RFD 184 Winter 2020

Number 184 Winter 2020 • $11.95

COVID-19 AND COMMUNITY

RFD 184 Winter 2020 1

Issue 185 / Spring 2021

QUEERING THE DIET Submission Deadline: January 21, 2021 www.rfdmag.org/upload

For this issue we’re asking you to explore the ways our diets, food cultivation and how we are able to access food resources shapes our lives. We know that many faced with the shifts in how our societies operate after Coronavirus that access to food became a challenge while also allowing us to become creative about the food we prepared.

So we’d like folks to consider any of the following: diet pathways—omnivores, macrobiotics, vegetarian, vegan, organic, localvores. How have any of these diet decisions shaped your life, shifted your perspective or gave you new ideas for eating.

We’re also looking at and asking ourselves as LGBTQI people how we help shape these conversations, how are we queering the diet of others.

Bring the wild, the different back into the kitchens by the choices we make to produce, purchase and life within a dietary ideal.

So for example do you work growing organic veggies, do you shop at a food cooperative, are leading cooking classes for others, foraging for wild edibles or merely bringing some fantastic item to the party.

We want to make this issue engaging by coming at this issue from a variety of perspectives so we’re asking our readers to consider how our

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RFD 184 Winter 2020

diets, like other parts of our lives are deeply personal. So we’re more interesting in sharing gifts about our experience rather than the politics of decision. So rather share a recipe for making oat milk over telling us how bad cow’s milk is.

We’re also really interested in how we as queer people are helping shape an approach to food which is healthy, cross cultural lines in terms of cuisines, and how are we asking others to engage in how we come to a common table to share a meal.

So tell us about your experiences in shifting how you eat, where you get your food or how you grow your food, who you have come across in your food journey and what recipes, tips or ideas do you have to share to help fellow readers in shaping a healthy queer diet.

For many of us we’re looking at ways to eat healthier for ourselves while some of us are also asking questions about our food, how it is produced and what is does in creating community rather than profit for some producer, food store or restaurant. So please look into all the ways that you engage with food and let us know about things you’ve learned, meals you have enjoyed and ways that make your life more interesting because of food.

Lastly, tell us about a great meal you shared and how you had a lovely evening.

Respect Fixed Distance Vol 47 No 2 #184 Winter 2020

Between the Lines As we enter the winter months, we’re all acclimating to the reality of Covid-19 and it’s impact on our bodies, on our mental state after months of social distancing and seeing the impacts of the virus on our friends, family and the larger global community. We share with you now responses to the coronavirus from a varied number of people in our diverse community. As a collective, we are so thriled to reflect a wide number of communities and regions in our pages especially as we communally respond as a queer community to this pandemic.

We look forward to you enjoying the issue – reading other people’s perspectives, sharing ideas and showing how the last few months under duress has drawn us together. We also want to honor those who are not reflected on our pages and encourage the quiet to raise their voices, RFD exists for it’s readers to share their thoughts and ideas.

As the winter comes global health experts predict soaring case rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths, we in our small way hope the vaccines prove effective, that the LGBTQ community finds creative ways to educate and protect ourselves.

As RFD is nearing forty-seven years in print, we’re proud in our role in shaping the gay community and we hope you, our readers will take the time when you get a chance to look at some of our back issues online—rfdmag.org/back-issues.php. We want to appreciate everyone who has helped produce and shape RFD’s legacy—collective members, authors and artists as well as the various ideas that came directly from our readers in shaping upcoming issues.

Please consider adding your voice to RFD’s pages, send us theme ideas, and please share RFD with your friends. If possible we also greatly appreciate your donations but understand we’re in uncertain times, but often even a small gift makes a difference. At this time of reaching inward and seeing the quiet hours, we hope everyone is safe and finding ways to celebrate the holidays and shift in the seasons.

Solistice greetings from a socially distanced but still tightknit RFD production team here in New England! “What do you mean Zoom doesn’t have a margarita function?”

—The RFD Collective

RFD 184 Winter 2020 3

Submission Deadlines Spring—Jan 21, 2021 Summer—April 21, 2021 See inside covers for themes and specifics.

On the Covers

Front: “2020 // E A R T H” by Chris Moody Back: “Together” by Victor adeniran

Production

Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Production Editor: Matt Bucy

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org. To read online visit www.issuu.com/rfmag.

RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation.

The business and general production are coordinated by a collective.

Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places.

RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302.

Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA

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RFD 184 Winter 2020

01035-0302. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190.

RFD Cover Price: $11.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded.

Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Hadley, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001.

Visual Contributors in this Issue

Images or pieces not directly associated with an article.

Chris Moody.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Front Cover, 26, 53 Dragon (Arthur Durkee).. . . . . . . . . 6, 17, 22, 23, 59 Richard Vyse.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 57 Kwai Lam.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 21, 41, 51, 62 ~WAVE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Eric Lanuit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 33 Dudgrick Bevins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Victor adeniran.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back Cover, 55, 60 Leo Herrera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inside Back Cover

Photo by Kwai Lam. “Well-filled hot pants, Salt Spring Pride.”

CONTENTS On Having To Fly Back Early. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven Finch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Phantom Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andre Le Mont Wilson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Forest Bathing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Al Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Yes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Liz Gold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Dance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Story Stag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Hora Sfakion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Luna. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Covid Connection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sandra Brown-Bass. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Summer 2020. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leslie Such . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Surviving and Thriving Again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hammer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 it is hard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Franklin Abbott. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Nude Beach Bubble. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wes Hartley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Catalyst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Al Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Realism and Larry Kramer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dragon (Arthur Durkee) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Spike. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andre Le Mont Wilson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Your Arms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andre Le Mont Wilson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 On the Doorstep of Summer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jack Berning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 This Garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don Perryman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Cheesman Park—Denver, CO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jack Berning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 M4M: still, you’re with me all the time . . . . . . Josh Dixon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Poetry Reviews: Antiss and DancingBare. . . . Leopard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 COVID-19 Social Distance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Fleming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Poetry, Public Art, and the Myth of Productivity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . luke kurtis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Grey Shadows In Between. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Qweaver. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Dancing with the Virus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mata Hari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 How to Cope During COVID-19. . . . . . . . . . . Steven Finch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 The Dinner Party. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mel Compo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 COVID & Me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notre Dame des Arbres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 We Were. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flaming Salamander. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 The Antidote to Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sionainn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Avatars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Story Stag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Illusive Satan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James McColley Eilers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Blushing Vinegar and What to Do with It!. . . JN.exe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 On the Path: Adrian Brooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lee Mentley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

RFD 184 Winter 2020 5

On Having To Fly Back Early March 18, 2020 on Gran Canaria.

The morning sun’s shining brightly again so I open the french doors so a couple rays can caress my face.

There’s practically nobody anywhere.

There’s only this invisible presence of invasive coronavirus everywhere.

And then, facing me, I notice there’s a new white hibiscus flower.

Another thing of beauty. And then it makes me think of a white flag, that internationally recognized protective sign of truce or ceasefire and request for negotiation.

Unacknowledged now.

Riding the wind, a butterfly flits by as if it were waving good-bye.

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— Steven Finch

Phantom Man

by Andre Le Mont Wilson

I

planned to wear my “Kiss me, I’m 6.25% Irish” shirt on St Patrick’s Day, but the executive director closed our Oakland day program for adults with disabilities on March 16, 2020, because of the pandemic. Now, my shirt remained unworn in my closet while I remained at home, navigating the unfamiliar world thrust upon me—and billions.

I had worked as a backup personal care attendant for twenty-five years. I changed the diapers and clothes of men who couldn’t change them themselves. In the absence of lifting and supporting men from their wheelchair to the toilet or changing table and back, five days a week, my body experienced shock. I had adapted my body to support another man’s body to such an extent that I felt lost without him, like the hindquarters of a centaur separated from its man half. I wobbled on two hooves. A severed horse torso searched for its man half but couldn’t find him. Memories of his weight lingered in my flanks. He existed only as a phantom limb, a phantom man.

If man and horse were united again, the virus could kill us. I had engaged in work I couldn’t do remotely. Social distancing and six feet were incompatible with a job that required close, physical contact with the bodies of others. I watched with trepidation as first dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands of attendants and nurses in nursing homes, group homes, and hospitals contracted the virus and died. I wondered if I would receive personal protective equipment when I returned to work, or if I would be forced to wear a trash bag.

I returned to work on April Fool’s Day. The building was empty of the sounds of wheelchairs, walkers, and their occupants. A skeleton crew of masked staff either taught Zoom classes or disinfected surfaces. I received two face shields and began calling, emailing, mailing, and Zooming participants who hadn’t attended the program since the shutdown.

Looking more like astronauts in masks, shields, gloves, and gowns, staff trained how to feed, transport, and hygiene people with disabilities once they returned to the program. But when the infection rate skyrocketed in Alameda County, we abandoned plans for in-person learning and launched a full curriculum of Zoom classes.

The executive director asked if I wanted to teach storytelling. I used to perform stories before participants behind the building after lunch. But in the year before the pandemic, attendants needed my help in the restroom after every lunch. All storytelling ceased. I told my director I would think about it over the weekend. On Monday, I told her yes.

During the shutdown, I had attended several literary events and workshops on Zoom, so I was familiar with the virtual meeting technology.

However, I was so accustomed to working behind the scene, wiping behinds, that I felt odd working in front of a camera. I used to change men; now the pandemic changed me.

My first Zoom storytelling classes consisted of videos of my storytelling performances and comedians with disabilities, followed by class discussion.

However, my support staff, attendants who had only worked as attendants, so botched the sharing of videos that I took over as host and began to read stories from text or storyboards and decreased the use of videos.

“Why are you still wearing that?” a participant asked from his box on the screen. His eyes motioned to the mask and shield on my face.

I said, “I wear them not because of you, but because of the support staff around me.”

For the next class, I placed a portable dry-erase board behind me, not only to block views of the classroom, but to prevent staff from walking up and breathing near me, even if they were wearing masks. Now, I removed my ghost’s bedsheet— shield and mask—and unleashed the full arsenal of facial expressions and gestures during storytelling.

The participants laughed from their screen boxes, like the Brady Bunch in their tic-tac-toe boxes at the beginning of their seventies show.

After six weeks, I received a report. My storytelling class had the highest average attendance of any class we offered on Wednesday. I filled my office with storytelling books and ordered another on virtual storytelling. I intend to revamp my lesson plan to make my class more interactive. I’m not in a rush to reattach to my man half as his essential servant after the pandemic. I have a lot of stories to tell.

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“Embrace (series)” by Dragon (Arthur Durkee).

Forest Bathing Where does this overwhelming calm come from?

The smell of Petrichor – the blood of the Gods - and the honeysuckle, oh God, the honeysuckle: You just have to touch my cup.

The dappled light mosaiced on the ground, telling parables through pictures. I see that the trees haven’t forgotten how to dance as I have.

The birds and cicadas screaming for sex over the rustle of the dry leaves when the chipmunk passes by.

The invisible underground kingdom of fungus or the spiders’ webs, dew-covered, revealed only by the morning light: a sibling in every foot, behind and before.

The blackberries, fat juicy treats for human and animal, alike and the velvet softness of the baby needles on the old blue spruce.

Which of these singular wonders brings me the most peace?

I briefly harbor dreams of commodifying it – if only so my sojourns can be made more efficient.

The knowledge that all flourish in ignorance of the troubles of the human world, perhaps. *** I stand, soaking in this natural bathtub until my sinuses cry out for mercy – my internal mucus moat rushing to protect me from the world that bore me.

—Al Cole

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Yes

by Liz Gold

tony I’m gonna keep growing my hair out for your pleasure, even tho it’s not my favorite aesthetic, I get off on knowing what and who it’s for and I was wet from our text exchange about that last night you correcting me and you calling me this morning, checking in, etc.

I keep thinking about and remembering our time together really I’m feeling you our meeting, yes, our date in the middle of the pandemic and wildfires and yes tony, I think that’s hot exceptional, really that is how I described you to one of my femmes “she’s exceptional” like the whole experience with you yes tony I am surprised this has lasted this long, aren’t you?

I mean long distance d/s poly, I did not expect this at all but let me be clear, as you like to say: I am very excited about it yes tony, I like submitting to you and being told what to do a lot like a lot, a lot you know this I mean I’m saying all this like I have said it before repeatedly, consistently, regularly, just like I submit to you but content doesn’t matter, right so... what else can I say? except yes tony your intention, your attention, your care your hands massaging my neck and shoulders your hands around my neck, finally, like they belong there feeling your strength me looking back at you and seeing you smiling me on your lap, kneeling your fingers tugging on my nipples our faces so close me kissing you, licking your lips, your mouth curling all wolfish you telling me to lean in and kiss you 10 RFD 184 Winter 2020

you touching my pussy, getting me off your eyes penetrating me, whenever you were talking to me do you even blink? wow fuck the way you look at me I mean come on your fucking style all of it I might be talking about this for a long time remembering bits and pieces of this time our first meeting and of course me rubbing against your boot in that vista point parking lot beautiful blue sky delicious pacific ocean random people around after you tell me to take off my pants and stand in front of you after I drink that drink that made me feel like I was flying the energy between us your coaxing, which I so obviously need felt.so.good.

I mean there is so much more to say, like you walking directly behind me brushing my hair from my face watching you undress to swim in the ocean I think I am just beginning here and then the words you shared when we were parting made my chest stretch so big and wide, the tenderness, the depth, the desire, the tears oh the uncontrollable tears undeniable all there all clear all saying yes tony I want more and I will do anything for this desire to express my submission for your pleasure please tony liz

Dance

by Story Stag

W

hen I got out of hospital, the faeries took care of me. Someone would come round every day, perhaps wearing a mask and gloves and bringing me food, or just sitting in the back garden with me on warmer days. Some days I had multiple visitors.

I spotted Simile walking down the stairs into my small walled garden. I hardly recognised her, wearing what looked like full body PPE, layer after layer of colourful protection. Simile was my favourite. She always had a surprise up her sleeve, from plastic flowers for my bathroom to cannabis oil for my soul.

‘Simile, I’m not really up for playing doctors and nurses.’

She held up one gloved finger to the mask over her lips to shush me. She then pulled a small hand-written sign out of a big bag: Safety Dance of the Seven Veils.

She fiddled with her phone and it began playing Middle Eastern sounding flute music.

She stood a few paces away from me and began to sway, arms drawing circular patterns with the music, and my head moved along with it. Simile wasn’t much for words, but actions she had, and dance moves.

Then one purple marigold came off, carefully pulled inside out, exposing sparkly black and pink nails. Soon the other was off too, and tossed – not towards me, but into the bag.

The goggles came off next, undone from behind her head and spun around high in the air as her hips circled below . Next was the translucent white gown – or was it a bin bag. She untied some strings at her side and pulled it off, her body still flowing.

The music changed mood, with drums holding the rhythm, and I beat my fingers to it. The dancing got louder too.

Her face mask stayed on as her hands slid over what looked like purple scrubs, which may well have been a pair of pyjamas. But I forgot about inspecting them as she slithered out of the top, exposing round breasts that bounced and rolled in the sunlight, independent of each other.

‘Yeeha!’ I cried, punching my fists in the air in time with the music. I stopped quickly as this left me breathless.

Her eyes smiled at me, but Simile’s movements were unbroken. Next she teased with the bottoms, pulling them out by the waistband. Finally, they came off, slowly being pulled down until a long cock bounced impressively as it was set free.

‘I’d like that head on a platter,’ I declared.

Only the face mask was left, ruby red under her large brown eyes. She undulated naked, suggestively tugging at the elastic straps behind her ears.

‘Best leave that one on, lovely,’ I said, pushing the armrests down to slowly get up. ‘Leave some mystery. And stay safe. Anyhow, I’ve had enough excitement for today.’

I gave her an air hug.

“This won’t last forever. I look forward to giving you a proper lap dance,” she said.

“I look forward to being well enough to receive it,” I answered.

We looked into each other’s eyes. A moment.

A promise.

A noise suggested someone else had arrived.

Simile slipped into a summery dress and gathered her things.

It was Rocky, carrying a big pot. Rocky was my favourite. They always brought food, such a good cook. And they would tell me all the gossip while watching me eat.

The faeries would take care of me, nurse me back to health.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 11

Hora Sfakion

by Luna

“I

am sorry if this comes as a disappointment”— the email said—“but now is not the right moment for this project. We will get back to you once the situation improves.”

In one stroke, he had lost his job. The publishing company had all but promised to commission him to translate the third novel of a relatively obscure French author, but with the drop in sales caused by the pandemic all new book projects had been put on hold.

He had just moved into an Airbnb in a sleepy small village in southern Crete. The house, perched on a hill overlooking the Libyan Sea, was a coveted destination in the summer, but with winter closing in, he had been able to rent it for a fraction of its usual price. Even if the house wasn’t expensive, money was in short supply for him. The translation was supposed to pay the rent, but now he had other things than money to worry about. The news from his employer came after the Greek prime minister had made a grim televised address to announce that the country was entering a lockdown within the next twenty four hours.

The announcement upset him. His plans to combine work with regular visits to the beach to swim laps were thrown out the window. He could also forget about one or the other escapade to meet men for sex. At least he found solace in the idea that the isolation would be good for his work and that once he immersed himself in the text, he would be able to forget about everything else. Now that he had lost his job, the silver lining evaporated.

He looked at the email on the screen dumbfounded. The reality of his situation sank in. He was going to enter lockdown in a house in the middle of nowhere, all alone and with nothing to do. He could hear the wind howling around the house. He closed his eyes and his mind conjured images of a pack of spectral hounds. He had a headache. Had he forgotten to drink coffee in the morning?

The weather forecast announced a week of intermittent rains and strong winds. He never anticipated that the Cretan coast in the winter would look so much like the North Sea, but as with many other things on this trip, the weather had turned out differently than he had expected. He wanted to shout; he wanted to cry; he wanted to escape. He grabbed 12 RFD 184 Winter 2020

his phone.

The screen lit up with a grid of small pictures of hairless male torsos and selfies. There were no unread messages in his mailbox and the closest user was more than 20 miles away. He sighed and scrolled down the screen. A profile caught his eye.

TomFun looked like the kind of twink brat who he usually fell for. He sent a message and waited in vain for a response. He put the phone away and looked for the box of painkillers. As he was swallowing the tablet with a gulp of tap water, he heard it. The sound he had come to crave and detest. A new message.

“New in the area? I’m Ben.” “I just moved in,” he answered. He then went into Ben’s profile and looked at his single picture.

Ben looked tanned and rather attractive, a smile concealed behind a pair of sunglasses.

“Not so many tourists this time of the year, what brought you here?”

“I thought I’ll find myself a quiet spot to work, but my employer just cancelled my assignment.”

“That sucks, I guess.”

“It does, especially with the lockdown starting tomorrow.”

“Tell me all about it, we better buckle up for a lonely, sexless month.”

“I am a bit overwhelmed right now.”

He wasn’t used to speaking so candidly about his feelings on the app. Usually it just took a few messages to start exchanging nude pictures and discussing sexual preferences. From what he could tell, Ben seemed genuinely interested in conversation.

Ben was also a foreigner, but he had been living for several years in Crete.

“That part of the island where you live is known as assassin country,” texted Ben. “What do you mean?”

“That’s where you go to if you are looking for a hitman.”

“I want to kill my employer, but I am not sure I can afford the fee lol.”

They chatted for a while, exchanging jokes and banter, flirting. Inevitably, the conversation wheeled back to the lockdown.

“It will be strange to be all alone in this house with nothing else to do than stare at the sea.”

“I envy you,” answered Ben. “I live in a small apartment and all I can see from the window are the houses across the street.”

“No need to envy me. The house has three bedrooms, pick the one you fancy most.”

“Are you serious?”

No, of course he wasn’t serious. He wasn’t going to invite a total stranger into his place on the eve of a month-long lockdown.

“Just kidding,” he wrote and then added, “though I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Me neither,” answered Ben. “It would be crazy, wouldn’t it?” he wrote, still indulging in the fantasy.

“Should we talk on the phone?”

He texted his number and seconds later his phone rang.

– Hello?

– It’s Ben, good to hear your voice.

He liked how Ben’s voice sounded, too. It was deep but also jovial and, dare he say, warm.

He felt nervous. He wanted to give him a good impression. He didn’t want to look lonely or desperate. They talked and flirted for half an hour, until it seemed they had run out of thing to say. An awkward silence followed.

– I hope it doesn’t come across the wrong way— he said—but how would you feel about exchanging some photos?

He could hear Ben laughing on the other side of the line.

– Give me a second.

With a whooshing sound, pictures started appearing on his screen. He frantically pressed through different windows in his touchscreen and sent a G-rated selection of his best pictures.

H

e had been sitting on the couch for a while, listening to the gusts of wind raging around the house, when the doorbell rang. He took a last look at the mirror next to the bookshelf and opened the door.

– What a hell of a wind!—said Ben, holding his baseball cap on his head with a pressed hand.

– Come in, come in—he said, dragging Ben into the house and closing the door behind him.

Ben looked shorter and older than in the pictures, but he still had the same smile.

– Hello and welcome—he said, putting forth his hand. Ben shook his hand and gave him a fleeting kiss on the cheek.

– You haven’t told me your name yet, did you realize?

He blushed and let go of Ben’s hand.

– I am Hadrian.

– Nice to finally meet you—said Ben. Ben took off his small backpack and left it next to his suitcase on the floor. Hadrian gestured him towards the couch and poured him a glass of white wine from a bottle he had left cooling.

– To good times ahead as lockdown mates—said Ben raising his class.

– Cheers—said Hadrian, and after drinking a sip from his glass, he added –Isn’t it crazy?

– Absolutely—said Ben, and both laughed nervously and drank some more.

– Would you like a tour of the house?—asked Hadrian.

They started with the kitchen. Hadrian opened the fridge, revealing an interior full to the brim.

– We won’t go hungry for sure—said Ben. – I made a big shopping trip on the way here. I probably overdid it, but I freaked out when I heard about the lockdown.

Hadrian showed him the bedroom on the ground floor, with views over the sea, and the first bathroom with a shower. Then they went upstairs and Hadrian showed him the other bedroom and the bathroom with a bathtub. All the rooms looked exactly as when Hadrian arrived, with the beds neatly made and the decoration as bland and impersonal as in a hotel. Finally Hadrian showed him the room where he had been sleeping and where the only double bed was located.

– So where would you like to sleep?—asked Hadrian as he sat on the bed.

– The other two bedrooms look cozy—said Ben, sitting next to him.

– The best view is in the bedroom downstairs.

– I like the view from here—said Ben, looking at him.

They kissed, softly at first and then hungrily.

They undressed each other in haste. Ben was hairy and tanned, Hadrian trimmed and pale. A shiver came over Hadrian when he felt the full weight of Ben’s body on his, their skins touching from head to toe. The sex wasn’t very good. Ben tried to penetrate him twice, but it hurt him and they had to stop.

They finally kissed and jerked off each other. After the sex, Ben asked: – Do you mind if I sleep here with you?

– Do you snore?

– I don’t think so.

B

en was right, he didn’t snore, but Hadrian slept badly anyway. After they had sex last RFD 184 Winter 2020 13

night, Hadrian was overcome by a desire for Ben to leave. After the itch of his sexual urges had been scratched, he could hear the voice of doubt louder in his head. To make things worse, the wind outside continued to howl and made the bedroom’s windows rattle. He spent the night tossing and turning while Ben slept soundly. Just before sunset he finally managed to fall asleep and was awakened a few hours later by the sound of soft kisses on his neck.

He felt the stubble of Ben’s chin brushing against his shoulder. They cuddled and suddenly Hadrian was glad that Ben was still there. He was so glad that he got a boner. Ben sucked his dick and after Hadrian 14 RFD 184 Winter 2020

came, he fell asleep a second time.

When Hadrian came downstairs, Ben had prepared a mighty breakfast with freshly brewed coffee, scrambled eggs and toasts.

– I thought you would be hungry after all the exercise last night—said Ben with a naughty smile.

– I usually don’t eat much for breakfast, but this looks really yummy—said Hadrian taking a chair in the kitchen table.

– Let me get you some coffee—offered Ben, and as he took the coffeepot he knocked down a mug that rolled to the edge of the table and smashed against the floor.

“Lad Mood” by Richard Vyse.

– Gosh, I am sorry! What a silly cow I am—said Ben while he finished pouring the coffee.

Hadrian stood up at once, left the kitchen and came back with a broom and a dustpan.

– I can do it, I am so sorry—insisted Ben. – It’s no big deal—said Hadrian, as he quickly swept up the pieces of broken mug.

They ate breakfast together and talked about the news and the weather. Ben did most of the talking. After breakfast, they decided to take one of the spare bedrooms each and turn them into their offices. Ben had a Zoom meeting with his colleagues in five minutes and went to the bedroom upstairs.

When he passed by Hadrian, he planted a kiss on his head.

– See you later, handsome—said Ben. In the ground floor bedroom with the sea view, Hadrian opened his laptop and answered a few emails. After less than an hour he had finished all his work-related tasks. He opened Facebook but regretted it instantly, closing the tab before the website had time to load. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate. He opened the app. Still no message from TomFun. He went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. The door of the bedroom upstairs must have been open because he heard Ben talking. He had a different voice, deeper and businesslike. The wind was throwing droplets of rain against the window of the kitchen. Hadrian looked at the dirty dishes from breakfast in the sink and felt that dread again. What had he been thinking?

Hadrian went back to the bedroom and forced himself to look at several job search websites. He found two listings suited to his profile and spent the rest of the morning writing application letters. At lunchtime, both of them snacked and ate sandwiches.

– How’s your day going?—asked Ben. – Slow, and yours?

– I am sick of those Zoom meetings, but at least I can attend them in my underwear.

– So probably it was a good idea that we don’t work in the same room—said Hadrian with innuendo and a smile. He hoped that Ben wouldn’t be able to see the sadness in his eyes.

– Time to get back to the assembly line—said Ben and vigorously climbed the steps to his room.

Hadrian spent the afternoon reading the online newspaper and rewriting parts of a novel he had been writing for years without ever finishing it.

He lost track of time and was startled when Ben knocked at the door.

– Hey handsome, what do you think about going

to the beach for a quick swim?

Hadrian looked over the window. The wind was still blowing but the sky had cleared. The late afternoon sun shone on the surface of the sea like on a sequin suit.

– Won’t we get into trouble with the lockdown?—asked Hadrian.

– No one will notice, we will be back in no time—said Ben mischievously.

They drove as close as they could to the sea and walked the trail to the beach. They found a spot among big boulders sheltered from the wind and they undressed. The water wasn’t too cold but the wind made Hadrian shiver, so he plunged straight in and swam crawl to heat up his body. Ben swam behind him, their bodies glistening naked in the turquoise waters of the Libyan Sea. Ben caught up with Hadrian and pulled his ankle. They stopped swimming to catch their breath, floating over the rocks beneath them. Ben pulled Hadrian towards him and they kissed. It felt good to be in Ben’s arms and Hadrian was relieved that he had nothing to hide this time.

That night the sex was much better. Ben fucked him the way he liked to be fucked, soft at the beginning and increasingly rough towards the end. After they came, their bodies were moist and exhausted.

– Good night, handsome—said Ben. Hadrian kissed him and fell asleep instantly.

T

he next morning Hadrian woke up later than he used to. Ben wasn’t in bed and he smiled at the idea of another hearty breakfast. Contrary to the day before, he had a huge appetite. He came downstairs but there was no food on the table.

– Ben?—he called.

He looked into the other rooms but there was no trace of him. His backpack and suitcase weren’t there either. He went outside to see if Ben’s car was still parked in the driveway. The car was gone, the driveway empty, except for the wind that beat against his face and howled in his ears.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and then he heard it. That sound he had come to crave and detest, to desire and fear.

At his feet, the waves continued their endless waltz, traveling all the way from the depths of the sea to die on its shores one after the other. The indifference of the rocks against which they crashed was only matched by the sea itself, made callous by an ancient solitude.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 15

The Covid Connection We’re all in this together they say; but I can’t tell.

I am packed up, piled up, and unprotected as frequent fliers pack out.

Another day I wake up striving to breathe beyond Buchenwald.

I go hungry with hunger to live; go hungry to forego being herded to chow for my state portion with a side of Covid.

Society sardonically sanitizes its hands while hearts remain infected.

Six feet apart outsidesix inches inside.

Masks for those outsidenone for those inside.

Sanitizer outside?

Not for those inside.

Ten or less outside-

16 RFD 184 Winter 2020

ten times five inside.

Global effort outside: S.O.L. inside.

‘Net connected outsidedisconnected inside.

Out of sight outsideout of mind inside.

We’ve been washed from society’s hands like Corona-but we are them; not some experiment gone viciously viral. Cleaning the surface never cleanses the system.

Masking our maladies don’t mitigate their existence.

In the end, we breathe what we breed.

Now we’re all locked down.

No one is safe for real.

In a world gone Wuhan bats, they now know how we feel.

—Sandra Brown-Bass

Summer 2020 heat waves through empty boardrooms. chill summer tunes beating through over-filled houses. barbecues unused as people lie on lilos in their living rooms. beach parties on Zoom. shades to protect us from our own fingers more than the sun. the doors may be locked but we’ll make our own fun. —Leslie Such

RFD 184 Winter 2020 17

Surviving and Thriving Again

By Hammer

O

ur Radical Faerie community appears to fare no better than the larger straight world. I see stress and distress all around. Several suicides and a number of deaths from drugs or unexplained causes. Families saying, “it’s not your business what he died of.”

For queers, isolation and a restraint of gathering in each other’s physical presence is a particularly harsh sentence. Not being able to embrace our elders, kiss our friends, and make love with our outlaw conspirators removes much of the deepest balm and privileges of being a faggot. For so long one of the deepest rewards for coming out was the hard-won freedom to associate intimately. Take that away and the rewards for being a social pariah are thin. Of course, “it’s not forever”, “it’ll be normal again soon,” “it’s not that much to give up for a while to do the right thing…”

Some of us have gotten into gear to create alternative Zoom gatherings, heart circles, and world class Saturday no-talent shows. We’ve renewed our appreciation of sheltering in place, old hobbies, cooking, gardening, and the house crafts we cherish.

But really after a time, it’s not enough. It doesn’t shut off the anxiety, the itchiness for normalcy, and doesn’t lift the low-level nagging depression. The yearning for more, to be alive, to attend a party, dance in a club, sit in a café, dinner with friends, in short to celebrate the body electric in community is still a deep desire.

Those who survived the AIDS epidemic are now part of the high-risk population for this pandemic because of our ages. We seemed at first especially triggered and especially at risk and troubled. Later I noticed this is also the group that seems most resilient and skillful in bearing the length of these shut downs, deprivations, and let downs. Elders seem the most clear-eyed in understanding the science, the technical notes about infections and avoiding them.

How to establish life in the midst of grave physical dangers are particular skills old queers have honed to an art. The art of living in times of plague, (again).

How to celebrate living and keep going when it’s a trudge and life or death might come from a slip off the balance beam.

To reach out to beloveds and new friends alike with a desire to hug but then pull back due to some 18 RFD 184 Winter 2020

deeper reticence of danger and hesitation and fear.

Perhaps an old wound from adolescence when the boy we loved most in high school seemed so open to us and that one time we were alone together, but still…

After the death penalty, isolation is the cruelest and most inhumane punishment. It is used for breaking prisoners’ resistance. It is used for the most recalcitrant. Those who refuse to obey. It is used to break the spirit. Divide and conquer is one of the oldest strategies of imperialist rule. Separating those would be powerful if unified. The Pride celebrations where we mass together, the packed bars, clubs, discos; the spiritual services, our gatherings, orgies, parties, dinners, rituals all interrupted.

Then the political sniping starts. Attacks on trans rights, suggestions the right to marry should be reversed, and monsters emboldened by a population in shock from the epidemic. The shock doctrine at work once again.

I reach out to individuals, small groups, looking to offer encouragement, and equally seeking my own renewal and sustenance. I wonder after the first month of lock down, “why don’t I take advantage of this time and offer more classes, more support groups, more interventions, more engagement?”

Upon reflection I realize I am grieving. I am full of grief. I am exhausted with grief and I cannot give what I do not have.

Just recently a naturopath tells me the root of my current health problems are stress. It hits me as accurate at once. I have been saying for months, “everyone I know is stressed and distressed!” Of course, that includes me too! So blind to the obvious.

We set up a fund after the Global Gathering 3 in South Africa to support some African faeries, for whom “Covid-19 lockdown” meant no work, no money, and no food. It seems to be an effective project. It’s keeping us in touch in a way which may not have happened without the pandemic. Funds get collected from Faeries throughout the northern hemisphere and redistributed to Faeries throughout Africa. But couples who have fallen in love have been separated by the travel bans. Hearts broken, desires thwarted, normal intercourse interrupted.

In Portland concern for economic losses also created a fund to support faeries who have lost jobs.

The community responds fully when the call is presented. Community building through the care for each member. A world that works for every faerie with no one left behind. But some didn’t get the message we care and with heart break we learn of faeries lost to despair. We continue to grieve. Weeping for the pain of separation as this loss of physical comfort stings. As well as the disgust and revolting ugliness of the political monsters unleashed. The raw injustices of the attacks perpetrated by white supremacy, ice steel capitalism, the brutal machinery crushing our living, once glorious planet into wood pellets for the stoves of dark madness that is human greed.

Elders and youngers come together. But how can elders pass their wisdom so that it is really useful.

What medium best facilitates this exchange. How can youngers receive the value of learned experience or the wisdom of elders? How to keep the

“Survival Is Not Enough� by Dragon (Arthur Durkee).

elders fully in the circle as they fade into fragile beings. Tragically oppressions appear to repeat themselves. What light exists at the end of the tunnel? Where is the vision and the call for a renewed earth, upgraded civilization, restorative justice, and responsible freedom?

We Faeries have in our collective consciousness skills and strategies for surviving other epidemics and mass tragedies, and mass oppression. Taking comfort in small circles and more intimate community is one way forward. Retreating and self-renewal are as valid strategies for the long fight as nightly street marches and organizing until we drop. Each generation of Faeries learns and recreates what it means to thrive as a queer. What makes our lives most fulfilled and rewarding? These are times to renew our spirit of resistance personally, communally, and organizationally. We have a lot of transformation on the planet still to effect.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 19

it is hard it is hard not to lean in especially when masks over mouths muffle the sound it is odd to miss the smile that kindles safety only eyes and eyes can wonder it is hard to flirt with only eyes without a smile and without a smile how can we know someone feels the same way? it is odd to walk into a bank with a mask it is odd to ask for something ordinary (to cash a check for my own money) while in stick up gear no note to slip to the teller no demand for funds no getaway car in the drive through when the chores are done the mask comes off a sigh is more than a sigh of relief a sigh is just half a gasp for air for breath I can breathe the gloves come off and are tossed the gloves come off and the hands can breathe sanitizer is squirted on the hands that were gloved and can breathe but need a half an ounce of reassurance

20 RFD 184 Winter 2020

the groceries come in from the trunk of the car it opens as if by magic by a lever touched by a gloved hand groceries are brought in still gingerly though no more the need to isolate wipe everything in sterilizing alcohol the milk can just go into the fridge the bananas can be left in a bowl to ripen the fear can be dropped with the gloves in the trash by the time I go out and gather and come in and arrange all the items I am so tired, disconsolate I need to strip naked and lie on my bed under the swirl of a ceiling fan is this my punishment or my reward was I a coward or uncommonly brave? —Franklin Abbott

Nude Beach Bubble Naked connoisseurs on nude beach sands, laid-back guys with time on their hands hard at work on their all-over tans Masks and Ray-Bans camouflage the faces of cautious contenders in the hot pursuit races on rainbow towels in their six foot spaces Gaydar signals, not looking for trouble, Tattoo Ted makes his move on the double and crowds into Danny’s trail biker bubble Compatible buddies, it’s love at first sight, freewheeling rowdies fraternally tight, when everything fits it’s got to be right Teddy and Danny took their chances and followed-up their gaydar glances with sleepovers, campouts, and bike romances Downhiller Danny and Tattoo Teddy lucky in love and going steady keep their Covid masks at the ready —Wes Hartley

RFD 184 Winter 2020 21

Catalyst The scientists have classified Covid as a virus—but to me, it is a catalyst.

Catalyst—noun—a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any chemical change.

In the before times, My slow, simmering (probable lifelong) desire to be someone else was creeping along – One shaky, timid foot at a time.

I figured I’d get there eventually after first passing through the door marked ‘motherhood’ Then came March, and my former indifference (more then a son’s) Sublimated as I stared into the void of my own inevitable demise.

I diagnosed myself with rapid onset dysphoria—I’d heard of such things, but never experienced them Until the catalyst.

But I must be correct—because nothing but the catalyst could make me Exothermic with rage—feeling trapped in the house— And Endothermic with sadness—feeling trapped in my body— Nothing but active sites on the surface of the mirror and me, With no distractions left to plug them with.

The catalyst has made the unthinkable, thinkable.

My gender hasn’t changed.

I’ve just lacked language to describe it and the bravery to hunt it down.

I finally am brave enough to look myself in the eyes and say I love you.

I see you.

I want everyone to see you the way I do.

Don’t get me wrong— It’s terrifying every time the needle cuts through my flesh like butter.

It’s terrifying to shop in the “wrong” section.

It’s terrifying to tell your boss, your friends, your family—always hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

But not to do these things is more terrifying.

It is more terrifying to consider going through the rest of my life with no one knowing me, not even myself.

What will happen if I continue to inject zero point two five milliliters of reagent into my thigh?

The medical literature notes many potential side reactions and unexpected byproducts – But nothing in the documentation will tell me if there is joy.

Hopefully dysphoria is the limiting reagent—meaning—when the reaction is complete—it will be all gone.

— Al Cole

22 RFD 184 Winter 2020

Photographs by Kwai Lam. Top: “You Said What?”; Bottom: “Looking Good My Friend.”

RFD 184 Winter 2020 23

Realism and Larry Kramer

by Dragon (Arthur Durkee)

I

’m tired of people in the LGBT community that I know coming down on me for being someone who turns to science and data for guidance instead of wishful thinking. Anyone who has lived through the HIV/AIDS plague years ought to know better.

I’ve lost all patience because I’m all out of spoons.

People who should know better are letting their cabin fever and their confirmation bias get the better of them. People are allowing a lot higher risk tolerance in their lives than they ought. Especially those with compromised immune systems, past or present.

I get it. Cabin fever. Quarantine. Unemployment. Being driven crazy. Worry. Anxiety. Fear. The current political anxiety on top of the pandemic.

The need to go out and protest, and go out and vote.

The need to be witchy and cast spells for healing the planet, ourselves, each other, and those who are suffering.

But now, more than ever before, is when we need to martial our reason, our logic, and our factual data. It’s time to get real.

24 RFD 184 Winter 2020

I’m neither a pessimist nor a cynic, despite getting called both. What I am is a hardcore realist.

That cuts all ways. (Intuitive logic, witchy reason, those aren’t oxymoronic.) People in the LGBT community yell at me for not being cynical enough, while others think I’m being a Pollyanna because I dare to refuse the presumptive apocalypse. Neither are true. I rely on the available data and science and medical reports. I am trained in science, and I understand how it is done. I carefully vet what I read for the quality and depth of the scientific work behind it, either in verification or in refutation.

Confirmation bias is not your friend. Willful ignorance is not your friend.

I’m also an artist, and a person of spirit. I make a lot of art directly inspired by the pandemic, some of which is a reminder to not let isolation destroy, some of which is reminders to stay centered and grounded. If Bohidharma could sit and stare at a cave wall for years, you can stay home and wear a mask for a few more months. Just sit!

“Embrace No. 2” by the author

This isn’t our first pandemic in our lifetimes.

Anyway it’s not the first pandemic for LGBT people.

AIDS was largely dismissed and ignored by the mainstream because it was just a bunch of fags and druggies dying, right? The mainstream and the government ignored AIDS for a very long time, which is why citizen activists formed groups like ACT-UP and GMHC. It was exactly the same impulse that had led to the Stonewall rebellion: no one else cares about us, so we’ll fight back for ourselves. My gods, the Stonewall uprising is so relevant again right now, fifty one years later. But after last years’ Stonewall 50 celebrations, a lot of the LGBT community was willing to revert back to placid ignorance of the radical meaning and root causes of rebellion.

That’s over, now.

Wake up!

The baseline problem in this COVID-19 pandemic is irresponsible behavior. Irresponsible behavior in both pandemics is what leads to getting sick and dying.

A lot of my gay friends didn’t like Larry Kramer’s books, like his novel, Faggots, because they thought it was a downer (and they hated the title). One of the reasons that some of my friends didn’t like the novel was that if they read it to the end they realized it was a polemic against irresponsibility and wishful thinking—which it was, with a scalpel. That was exactly why I did like the novel. By no means was Larry making a Puritanical condemnation of sexuality, he was lamenting willful ignorance that could kill you.

Sound familiar?

We are dealing once again with being at mortal risk because of the willful ignorance, irresponsibility, and wishful thinking of others, aided and abetted sometimes by ourselves.

I for one have a very low level of risk tolerance, even before the pandemic was politicized. Not for my own sake, but for everyone. It doesn’t matter Image by the author.

much that I find myself once again in a high-risk group, what matters more to me is how more-risktolerant people are being assholes, and irresponsible. I got no sympathy left, because I am all out of spoons, for that childishness.

No more spoons. Only knives.

We can’t let this stop us from living our lives.

Survival isn’t enough.

We must be concerned about the virus, in a rational way, but not in a way that changes our behavior beyond what is being recommended by the experts. There is a new virus, and it is a risk, but people freaking out is making things worse, not better. People are doing crazy things that place them and their loved ones at greater risk, either with the idea that they’re protecting them, or in willful ignorance of the virus’ effects. And many of the things they are doing are either the wrong things, or are being done the wrong way, or don’t work, in addition to endangering others.

This isn’t our first pandemic, in the LGBTQA community. But it’s the first pandemic for the world at large in a century. So we are not freaking out the same way they are, having already lived through times when we were dying and the government didn’t care, and refused to do anything. Some of my friends don’t understand why I’m not freaking out the same way they are. It’s not I’m not freaked out, but my responses are altered by past pandemic experience.

We can teach the larger world community what we know, from surviving. We can teach them about the necessity of grieving, and of continuing to live our lives, hurt or not by circumstances. We can’t let the virus stop us from living our lives. We can live our lives while being safe, still. And we do that by staying alert to the science of the pandemic, and by nurturing our homes and hearths for healing of spirit as well as of body and mind.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 25

Spike

by Andre Le Mont Wilson

Two black teenage boys—you and me— sat at opposite ends of a bus stop bench beneath a railroad overpass.

I bolted from my seat.

On the sidewalk I turned.

You followed

You grimaced and sat so far away from me you almost fell off the bench.

on the other side of the street.

I quickened my pace, certain that you were going to finish what you started at the stop.

I turned.

You disappeared.

I didn’t know where you went Moments later a railroad spike dropped from the overpass and missed my head by inches.

It rang when it chipped the pavement.

Footsteps crunched the trackbed stones.

I watched you descend the bridge and resume your seat at the opposite end of the bench, as if nothing had happened.

So sure you were of your aim, that you hadn’t planned what to do if you had missed and I survived.

So unsure was I of your intention, that I convinced myself the fallen spike was an accident.

But as failed assassin and flunked victim sat across the aisle from each other on the bus home, the reality of what almost occurred festered.

We spoke neither a word nor gave a sideways glance.

We stared straight ahead. When the bus arrived at my stop,

26 RFD 184 Winter 2020

You quickened your pace, certain I was going to snitch on you.

I approached the apartments.

You approached them, too.

You’re no stranger. You’re my neighbor.

We ran to our apartments along separate paths.

We sought refuge behind closed doors.

We avoided the disaster of answering questions: Did you see burned into my eyes the images of the first gay porn magazine I had found two days earlier?

Did you hope to destroy in me my desire for men as I had hoped to destroy that desire in myself?

Did you fear I would look at you the same way I had looked at penises rising, hands grappling, mouths waiting?

Did you imagine that if we sat together on that bus stop bench we would desire each other the same way?

Did you pray that by sacrificing me you would cure yourself?

Your Arms Funny, what I most miss about you are your arms.

Like phantom limbs, memories remain of your arms.

Lying in bed together after making love, my body tingled in the embrace of your arms.

When we spooned together, you in back, me in front, my finger worried cicatrices on your arms.

I asked how you got the old cuts, scars, and burn marks, and you told stories of each blemish on your arms.

Our entwined fingers formed a human centipede; limbs squinched in the anaconda coils of your arms.

Spooning, I imagined our bodies merged to one— centaur-like—with four legs but only your arms.

Once, I dreamed I shrank to the size of an ant scout that explored the alien surface of your arms.

Other times, my body pulsed within your heartbeat, as if wrapped in the blood pressure cuffs of your arms.

Sometimes, I gazed upon the fine hairs on your skin and watched them undulate with each breath on your arms.

And if an entangling limb should stray past my lips, I kissed your skin and tasted the sweat on your arms.

Had I known that would be our last night together, I would have pressed myself tighter into your arms and held my breath while feeling your breath on my neck, as if that night would last forever in your arms.

Strange how your absence tightens its grip around me to where I can’t breathe without yearning for your arms.

I wonder what you were thinking on our last night and who tonight dreams in the embrace of your arms.

You tattooed the nickname you gave me on your skin; did lasers remove my memory from your arms?

—Andre Le Mont Wilson

RFD 184 Winter 2020 27

28 RFD 184 Winter 2020

“Bridge of the Gods” by Chris Moody.

On the Doorstep of Summer On the doorstep of summer.

The sinus mumbles its discontent.

The fingers wait to swell.

Today I could not put down a novel about two gay lovers on the coast of Italy.

I don’t know what was so tragic about it— perhaps it was the knowing that we may find love and not hold it or that we may hold it apart, parching the body.

I can already see him at the pool, the boy I’ll fall in love with.

I can smell the residual of sunscreen and sweat and him—distinctly him— in my bed sheets.

Already I know I cannot bear a second without him.

His lips are my sour fruit, his belly my moon.

At night our nakedness will be waterlike.

I will take him or he will take me and then, late in the evening, when the sunlight behaves like a bruise and the body’s craving grows insatiable, we will split ourself with the heat.

If I have seen it, so too has he.

He must come: It is time for our body’s awful moment.

—Jack Berning

RFD 184 Winter 2020 29

This Garden Those who know do not speak, and talkers never know. – Tao Te Ching I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.

—Adrienne Rich Sometimes I simply need to be – in some beautiful zen garden like ones I’ve wandered by before or maybe ones I’ve seen in movies, dreamed of once or twice, waking in tears.

I think you’ve also known this place.

I’m fairly sure you’ve been here too.

Mine’s a breathing space the brave hero (or in this case the ordinary guy like me) retreats into for sorely needed restoration before he faces back to doing battle with all the hydra-headed enemies of freedom, beauty, truth, and decency including any foes that lurk inside him.

Maybe it’s not available here today, or won’t be here again for the duration.

Maybe it’s one of those fantasies on a far-flung planet of a future world, one like my sheltering partner encourages me to appreciate with him – a show on Prime perhaps.

But I recognize this place, I surely do: All is serene and placid here.

Breathless as I may have been, breath resumes again – slowly, easily.

Everything inside this holiest of folds is lovely order, perfect stillness.

Even the randomly settled rocks in this tended, geometric courtyard are content – just being dry old stones, the way I sometimes see myself, forged then washed and rolled for eons in the river, smooth and unassuming – solidified for now.

30 RFD 184 Winter 2020

I’ll rise when my hoped-for host appears to greet me. We’ll make our Namaste.

He’ll be shorn and robed – and merry!

Imagine the smile of Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama’s beatific grin (beaming even now above my keyboard).

What a marvelous apparition!

Such modesty of emptiness, whole and hollow, silver flute before its tune.

It could be dear old wizened Yoda smiling, radiating all and nothing, swaying his unassuming head before he says, We do not try.

We simply do or we do not do.

I’d then be just as energized.

Tea is brought without a whisper (much as I might think a little saki would be preferable and quicker).

I do confess, I’ve never celebrated such a salving ritual or ceremony, but it’s a place I need to be. Don’t you?

Then tell me, finest friend, please, in all your marshaled wit and wisdom, tell me what our sage will say (if anything) after our first contemplative sip of tea before the final tone that readies us for our return to that ongoing war.

—Don Perryman

Cheesman Park—Denver, CO and the sun soaks the sky red in its final affection and the mountains make their blueful song and teenage boys wait to kiss until after sundown and a confident man introduces himself to a beautiful, gray-haired woman as Jeff and the power walkers keep their heart rates up and the homeless pitch their tents while they listen to AM radio and a new mother lets her child to dance and the writer is content to be alone through it all and an iPhone is forgotten in the field, lost forever and a punk kid in a tie dye shirt, whose parents have already written him off as a nobody, rides his bike backwards, weaving through the lampposts and the skyline peeks over the oak trees, desperate for a glance and the jugglers trip mushrooms in the pavilion and a young widower misses his wife and the writer is moved to tears and now the punk is sitting on the handlebars and the crows — the crows are flying — and the filmmaker keeps it all in focus and the sun is gone and it promises a return, somehow and the music has changed and the night whispers and the boys kiss and the writer, he cries, and it’s the second night of autumn and the pavilion lights come on —Jack Berning

RFD 184 Winter 2020 31

M4M: still, you’re with me all the time

by Josh Dixon

I

have to tell you something and I’m not quite sure how to say it. It feels weird now. You’re someone I know—or maybe knew—so well and even though we still talk frequently, in text or sometimes on the phone, we would both be lying if we said things hadn’t changed between us this year. And it’s not for lack of trying. Neither of us are to blame. It’s just the way things are and it’s out of our control I guess.

I guess that’s why I’m writing this here instead of telling you directly. It’s just that something happened today. Or rather, I did something today and it’s been haunting me ever since. It would be weird to send this in a text message though so I’m just going to post it here. Maybe you’ll see it.

Anyway, I used your toothbrush this morning. Well, not “your” toothbrush. Just a toothbrush you used a few times when you stayed the night here at my place. I didn’t mean to though. It wasn’t intentional. It’s just been so long since I’ve seen you—since you’ve been here, since we’ve really been together—I forgot who it belonged to.

I grabbed it from the dish on the counter without even really looking, let alone thinking. It was early.

I wasn’t awake yet. I knew there were two toothbrushes sitting there. They were identical except one was blue and one was purple. I grabbed the purple one and it felt familiar. It was only once it was in my mouth that I realized the purple toothbrush was the one I told you to use whenever you visited. The blue one was mine.

How could I forget?

I was tired, okay?

The purple one was yours and it already had toothpaste on it. It was already in my mouth and it had already met my saliva and my tongue.

You were already with me, just as you often are these days: permeating my thoughts. This time though, you were tangible. It was already happening. To stop, acknowledge it, spit out what had 32 RFD 184 Winter 2020

gathered in my mouth and start again with my own toothbrush would have felt disingenuous. So, I continued.

I brushed the top row and then the bottom row.

I scraped the plaque off of the teeth in the rear of my mouth. I used the back of the toothbrush to drag the film that had built on my tongue down into my saliva which I spat forcefully and precisely into the sink where I watched its mucous qualities trail slowly down the drain.

As the brush jerked in and out and around my mouth, I thought about your lips and the last time I’d felt them.

God, when was that?

I couldn’t remember.

I allowed the toothbrush, scraping against my teeth, to remind me of your tongue: at some points eagerly inspecting every crevice the way you would after a drunken night out; at other times soft and delicate, the way you would after I’d stirred from a deep sleep in the morning.

I thought about all of the times we’d kissed: The faint, quiet ones.

The sloppy, messy ones.

The redemptive ones after a fight and eventual apology.

The ones that started in our mouths and moved beyond to necks, nipples, bellies, crotches.

I started to sweat as I considered the passage of time between your last visit and when—if—you might ever be here again. Had it ever happened in the first place or this was all something I was imagining?

My continued brushing grew aggressive and my gums started to bleed. The foam of the toothpaste that gathered and spilled out of my mouth turned from pure white to a soft pinkish color as it too met the base of the sink and seeped down the drain. My

mouth burned from the shock of the mint aftertaste mixed with the stinging flavor of blood. I clutched the toothbrush in my hand, unable to lessen my grip on its handle. My other hand steadied itself on the rim of the sink. I looked at myself in the mirror noticing that some of the pinkish foam was trapped in the hairs of my mustache.

I raised my bottom lip to cover the hairs and used it to guide the residue back into my mouth.

Swallowing all I had left of you at once.

I washed the toothbrush under some cold water, bringing the head back to its original pale shade. I

“Untitled” by ~WAVE (mono-print 40x33cm)

put the toothbrush back down where I found it and, in turn, placed you back on the counter where you would remain as nothing more than a thought in my brain; a text message; an old photo. A memory of the companion who once filled both the physical and mental space of my life now relegated to an intangible being existing in the faultlines of our modern means of communication.

I left the toothbrush there, in the dish on the counter standing next to mine. Available for retrieval when I needed you but always sitting there, statically, otherwise. For now, that’s where you’ll remain. That’s all I have left of you.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 33

34 RFD 184 Winter 2020

“Christophe” by Eric Lanuit from the Uniforms and Fantasies series.

“Jorky” by Eric Lanuit from the Uniforms and Fantasies series.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 35

Poetry Reviews: Antiss and DancingBare

by Leopard

O

ne weekend in September I received two books of poetry from friends, both Gay elders who had discovered their joy in writing poetry in their fifties. I found it curious and significant that one was a handset letterpress edition of compact and exacting poems, while the other came to me as an ebook PDF (a printed edition is now available) with poems lengthy, expansive and story like.

The first is My Now and Then by octogenarian Londoner John Anstiss. His thirty years of writing and performing poetry has led him to an extreme, and refreshing, preciseness in his words and expression.

He delights in sharing glimpses, or rather knowing looks, into life as an older gay man in the city, one who has not lost his pleasure in the moments of chance intimacy, slight possibilities and echoes of past loves. The remoteness of those opportunities only increasing the appreciation and power held within a smile from the checkout boy, or the fascination with the guy at his laptop in the cafe.

Here is both the defiance and the self-assurance that comes from a long life of celebrating being Gay. John grew up in Auckland New Zealand (there are a set of poems comparing his life there with recent views of that city) and came to the U.K. in the Sixties when Gay was hidden and illegal. The thrill of the journey towards acceptance, as well as the struggle of otherness experienced by Gay society as a whole, weaves throughout these poems yet in a very personal way.

Each poem, concisely crafted, is a small gem to muse upon, each line a facet that shines a certain light, and flows easily as a whole into a tapestry that evokes a compassionate knowing of the passing characters and places that create a life. We are allowed to share the senses of one who has had to 36 RFD 184 Winter 2020

learn that same compassion and knowing towards self through an often joyful but also, at times, difficult journey into the peaceful, calm but often strange fields of old age.

It is very moving to hold such a carefully and traditionally produced book, the letterpress and hand bound production gives the words vibrancy and presence. The cut of type inked into the page whispers of the time taken not only in the setting of the print and the pressing, but also with the words themselves to form the poems, and beyond that, the life lived with quiet observation and joyful participation that led eventually to this artefact.

Humorous, longing, wry; observing emotional closeness and distances entwined with the processes of growth, aloneness, ageing and memory. This collection is generous and heartfelt and one to return to often.

W

hile John’s poems have the air of some one who has found their peace, a sense of urgent searching underlies much of RedWulf DancingBare’s book and is hinted at in the title: Waiting on the Monsoons for His Desert Soul.

His poetry is eager to fill the page with as much color and detail as possible with an excitement about the many twists and turns life can take.

RedWulf has lived in the desert as part of the community around Zuni Mountain since the Nineties.

He has been part of a poetry circle there for over a decade and this has clearly given him an impetus to create and a consistent, attentive audience, leading to writing that is intricate and fascinating with stories that range wide as they explore a life lived with enthusiasm and intention.

With over eighty poems, many several pages long,

we are invited to hear many vivid and exuberant tales. The book is in three parts, the first “Rituals and Remembrances,” the second “Poetic Portraits,” and the last “My Authentic Life.” Yet there is much mirroring between these different strands and much of the writing is in the third person so, intriguingly, we can’t always be sure whose story is being told. The autobiography is cinematic: growing up in Pennsylvania as a closeted farm boy, a past distant enough to have the flavor of a time long gone, traveling from home seeking the freedom of expression, hitch-hiking cross country and actually joining a circus and eventually finding community, spiritual connection, and dancing the Sun Dance as a Winkte. The poems offer fascinating insight into these many varied lives and, importantly, they seem to be always asking a greater question about how to keep opening our hearts to life’s possibilities and challenges.

The Poetic Portraits show a deep appreciation for the people, whether friend or passing acquaintance who have inspired or guided him in some way. Their voices and faces are deftly conjured, the worlds that they inhabit are related with a great deal of care and

curiosity. The delicate poetic knotting between self and other, between time and event, between life and spirit, between ritual and chance, give the collection a powerful magic.

Indeed, magic and the richness in life that it invokes, is at the heart of this writing, bubbling up from a dedication to honesty and the courage to explore both motivations and consequences of actions.

By embracing the opportunities that life presents with a passion, RedWulf DancingBare has not only accepted these challenges he has used them to forge poems that encourage the uncovering and insight into our own stories and creative expression.

My Now & Then by John Anstiss is available from www.new-north-press.co.uk, listed edition of 100 copies. He is on YouTube at “JohnAnstissPoetry.”

Waiting on the Monsoons for his Desert Soul by RedWulf DancingBare is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com and can be bought directly signed by the author by contacting waveridersheal@ yahoo.com.

Plain Songs I -V

By John Anstiss

I Met a stranger, a knowing stranger Embraced not straight laced Ease and excitement clashed Erotic cymbals crashed Cerebral connectors coupled Instructing instinct.

Met a stranger, a knowing stranger.

II Erotic excitements in dark places Enticing glances, sultry dances Guiltless pleasure, lurid chances.

Edgy time-lapsed love Severed the legs of lies.

IV Finding an awkward acceptance; Away indulgent anarchy, Overthrowing self tyranny, Bottled anger, passive forbearance, Indifferent tolerance, Worded in wooden words.

V A seam of insight Mining imagination’s geology; A shaft sunk into desire, Quarrying the love lode.

III The road travelled with purpose Not straight Guided through dark alleys, open spaces With self nav assurance.

Dancing, singing, crying, laughing; Discovery a wide-eyed independence.

In a clearing A congregation of wanderers.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 37

Whale Songs

by RedWulf DancingBare He couldn’t recall the song with which the old tent crew boss marked the rhythmic flow of time: perhaps an old seaman’s chanty, mushed through the mouth of stained scrimshaw teeth still clutching a half smoked unlit Cuban stogie off one corner.

The gruff bass voice creaked out from his hulking vessel timbers, connecting new tissue to ancient sound.

Especially clear, it rang the brash “clank” of his shiny grey sledge as it walloped the wide head of the three feet long steel spike.

It had become indelibly etched in him when the man three times as old as any man helping him began to sing the stakes into the earth.

With his resounding cadence the old salt impelled the sledges of all six men in the chaining gang to deliver a loud, telling blow, each in perfect clockwise succession, to the stake in the center between them all.

He would continue the chant as long as it took them to drive it in until only six inches outcropped.

Then, like a shimmering human octopus, the six would move on to the next stake and the next and the next setting pylons deep to the beat of his crew boss gathering-way song.

They moved enchanted, like one soul, until all 120 stakes had been driven into the hardcaked earth as the circus tent was soundly anchored in its new harbour.

The driving duet with the old man’s eerie melody against the haunting chorus of clank, clank, clank, still bewitched him like whale songs connecting across oceans.

The memory of the elemental bonding of these men always returned to him to that timeless sea.

38 RFD 184 Winter 2020

Their great flukes of long hammers stretched out from thick arms, arcing out and up and over their bodies, then swelling like a great breath taken and driven downward to slap the surface.

It took him back to seeing Humpback mothers teaching their babies to slap tails against the waters.

He could still hear that clank, clank, clank and surreal song.

It always woke the town to the odd newcomers who had mysteriously appeared to this out-of-theway place in its mundane routine of just everyday surviving.

The out of the ordinary sound announced that the big top show of dogs and ponies had come with exotic animals, death defying acrobatics, and clown escapades: an odd sounding that came with other-worldly smells of grease paint, cotton candy, and dancing bear scat.

It carried an entrancing invitation that said, “Come share our dreams and adventures!” and then the next day would be gone, a phantom ship in the mind’s harbour.

But more than any of these, he could still see the sacred sweat streaming off grimy, thick necks, strapping shoulders, and dirty, bulging biceps as they channeled their souls of whales, saltwater rivulets cascading down desert dirt- smeared faces locked in ancestral ritual.

Lunar rhythms and solar wills transcending self as one song, one heart, one beat Echoing across fair lots and fields, tent crew boss calling, “Wake up!

Leave your small ponds behind and jump into the ocean.”

COVID-19 Social Distance & now they’re none, humans, 6’ together, earth overseer repealed my bill of rights, 2 congregate with 10 humans soul with my > 10,000 germs my house wall divides me 50’ from another human – if only i had a jackhammer 2 break thru 2 my neighbor, nah, better, if only, i was a leopard – id still be sole, but wear a black skin or spots, & show my saw teeth, with a big cat hiss! not i, cat 2 b, 4 im a hu-man &, damn, I can’t transmute my 2 legged backbone into 4 legged leopard; as consolation, i connect 2 the www with rollbar fingertips, & phone screen fingertips, & after, i can no longer bare 2 jackoff 2 my > 500 porn videos, ill self-evict, me, the last man in my house & launch my earth pod & eject into?

—Robert Fleming

RFD 184 Winter 2020 39

Poetry, Public Art, and the Myth of Productivity by luke kurtis

W

hen I messaged fellow poet Dudgrick Bevins the other day, I told him I’ve been finding it difficult to move forward creatively during the coronavirus pandemic. I’ve been at home in lockdown mode for over a month and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gone outside. You’d think that means I’m holed up, head down, writing poetry, and doing all the creative things I usually do. I’ve been doing a bit of that, yes. But, mostly, I’ve been at a standstill.

“I just try not to pause,” was Dudgrick’s response. Simple, yet telling, almost as if it were a line from one of his poems.

He told me he’s been putting poetry out for free as a way to help bring joy to people during this challenging time. “I’m trying to work as a public artist right now,” he said.

The work he’s making isn’t necessarily about the pandemic. “I think it’s important to address the pandemic and also not only that. People want a distraction. They are on overload,” he told me.

T

his isn’t just Bevins’s personal poetry practice, though. As a creative writing instructor, he teaches his high school students to take poetry into the world by introducing them to the Guerilla Poetics Project. “They have to write short poems and place them safely in public view anon40 RFD 184 Winter 2020

ymously,” he explained. “Some did the mailbox.

Some did stairs. Lots of Post-it notes. Some group chats and digital stuff like Instagram stories.”

But how do his students feel about what is, in essence, another homework assignment? He tells me they really enjoy it, and it even expands their perceptions about what poetry is.

“They were surprised by the results,” he said.

“We did a good bit of looking at the shapes poetry can take, but they were really surprised when they saw perplexed people looking at their work or made their mom cry with kind words.”

What is poetry if not a means to make a difference, no matter how small, either by causing a stranger to stop and think, or letting a loved one know how much you care. That’s something we could all use, whether in a pandemic or not. And that’s exactly the reminder I needed.

Months later, though the city is not locked down in the same way, life has undoubtedly changed. Dudgrick’s vigor for putting poetry into the world has helped sustain me over the past few months, though. As the person behind publishing-as-practice operation bd-studios.com, I’ve focused on moving projects forward as and when I can. I’ve managed to shepherd three books out the door, all projects that had previously stalled because of the pandemic. The best part is that the Photos by Dudgrick Bevins of his own free poetry installations.

books seem to be resonating with readers. And if they help folks a fraction of how much these books helped me get through some dark days, that’s all I could ever hope for.

But the last thing I want to do is perpetuate the idea that creative folks must remain productive, whether during these traumatic times or otherwise. The truth is, I’ve probably had more days sitting and staring into space than anything else. Emptiness has always been essential to the creative process, and it’s no different now.

Create when the spirit moves you. Don’t force it. Sometimes that means accepting long periods

of silence. Listen to the silence. Sit with it. Even when it’s uncomfortable. It might just lead you somewhere fabulous in the end.

And if it doesn’t, you can always read some free poetry by Dudgrick Bevins.

Dudgrick Bevins is a queer interdisciplinary artist from North Georgia who lives, teaches, and creates in New York City. His poetry volumes are published by bd-studios.com and Poet’s Haven.

You can follow the artist and see a complete list of his publications and video work at www.dudgrickbevins.com.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 41

Grey Shadows In Between

by Qweaver

Too much to feel and no certainties close the gaps ripping ordinary apart.

What the hell even words choke.

I’m beached whale.

Driftwood.

Vanishing point vanished with nothing left at all except a new strain of dis-ease.

What shall we talk about?

Familiar strangenesses?

Who stands idyllic in your memory?

Now a beached whale.

Who would want longer life in this ugly?

Walls pile up like felled forests glory stranded into smaller pieces and no peace in the unkind streets.

Is this the best way?

Stabbing pain for a second of soul.

Both sides of the wall we die just the same.

Schoolkid to his corner bent inwards waveriding ocean in his head.

Sharptoothed laughter prowls the shore.

Gown and choir and the cross ever booming.

And again now bent inwards, cornered, trying not to inhale fear.

Grey sky gnarly leaning in dangerously.

Heart ingrowing.

The internal bleed.

42 RFD 184 Winter 2020

Some long number. Was someone’s dad. Died last Monday. He was Tim—is Tim—is a different Tim— gone—departed—gone from—gone back—over.

Tim who was—is—something else now—is— A field, a hole.

Round the hole figures gravity caught. Ten only.

In the hole flowers.

The flowers weigh soil’s infalling clumsy plucky lucid like tears cool to silence to a field subdued behind memory’s gate.

Love’s driftwood today. (Don’t look down.)

Who are you?

Love again. Useless as sunlight.

Nowhere to rest in myself.

Nowhere to play. Let me see your hands.

(Don’t look down). Here is a ring on your finger, golden as a boy’s ass sacred to the dance.

Priceless.

But not enough.

Who made it so?

All of it poured into small lives, one small life betting on another?

The low gate in the wall. Find it.

Go through. Within an enchanted garden long with ivy high with elms innocent of any window.

What precious would you bury here?

Here where summer’s sweet wine light lifts us a finger’s breadth above the grass and suspends us?

I will look down, I must. You

Moon is leaving us.

It is a fact.

Slip sliding away till we will be left here alone unshielded to confront the all.

And now?

In this moment, this clumsy lucid deadcentre moment grasp freedom with the whale one spirit one wave booming.

Shivers like the harmonics of an owl.

What is moon without light?

What am I without loving?

Beached whale? A still life?

Driftwood?

“Reaching for Stillness” by Kwai Lam.

know how much I liked it when your hands woke me in the mornings. You were my mornings. Garden shivering with birdsong light.

Bird is air dancing whale is water dancing we are dust dancing love is the dance and it still goes on.

RFD 184 Winter 2020 43

Dancing with the Virus

by Mata Hari

C

orona throws us all back to the essential: WHO ARE WE? WHAT ARE WE FOR? HOW DO WE RELATE TO OUR PARENT SOCIETY RESPONSIBLY AND AS A GROUP?”—The Great Questions posed by Harry Hay. At the beginning the pandemic caused deceleration, pausing, thinking about ourselves, our values and the world and for a short time solidarity among humanity. Unfortunately, half a year later not much of this is left. Now the world seems once again to be divided into two camps: The Corona measures advocates and those who think they are excessive. And we seem to forget again the willingness to change our lifestyle facing the climate catastrophe. But how did this Corona crisis start for me?

I was on my way to the 3rd Global Gathering in South Africa. When my temperature was taken on my arrival at Cape Town Airport on February 13, 2020, I did not yet think that exactly one month later the world would experience a global lock down. At the gathering and afterwards during our stay in Cape Town and at the Gay Pride Parade we all spent a fun, permissive and relaxed time full of physical affection and hugs. Nothing could stop us from kissing or holding hands at every encounter. But on Friday the thirteenth of March me and my colleagues were called together in our work in Vienna and someone who worked in the Austrian government’s crisis team explained that we all had to stay at home for a few months from Monday onwards because of the sudden Corona pandemic.

It felt like war, and I was so shocked at first that I wanted to warn others immediately that they should 44 RFD 184 Winter 2020

stock up on durable food, that we should not go out and that everything would be different. But I still believed that it would all be over in August and that the fourth “Sound of Faeries” Gathering at Hochkönig mountain would take place as planned. I was accused the same evening that I would spread panic, I should verify my sources and in general I should not believe fake news. But the world was about to change and my posting turned out to be an understatement. I was just hoping to save some lives with my quick warning. In any case, I felt very misunderstood and embarrassed by some, as if I was falling for fake news and trumpeting irresponsible things to the world. In principle, I hardly read any social media and I hardly believe anything that is written in these (anti)social networks, as I prefer real communication to virtual communication. When I phoned a faerie in England, he just wondered what was going on in Austria with this lock down.

But then for the next three months the whole world was not allowed to leave the house and I noticed how many compulsions fell off me. I also learned how uplifting it can be to walk for an hour every day or jog every week. And I was also afraid that I was a risk patient, as I had been suffering from mild asthma for three years.

My partner Red Rose, a home nurse who had been suffering from severe pain in his almost severed Achilles tendon for a long time, so that he could not walk or work for more than a month, was feverishly waiting for his operation on March 25, 2020. This operation was his last salvation, as his pain did not let go of him despite strong painkillers.

Photographs courtesy the author.

Only with heavy vodka consumption was he still able to fall asleep. But four days before his operation date he suddenly received the dreaded call from the hospital: they could not operate on him, he was NOT an emergency and all beds would now have to be reserved for possible corona patients.

The operation was postponed indefinitely. For my partner, a world collapsed, and he got depressed, which almost led him to suicide. On April 28th he finally received the liberating call from the hospital that his operation was now possible again. That saved his life. And he was lucky that I now had to work in the home office and was therefore at home twenty-four hours a day and could look after my handicapped partner. This also strengthened our partnership and our love.

I also used my free time in my home office in a positive way to give free rein to my dreams, to activate my creativity and to finally become a writer.

For seventeen consecutive days I wrote seventeen short stories about my experiences with Corona and about events that have changed my life from childhood to the present day and that present challenges for all of us. Especially now, as the earth is moving into an uncertain future, it seemed all the more important to me to adjust to change, to gather my strength and to write about it: “Look at the stars, everything will be fine” was the title of the book. A nurse said this sentence encouragingly to my friend with cancer when he was in hospital at the age of eighteen—and he is still alive today. And then I had the brilliant idea to write a book about seventeen of my idols, from Liz Taylor and Nelson Mandela to Harvey Milk and Charlie Chaplin, who have always inspired me and us and whom I have followed all my life.

I was also thrilled to see how the Radical Faeries moved their activities to the internet and discovered their love for Global Online Gatherings and also held regular Online Heart Circles. Of course, these could never completely replace the real meetings, but they were still a way of staying in touch. Before Corona, I was very skeptical about virtual Heart Circles, but now we had no other choice — and they worked very well. We started to hold a Germanspeaking Heart Circle in Vienna every Monday, as a supplement to the English-speaking one that was offered every day. We were very grateful to these initiators. Global Love Temples were also created where we could unite and get to know each other globally and also express our sensuality and sexuality, though mainly through masturbation, which we

enjoyed. But the best invention was probably the Global Faerie Know Talent Show, which took place every Saturday. Especially Bulbul was a technical magician. I already took part in the first show as a performer and was very excited about what was to come. But I didn’t have to be afraid of it, the Faerie audience on Zoom was extremely nice, uplifting and enthusiastic. One week before, I had already considered what my first appearance on the Internet could be for a worldwide audience. I had the idea that I wanted to show a dance with an oversized coronavirus. For personal protection against the dangers of the internet I wore glasses with sparkling crystals and for protection against the virus I wore a bronze shimmering Mouth- Nose Protection as a sign of my sense of responsibility towards others. In spring people thought that a mask would only protect others, but now they know that it can also protect you from too many viruses. I wanted to radiate love and not the virus, so my face shone on computers around the world and I even found myself in a Guardian.com video that was put online about this show of the alternative art scene. The clip even showed my performance where I play with the virus on the bed. Everything sparkled in my bedroom. The virus was hiding under my dress, but I pulled it out, balanced it like a juggler, threw it from one hand to the other, pressed it against the wall and braced myself against the imaginary prison I had put myself in during this time of pandemic.

I listened through a golden blowpipe to see if I could hear the voice of freedom somewhere. The song by Petula Clark “Sincerely,” which I played for the dance, was indescribably amazing. It started simply perfect: “It’s a beautiful day outside but I’m inside thinking of you…” Yes, I couldn’t go outside and longed so much for nature…to meet others. It was my honest feeling, I wanted to love someone and I couldn’t. I could only love myself right now and watch gay porn. I also took part in some other shows and co-hosted the 23rd No Talent Show on October 3rd, 2020, which was held as part of the Queer Heart Festival. I also performed a tribute to my three favorite divas: Barbra Streisand (Lady Liberty), Lady Gaga (Replay) and the recently deceased Juliette Greco (Over the Rainbow).

With a heavy heart, we had to decide in June to cancel the 4th International “Sound of Faerie” meeting in Austria and postpone it by one year to August 14 to 24, 2021, which I had to announce in a No Talent Show. As a small substitute, we organized an Online Global “Sound of Faeries” tea party for RFD 184 Winter 2020 45

all participants on the cancelled opening day of the gathering. And the Faeries liked it.

Summer 2020 came and the contagions went down until they started to rise again in autumn.

Multiplied by the constant media reports, many people panicked again and continued to be afraid to meet others, even if one followed the measures that were supposed to prevent infection. To find out whether a Faerie Gathering would be possible despite Corona, I therefore visited a Burning Man Gathering with a hundred people in Austria to see what measures were taken there. We were divided into pods, i.e. groups of about twenty people who

were allowed to get closer and have close contact.

We were to keep our distance from the members of the other pods and greet each other only by “butt kissing”. The members of our pods were tested before and after for Covid and so far I have not heard of any infections among us hundred burners. In the house we always had to wear masks, which was almost always respected. So I have to say, a Gathering is possible, but whether the Faeries, like the Burners, would adhere to the guidelines of social distancing from the other pods remains to be seen.

In mid-October, despite rising Corona numbers, my partner Red Rose wanted to organize a one-time birthday party for me for my “round” birthday on October 14, because I had done so much for him and the Faeries. It was heartbreaking how lovingly he did it and what ideas he had for it. Life can be very crazy sometimes, but it is even crazier to let your potential, talent and creativity lie unused.

That’s why my motto in life since I almost died in an accident at the age of seventeen was: “Live EV46 RFD 184 Winter 2020

ERYTHING”—and celebrate your life sometimes, but always with “Freedom, Love, Respect” for your neighbor. So I spontaneously had the idea to create my first photo book about the highlights of my life as a birthday present for all participants of this celebration. And that is why I called this book: “Live everything. Life is a Ball”—because you are always up and down in life. The celebration should look like a normal inn visit and all Corona measures would be followed. We invited many of our best friends, but we still received so many refusals in the days and hours before for fear of Corona that everything was already very frustrating for me. But in the end the celebration took place at the last week before only six people were allowed inside.

Everything was touching and great, even though only about sixteen people came.

I believe we must not allow ourselves to be too afraid of Corona to darken our lives, but still show solidarity for the Community and for life.

With our celebration we not only supported groups of disabled people who created flower arrangements for us, who were delighted that we did not cancel and gave them a chance to earn money, but also showed that we were acting responsibly. We should allow ourselves a little joy in life, because we cannot repeat or cancel our life. It must be lived now. COVID-19 is not the only problem in the world. It has only suppressed the big real problem, the climate crisis and global warming, which cannot be solved by wearing masks alone. We should certainly panic, as Greta Thunberg says, but we should not only be guided by our own fears, but also use our brains.

The most important thing I have learned again during the Corona pandemic is not to let communication with others in the Community break down and to learn to show solidarity and understand that we are all “one“ and come from the same roots.

Only then can we meet the challenges of the future positively. Yoohoo!

How to Cope During COVID-19 During lunch, M is trying to “work up enthusiasm” to get us all to go to a restaurant to celebrate H’s birthday.

“Over my dead body.” I say. And, as for P—our minpin who’s black-and-red and is also beginning to gray—, she naturally wears what I call a “Batman mask” but I seriously doubt she’d wear a mask over her snout— Covid-19 or not. H will be 19 on the 19th! And I know P prefers to stay home and wait for the doggy bag.

Besides, how can you blow out candles in public with a mask on?!

In the afternoon, F sends an e-mail about how to cope with ageing and Covid-19 studies done on masked hamsters— golden ones!—and... the Swiss army!! When I see the photo of a toy hamster with a mask on, it’s “laugh out loud” and knowing what I know about the Swiss army, it’s “laugh out real loud”. And then comes the subject of drinking green tea, that’s now considered beneficial for coping with growing old.

But you must drink a lot of green tea to feel any kind of benefit and it’s better to begin very young, not before old age is staring you in the face. O give me, with a delicious breakfast and after the post-lunch nap, without sweetness or whiteness, a cup of freshly ground and strong coffee!

Indulge in good books—such as Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous—and music—such as Chopin’s waltzes, radically different from the Viennese kind and not designed for dancing except for “prancing princesses” or—why not?—queers wearing face masks that are self-made or designer. And “bypass” boob tube.

—Steven Finch

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The Dinner Party

by Mel Compo (Mixed media, 1979, Brooklyn Museum) In my lifetime, her work is unpacked from storage and gifted a permanent home.

Although, a curator notes, you see penises at museums around the world the vulva is always considered pornographic.

Put it like that and it feels revolutionary when Judy serves them up for dinner primordial to modern, flat to gently curling, pinks and purples and inviting warm colors, ruffled, molded, fired, stitched, poured over, researched, named places for these white women at this table, insisted on the rigor and scholarship of her work even as institutions rejected her.

In my lifetime, a hall is built to house her party in the Sackler Center for Feminist Art named for the benefactors who built the strange glass room, here at the heart of the Beaux Arts construction, the folds of each vulva preserved like bees in amber protected by the name of the family made rich by inventing Oxycontin and innovating direct-marketing advances pitching painkillers directly to doctors that has nothing to do with the emergence of the opioid crisis in America, according to their defense in the open lawsuit brought by the State of New York on behalf of 500 counties, cities and Indigenous nations.

In my lifetime, corporations have become people and in my experience they are people with better lawyers than the rest of us. The case is open as, in my lifetime, pandemic rises up and crashes on this city where I was born, and my father, and his father, closes all our doors but doesn’t stop the cops or the rot at the core of the justice system and in the seething whitewater of crisis I come sputtering to my own whiteness, choking on apocalypse but determined to survive, somehow, for something, to be worthy of living when more than 100,000 people have died so far

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this year of pandemic and more than 1,000 people died last year alone at the hands of American police and the year before that and the year before that and Sojourner Truth’s token invitation is not enough when there is no place at the table for Marsha P. Johnson our Mother, who started the riot at Stonewall and died homeless, her body pulled from the Hudson, ruled a suicide, never investigatedno place for Dominique Fells whose body was pulled from another river, mutilated, just three days past, no place for Layleen Polanco Xtravaganza picked up for the work she did to live and left to die last year at Rikers in solitary because she could not afford $500 bail at twenty seven when she should have lived to be twenty eight now, like me. Instead of me.

In my lifetime, I stand outside the Museum with fifteen thousand and say her name, masked and gloved to protect each other and ourselves from the threat we know but cannot see in order to illuminate the threat we are learning to speak collectively after centuries of trauma at its hands, armed only with water bottles and granola bars and supplies to share, armed only with interpreters and seats for those who are unable to stand, armed only with our signs and our voices and our beautiful many strange tender queer bodies and we say with our whole voices BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER outside the institution, where we, whose junk is too complicated for art history’s neat binaries

—pornographic or not— do not ask for a seat at the table but demand instead, that everyone gets fed.

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COVID & Me

by Notre Dame des Arbres

W

hen I first heard about the new virus, I now sit, type recall my thoughts of: A 1960s Hit single (UK) by Thunderclap Newman; “Call out the instigator, because there’s something in the air” Well, China was “called out” eventually, after being fawned over by The Orange One. The lyrics continue “We got to get together sooner or later Because the Revolutions’s here (And you known that it’s right..”

Only far from getting together, we got and were encouraged to get apart. “Divide and conquer” occurred to me to describe the shift. They used to have a British (only?) ad for Playtex bras that had strong cross elastic between cups in order to “lift and separate”. But this, I thought was separate, then lift. Globally, ministers, government advisers, lobbyists, think tankers, policymakers were swiftly and massively increasing holdings in Amazon, Zoom, Fedex, UPS ahead of the coming lockdowns. At home, in rural France, happy enough to be confined to my veggie garden and charming ruin of a “farmhouse” (aka stable) I played “fantasy stock market” with an imaginary capital of 10,00 US dollars. From March to July my daily trading had brought me to USD 228,000 in round figures.

So where was the Revolution? In my heart, my habits- did I do endless online yoga, heart circles, learn to knit? No problem if you all did. I just did the same as ever pottered around in the garden, orc-communicated anything that came to mind to my long-suffering, WhatsApp-connected friends and family. I resigned after a record number of years as a steward of Folleterre, but promptly increased 50 RFD 184 Winter 2020

my workload, notwithstanding. Until September, the only trip I took away from my local area was to check on our Sanctuary. I proposed a system of caretakers coming to Folleterre that was accepted and started in June and I supported them. Was so happy to see and feel the Land at rest, not overburdened with too much footfall, tears, sperm, glitter, crises. Sure, the laughter and the frolicking joy, and learning were missing.

And yet it made me question and review yet again the relationship we have with the Land. “I get along without you very well!” is a better known song. But “it’s complicated”. Dryness had affected the needle trees horribly, There is ash die-back disease or syndrome. Contagious “mushrooms”, “Scolytes” have been killing off the huge, French government inspired cash crop investment by former smallholders and external entrepreneurs of pines etc grown for wood. The natural habitat changed over eight years back. So now grotesque industrial machines have harvested all around Folleterre and the landscape look like a recently shared sheep— shockingly nude, but so much more vulnerable. Once we started to interfere with nature on such a scale, I realised we cannot just walk away like a colonial power after the banana, tea or rubber prices have dropped through the bottom.

I looked over Folleterre and realised we faerie human hands were needed- trees needed felling, thinning. I looked at our “potager” or vegetable gardens. Thought briefly of “Macbeth” (“Fie on’t, ah, fie!

Tis an unweeded garden things Rank and Gross in Nature possess it merely.” But they were only weeds.

Photographs courtesy the author.

Duncan was just being a Drama King. We came to Folleterre in 2005. We had to buy and “own” the place. A legal requirement but the Law is sometimes indeed an Ass. It brays and makes a lot of noise, so we mostly pay it attention. As indigenous North USA continents Indians puzzled, “how can anyone OWN land”. We faeries see it as they did, a partnership demanding mutual respect and accommodation. An innate understanding that humankind is a part of Nature not outside and above it. Hence stewardship. We stewards have to run to benefit, care, preserve and improve rather than to exploit, neglect, over change and downgrade. We are answerable to, and hold in trust, those who come after, some who will meet us and call us to account. Many (if this planet survives to nourish future generations) we will never meet.

I know I am not alone in feeling that Nature has a way rebalancing things “out of sync”—like demographic explosions. Epidemics in the animal kingdom contrive boom and bust of populations as they outgrow they food supply when exponential increases are reached. Pandemics, as plagues are we guess, Nature’s way of evening things up. No surprise that wars, genocides, murders, violence

increase as populations grow without even distribution of wealth. My elder brother Robin many years back came home from school and told a feeble (and politically incorrect as it is now) joke he heard. Fat man says to thin man “looking at you, anyone would think there’d been a famine!” Thin man replies “looking at you, anyone would think you’d caused it!’.

I so far have not been infected by COVID-19 in my health. But of course I have been very much affected. Indeed we all have. As with the degree of agape the selfless love we remember—those who survived!—demonstrated in the care of other during the AIDS pandemic there have been incidences of tenderness, sacrifice and duty that mark out healthcare workers as angels on earth—some dead, many grumbling—all exhausted. Nearly everyone has been made to think. Many have been encouraged to feel. I am well-used to confronting or being confronted by myself. I embrace both living alone but also being gregarious and a part of community. Even so, I feel, since last Spring, I have been made more questioning of my comfort level in my own skin. Because of this seemingly terrible blessing of the Great God Pan (not dead, but was only sleeping).

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We Were Once where we noble ascending from the rushes, in the rustling restlessness, arms flaying, trudging upward, howling with the wind, gulping pollen and spitting salt.

Once were we noble where of those times the crumbling dust of the Lion lasted on our lips, pressed together at Chaeronea.

And did I? Did we coax the picturesque sun to lie down with the faeries, by name pansy, buttercup, rose bud and Lavender, a thimble of milk, left we thinking our days would bode before were we gone.

And of Him once noble, Narcissus, who began where He left off; had He known His beautiful tragedy and did He care not? Searching for wisdom in the waters.

A botanist in the evening lifts his tiny frame; His ravenous curse, like the whispered grace between Castor and his brother, we witch as our fire (life giving) and epiphany.

Sailing toward a tempest huddled, collars flapping in the wind, wet even as flames shoot from the mast.

Enlightenment as seen on the horizon is finally allowed. Who joins we in the fabled abyss? —Flaming Salamander

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“Mossy Crack” by Kwai Lam.

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The Antidote to Civilization

by Sionainn

G

rowing up gay in the rural south, I spent most of my days alone, hidden away in my room, buried in offbeat literature and cult films. I never felt a sense of community, a sense of belonging, until I happened upon a backwoods naturist camp late one summer, during my first year of college. For many of us, the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a reminder of the pain of isolation, the fragility of our support networks, and the ephemeral nature of our communities and gathering spaces. Locked away in isolation once again, I was inspired to revisit my summer with the naturists.

Sun baked gravel burns bare feet. Mosquitoes bear down on bare buttocks. Skinny, self-conscious fellow oohs and ouches a spastic dance down the rocky road. Spaghetti arms swim through sweltering summer air. Swatting skeeters, scratching stings.

Lanky lad trepidatiously tiptoes up splintery steps.

Nest of sparrows in the porch rafters. Disinterested cat in a rocking chair. Screen door swings on rusty hinges. I stand there, totally undressed, a little distressed, in the lodge of a backwoods nudist camp.

“Naturists, son. Not nudists. We’re naturists here.”

The Chief corrects me, gently scolds me, reminds me there’s a philosophical distinction between nudists and naturists, laughs, slaps me on the back, welcomes me back. The Chief is more than the proprietor of a naturist sanctuary, he’s a philosopher.

A sage. A little bit of Thoreau, a whole lot of Twain, with a dash of Native American knowledge thrown in for good measure.

Gangly geek moves like a newborn calf, teetering, tottering, awkwardly ambling. Arms crossed to conceal ribs. Head down. Shoulders slumped.

Knees knocking. I feel inexplicably ridiculous being nude, but then I start to feel ridiculous for feeling ridiculous about being nude, and then I start to feel ridiculous for allowing my mind to be infiltrated by some insidious illiberal indoctrination that somehow, at some point, crept in and seeded this crippling sense of irrational modesty, this nagging notion that casual nudity is unbecoming, unseemly, unbefitting, unacceptable. I resent feeling ridiculous and vow to resist.

Damp moss below, sun on shoulders, breeze brushing bristly hairs on bony legs. It takes a moment to get reacquainted with these sensations. It 54 RFD 184 Winter 2020

takes a minute to move freely again, naturally once more, unconfined by buttons and belts and zippers and collars and laces and elastic things and velcro things and psychosocial things. How can the most natural come to feel so unnatural? Unfamiliar? How do our perceptions of normal become so distorted until our most normal state of being feels so abnormal? How do we let that happen?

It takes a minute, but soon enough the burdens of adult sophistication and civilization are lifted, and this bashful, blundering bohemian boy stretches and smiles and savors the sun, the smells of the forest, the tingles and tickles and prickles of the earth. Soon enough, I straighten up and start to stride, self-confidently, self-assuredly. Soon enough, my shame is shed, I’m unshackled, and nudity once again represents a heightened presence of self, not an incapacitating absence of attire. Soon enough, I’m just another critter in the forest, carelessly bare.

Silver-haired granny smiles, shoves a paper plate of funnel cake into my hands. “We got us a carnival this weekend!” Granny grins. Naked naturists pay a dollar to hit a junk car with a sledgehammer.

Nude naturists pay a dollar to lob three softballs at a naked clown in a dunking booth. A naked carnie sells cotton candy. A bare county fair. An au natural carnival. The grinning granny worries that I need to fatten up, tells me to come back at five for supper and she’ll secretly slip me an extra slice of strawberry pie. “We’ll get that belly pooched out for sure!” she promises. Smiling strangers wave and call out for me to dunk the naked clown, join the stick horse race, pop a balloon with a dart. “We’re sure glad you’re here!” they exclaim, even before I introduce myself. Things are different with the naturists.

Country boys call from the clubhouse. Tank top tans. Rusty pickup trucks. Thick southern drawls.

The sort of boys that might bust my lip and blacken my eye back home. But things are different here, with the naturists. They yell for me to join their game of pool. Country boy offers me sips from his beer, throws a sweaty arm around my scrawny neck and tells me I should come to karaoke after supper.

Join him in a duet, maybe. It feels nice to be invited.

Included. Befriended. It’s always so easy with the naturists. Almost effortless.

Lee Baxandall once described naturism as “the

antidote to civilization,” a form of personal protest against the dehumanizing aspects of industrialization, urbanization, mechanization. The Chief says naturists are “wanderers, wonderers and ponderers,” seeking restoration and revitalization in nature, in the safeness of similar minds. The chief preaches that naturism is an unburdening, a deprograming, a psychological decluttering that begins with the simple rebellious act of going nude and burgeons into a critical analysis of our bourgeois value system. Successfully challenge this one core tenant of “civilized” society, and we’re bound to start questioning what other assumptions and certainties we’ve allowed to go unchecked, what other convictions might suddenly lose their significance if we quietly put them aside. In his words, “Naturists drop more than their damn drawers.”

The grinning granny says that naturism returns us to childhood, turning back the clock to a time in our lives when our bodies were merely the vessels with which we experienced the world around us, a time when friends came easily, when differences were not twisted into divisions, when we weren’t driven by ambition, materialism, suffocated by the accompanying responsibilities. A time when we felt free to laugh and play and be ridiculous with complete impunity. In her words, “We’re free to act like a bunch of crazy-assed kids here.”

Sunset. Karaoke. Islands in the Stream. Bare boy on a shaky shipping pallet stage sings the Kenny part and his bare buddy sings the Dolly part. Crowd cheers. The men sound like shit, but their showmanship is spot on. They jiggle and wiggle, they shimmy and shake, shamelessly. A tiny bit inebriated, but mostly just liberated. Cornfed boys croon a corny country ballad. Unintentional conceptual performance artists. Accidental avant-gardists. A naked audience applauds their bare-assed bravado.

“Hiiee” by Chris Moody (35mm).

They take a bow. Bravo.

We’re free to act like a bunch of crazy-assed kids.

What happens when we leave our naturist space, get back into our costumes, resume our routines, reassume our adult responsibilities? Will our newfound enlightenment silently slip away as we ease back into society? I hesitate to think about it. I don’t want to ponder it. I don’t want to become inhibited and neurotic about my own body again. I don’t want to become complacent with someone else’s cockamamie customs and conventions. I don’t want to blend back into the angry and cynical world that hustles and bustles at the edge of this forested hideaway.

Fried smells fill the evening air. Fried tomatoes, fried okra, fried corn. The singing stops, and the circle of newfound friends gradually gathers around the bonfire. Logs crackle and crinkle, flickering flames paint bare bodies with bold strokes of crimson and amber. A circle of friends, connected by something profound and powerful. A philoso-

phy. The naturist philosophy. We’re plain again.

Native again. Wild again. Free. We’re critters in the forest. Big kids. Arms around sunburned shoulders, differences discarded, convictions set aside. Hustle bustle of civilization a million miles away. Misty mountain moonlight. Symphony of cicadas. Chorus of crickets. Bullfrogs croak from the creek. Doves coo from the hollow below. Cool mountain breeze brushes bare skin, sends bonfire embers swirling through cedars, circling toward the starry sky above.

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Avatars

by Story Stag

W

hen we went into quarantine, the animals starting coming out. In different cities, deer, foxes, and hogs were seen and filmed out and about.

In other places rats plagued the streets, so to speak.

Escaped cats and dogs swelled the ranks.

In zoos and aquariums around the world, penguins took the place of people as visitors, waddling around curiously. Meanwhile, live video feeds from vultures’ nests and badger sets captured our attention.

Adding cameras to individual animals was the natural next step, it was as easy as tagging the animals for identification. A spy in the herd became a real, urban animal. Drones were deployed, first to knock out the animals so people could tag them.

Soon more sophisticated software and clever drones did the job on their own.

People began to donate cameras from old laptops and phones, or CCTV-types of questionable origin, to be used in the effort. In exchange they got control of the camera when it was on an animal. Others were content to find a free camera for the afternoon and follow it. It was surprisingly addictive.

As the numbers of camera-tagged animals grew, people began encountering other tagged animals as they watched. While you couldn’t control the animals, you could meet the person who’s camera it held. A new type of social interaction was born.

Soon, everyone wanted to participate.

We’re all avatars now. Live, 3D avatars, climbing roofs, playing in parks at night, raiding bins, hissing at each other on fences, swimming in the rivers, and yes, sniffing each other’s backsides. We are vicariously repopulating our rewilding cities and towns as we stay indoors. And we love it.

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“Balance” by Victor adeniran.

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Illusive Satan

Illusive Satan is held in my hard embrace through the dark of the night until I fix my seed in him – a thrill, a defiant act, a lantern hung in a dangerous spot.

Satan falls into the Pit, and, under a new sun, a shield bears my name.

Behind the shield is tenderness, uncertain joy and pain, and hope.

The shield reflects the changing sky where days and nights are the blinking eyes of gods gone mad. Tripping by, they stumble into the sea. I am free.

—James McColley Eilers

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“Gio in Red Mask” by Richard Vyse.

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Blushing Vinegar and What to Do with It!

by JN.exe

D

uring quarantine I needed to make use of every little bit I had. I could not waste time and money just to risk my health for creature comforts.

I found a way to satisfy my love of unctuous sauces and summer fruits. This recipe is for my “blushing vinegar.” My watermelon and apple cider vinegar has a delightful blushing color and is a versatile ingredient. This process is low effort but will take 2 weeks for vinegar to be made from scratch with nothing other than what is in your cabinet.

merged in the sugar water, cover the top of your jar with its lid. We need to make sure oxygen is circulating (but not for the scraps). Be sure there is no hole in the top or else bugs will get in.

And voila! That is basically all you need to do,

First and foremost, sanitize all of your jars and spoons thoroughly! Make sure any scraps you have do not have mold, rot, or anything else on it either!

Blushing Vinegar Ingredients: 1 cup of worth of apple cores and the last little edges of watermelon rinds 2 cups of water 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar A large glass jar with a top (that I have sanitized) A drinking glass/small glass cup to keep the scraps submerged This is all that we need! Now the next step is to find a large jar that will be able to fit all of the scraps. Mix the sugar and water in a separate cup until the sugar has dissolved.

What we do now is place all of the scraps into the jar as flat as we can. The reason we want to do this is because we want to submerge the scraps in sugar water (keep them in the water with anything that is glass) in the jar. We want to keep every bit of scrap in the sugar water because if oxygen is able to reach any organic material (the cores or rinds) you will have mold and bacteria cultivating in your jar.

That being said, slowly pour in the water. You may have bits float up again but that is not a problem, readjust however you need to so that the scraps are beneath the sugar water.

Now that the scraps are laid flat and are sub60 RFD 184 Winter 2020

just check up on your “blushing” babe every day by taking a peek at its activity and “burping” it every day. “Burping” meaning opening the lid and letting out the built up gases, then closing it up again. (If you don’t burp this babe, you will deal with consequences much like with real babies. The difference is that this jar will potentially explode).

What you are looking for is to see the fruit scraps submerged in the water and that the mixture is “alive” meaning that there are little bubbles. Don’t panic if you think it’s gone bad! As long as the fruit scraps submerged in the sugar water and you are burping the babe once a day, this will be just fine!

Trust your nose, the smell of vinegar is distinct and undeniable! When you put your nose close to the jar, that sharp and tart smell should hit you as two weeks nears!

Here you are now with your homemade vinegar that is alive and kicking with flavor! What to do with the vinegar?

The vinegar can be used for cleaning, since it is mildly acidic.

The vinegar can be used for a Blushing Vinaigrette: 1/4 cup of vinegar 3/4 cup of olive oil This watermelon vinaigrette was a delight to see, a blushing bottle on my kitchen table.

You can also make a gastrique as well! Which is a fancy French cooking term for a sweet and sour sauce.

The recipe calls for one part sugar to one part vinegar then any spices of your choosing. To simplify things, let’s say one cup of sugar and one cup of vinegar.

Blushing Gastrique: 1 cup of granulated white sugar 1 cup of your Blushing Vinegar First add one cup of sugar and vinegar into a medium sized pot. Turn on your stove to a medium heat. Now, with a wooden spoon gently stir the pot as the sugar and water mixture combines and bubbles. You know you’re done when you can lift your spoon and the mixture drizzles like honey down back into the pot.

Now you are done! You can flavor this further with herbs like basil, parsley, or whatever your heart desires—you can even add some heat like a few

“Get Naked” by Dragon (Arthur Durkee).

slices of jalapeño.

This sticky sweet sauce can be drizzled over anything you like or be a coating to dress up a home cooked meal of fried chicken.

You can also use the vinegar for cleaning! Vinegar is not going to be a disinfectant but can help with cleaning up grease and stubborn caked on food since vinegar is 5-8% acetic!

I use this recipe for my DIY cleaner: -3/4 cups of distilled water to 1/4 of vinegar in spray bottle I use this for my tabletops and sinks!

I hope you have enjoyed making your first kitchen potion, with so much potential for more! Even if you use the vinegar as a vinegar, it’s dewey glow will cheer you up on these cold nights.

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“Don’t leave me here” by Victor adeniran. “During covid there have been so many people going through social isolation and reaching out for a hand and having people pull you through is definitely helpful.”

On the Path: Adrian Brooks Remembrance by Lee Mentley

A

drian Brooks was a novelist, non-fiction writer, poet, performer and international traveler. He was also a playwright, critic, designer and spiritual friend.

As a Philadelphia Quaker, Brooks was inspired by Henry Cadbury, the President of Haverford College, who accepted the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the American Friends Committee; and friends of Martin Luther King, such as Senator Harris Wofford, and others close to Mahatma Gandhi, such as art historian, Dr. Stella Kramrisch, who had a great influence on him from first meeting in 1954 to her death in 1993. Indeed, Brooks was born on Gandhi’s last birthday (October 2, 1947) and died on October 2, 2020.

After (barely) graduating secondary school in 1966 and as an early anti-war protester, he attended the international Friends World Institute—a revolutionary Quaker school guided by educator John Dewey, nurtured by Eleanor Roosevelt, endorsed by the New York Yearly Meeting and Morris Lewis of the Putney School), intent on its students becoming lifelong “agents of non-violent social change.” In 1968, Brooks volunteered for Dr. King in Washington, DC. After MLK’s assassination Brooks did field work in Mexico and East Africa and attended Woodstock in 1969.

In 1970-1972, Brooks was part of the SOHO scene in New York, having grown up in the art world. Andy Warhol cast him in a film and invited him to be the front person at ‘the Factory,’ an offer Brooks declined, choosing, instead, to go to India for the first time in 1972 to live with Gandhi peace workers in Bangalore.

By 1973, Brooks was writing poetry in California before he moved into San Francisco and organized what some refer to the first public gay poetry reading advertised as such on September 18, 1974. Soon afterwards, Harold Norse presented Brooks’ poetry and drawings with works by Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet and William Burroughs in Bastard Angel, his seminal literary magazine. Brooks’ poems also appeared in Gay Sunshine; Manroot and Mouth of the Dragon. Most visibly, Brooks became scriptwriter/ star of an iconic free theater, a split-off from the Cockettes: The Angels of Light. From 1974-1980, he scripted seven shows, including their two smash hits, “Paris Sights Under the Bourgeois Sea,” hailing the end of the Vietnam war in 1975; and, in 1979

and 1980, “Holy Cow!” dedicated to the memory of George Moscone and Harvey Milk.

In 1974, Brooks read his poetry at the Hula Palace Salon and in 1978 on stage at the Gay Pride Parade under the first (eight-stripe) rainbow flags conceived and designed by Lynn Segerblom, one of the Angels of Light who also followed group strictures and did

everything for free, taking no personal credit.

In 1980, The Glass Arcade, Brooks’ first novel, was published. In 1983, Brooks starred in “Leni Riefenstahl,” his trial drama about the 1945 US Army interrogation of the famed German film director. In 1985, upon learning that he’d acquired HIV in September 1981, Brooks left the US. In London, he worked as a designer at Chelsea Harbor. In Holland and Goa, India, Brooks often appeared with “the Amsterdam Balloon Company,” which emerged from the Provost Movement, a forerunner of Burning Man festivals in shows continuing to the present.

India proved spiritually and politically transformative. From 1986 on, Brooks was an adept of Siddha Yoga doing live events to warn people against unsafe sex. One intimate—Dominic d’Sousa, the first well RFD 184 Winter 2020 63

publicized AIDS case who, having been diagnosed, was confined to hospital and quarantined, a decision he fought legally before being released and starting AIDS consciousness raising groups.

In 1995, after meeting W. H. L. Poonja, a disciple of Ramana Maharshi and receiving his Grace, Brooks returned to SF to study with one of Poonja’s highly visible disciples and live as a hermit. In 1998, he experienced an Awakening and began offering counseling for men’s groups, AIDS hospices, and Death Row at San Quentin. His satirical novels—Roulette and Black and White and Red all Over—came out in 2007 and 2009, while his theater memoir, Flights of Angels, appeared in 2008.

In 2009, Brooks collected his poetry and drawings for In the Land of Opposite Time; by collating fifty-two volumes of journals dating to 1967 in Black Cargo, and wrote “The Sea Horse”, a fairy tale which arose in a dream.

Brooks returned to Goa in 2010. For four months a year, he assisted a home for HIV+ orphans. Back in the US, he continued to edit his work and offer truth without nonsense in spontaneous, always freelygiven satsang.

In 2013, Brooks used text taken from Stella Kramrisch for the celebrated theater artist, Sha Sha Higby, and began an anthology about LGBT activism. In 2015, he published The Right of History: 100 Years of Activism. Now, finally, his fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journals, short stories and plays are housed at the ONE Archive at USC in L.A.

64 RFD 184 Winter 2020

“Sunset or Sunrise? Beginning of a new or End of an Old”, Photograph by Kwai Lam.

READ RFD ONLINE www.issuu.com/rfdmag Most Issues from the first to this one. Missing issues uploaded as we get to them.

Spirit Dancing

Radical Faerie Ritual Chants

By Shane & Heron IS NOW AVAILABLE ON ITUNES AND YOUTUBE MUSIC! YOU CAN ALSO STILL DOWLOAD FOR FREE ON BANDCAMP.COM

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RFD 184 Winter 2020 65

Announcing a New Book from White Crane Books:

The Evans Symposium The long awaited sequel to Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.

In 1975 Arthur Evans presented a series of lectures based on his research into LGBT history and cultural roots in European societies of the medieval era. The ground-breaking work was subsequently collected into the 1978 publication of his book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture.Working with Arthur at the end of his life, White Crane Books convinced Evans to gather the remaining materials—that had been edited from the original book or simply hadn’t made the cut—into a sequel of sorts to that book. Arthur did so and called it Moon Lady Rising. We present the entirety of Arthur Evans work for his symposium material here.

“White Crane Books, once again, reminds us of the important works of our time by renewing the essential writing of our elders. Arthur Evans’ original work in Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture is a seminal piece of lost LGBT history; and the added, new material of Moon Lady Rising stakes a further claim to our shared, birthright history. We will not be erased.” —Mark Thompson, author, activist, Radical Faerie “No book was of greater importance than Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture as the modern gay liberation movement was forging our identity as a people.” —Robert Croonquist, activist, first generation Radical Faerie and Founder of Youth Arts New York/Hibakusha Stories, a member organization of ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), 2017 Nobel Peace Laureate.

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Available at www.whitecraneinstitute.org/books Hardcover $29.95 • Cloth cover $19.95 Or mail a check payable to “White Crane Institute” to: Bo Young White Crane Institute 22 County Route 27 Granville, NY 12832

Issue 186 / Summer 2021

SUMMER OF SLEAZE II Submission Deadline: April 21, 2021 www.rfdmag.org/upload

Let’s face it–life’s been a humdinger in

the past year–especially due to this pandemic that’s taken lives, loves, jobs, and our very ability to congregate socially, in community, or in ritual. We’ve been severely limited in our ability to give or receive physical touch.

Even public face–masking, a public health recommendation (requirement?), has fucked with our ability to cruise!

We’ve become a mystery to each other, hiding behind our masks and/or our politics. We fear we will never regain the erotic camaraderie that connects us to each other at the soul level. It’s time to let our hair down, spread our legs wide, and let the power of Eros restore our humanity–at least in print!

We call for a Summer of Sleaze issue to respond to the pinched expressions of this moment. Bring on the salacious in your words and images; excite our imaginations with the sexiest, nay–the sleaziest offerings you can conjure. Dare to expose us to what others would not print–or even imagine seeing?

Make your prose smell like funk, your images cause us to drool, your poems leak with pre-cum.

May our deepest desires erupt into a fantasy of sexual delights of all kinds! May Eros lead us into a happier future.

Photograph by Leo Herrera.

BRING IT!!!

RFD 184 Winter 2020 67

a reader created gay quarterly celebrating queer diversity

68 RFD 184 Winter 2020