So Why Didn’t Gay Marriage Solve Everything? đ
Hey, babes ^^
So let me start by saying I donât want to craft walls and bars with words so that people feel this is the only reality. This is the difficulty of societyâthe difficulty of being a storyteller when people reading the story donât understand reality is not actually confined by our perception of it. We are confined by our perceptions of reality. Iâm going to tell a story about how I see parts of reality and why I write what I write. This reality is not shared by everyoneâthank fuckâbut Iâd love to hear your responses. I love to talk about this shit. XD Oh, and fuck, I will be getting back to the comments of last week. I got most of youâIâm so excited youâre excited about the Demon Virus interactive story! I just got caught up in writing and didnât want to leave.
With that out of the way, I love the premise of this book and I want to talk about it! I havenât read it yet, to be totally upfront. Once Hellcat is done Iâm going to indulge in fun, damn it! (and yeah, this kind of reading is totally fun for me and my inner nerd⊠as is writing⊠as is writing HellcatâIâm actually having lots of fun. XD) But just reading the premise, I think you can understand where âSadie Sinsâ might be really on board with this whole concept and it has my mind sparking.
Why Straight Guys Love Their Gay Guys: Reviving the Roots of Male Sexuality
After fifty years of progress and the advent of gay marriage, statistics on the well-being of gay men are as grim as ever. Rates of suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse have not budged. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, and poor health are just as widespread. Studies have shown that gay men who live in urban gay communities actually are worse off, not better.
The utopia promised by gay marriage has not materialized. Gay men seem to have run out of ideas for future progress. There is little acknowledgment of the fact that something remains badly wrong. Nor is there a diagnosis of what is wrong.
This book proposes that the diagnosis is obvious if we look at the origins of male sexuality and how it was expressed in other cultures. The anti-sex Puritan system in which we are now immersed is relatively recent in human history. Yet in less than 2,000 years, knowledge of how other cultures lived and loved has been systematically wiped out. The forms of male sexuality were remarkably similar from culture to culture. But starting with the early Europeans in the last years of Rome and continuing around the globe as Europeans colonized the continents, natural male sexualities have been cruelly repressed and then obliviated. We are all Puritans now.
The greatest taboo of all in male sexuality remains unchallenged and is still heavily enforced. That is the taboo of male-male sex, which until 2003 was still a crime. This book argues that the plight of gay men is only a piece of a much larger catastrophe â the Puritanical repression of the sexualities of all men, in an attempt to harness the enormous power of male sexuality for social purposes in the name of moral progress, with promises of greater glories to be found in heaven. The damage that Puritanism caused to human beings and to stable social systems was never noticed. In fact the damage and misery were regarded as good. It was seen as payback to the devil.
This book is not arguing for something new, untested, unknown, and radical. Rather, the challenge is to return to something very old â the joy of male-male sex â which took similar forms in most of the cultures that we have knowledge of. In such worlds, it was understood that some men are more masculine than others, that some men are gayer than others, and that heterosexuality and homosexuality are complementary and of equal value. And those old worlds were worlds in which every gay man was able to take for granted what to us today is the impossible dream â sex with a straight best friend.
The Root of Sin is a Story
This is the root of all my stories, from the dirtiest noncon/dubcon/beast/incest/degradation to the sexy, happy fluff. This is why I write sex, to offer a narrative that to âgive inâ to your fears and break the societal constructs surrounding sex will allow you to find pleasure instead of the sin. The sin is a lie, itâs something we were taught, not something that exists. But our brains hold power over us, our narrativesâthe narratives of society, of the casual little phrases we donât even think about that create the bars to the cage that say sex is bad and wanting sex means youâre bad. That sweat, shit, tears, cum, vomit, urine, blood, flesh, bonesâthese things that are a part of living in a human body, something every single person on this planet experiencesâis on some level bad and offensive. The body must be hidden and those who donât hide theirs are narcissists, deviants, godless, seducers, sluts, asking to be harmed because to have a body is to deserve to be raped. These are the narratives we hear every day, little stories that filter in and our brains pick up and form a construct of the world around us.
This is also the root of censorshipâI know, that other thing I love talking about! XD I find censorship extra fascinating because rarely is it just for reality but for imitations of reality. If youâve been watching news about Trump and his âshitholeâ comment, I hope youâre laughing as loudly as I am every time a newsperson goes to say the word shithole and instead they say something like âbleepholeâ or âyou-know-what holeâ XD OMG. They canât even quote reality. Someone, somewhere is demanding these people not say certain words, and my fuck, they fucking listen, donât they? They create a complete construct around avoiding certain mouthsounds, and those who donât conform are punished. Book censorship of course is just as insaneâthe belief that an idea is wrong and shouldnât be allowed to exist or people will be harmed.
Sit with that for a bit. Lol. So many people afraid of their brains, claiming their actions are powerless to their thoughts. How easy it would be to justify murder if we truly believed we werenât responsible for our actions? We thought about killing someone, then we didâblame the thing that gave us the idea, not the choice of committing an action. Society can see how ludicrous that is for murderâusually, donât get me started on the Stand Your Ground lawâbut for sex? For an internal desire expressed in the body that our history (and some current cultures) claim is just as atrocious as murder? Far less rational thought occurs when reacting to a societal message of morality.
The Societal System
Society pushes to say âdonât accept who you are unless⊠*insert demand*â Unless you look a certain way, unless you act a certain way, unless you get that paycheck of a certain amount, unless some god loves you, unless you sacrifice, unless you earned it, unless you prove youâre worthy, unless your parents/teacher/priest/doctor/boss/celebrity/friend/someone approves⊠unless youâre something else. The message is you arenât good enough as is; you must be something else and then you will be acceptable and loved. And this isnât just the big society, that vague âthemâ that encompasses a state or continent. There are tons of societies from groups of friends, to families, to the workplace, to your singular mind, and in this particular bookâs case, the gay community.
I fear just the act of placing the gay label is the first step in this slippery slope of crafting cages and demanding of yourself to be something else concerning sexuality. It was in the lesbian scene I saw the most fighting, the most cruelty, the most anger. I met women abused by men who turned to women, only to be abused again. Or to abuse others. To seek drugs, to steal, to break up relationships, to blame others for their actions. Everyone was a hookup instead of a person. Everyone a savior to prove theyâre worthy instead of a person. I saw women who demonized men, women who demonized mothers, women who demonized beautiful womenâreally, just pick a âtypeâ and someone hated them because of how they looked, how they acted, how they existed.
I saw so much unhappiness in that place, including the beautiful group of males who crossdressed as females and were so defensive, it felt like I was in a war scene when they stepped off stage and walked through a sea of women and seemed to expect to be attacked/judged/mocked. And given the sea of these hurt women, they might have had experience to feel that way. I saw women who desperately needed to have their peers reflect them so they could see who they were. It was identity through the control of others. Identity through comparing. Identity through reacting. They could only find themselves when interacting with othersâothers who had to fit their narrative or were punished. And why did those who were hurt by not fitting stay to fit? Because they gained identity by staying, by being labeled. Every person there was there by choice.
I canât speak for gay men in that scene. Why? Because the sexes were segregated when it came to gay and lesbian and the clubs and parties I found myself at. I think part of the whole meat market aspect of that scene was, if youâre not in the market, youâre not welcome. I dunno. Maybe they couldnât reflect off of such a different looking personâa manâso they kept them away? Maybe what the did reflect pushed them away? I can speculate but I donât actually know. If I knew there were men out there who hated me just because of my gender the way some of those women hated men (even if those roots were based in abuse,) I probably wouldnât be in a rush to hang out. XD
A Living Narrative
So, this is a story of the past that doesn’t exist anymore. One place in time through the eyes of one curious woman whose brain loves to find patterns in people and understand. These are moments in my life I remember to write the narrative of today–even if today is completely different. And this is part of the problem; we as humans take the past and project it into the future. We decide everything we know makes us a fortune teller. XD
During that time I spoke with women who left the scene who confided how painful it had been for them, how insane it was compared to being sexually evolved out in the world. I was still watching the scene trying to understand why everyone seemed to have a prescription or a drug or a trauma they were taking while calling themselves these two dimensional labels and looking to be seen but not really known. I was straight out of the psych ward hanging with a lesbian (who by the time I left was considering identifying as a male) who was fresh out of prison, and I had a bipolar bisexual girlfriend (who called herself a lesbian once she started dating me but nearly married a man right before.) The bubble I was in was real but that doesnât mean it was the entire view.
After the psych ward, where youâre labeled by your brain/behavioral âmalfunctionââyou know, the true way to identify who you are, by the thing that fucks up your life completely and you can never be free of. XD The illness that makes you wrong compared to everyone else; thatâs who you are. Sigh. Now thatâs a system of suffering that keeps people suffering, and after the psych ward, the scene just seemed all too familiar. You can be sexually free, but only when you label, so make sure you know what your label is and donât try to change it. We already have identified you by this label and we donât want to be confused or worse, annoyed. Your sexuality is a judgment on us, especially if you ever fucked usâdonât you dare be bisexual or trans, cus that just confuses the fuck out of us and our sexual identity.
It was a beautiful chaos of pain as people tried to discover themselves while stepping on everyoneâs toes. As much as they hurt each other, they hurt themselves even more, and the ones who stayedâso many stay until they find what they needâthey hurt themselves the most.
Why Do We Do It?
I love people, I truly do. I love their insanity as they claw at themselves demanding the impossible while hoping against hope if they reach that goal, the suffering will finally stop. And while theyâre clawing at themselves, theyâre screaming at anyone who looks a little like them, demanding the same of themâbe perfect, be this, be the thing I need so I can be free already. Hurry the fuck up and be what I want! XD Ah, itâs so powerful, so amazing, so fucking cruel and beautiful and we demand of our loved ones first, donât we? Those who provide us the most on a material and emotional level we then refuse to allow to be free of our filter. If you change, then who am I?
I can look back and see how lost I was when I was this person who needed others to be a certain way so I could feel safe in the world. Err⊠like a year ago. XD This part is not an old story and she still pops up time to time. What an exhaustion trying to get people to change just so I could calm the fuck down over stupid shit like dishes. And what pain I inflicted on myself with my own demands.
Lol, thatâs why my writing is so different these last months with less a focus on completion and more on actually writing the story as it wants to be. I finally learned to stop demanding so much of myself, and Iâm still learning. A writer can be an ass to herself and decide if editing isnât perfect, you suck. (whoops.) If that novel isnât published by the end of the month, youâre a horrible person. And then you can find other writers to agree with that inner bitchy voice. Itâs easier to see the interactions with my loved ones and stop, but the pain I commit on myself by having all those inner demands? Whooo, it has taken time.
It takes time not to respond to my loved ones when they come to me to identify them. When some days they want to feel weak and helpless in the world and they lash at me to give them the promise that Iâm strong enough to carry it all for them, or that I perceive them incapable so they donât have to try. Sometimes they define me by the mold toxicity so that they can be my hero for a little bit even if it means I canât be my hero. Itâs not a one way streetâeveryone is in a relationship by choice to gain whatever it is they need. Some people are afraid to move forward and they want someone to point it out to them so that they can tell themselves they donât have to move forward, they can just be angry at you, bitch. XD Or they ask you for advice, ask you to carry them and do it for them, and when you donât, ah, what a washing away of responsibility. Such bliss. They donât have to do it because they handed you the responsibility, and if you donât do it, oh, well, it gets to slip away and be unimportant, dragged out only during later arguments to âwinâ in the battle of dominance for the right to narrate the shared story. Lol, itâs beautiful.
This could be the pain of the group, of the lgbt community that holds itself back, that demands others be a certain way because they have to be a symbol, a representation of an entire sexual movement. It has to look a certain way, and if you donât fit you shouldnât be allowed to exist as you areâchange for us so we look the way we should.
Freedom to marry doesnât give you anything when youâre not free to be yourself. It doesnât change the way you think the world still sees you. It doesnât change the way you still see yourself. Itâs not only straight people who have the ability to judge. I see so many who have struggled to find their sexual identity and they feel threatened by the existence of someone similar but different. I have plenty of gay people still tell me bisexuality isnât real. Some fear the spectrum because then they donât know where they fit, who they are without the sexuality label nice and clear. I love writing straight to gay because of thisâto show that facing the fear of being different from your self expectations can lead to pleasure.
My theme as a writer seems to be submission to inner dark desire=pleasure. XD I knew nothing about bdsm when I started writing eroticaâI thought it was a super tacky genre from the few books I read at the time with all their equipment and living in clubs and their silly rules. All I saw was the structure and none of the underlying emotion. Now, after studying the push and pull of the human psyche as it seeks relief in others, I see the struggle of relinquishing to self.
So funny, the battle of the ego just looking for an escape to let go, looking for someone to save them because they donât want to think they have the power. If they have the power, then theyâre obligated to change their life, right? No thank you, just hand that over to the guy with the whip. XD Keep the changes in a safe place, one room, one little therapeutic dose of giving away control, giving in to desire without fear of consequence in the real world. A structured fantasy with the only one to judge being yourself and your partner.
Toxic Fruit
I like the premise of the book, of the greater society, of history and religion and the rejection of the human form being the roots of this problem. I want to see if it goes further. The roots still feed the plants that bear fruit, and where do we see the hurt coming from when history is dust, and morality is merely a system in place that no one is actually controlling? Why do those newspeople really hold back from swearing on television? Do they give a fuck about the concept of morality, or do they care about losing their jobs? Individual humans in this world punish them, and those who are punished choose to accept thatâs the trade off to being free to speak certain words on TVâha! I live in a country where we hold up free speech as some big right while saying itâs not allowed on television. Wow. Individuals strike out at others, demand from them what they demand of themselves to keep the world one way. They perpetuate the message while being bombarded by the message.
We are intelligent beings with technology and information beyond anything we have had before, but we still repeat the broken messages that keep us trapped. Why? Because we open our mouths and speak them. We do this; we are society. We teach our kids to be ashamed of the very bodies they are born into, while we look for ways to stop hating ourselves. We tell ourselves we canât win in fights we never bother to battle. We create a god we must impress, must live up to, or we will suffer damnation. We decide that speaking up deserves pain, so only the most brave speak up. We create all the monsters that we end up battling or avoiding, while blaming the monsters.
Redefining Reality
Is that an ugly thought? Should it be censored so people donât have to feel uncomfortable? The beauty of these systems that hurt us is how a changing of the message can save us. If the system in place is redefined, everything it touches redefines. Oh, letâs say the Pope declared sin nothing more than a fallacy of the mind used to control society, and every church in the system took up that belief and spread it to the followers. The next generation of Roman Catholics (and whoever listens to the Pope) could be free of sin. Actually free, instead of the indoctrination of bestowing original sin on every child born just so they could âbaptizeâ it away.
What if the psychiatric community decided to look into how allergies are linked to mental illness? What if they taught how most people who have allergies but donât produce a certain response are far more likely to suffer mentally from bipolar to depression to mania to agitation to ocd to fits of rage, hence the rise of suicides during high pollen counts? What if when your kids are taught about nutrition, theyâre not taught skewed information in there by companiesâsugarâwho donât want people to know their product is not required on any level?
Systems allow for very big changes in a short amount of time and hey, theyâre already in place. The media is such a system, which is why we have some channels spewing the extreme conservative narrative of âfear your neighbor and self,â and others the extreme liberal narrative of ânothing you do is good enough unless you reach our blessed heights.â Iâm a liberal and my fuck, itâs like being a vegan among vegansâyouâre never fucking good enough. Lately, I feel like Iâm back in church answering to some faceless god of morality claiming gloom and doom if ideas exist and it totally sucks. No wonder Trump is terrified of the media. Itâs a system bigger than him capable of changing the narrative of the world, the narrative he canât reflect off of. He chose his enemy and his enemy grows bigger because of it.
But the caveat? Even when a system changes, itâs still up to the individual to change, to let the old message go. To allow through their filter of the world for things to be different, for things to be fun and not so fucking serious. Ugh, everyone is so damn serious. Do you know how many authors I see resend newsletters over fucking typos? Typos. Gah. I had an old guy glaring at me Christmas Eveâthe entire nightâand only found out when he said goodbye that he was offended by my lipring. XD I had it for 10 years but he was certain it would be infected by tomorrow because something in his past made his perception of my reality look dangerous.
Our brains are the system of oppression weâre trapped in. We perceive the messages and give them importance enough to actually follow them. Every message out in the world was first conceived in someoneâs mind, which was then expressed through language where other minds picked it up, decided it was important, and followed or rejected. I used to think a vow of silence was about being able to finally hear yourself; now I wonder if itâs to do no harm on the world through the influence of words. But the words arenât the harm, itâs still the minds that turn them into something more and act upon that belief.
There are so many people out there afraid of their thoughts. I wonder when theyâll see that they choose to act, they choose to make thoughts into an action? They choose to believe a message and hold onto it, making it part of their identity.
We Are the Storyteller
In our brains live these realities, these perceptions, these characters born of narrativesâI think youâve all met my characters in stories. XD But just as Iâm an obvious storyteller, we are all telling a story about the world and about ourself. We tell the story that our attraction and gender is a part of our identity, that our job gives us value, that our family is a reflection of ourself, that if weâre not liked then we are bad/lacking, that our face defines our beauty, that to lose everything is to really lose everything.
It can be so hard to break out of that story, to see that we still persist even when everything changes. Maybe that is the joy of reading. For me it is the joy of writing. I write freedom (sexy, dirty freedom, lol) for every character I conceive. Maybe to experience a narrativeâany narrativeâbetween pages feels safer, allows us to see how we can wiggle free of the story of our life and be something elseâbut safely, in our brains, because that is where that story lives.
The reality is, for all my intentions, I can only hope people find freedom in my books. For some, they may be perpetuating the cage theyâre trapped in, seeing their own self dissatisfaction reflected in the characters and never following to where itâs okay to be okay with yourself. Lol, those outraged reviews from poor souls so angry about the sex or the swearing or the lack of consent or the typos; I donât think they got it. XD Maybe a few more rounds in the story until they see it canât hurt them, pleasure is actually pleasure no matter the circumstances in a story. Orgasm = good. My characters still seek freedom and I will still record it, but there is no way to control how any of it is perceived. Itâs all in the readerâs mind.
The individual is the god of their story, their world, their life. As your personal storyteller, do you choose to be the hero, the victim, the protector, the caretaker, the child, the clown, the villain? Do you let it change or are you stuck with one identity, struggling to be more than your job or your role in a family or the thing that fucks your brain up? So many stories we write about life, but are any of them as satisfying as the ones where we learn to love ourselves? And⊠insert masturbation joke here. XD
I have rambled the fuck away. Today Iâm an artist, an observer of life who seeks understanding in the name of freedom from my own brain. I hope in my little journey, you have found some too. Let the walls fall down and get some fresh air, eh?
The New Boy
An Iron Eagle Gym Novel
Lance Packet just got a contract to shoot an erotic BDSM deck of cards; the only problem is finding models. So far everyone heâs interviewed thinks heâs looking for sex for hire. Then in walk three perfect examples of men: Tide and his friends, Tyrone and Bran.
Tide Germaine is a model and a Dom. He and his best friend Tyrone opened The Iron Eagle Gym as a place for gay men in the lifestyle to work out, do scenes, and congregate with like-minded men. The modeling is just another job for Tide, but it soon turns into a grand seduction as Tide falls for the shy, self-conscious photographer. The problem is Lance doesnât believe heâs in Tideâs league, and heâs not at all sure about the Dom and sub thing.
Itâs not going to be easy, but Tideâs going to have to convince Lance he belongs at Tideâs side as both lover and sub.
A Night To Remember: Phoenix Wedding Night
A night of romance, passion, and love that theyâll never forget…
Love and passion are in the air as the newlywed couples share their first night together as husbands. Finally released from their celibacy pact, the men are more than ready for a long night of warm romance and heated love. But they arenât the only ones sharing their hearts and their bodies as other couples, yet to be wed, make the most of this enchanting evening as well.
Note: This is an M/M romance and should be read by readers 18yo and above only.
The Drunk Email
Nick has had a crush on his older brother for as long as he could remember. Justin is just so perfect; handsome, strong with blond hair and blue eyes. It’s impossible to look anywhere else. Nick never thought he’d ever tell his brother how he felt. That was until Justin went on a school trip out of country and Nick got lonely and really drunk.