RFD 150 Summer 2012

Issue 151 / Fall 2012 Call for Entries

Kawashaway Sanctuary & The Northwoods Radical Faeries

Calling all the Walk Betweeners who have communed with us in the past 25 years.

In 2012, the Northwoods Tribe of the Radical Faeries is celebrating all things silver, our Silver Jubilee year. Like starlight sparkling in our hearts, the fall RFD will feature our community. Join us as we reflect over our 25 years in RFD’s 2012 Fall issue.

Perhaps you know us from Gathering, or an Urban Phase event, or online. We may be best known—by fae and fae-curious alike—thanks to the sumptuous coffee table book Faeries: Visions, Voices & Pretty Dresses (Aperture Books, 2000) by our own Klick, aka Keri Pickett. Winner of the 2000 Lambda Literary Award Best Fine Art Book, Faeries excerpts helped us

“Yoohoo, 1999” Keri Pickett www.pickettphoto.com

spread our wings as a feature in Summer 2000 RFD. Look for new, never-seen Klick photos this Fall. And we’re yoo-hooing for your submissions of art, images, stories and connections.

Please share memories and connections you have with Mother Kawashaway and the Northwoods Tribe. We are specifically looking for content about the first two gatherings in Gordon, Wisconsin, the first gathering at Kawashaway, and Spirit Gathering. Kawashaway-related submissions can be sent electronically to Phoenix & White Ash at RFD@ Kawashaway.org. If you’re sending big-assed files, please zip ‘em up and send via www.YouSendIt.com. Please send to us no later than June 30, 2012. Ads and non-Kawashaway-related submissions direct to submssions@rfdmag.org. Visit submissions. rfdmag.org for more info.

Vol 38 No 4 #150 Summer 2012

Radiating Fecund Dick

Between the Loins

“Desire is a Horse that wants to bring you to Spirit.”

Welcum to “Summertime...where the living’s sleazy...” to rephrase that great Jazz standard, with its slow Sax solo sounding desire to one’s core. Hearing those chords is sex magick to me, sounds creating an alchemical change in my body, causing fluids to flow, sparking my imagination and making my heart race.

We are excited to present this scintillating issue of RFD, a survey of images, reflections, and recipes from a host of fey sex magicians willing to share their experiences in the realm of Sex/Magick. We are tickled to include collages created by Donald Engstrom, one of the founders of this dear qweer zine, for our cover and centerfold. We are also pleased to include Franklin Abbott’s interview with Cyrus Cassell, with a cache of his evocative poetry. We were delighted by the huge response to the Call for this issue, many thanks to ya’ll, apologies if we could not include all of what was submitted.

I personally would like to dedicate this issue to the memories of Harry Hay, Baba Raul Canizares, ibae, and Gryphon Blackswan, all of whom have gifted me with so much concerning sex magick.

Harry’s proposition that our sexuality is our window into consciousness echoes the teachings of OSHO, who noted that one could learn more about oneself through watching one’s sex life than any other aspect of one’s life. Harry once noted to me that his sexual desires never diminished as he aged (as he thought would happen), causing him to query: “What are we really looking for through our sexual desires?” His Sex Magick/Daisy Chain Workshop became his recipe for us to use in our own search for that answer in our lives, personally and communally.

Baba Raul taught me not only to open to my ability for aspecting ancestors, but also connected me to the magickal lineage organized by Aleister Crowley. While in Spirit, he exhorted me to create the “PAN chant,” which opens ‘Uncle Al’s” Book of Magick.

Pan is the God of the wilds (as Harry pointed out), places not touched by humans. The places where qweers have long sought sexual refuge, spiritually feeding eat other with our seed. Invoking Pan allows us to accept the wilds within, those irrational drives that lead us...well, dear reader, I am sure have your own stories to tell and we’ve included a few from our fellow feys. Accepting the Pan within is essential for a healthy attitude toward Mother Earth. Those who are sexually generous tend to be ecologically minded.

Gryphon Blackswan died from AIDS in 1996. He was a member of the Circle of Loving Companions, graduates of Harry’s sex magick workshops. He continues to speak to me (see pg. 37) from the realm of Spirit. The continued reality of HIV (transmission) in our community makes it necessary for us to address this phenomenon within this issue. All of this is to show that in the great cycle of life, we continue to experience the ancient mythic dance between Eros and Thanatos.

These relationships are markers of the lineage we are developing within our community, as most learning in this realm is conveyed through one-onone mentorships in an oral tradition not dissimilar to how Tantra entered Tibet from India. Words are a form of magick. So is sex. Mixing them alchemically requires a strong container, as erotic power breaks us open in ways that are profoundly ecstatic, and can be dangerous to our bodies and psyches.

Desire is a particularly idiosyncratic mechanism in our lives. It is my belief that there are as many sexualities as there are individuals. What are you going to do with your sexual desires this Summer? This Lifetime? May this issue offer some perspectives to consider, something for your erotic tool box, some sparks to ignite your fluids. Go ahead—touch yourself right now & feel the burn! May your sex life be magickal! Happy Summer!

—Rosie Delicious for the RFD Collective.

Submission Deadlines Fall–July 21, 2012

Winter–October 21, 2012

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org

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 01035-0302 Non-profit tax exempt #621723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $9.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. Copyright © 2012 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. Mail for our Brothers Behind Bars project should be sent to P.O. Box 68, Liberty TN 37095.

On the Covers

Front & Back: Donald Engstrom-Reese

Inside Front: “Yoohoo! 1996” by Keri Pickett. www.pickettphoto.com.

Inside Back:

Production

Bambi Gauthier, Managing Editor

Guest Editor: Rosie Delicious

Matt Bucy, Art Director

Paul Wirhun, Editor

Jason Schneider, Editor Myrlin, Prison Pages Editor

LETTERS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

A Letter from Be

Kudos on #148 Winter 2011! I love the new format and the latest issue was truly great. As I read each page I became increasingly ashamed that I had, once again, procrastinated too long to make a submission.

I count my Faerie birthday as Aug. 1980—at the 2nd Annual Gathering of Radical Faeries in Pike National Forest near Denver—beautifully hosted by the Denver Faeries. I did not attend Short Mountain Sanctuary’s 1st Gathering in the fall of 1980, but I was there for the 1st Spring Gathering in 1981—the gathering when the tower fell. As with all memories, each one is subjective and while I would not dispute Franklin’s memory; I have a few recollections to add.

When we gathered at the tower to take the group photo, Bric Miller and I climbed to the top and hung out on the upper platform (the photo in #148, p9 is a picture of the tower under construction) which was by then solid. When the lower platform gave way and dumped faeries to the ground, Bric and I were fine—the upper platform was intact and we climbed down safely. Unfortunately not everyone was fine. Pearlie Mae Sudds sustained a long gash which opened his leg (right, if I remember aright) from mid thigh to mid calf. The wound was not very deep and Pearlie closed it with a series of butterfly tabs made from adhesive tape and elected not to go to the hospital. The ambulance took away a young (late teens—early 20’s) deaf boy who had broken his arm in two places (not quite compound, but close); who had been ably and lovingly tended by Linda Luna—a nurse, crone witch. Linda served our Faerie Tribe with distinction until her death from cancer in 1995.

Incidentally, the photo shows the pole for the bottom platform near the bottom of the picture. The platform itself was 9 ft. above the knoll, and one pole was down near what is now the driveway making the drop from there about 14 ft. It was that drop, of nearly 14 ft., which injured Pearlie and the deaf boy; not to mention numerous others with scrapes and bruises.

I have long maintained that finding and identifying with the faeries brought a process of healing and

integration to my life which deepens and improves with the passing years. I have an ever-growing roster of dear friends and lovers—there, only because I dared to say “I’m a Faerie too”. I treasure the years I spent entering data, writing and proof-reading for RFD and I congratulate you all once again for the wonderful work you are doing. And a great big THANK YOU to Short Mountain Sanctuary! May it live on as long as there is a need for safety and compassion in the world.

Love, Be

Sex Magick Workshops

The Sex Magick/Daisy Chain workshops were originated by Harry Hay in 1990 and have since been referred to by the shorter moniker: Sex Magick. They are seven days long and participants commit to being engaged and present for the entire time. Each one is limited to 15 participants with 2 or 3 facilitators. There is an entry level Sex Magick, nominally called “169” and an advanced workshop known as “269.” More advanced events are planned for the future starting in the spring of 2013 with a “269.” In addition to the workshop held at Wolf Creek in May, there are two more planned for 2012. Both entry level, the first one will be at a private farm near Kansas City, Missouri September 15-22 and the other one on November 9-16 at a large cabin outside Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. For more information please visit www.faeriesexmagick.org.

Radically Gay: The Life of Harry Hay

Exhibition: April 21 - July 29, 2012

On the centennial anniversary of his birth, this exhibition celebrates the life and work of activist Harry Hay that laid the foundation for the modern U.S. lesbian and gay rights movement. The exhibition also chronicles Hay’s life from his early years through his labor activism and involvement with the Communist Party before founding of the Mattachine Society and co-founding of the Radical Faeries. Jewett Gallery, Main Library, 100 Larkin St., San Francisco, CA

Radically Gay: Harry Hay

September 27-30, 2012

Radically Gay

The Life and Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay @ CCNY Grad Center & NYU

For information and registration visit: web.gc.cuny.edu/clags

Saturday, September 29, 7–9:30pm A Roll in the Hay A Celebration of Harry Hay hosted by the NYC (dis)Order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence @ LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St.

Sunday, September 30, 12–4 p.m. Community Heart Circle

Carrying on Harry’s legacy/Queering our future facilitated by Rosie Delicious & Chas Nol @ LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St.

Sponsored by: the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies & the Harry Hay Centennial Committee

FAEposium

After a year’s hiatus, the cauldron is brewing again. This November 2012, FAEposium returns to inspire our community toward a higher vision of itself.

The four day even, based on the classical Greek Symposium, is our opportunity to come together to share, learn, muse, discuss and create. What are the issues that affect our lives? What can we do as a community to effect change amongst ourselves and the larger world we are a part of? Let us come together to have these very important conversations.

Important? Yes. Overly serious? Come on, this is a Faerie gathering! Between the panel discussions, workshops and conversation will be ritual, feasting, laughing, languishing, cuddling dancing and stellar entertainment. This event is meant to be a sublime balance between the philosophical, the physical, and the spiritual and to give us the opportunity to share the vision, wisdom, and real-life tools to guide us into our collective future.

To make a donation, submit a workshop or performance idea, or for more information about attending and volunteering, please visit out website: www.faeposium.org. With love and blessings, the FAEposium Planning Committee.

Back Issue Sale!

20% off for Five or More

www.rfdmag.org

Hymn To Pan

Aleister Crowley, 1929

Thrill with the lissome lust of the light, O man! My man!

Come careering out of the night

Of Pan! IΩ Pan!

IΩ Pan! IΩ Pan! Come over the sea

From Sicily and from Arcady!

Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards

And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards, On a milk-white ass, come over the sea

To me, to me,

Come with Apollo in bridal dress

(Shepherdess and pythoness)

Come with Artemis, silken shod, And wash thy white thigh, beautifal God, In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount, The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!

Dip the purple of passionate prayer

In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare, The soul that startles in eyes of blue

To watch thy wantonness weeping through The tangled grove, the gnarled bole

Of the living tree that is spirit and soul

And body and brain—come over the sea,

(IΩ Pan! IΩ Pan!)

Devil or God, to me, to me,

My man! My man!

Come with trumpets sounding shrill

Over the hill!

Come with drums low muttering

From the spring!

Come with flute and come with pipe!

Am I not ripe?

I, who wait and writhe and wrestle

With air that hath no boughs to nestle

My body, weary of empty clasp, Strong as a lion and sharp as an aspCome, O come!

I am numb

With the lonely lust of devildom. Thrust the sword through the galling fetter, All-devourer, all begetter; Give me the sign of the Open Eye, And the token erect of thorny thigh, And the word of madness and mystery,

O Pan! IΩ Pan!

IΩ Pan! IΩ Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan, I am a man:

Do as thou wilt, as a great god can, O Pan! IΩ Pan!

IΩ Pan! IΩ Pan Pan! I am awake In the grip of the snake. The eagle slashes with beak and claw; The Gods withdraw; The great beasts come, IΩ Pan! I am borne To death on the horn

Of the Unicorn.

I am Pan! IΩ Pan! IΩ Pan Pan! Pan! I am thy mate, I am thy man, Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god, Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod. With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks Through solstice stubborn to equinox. I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend Everlasting, world without end, Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man, In the might of Pan.

IΩ Pan! IΩ Pan Pan! Pan! IΩ Pan!

“Pan” by artboydancing

Park Magic: A Memory Fragment

by Jed Barnum

The reasons and causes may be debated, but the fact remains that we faggots have lost (or given up) many of our historic gathering places, not only bars, but also parks, toilets, docks, and abandoned buildings.

Sex in parks has always been magical to me.

Seurat got it right: people go to parks to be themselves. There’s so much green growth and optimism in a park. The smell of the earth, the combination of secrecy and abandon, the history (I have heard that men have given blowjobs and fucked other men in Boston’s Fens for over 200 years, for example).

For me, sex in a park is a kind of communion like no other.

Ioffer this story, written over a decade ago in the late nineties, about my first night-time visit to Boston’s Back Bay Fens.

I was 23.

I’d had plenty of sex in bookstores, bus stations, and back alleys, but this was something new and the magic would keep me enthralled even as it began to fade around the turn of the century, and that magic still holds me in its sway.

I’d heard many stories about “The Fens,” or “The Reeds,” referring to a section of Boston’s Emerald Necklace next to the Muddy River which encompasses community gardens, a park, and lots and lots of very tall phragmite reeds.

I’d been to the park during the day but had never seen much.

In the daytime the park was used by all kinds of people—gardeners, dog-owners, student couples lying in each others arms in the grass (straight couples, that is). During the day, the park certainly seemed heterosexual, and one had to look closely to find the magic in it.

That was mostly in the gardens themselves, which were (and still are) filled with bamboo trees, zen rocks, little bridges, giant sunflowers, jimson weed, and calla lilies.

A special place, but not necessarily enchanted.

After hearing the stories, I decided to visit the park with something else in mind.

Feeling painfully conspicuous, as though everyone knew my true purpose, I sat on the grass at the edge of the park, pretending to read The Mists of

Avalon. I was quivering with anxiety, arousal, and curiosity.

My mouth was dry and my palms were wet.

I found I couldn’t concentrate on my “cover” (innocently reading in the sunshine).

At first I refused to look up at anyone.

I’d be staring at the trees or the sky, mind wandering, someone (it didn’t matter who) would step into the park, and I’d quickly glance furiously down into my book.

I began to feel like an imposter, and besides, I was really there to check out the action, wasn’t I? I wasn’t going to get arrested just for watching people walk by, even if some of those people were men considerably older than my 22 years, mostly unattractive, my father’s age (the irony!), who slowed as they saw me look at them, shark-like gleams in their beady bespectacled eyes.

But I don’t think I ever saw anything more lurid than what I’ve just described.

Not during daylight hours, anyway.

I’d just moved to a studio apartment a few blocks from the park.

One night, perhaps fortified with a drink or two from one of the nearby clubs, I headed for the park.

The place did have a nasty reputation for muggings and thieves and so I kept my street smarts close about me, my newly-acquired biker jacket zipped up tight, and my eyes wide and ever vigilant as I crossed Park Drive and entered the park.

Not wanting to appear too obvious, I headed for a path which seemed to skirt the middle of the park.

It was darker than the rest and had a feeling of being off to the side; overlooked.

The path was lined with small overgrown trees, which made it fairly dark.

Stepping from the sodium-lit streets into the darkness of the path, I was blind for a few moments. (This is one of my favorite feelings—stepping from a busy, well-lit, city street into a pitch-dark, earthysmelling place with grass and leaves underfoot and branches overhead, suddenly quieter and darker and much more magical.)

On this particular night I was extremely nervous—my senses were supercharged and every

“Ed Loves Rand,” photograph by Kwai Lam

footstep sounded like an earthquake.

As I walked along the path into the trees, I saw the full moon between branches, and a delicious shiver of excitement went up my spine. I stopped for a moment to get my bearings and to let my eyes get used to the darkness.

There were six or eight craggy old apple trees around me, just finishing their blooms.

I could smell the flowers.

The tree trunks were stocky and short and the branches stuck out at odd angles.

They made quite a silhouette with the moonlight behind them.

As I looked, I saw a tiny orange light next to one of the trunks.

My eyes moved up from the pinpoint of light and what I had thought was part of the tree trunk moved slightly and slowly exhaled a plume of smoke.

He was a very tall man, dressed almost entirely in black leather, watching me.

It was as if he had emerged from the tree.

Slowly I became aware of more than one.

Leaning against the trunks or standing in the shadows were at least six men; two or three languorously lifted that glowing orange pinpoint to their lips and I could barely make out the little puffs of smoke as they exhaled.

I became aware of the slight smell of cigarette smoke.

The layered scents of fresh spring earth, damp evening air, apple blossoms, car exhaust, and a bit of cigarette smoke and leather, in combination with the full moon, the mist over the reeds, and the distant sound of traffic, were intoxicating.

I felt as if I’d stepped into another world.

Who knew what would happen when I stepped completely into the darkness. w

Rites of Seduction

by Ben Wu

It was a tepid evening just after the Vernal Equinox, a few years ago, when wonder reappeared in my life. It came to me in the guise of a young man. He wore magic like a cloak. Ebony—night itself— clung to him. Deep folds and furrows of ethereal fabric filled with mystery. I could see the brilliance of a thousand galaxies adrift in those sparkling, dark orbs—his eyes; gates to an ancient soul that had stirred the cosmic dust of an Earth newly born. A spirit that had crossed primordial oceans and stridden side by side with the most ancient of days.

He was my Forest Lord and the taught me all the secret rites and rituals, that turned the fiery nectar of passion, sipped from Lust’s goblet, could transform our animal instincts into a divine love. He told me how sex could transform us and empower us. I had never thought of sex as empowering, but something dirty and wrong. A shameful act done behind a veil of darkness. He kissed me tenderly and vowed that he would open my heart and my body to joys I had never known. My lord vowed to awaken a beast within me. Then, subdue it and dominate it, until he and I became one in the intoxicating breath of the sex beast. Carrying me at last to the precipice of fleshly joys, the threshold of the divine.

He undressed me and laid me down on his bed. As he walked around his room lighting candles and small lanterns hanging from the corners of the room, he disrobed. Garment by garment until he was nude. Before me stood a glorious figure of masculine beauty—hair and supple skin, firm muscles, a wondrous wand of flesh, strong arms and wild eyes.

As he neared me in the crepuscular glow of the candles, his room became a woodland sanctuary. The quivering flames became stars and the long, flickering shadows became tall oaks encircling the place where I lay.

He bowed over me and kissed me passionately as his body settled against mine. I could feel my heart throbbing as my mind raced. I had been fucked more times than I could count, but I had never truly made love. I had thrust my cock into one guy after another, but had never filled the void in my soul, or

sated the hunger that had long been my companion. He whispered to me constantly—short breaths filled with word between primal grunts and growls. He licked at my thighs, his hair brushing against my balls and cock, causing them to ache for more. I wanted his lips on my cock, but he went everywhere, but there. The anticipation almost hurt. I could feel my precious member grow achingly hard. Just when I couldn’t take another moment of waiting, his lips slid over my shaft and his tongue flicked my sensitive head within his hot, moist mouth.

BeforeI knew it, my legs were around his waist and he was pushing, every so gently, into me. His ample rod, anointed with our pre-cum, mingled like some sort of potion, sweet and viscous, opened me up. Gasping slightly as he slid his full length in, I felt it grow and harden. As he thrust, he looked intently into my eyes. I wanted him deeper inside me. To become me! To live inside my body and meld with my soul. We moved in unison, a collection of limbs and flesh, blood and bones. Time meant nothing, the stars blurred and within his eyes cosmic fires whirled and burned. With a deep breath he came within me causing me to climax. My cum shooting haphazardly onto us both. It was an ecstasy that filled with me joy and pain and sensation so intense that I felt I had left my body—broken the clay vessel and freed my spirit. He had taken me to the Threshold of the Divine.

We never met again. Yet, he had taught me more than a thousand weighty tomes could contain and awoke the magik within me. In the crucible of this imperfect body, we cultivated a union in which flesh pleasured flesh and soul nourished soul. It was more than a hook up. It was a spell cast by two beings coming together in a beautiful, preternatural way. Worshiping at natures altar and genuflecting before the glorious flesh that the Creator gave us, we touched paradise. Channeling within us and conveying to each other the power that flows throughout the Universe. w

I had never thought of sex as empowering, but something dirty and wrong. A shameful act done behind a veil of darkness.

“Rites of Seduction” by Ben Wu

How Sex Magick Found Me

by Ed Ehrgott

Ifoundsex magick entirely by accident. Maybe a better way to put it is that sex magick found me when I was ready for it. I’m about as ‘middle America’ as it gets—I was raised in Midwestern suburbia. My adolescence was in the 70’s and sex was making more of an appearance in daily life. I do distinctly remember that whenever the topic came up (even on comparatively mild 70’s television) everyone in my family became noticeably uncomfortable. I quickly learned not to talk about anything related to Eros and keep my questions and exploration to myself.

What I did get during this time were many lessons in how to distance myself from my body. As a boy, my father pushed me into sports. He was well intentioned but things didn’t turn out the way he envisioned. I wasn’t very athletic. For many boys, playing sports is a way to build self esteem. For me, it just reinforced that my body wasn’t worth much because I couldn’t do things like the other boys did. The other boys received ribbons and trophies. I learned how to not like the body I was given. I always wanted to be the thin boy, be the boy that could run fast, be the boy that was a good athlete. I wasn’t any of these. As a boy I learned how to separate myself from my body.

This time is also when I first recall having strong feelings of being attracted to other boys. I really didn’t know what these feelings meant, but the other boys sure figured out things fast. So, here I was this queer boy among all the macho jocks (ok, as macho as a 12 year old can be). I was the recipient of their teasing and occasional beatings that helped me further become numb to my body.

So fast forward a few decades…I came out in the early 80’s right when HIV/AIDS became public. I arrived to the party and the party was over. Instead, I

buried my head in the ground and focused on work. I became addicted to a steady (ok, boring) routine— a corporate minion—just going through the motions. I progressed up the corporate food chain. My definition of success could easily be measured. It was called money. I did what everyone expected of me. I had all the outward signs of success. And I was miserable inside.

Finally something in me snapped. I had just completed a harrowing corporate ritual of essentially justifying my job—which for me at that time was pretty closely tied to my existence. My body was a wreck. I constantly felt miserable inside. I was going through the motions to show what a wonderful corporate soldier I was. But I wasn’t even asking the most important question—why?

I couldn’t answer that simple question. I then realized that it was time for a complete change. My left brain was way overused and my right brain barely had any activity at all. This condition needed to change and I began a conscious effort to develop my right brain. So, in 2004, I jumped off a cliff and left the corporate world behind. I knew I wanted to make a conscious change in my life. I really wasn’t sure where or how I would land.

During this time, when I jumped off the cliff, I started becoming intentional and conscious about my sexual expression. Masturbation transitioned from something I did just as a way to get off into an actual practice. I learned how to slow down and savor. I learned about the mysteries that could unfold if I let go of goals. My experience of sexual energy transitioned from something that was primarily concentrated in my cock into qi that I began to feel throughout my entire body! I literally felt waves travelling in my body.

For the first time that Midwestern left brain

Photograph by Ed Ehrgott

mentality began to realize that something that couldn’t be measured was going on with my body and it was really important. I was beginning to learn how to break that artificial barrier that separates sex from all other aspects of life. I experimented. I included ritual into my practice. I breathed. Most importantly I slowed down and learned how to surrender to the experience. When I let go, there’s room for magick to appear.

One evening, during a particularly intense solo experience, I caught a glimpse of my eyes in a mirror. Something changed—the energy exploded as I connected with my eyes. I had visions of that confused boy of many decades ago. I felt I was able to communicate with this part of me that I had almost forgotten about. As me in the present continued the connection with me in the past, the erotic charge in my body helped me complete the circle. When I surrendered and came, I cried. I was finally able to let go of so much of the pain from the past and I experienced what true acceptance of my body felt like. I was able to accept myself—both past and present—as being perfect just the way I was and just the way I am. My mental noise completely shut off and an experience of profound peace surrounded my body as I basked in the erotic afterglow.

Shortly thereafter, I then experienced the most profound lesson of all. I was able to let go of my body completely and simply accept. The feeling is very hard to describe but I’ve found that others have had similar experiences. In a powerful form of erotic surrender, I detached from my body. I felt completely detached, comfortable and safe. Except for a reassurance that I was safe and this wasn’t the time for me to die, my brain shut off. I became aware of an incredibly powerful force guiding me on a journey somewhere else. The primary experience was actually a feeling of complete peace. After I came back, I felt a profound feeling of no longer fearing death—

“Two of Bones” by Zach

Bloom

that’s certainly not what I was expecting from a masturbation experience!

These unexpected lessons pushed me into exploring erotic integration—recognizing that sexuality isn’t distinct from the rest of me. It seems like this is a radical idea in our culture, but sexuality is abundant and present everywhere. I connect with my sexual energy when I’m in need of grounding and patience. I connect with my sexual energy when I need strength. I connect with my sexual energy when I need to heal. I connect with my sexual energy when I need peace.

After these profound experiences I found I needed a symbol of the experience. As is often the case, the talisman found me. I was given an amazing penis amulet that has become the perfect talisman. I often incorporate this amulet into my erotic rituals and I wear this talisman as a symbol of the energy of sex magick. w

Mystic Sex Does Not Require Genitals

by Blaise

I. I believe in the micro-sacred act. Mundane magic Is my personal practice.

My rituals start, as in many traditions, with the most simple of cycles: The movement of Breath is a sacred act. Breathing is a ritual practice.

My practice has consequences— I bring in air, I survive. I expand, I release excess air. I am empty, ready to be filled.

II.

I am a smoker. At least once a day I breathe in tobacco smoke, I take the spirit of tobacco into me.

It swells my lungs, and mutates my cells. It takes me to the thousands of cigarettes

I’ve smoked before: college dorms and truck stops, foreign smokes and midnight smokes and after sex smokes. Always after sex smokes, the smoke twisting up and wafting off, drifting towards the romance of ‘Not Here.’

Cigarettes smoked in faerie spaces, and cigarettes smoked sitting vigil with other Faeries, or with queer comrades, vigils for the failing, the falling, the fallen. Cigarettes smoked in the gutters, looking up at stars.

III.

I would drop tobacco ashes and praise Artemis as I stepped out onto the city. I would drop the ashes and praise Kali, as I circled in closer, praise to the souleaters, to the Cycle Spinners, to the Catalyst Energy pulling me food and surplus to honor of the organizers of the rites of my hunger.

Ashes to Hecate as I turned myself to mirror and worked my way in to homes, in to hearts, under skins.

And, as I sped out with dawn’s light footsteps, Ashes to Aurora as I traveled back home.

IV.

I have a new Ritual mundane Sacred acts generator. His name is Scout. He is my Daddy.

His job description is: to check the alignment, to re-prioritize, and to re-organize when necessary, the translation of my Desire into my actions.

He is my compass in the wilderness, my direction in the wildness, pointing me towards home.

V. Faeries say “Welcome Home!” and mean it.

At the bonfire I witness the homes we’re coming from manifesting in our Micromundane sacred acts.

Every act is A sacred act; They weave the web of our lived reality.

I see the homes we Faggots emerged from, we wear the scars which trace our routes to this, our common resting place. Our sacred out posts, our sanctuaries on the edge.

And, though we Patrol relentlessly our Fortress walls, The snowglobes we cast are as fragile as their namesakes. Our glass house only as solid As our self-discipline to recognize each other as our Sacred Subject Selves

VI.

My Daddy fucks me with his rules He says it’s good for me. He binds me with my good intentions And beats me with my dreams. He asks me what I want to be And then he makes me be it.

Sitting at my Daddy’s boots, I struggle hard to cast my magic spells. There is little that challenges quite like ‘ask before you touch,’ like keep yourself ‘intact,’ like suffering through the urge for nicotine, dear old daily prayers traded, never lightly, for straps of leather and stricter rules.

I find my sacred in the yielding moment When fear is released and self is gently rested at the feet of the beloved.

My sacred manifests as Grace, when we cool the currents of our rage, the heat of self-first passions, and build ourselves a future.

Drawings courtesy Bruce Grether

Your Golden Phallus and You!

By Bruce P. Grether

Asa boy or a teenager, you probably sensed something truly magickal about playing with your penis. It fascinated you, felt better than anything else you knew, and frequently drew your total attention. In fact, your sacred penis, which I call your Golden Phallus is your ticket to a return to living in Paradise full-time.

Many men still don’t know that you can easily and simply do SoloSex Magick to transform yourself and to manifest whatever you wish into your life. It’s the new frontier of advanced sexual practices—not because masturbation is better or worse than any other form of enjoyment. Self-pleasure is, however, far more under your own control; by your choice you can create a laser focus of intent to render it most powerful indeed!

Mindful Masturbation means paying full attention to yourself, to your own body, and to your own sensations while you engage in self-pleasure. In the case of the First Form of SoloSex Magick, it means you need to try semen retention, a practice beyond what many guys call edging.

To keep both the seminal fluids and the energy you generate in your body while you continue to stimulate not only your penis but also your entire body and being to high erotic states of trance, builds and amplifies the charge of life-force, qi, prana, baraka; whatever term you like, it’s basically energy.

SoloSex Magick can raise an Erotic Cone of Power and then direct it according to will using your focus and intent. Why not use these potent clues to render your masturbation truly magickal? I like to coach men in Three Forms of Male SoloSex Magick that you can unfold most effectively in this order:

• Personal Transmutation Within

• Influence External Reality Without

• Merge Within and Without

1. Personal Transmutation Within means the Male Erotic Alchemy or personal transmutation of yourself, from feeling like you are an ordinary mortal human to awareness that you are in fact an incarnate phallic god! This form is a non-ejaculatory practice, for it involves retaining your semen. To simply surrender to the bliss you can generate (instead of struggling with therapies like talk and drug options) can perform a kind of automatic depth

psychology upon you. Bad old habits such as poor self-esteem fall away from neglect when you feel this good! You become your best possible self!

2. Influence External Reality Without comes about when to employ your Mindful Masturbation skill within a magickal structure. In this form you get to ejaculate—eventually! Create a container by selecting an intent, whittle it down to a simple visual image or a few words. Invoke Sacred Space in which to perform this spell. Keep the visual or verbal focus all the while you cultivate high erotic states for a prolonged interval, at least say 3-6 hours. This is how you raise your Erotic Cone of Power. Then go ahead and ejaculate with full, wild animal intensity, but keep your focus on the intent all the while. You will get what want, though not always right away or in the way you expect. We live in a supportive Universe and it provides. Guaran-damn-teed!

3. Merge Within and Without happens when you’ve refined your practice of Male Erotic Alchemy to a certain point and you no longer need to think about your practice. It becomes effortless. It becomes what I call Golden Phallus Yoga, as you listen deeply to what your body wants and respond without thinking about it. This is a sweet and indescribably delicious reward for your practice up to this time—and renders you an Erotic Wizard in the process. Follow your bliss; all your dreams can come true. Live in Penis Paradise full-time! Experience Oneness.

Mindful Masturbation is not something you can learn by only watching the DVDs I created. You must participate. MM requires dedicated practice, you must gradually develop erotic fitness, train your penis, and persist. These processes, of course, are their own reward! I’ve given you enough clues here, that you could conceivably do it all without any further coaching or training, if you really get what I’m saying.

I offer plentiful resources to help. My new book The Secret of the Golden Phallus: Male Erotic Alchemy for the 21st Century distills the work of my lifetime into one slim volume, or e-book as the case may be. I also created three DVDs that can coach and inspire and arouse you. I’m available online for consultation and coaching via Skype.

To practice Male SoloSex Magick is the best thing you can do for humanity and the planet. w

Communal Cock-Worship as a Spiritual Practice

By Don Shewey

Ilearnedfrom Starhawk and other pagan teachers that there is no community without ritual. I learned from Malidoma Some and his wife Sobonfu, who wrote a book about love relationships in their West African village culture, that there is no intimacy without ritual. And I learned from Keith Hennessy, in the course of the Body Electric School’s legendary Sacred Intimate Training, to connect the dots: there is no community without intimacy.

No one taught me, though, how to conduct a sacred sex ceremony in the form of a cocksucking daisy-chain. I had to figure that out on my own.

Worship of the phallus has been evident since antiquity, whether in the form of fertility gods, Shiva-lingam, Bhutanese good-luck charms, or the origins of Greek drama. Gay men, of course, have a special affinity for cock worship, which can also take many forms. I’ve always wanted to conduct a survey, asking a statistically significant number of gay men this question: when you see a beautiful cock, what is your first impulse: a) take it in your hand; b) put it in your mouth; c) maneuver it into your ass; or d) swap it for your own? While I have visited all four aspects of phallic worship, my home team is definitely the oral tribe.

Over the years I’ve taken part in any number of erotic rituals that met and matched my craving for communal cock worship, almost all of them involving touch, many of them inspired directly or indirectly by Joseph Kramer’s visionary revolutionary teachings about tribal tantra. There’s something thrilling, soul-nourishing, edgy, and liberating about sharing erotic pleasure in a group, building a container within which a vortex of energy gets built by participants willingly engaging in transpersonal intimacy. Not that there is anything wrong with dyadic intimacy or one-on-one erotic communion— that can be just as deep and powerful as any other contact—but there’s a reason why we’re drawn to festivals and special occasions where we get to transcend the limits of our individual egos and what Joni Mitchell (world-class cock-worshipper) calls “our possessive couplings.”

I’ve enjoyed and benefited from reading about the higher octave of oral cock worship. For instance, Phil Hine, a British scholar on the subject of tantra,

published an important essay about blowjob bhakti, “On the Adoration of the Lingam,” that is readily available online. (Key mantra: “Suck cock till you can’t think.” Another version of spiritual surrender.) Virtually all the literature focuses on one phallus, one devotee. Personal experience has established the special sacredness of mutual oral cock-worship. For diehard cocksuckers, there is nothing more sublime than 69-ing, both for the sheer full-body pleasure it provides but also for the exquisitely precise opportunity for spiritual communion, at once deeply personal and transpersonal. This loveposition conjures timeless mythological connotations: the image of the ouroboros (the snake eating its tail), the romantic symmetry of twin-lovers, the philosophical satisfaction of Aristotelian completion. (Cf. “The Origin of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.)

Butas far back as I can remember, I’ve harbored the desire to experience cocksucking daisychains as the ultimate celebration with a community of fellow fellators, to match the kind of volcanic group experiences I’ve had with Body Electric or the New York Jacks. Surprisingly, in my experience, it’s not so easy to devise group oral ceremonies for more than three people. I’ve talked it up for years with friends and associates and playmates and workshop participants and faerie-gatherers, and the notion is generally treated as a sort of hot idea but also kind of a joke. I’ve tried posting invitations on Craigslist. I’ve scanned various list-servs and websites devoted to cock worship. It’s surprisingly difficult to round up a minion of guys in the same city who are willing to commit to meeting at a given location at the same time and to holding a shared intention a communal cocksucking as both fun and sacred.

And I understand the resistance. Stepping into this kind of ritual space requires several key ingredients: a high tolerance for intimate interaction with strangers and/or—sometimes way more challenging—willingness to be sexual with friends; an ability to suspend rigid preconceptions about “who’s my type and who’s not”; some aptitude for approaching sex with intentionality; and some dexterity at

“Vapori della Pan” by Mitcho

verbal communication and negotiation skills. Lord knows my social circles ostensibly contain plenty of soulful and slutty—oops, I mean, sexually generous process-junkies. Still, even with the help of a goodgame-and-giving boyfriend and another suck-buddy as ardently invested in the project as I, it took six months of recruiting to get half a dozen guys to agree to meet on a Sunday afternoon for a 90-minute ritual.

Iguessyou could say overcoming resistance was part of the preparation, and as we know preparation is 90% of ritual-making. In my experience, this kind of ritual is much more likely to actually take place if there is 1) communal ownership of the intention; 2) someone who is willing to serve as convener/host/timekeeper; and 3) a time limit that creates a clear beginning and ending. By the time we gathered, we had all agreed what the basic experience would be: not a blowjob orgy, not a free-for-all, but a ritual of blessing and celebration in the form of a cocksucking daisy-chain. We also made these agreements:

• everybody will get to suck and be sucked by everybody else;

• no pressure, all pleasure—erections may come and go, no worries, it’s all about the joy of cocksucking;

• no drugs, no drinking, no poppers—get high on cock;

• no butt-play this time;

• no expectation that anyone needs to ejaculate— at the end of the ritual, there will be an opportunity to squirt (and/or feast on cum), totally optional.

for comfort.

Round 2: reverse direction, so the person you were sucking is now sucking you.

Round 3: break into two groups of three—the outer circle and the inner circle. Arrange yourselves for three-way sucking.

Round 4: again reverse direction, so the person you were sucking is now sucking you.

Round 5: there is now one person you have not partnered with, and he is in the other circle. Find that partner for the final round, one-on-one.

This turned out to be an elegant solution that allowed for both communal feasting and intimate connection.

Setting

up the space was easy. My living room is already a consecrated sacred intimate temple, humming with good vibes. All I needed to do was spread out a couple of king-sized sheets and a colorful sarong, buy some fresh flowers, and light the candles. The trickiest logistical decision had to do with choreography. In my fantasy, a daisychain simply progresses from one man to the next, a conveyor belt of cocks. But when I really starting thinking seriously about how the partnering would work, I realized it’s not that easy. It took an afternoon of drawing charts and diagrams on a legal pad and a simulation using matchsticks to come up with a pattern that would work for six people.

Round 1: begin standing in a circle, then form three pairs facing each other in inner-circle/outercircle formation. Then lie down with all heads going in one direction. Organize cocks in mouths. Adjust

The event unfolded as planned. The group that gathered was friendly and nicely assorted—our ages ranged from 24 to 57, everyone knew me, and most people knew one other person and met two or three newbies. We started with a brief opening circle, giving everyone an opportunity to introduce himself and to voice a personal intention. I put on some ambient music and set the timer I use for meditating—an iPhone app called Insight Timer— which you can set to chime at the beginning, at the end, and at intervals. I chose eight-minute intervals, which turned out to be a good number. We enjoyed our five rounds, and then there was what I suppose you could call the bonus round, where we opened up space for anyone who wanted to ejaculate. Several were eager to. Semen-harvester that I am, I would have been happy to be a receiving vessel, but these lads were more inclined toward DIY. One immediately placed himself flat on his back in our midst and proceeded to stroke himself off. Two others quickly followed. Another took a little longer. Another tried for some time but didn’t not achieve climax. The sixth was fine not squirting. And then we closed the ritual by sharing chocolate, sparkling cider, and a few words about our experiences. There was enthusiasm all round to schedule a repeat engagement.

And indeed, a month later another cocksucking daisy-chain ritual occurred. The same six people agreed on the date, but at the last minute two guys dropped out, so the choreography had to be revised. Again, an ingenious solution presented itself: for Round 1, we formed a square with two gents lying on their backs, heads in opposite directions, and the other two lying crossways on top of them, plugged in Lego-style; for Round 2, a simple reversal took place, the same partners but in the opposite direc-

Continued on Page 57

The Annual Imbolc Circle Jerk

by Zac Benfield

Allmale group masturbation, the “circle jerk”, according to modern mythology is a spontaneous event in which any group of guys (attracted to each other or not) beats off together. Supposedly this is done as both a demonstration of personal virility and a display of their own prowess at self-pleasurement. Theoretically, it is not even based on sexual orientation, an act that is not gay but merely male.

The idea of this awesome act is culturally embedded, rumored beyond rumors, yet in my real life it is challenging to manufacture. As a faggot, I find that in my real life, as soon as some group starts to circle up in a sex club or back room somewhere, some savvy qween starts sucking dicks and an orgy (or at least coupling off) ensues.

I believe in the circle jerk. It is not only a great way to get off, but also a tool for building communities, strengthening bonds between friends and couples, and exploring our individual emotional/psychological inner workings. The energy raised in this space is awesome, it is an ancient intrinsic majick that once accessed can be exceptionally transformative.

I am a proud pagan and radical faerie, so I don’t fully understand what’s so hard about getting a group of guys to gather in an actual circle and stroke out a load of jizz, but somehow it is a rare enough a phenomenon that I have to actually invite boys to be part of an intentional event (complete with facebook evite) or die of old age waiting for it to randomly occur.

For the last five years, on February 1st, the pagan holiday of midwinter’s self reflection and divination, Imbolc, I have thrown a “sacred circle jerk.” This erotic excercise is open to the community as a unifying experience.

It can be intense inviting boys to participate in something that is both specifically spiritual and sexual. The “shame culture” manifests itself in so many subtle ways that mixing sex and spirit is still a bit scandalous even for the radical night-lifers in the candy store of the world’s capitalist gay Mecca. Even if your invitations aren’t always well received, rest assured that there are enough men living for the opportunity that you will have a successful circle jerk.

The event itself is a turn key happening. Everyone already knows how to masturbate so essentialyl all an organizer has to do is ring a bell, light a candle, invite everyone to sit it a circle around a “target” or talisman placed on top of a large mirror. Within an hour the room will be full of man-smell, sperm and smiles.

If you want to throw one yourself, this is basically how it goes:

The first hour is fagged-out mingling like every other house party you have ever been to. There is usually an air of anticipation, introspection, and awkwardness. I try to keep the booze to a minimum, because even though I love to drink, I don’t want people to lose their inhibitions to inebriation. I want the liberation moment (whatever that is) to be deliberate and memorable.

At some critical mass I close the doors (30-50 usually show), cue the woo, and lead the group on a ritual erotic journey. I like to make everyone enter the space in a line, letting them work through the last self-conscious giggles of their nervous narratives before the door. Starhawk would call it “setting ritual space.”

Sometimes the line features blindfolds, giving out some sort of unifying sacrament, (mouth wash, coconut oil as lube, hot chocolate laced with whiskey

Continued on Page 57

Photograph by Kyle Devries

I Fuck To Cum

by Oberyn Kunning

Hedwig: I believe love is immortal.

Tommy: How is it immortal?

Hedwig: Love creates something that...was not there before.

Tommy: What? Like procreation?

Hedwig: Yeah, but not only.

Tommy: What? Like recreation.

Hedwig: What is that? Stop, you come in here crying and you wanna recreate with me. Maybe just… creation.

—from Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Queersex magick is done for its own sake, and that sake reveals that sex and the Creative Force of the Universe are the same energy running along the same lines of the body for the same purposes. Both act upon the world, as the body of the sorcerer is the body of the Earth itself, there is no difference.

Let us remember the truth of the Goddess. “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals,” She said. If all these acts are Her rituals, then She must be the actor. Our bodies are the body of the Goddess, both individually and collectively and we are not separate from our environs.

Sex magick is an act of Creation and Destruction, the undoing of the self and the doing in the world of the work of Spirit. It is direct participation in the Creation of the Universe, the re-membering of God Herself.

But in this re-membering, one must first, like Osiris or a practitioner of the Tibetan Chöd, be dismembered. The ego must be torn apart, devoured in the Holy Hunger; a sacrifice upon the altar of the Old Ones. If the orgasm is the little death, and a doorway into the realms of the Stellar Gods, one must leave behind any clouding thoughts and ideals of identity to have vision there, to bring back any piece of the experience in the revelation of its ecstasy. We must forgo putting our ego—our ideals and identities and stories of who we are—into the driver’s seat of our desires. We must sink more fully into the depth of Being, letting go to be swept away in the ocean of milk and honeybear

that is the Holy Hunger, the pulsing, blissful rapture of the Star Goddess.

Here is the profound playing out of subject-SUB-

JECT consciousness that Harry Hay spoke of. We tether the piece of the divine spark that resides deep inside each of us—a star within a shadow—to that of another, and in doing so we bypass the objectification of any other person. There is nothing to objectify, as we are but God coming back together with God; we are pure consciousness. The first “subject” is the practitioner in the process and the second “SUBJECT” is the piece of God inside another, shining its radiance out through the crystalline structure of the rest of the human soul and body. We move from turning another person into a masturbatory prop for our ego-laden and empty desires to becoming self-possessed of the All-That-Is making love to Herself. We refract the image of the Divine Twins, who in the Faggot Mysteries are known as the Red Man and the Green Man. The Red Man and the Green Man are prefect harmonic resonances of the Creative Force in action as it resides in the spinning wheel of the seasonal tides, the renewal of all Life.

The Red Man embodies the life-force of the animal kingdom, called the blood-kin. The Green Man embodies the life-force of the vegetative kingdom, called the sap-kin. Their mutual devouring of one another is erotic and complete, the ultimate subjectSUBJECT consciousness. They neither haggle over “types” or ideals of form, instead ravaging one another in whatever form they encounter the other. They are pure chemycal desire that throbs with the Love-Lust of the Goddess. Here there is no objectification, only the mutual devouring and adoration, the cycle of renewal from which all Life springs. The flesh and blood is embraced and entombed within the Earth to feed the sap-kindreds who in turn become the leaf, root and fruit that feeds the blood-kindreds. There is no waste, there is no rejection, only an opened circuit for synergistic energy exchange. Life is Sex.

All things that are alive contain this circuit, the pulsing seed of Secret Fire that is the spark of divinity hidden deep within us, in the deepest darkness of our souls that is like fertile soil. We can complete it ourselves, to become whole, and then we can conspire with another(s) to complete it, opening it into a bigger circle. We put God back together, for the sake of love and pleasure, however temporarily. This is magick we are working here, queen; the

chance of union.

The union of the Red Man and the Green Man together begets the winged serpent ablaze bearing the (t)horned crown. They are the terrible and fierce Peacock Angel of the Starry Heavens. It is worthy to note here that the Peacock Angel is also known in some Traditional Craft lineages as the Blue God, the Laughing God of Love, who is androgynous and whose desires know not gender. The Peacock Angel is the embodiment of Pride and Beauty; the many colors of the Peacock Tail is the arrayed spectrum of Light found in the albedo phase of the alchemical reification of the Philosopher’s Stone. This is the same Light found within the deepest darkness of our Shadow. This is the first ray that like a lance pierced the Darkness of the Void of Space, which is the Womb of Mother God.

InTraditional Witchcraft, lore tells of aka (“shadow”) threads. The Fetch, the animal part of the triune soul of our species (for more on this concept, see Victor Anderson’s Etheric Anatomy), is known to be “sticky,” creating shadowy threads to everything— and especially everyone—we encounter. This is the same part of the soul that first feels sexual desire and falls in love, as well as the part of us that stores memory; that re-members. It is from here we stretch forth an aethyric cord from our sex, our divine spark, to the spark of others.

If operated correctly, this kind of sex magick is the only event in which we get to be our true and real Selves—free of the ego and personality -- and free of all that covers our own immanent divinity and seeks to smother the spark, which is invested into our Will. This bears repeating: sex magick is the only place where we get to share our deepest Self, the truth of who we really are, with another. It is beautiful yet awful and terrible, in the most ancient sense of those words. It is true freedom, with Love as the only boundary, in a circle of perfect Trust.

Now here is a Mystery: sex magick is a formula of Love and Death. There is an occult apothegm, writ upon the arms of Baphomet, one of the manifestations of the Ancient God of Witchcraft called the Great Teacher and the Divine Androgyne: Salve et Coagula, “divide and join together.” The clitorophallic Star Goddess also reveals to us, “For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.” (AL 1:29). These are the same formula. They are a rendering of the Mystery of Love and Death, of the dismemberment and remembering of God Herself performed during sex magick, when we use the creative force to rejoin the shards of Light once divided that Creation might occur.

This is the original meaning of the word religion, from the Latin re-ligio, “to re-tie.” Sex magick is the holy communion of Witchcraft, where sex and religion never became separated. In Witchcraft, and in particular the Faggot Mysteries, sex is a sacred act, most holy. To perform sex in ritual is to honor all Life.

Cora Anderson, in Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition, calls it “a sun and moon-lit path leading across the sea of life to an infinite horizon.” It is completely natural, and sacred and holy. Any strictures placed upon sex are sent from archons and hierophants seeking to control you using the tools of domination: force, duty, greed, shame, and guilt. The sorcerer needs none of these. Be your own shaman. In looking at the naturae naturans, the Tao, the ebb and flow/yinyang of the Red and Green Men, we see the futility of these illusions.

There is no need for force or duty—true desire, though wrought from the foundations of our Will, flows in a spontaneous way like an underground stream. This is where there is the least resistance, and denial wrecks havoc. The sorcerer follows their bliss. The sorcerer seeks not to deny desires that spring forth hidden from our ordinary conscious-

“Hold On” by artboydancing

ness. The sorcerer does not wear a uniform nor do they enchant only the same spells endlessly. They travel roads dark and bony, hidden from those who merely sleep at night.

There is no greed—every mouth shall be full, every belly will be filled to completion. In Tibetan lore, there exist a class of damned souls known as hungry ghosts, with huge distended bellies and tiny mouths. They have a huge appetite but cannot bring it to satiety. This is not the Holy Hunger, but an empty yearning for an ideal born of our ego and identity. It does not exist in the natural world. The sorcerer nourishes themselves sustainably.

Shame and guilt are unknown in the natural world. Wild animals and young children do not feel these emotions or seek to manipulate others with them. The sexual impulse in both remains pure, lascivious. The sorcerer seeks to emulate this, to be as the Gods, hands deep in the toolbox of Creation.

To employ these aforementioned potencies of force, duty, greed, shame, and guilt in our lives and in our magick is to undo all the Work.

Yet the culture we have been born into indoctrinates these messages into us. We, in response, subvert our own life force—sabotage our authentic connection and then objectify one another. It blocks us from the magick, keeps us from our creativity, and binds us from true freedom. With our very liberty at stake, we must actively strive to decolonize our bodies and our minds, to sand away these messages from our bones and our psyches. We must tattoo new spells upon our flesh. We must memorize and mesmerize our minds with the mantras and chants of the wild Powers. We must walk that sun-and-moon-lit path towards the infinite horizon, make friends with our Shadows, and invite our demons over for tea. We must open our love-lust circuits to include ourselves, and we must also include the bodies we’re told we should not desire. We

cannot commune only with bodies that are the same or that we are taught to desire through cultural and peer pressure and advertising. We must make love with the aged, the fat, the disabled, those differently gendered, the bodies ravaged by poverty and overwork as well as those who fulfill our fantasies. All these bodies are sacred and contain the same pieces of Light, shards of divinity buzzing with Life.

There is music in the heart of everything; a yearning crackle of the seed of Secret Fire. There is an infinitely small point in the core of every single thing. Can you hear it? That music is the Creation-song of the Universe, the Word or Logos, which is the orgasm-moan of God Herself as S/he made love to the image in the curved black mirror of Space, calling Her own Name. It beckons the sorcerer: stretch forth the aethyric cord, Sex, and connect spark to spark. It is your own Name.

That seed is the Light that resides in the deepest darkness of our Shadow, beyond the rim of the Wyrding Well to an infinitely-expanding circle of space and time whose circumference is immeasurable and whose center is everywhere. This is the Watery Abyss, the womb and tomb of the Goddess, and the Vessel that is the Holy Graal. As Hakim Bey states in T.A.Z., “The dullard finds even wine tasteless, but the sorcerer is intoxicated by the mere sight of water.” Pierce the Spirit-filled Cauldron with the Lance to let the waters of your destiny flow, like the prick of the finger upon the spinning wheel of Life. There shall be no sleep from drops of blood, but instead a true awakening into the depths of who we really are, to re-member and share in that union. To commune: the chance to drink deep of the intoxicating wine of Life, the blood of the Gods in a Cup overflowing.

Hear the song, heed the call, and enter into Chapel Perilous, for the journey is just beginning. w

Shame and guilt are unknown in the natural world. Wild animals and young children do not feel these emotions or seek to manipulate others with them. The sexual impulse in both remains pure, lascivious. The sorcerer seeks to emulate this, to be as the Gods, hands deep in the toolbox of Creation.

When All Else Fails, Try a Happy Ending

by DhamiBoo

AsI wove my hands in and out of his aura, I kept getting the feeling he needed to be touched. More than touched: naked and loved. But I was on a sabbatical from sex work. I just wanted to do nonerotic, non-sexual Reiki. That was enough, wasn’t it? Besides that, I didn’t think the clinic where I rented healing space would look kindly on an erotic massage performed on their premises.

It’s not that I was opposed to sex work outright. For several years sex work had been a mainstay of mine. Erotic massage, stage shows, porn, and escort work. Several months after I started doing sex work, about the time of spring equinox, I had a really big orgasm. One of those earthshaking ones. I convulsed ecstatically for what seemed like twenty minutes. Every few moments my body would jolt into a new reality. Something big shifted in me.

The next day I could feel energy. I could feel the energy of my new lover. I held my hand out feeling the energy radiating from his body. “What’s that?”, I asked. “I don’t know,” he replied. When I walked down the street, I could feel the energy of the trees. Each tree had an aura and as I passed each tree a wave of energy would wash through me like waves and currents in a gentle ocean. At the time, I was a bit wigged out. I didn’t know what it was. I mean I knew it was energy, but was it coming? Going? I looked into various stories to explain the energy. I remember finding a kundalini awakening support group, in which every one was victimized by their kundalini awakening. I decided that wasn’t the story I wanted for myself or my experience.

I soon found myself at SMS for Beltane, where Balance was teaching Reiki, and I took his training in Reiki I. Reiki offered the perfect story: being a channel of infinitely available, Divine energy that can only go to highest good. I eagerly devoured all the Reiki books I could find. I practiced Reiki on myself every day, gradually expanding to work on others. Within six months I completed all three levels of Reiki training and started teaching Reiki. I began to view my big orgasm as my unofficial Reiki awakening. I began to incorporate Reiki into my sex work. I began to use my entire body as a channel of Reiki. I developed something called Erotic Reiki to teach others how to do the same.

As I practiced Reiki and incorporated it into my

sex work, I focused upon setting intentions. Whether it was a non-erotic or erotic session I would have clients set some intention for change in their life. My erotic massage clients would find themselves setting intentions and getting their chakras balanced before I set about rubbing them into blissful, full body orgasms. They could work on any level of emotional, physical, or spiritual well being. They found relief from anything ranging from back pain to intimacy issues. I viewed the session as a ritual for change. The orgasm was more than a simple happy ending; it was the ultimate reality shifter to integrate their intentions.

I found myself going through various stages of disbelief and acceptance of my own work and offerings. I looked into training in therapies like massage, hypnosis, and energy work. At times I was tainted by sexual shame espoused by modalities that admonish practitioners to avoid sex with clients and dismiss all efficacy of sex as a therapy. I also went through my own processes and fluctuations about feeling comfortable sharing my body with others. I became enchanted with the notion that non-sexual practices could produce the same ecstatic states as sex-play and orgasms. Somewhere within me lingered a bit of denial about the efficacy of sex work.

So it happened to be that I was taking a break from sex work and focusing on nonsexual sessions. It was then that I had a regular client, a young man dealing with HIV. I suspect he even bordered upon an AIDS diagnosis, although, not being a medical practitioner, I didn’t focus on medical terms. To me it was all energy, and patterns of energy. Early on in my study of Reiki I had given a roommate Reiki for his headache. After twenty minutes of me doing nothing but laying my hands on him his headache went away. I innocently thought: “If that’s possible, anything is possible. My entire sense of reality just went out the window into hyperspace. If a headache can disappear in twenty minutes of me ‘doing nothing’ but laying my hands on someone, what’s cancer? HIV? Thirty minutes? Ninety minutes?” So I always held space for miracles. A western medical diagnosis was merely a name given to a pattern of energy that could be shifted through energy work.

So, for the young man with HIV, I visualized, in-

tended, and held space for reverse seroconversion as well as whatever his symptoms or challenges of the week were. I usually gave him twenty minute sessions that included little direct hand work. My Reiki technique had evolved from hands on to hands-off as I found myself almost dancing around my clients playing the game of energy switchboard operator. Well, it was mostly hands off, for the non-erotic clients that is. My non-erotic sessions consisted of some laying of hands but also a lot of work off the body working in the aura. For my erotic massage clients, I used sensual physical touch through my entire body and “happy endings” to move the energy.

One week, the young man arrived for his session and indicated he was quite sick. As I worked on him I found myself overcome with the sense that his body needed to be loved and worshipped. All I could think of was how divinely beautiful he looked. I repeatedly felt the sense to strip him and rub him all over to give every inch of his body love. To give him an erotic massage. Honestly, I found him very attractive and I didn’t want to make any error in confusing my own desires with being a clear channel of healing. I was taking a break from sex work. Furthermore, we were in a clinic in which I rented a practice space and they wouldn’t look kindly on sex work on their premises. But I kept getting that message: his naked body needed to be worshiped. I kept having the vision of him naked and receiving my touch.

Waves of Reiki flowed through me as I looked at his lithe body on the massage table. I eventually found myself rubbing his legs, feet, forearms, and hands in a manner uncharacteristic for our usual sessions. But, rubbing and massaging his extremities was as far as I went. It would have been a major renegotiation of our contract together to get naked and sexual. Even with what little massage that I did, I proceeded slowly, gaging his response. As I rubbed his forearms and hands, then, his calves and feet, it felt good. It felt right. He liked it, and, when

I checked in at the end of the session, he was quite pleased. His immediate symptom, a feverous headache, had dissipated.

I honored the message that “his body needed to be worshipped” by suggesting he look into an erotic massage. I figured he would say, “OK”, go look into it, and I would be clear of my responsibility to the message I had received. But he asked “What’s that?” So I explained that an erotic massage is where someone worships and massages your entire body, naked, and often includes sexual release. I told him he could find someone in the local gay newspaper’s classified section. To my chagrin, he asked “Can you do it?” Inwardly I sighed with a chuckle of realization that it was my destiny, Outwardly, I simply said, “Yes, but not here in the clinic.”

Afew days went by and I called to check in on him. He was very ill at his home. I offered to stop by and give him some Reiki. He barely had the energy to come down the three flights of stairs to answer the door. I followed him to his room and gave him my standard, nonerotic Reiki session. In fact I gave him several “rounds” of Reiki. It’s my usual practice to check in after I think a session is complete to see if anything is uncomfortable, and make sure we have achieved the client’s intention. If necessary, I repeat another round of energy work. So I tried several rounds of Reiki on him that day, each one proving “unsuccessful”. I was frustrated because often he had received amazing results with the flip of a finger or hand. But not this time.

He asked if we could try “that erotic massage thing”. So we did. At the time I wasn’t feeling very optimistic. My ego was attached to non-erotic Reiki working and upset that my usual Reiki techniques had failed, left me with doubt. But I went ahead and gave him my standard erotic massage session and did my best to surround him in Unconditional Love. The session started with his intentions for healing and I channeled Reiki as I gave him a sensual massage that morphed into a full body orgasm as I worked the “SunFkLoonie” by

DhamiBoo

energy of transmutation through his erotic body. The session didn’t seem extraordinary to me. Part of me was still resisting the call to be sexual. I was also monitoring myself to be a clear channel and not to get sidetracked in my personal desires for him. But I did my best to hold space and big intentions. I nullified my doubts with the prayer that he receive all his intentions or something better. I end every session like that, with the prayer that regardless of how I think things went, the client achieves their highest potential and path and miraculous transcendence. He said he felt better.

At the time I was so distanced from sex work that I held little hope for success from the session. I was disgruntled that the non-erotic Reiki had not worked. The next week, when he showed up at the clinic for his session, I was anxious to hear how he was doing since the erotic massage. My disbelief in my practice was at the surface of my awareness. “So how was the erotic massage session for you?”I queried tentatively. He said, “Don’t you remember? Before the session, I could barely get down the stairs to let you in. Afterward, I was full of energy.” He went onto explain how his entire relationship to sex had changed since the session. He recounted some new sexual experiences and how different he felt during them. He noted that his physical health had also improved. He was exuberant and full of energy; clearly a new man compared to his sickly state a few weeks before. I was happy for him. And I had to laugh at myself for doubting the magic of sex and happy endings. Given my history, I don’t know why I thought I could escape sexual healing. And, I don’t know why, given my intentions, that I was surprised at the “happy ending”.

Afterward

I’ve had a lot of experiences, but that one stands out because, at the time, I was doubting the healing abilities of sex. I now know it was sign for me to not deny sex as channel of the Divine. Not that it’s wrong to take a break from sex and sex work,

but just don’t deny sex’s capacity for healing. That was many years ago and one of many amazing experiences. I could write a book about all the incredible mystical sexual experiences that I have had. Are all sexual encounters healing? I think it’s where we choose to put our awareness and intention. Years ago, I remember someone saying something to the effect that God is always there, it’s just whether we choose to be aware of God or not. For that matter, our breath and heartbeat are always there, it’s just whether we choose to be aware of them. And so it is with sexual healing. It’s a lot like an optimist and pessimist walking down the same street and having two different experiences. We get what we see through the filter of our stories about life. Multiple and conflicting stories cloud our vision. The more stories we have about something the more difficult it is to see that we are merely living out our stories.

Our sex is Divine, healing, magical, and fun, when we allow ourselves to see it and be it that way. A given situation can go in any direction we choose. It only takes a moment of intention and action to ground and transform an experience. The more conscious we are in our intentions and stories, the more aligned we are in our thoughts, the more we see what and how we are manifesting in an experience. Had I pursued my doubts that the erotic massage would not help and focused instead upon my client not being happy or “healed” with the session, I might have manifested that outcome. Had I not been aware of my concerns about being clear of personal motive and intended to be a clear channel, I might have manifested a different outcome. Magical sex is only a thought and a breath away. But it does take discipline.

Overall, two approaches have worked well for me: 1) when I am so enraptured with my mate that I see only God(dess) within him; and 2), when I have consciously set my intentions for a session and remembered to choose such awareness. Those approaches are what seem to separate a Divine experience from a mundane one. It all comes down to deciding to have a happy ending. w

“Through Orgasm” by DhamiBoo

Daring to Make Magick

by Chas Nol

Oneof the most frequently asked questions by Faeries, especially younger ones, who are considering going to a Sex Magick workshop is whether there is an expectation that they will have to have sex with people they aren’t attracted to. This has come up in almost every discussion I’ve had with incoming participants.

A Sex Magick alumnus in his twenties reported how some of his Faerie friends around the same age were repulsed by the idea of being sexual with men who they were not physically drawn to. They regarded his positive ecstatic experience as exceptional.

As a Sex Magick workshop facilitator for ten years who collaborated with Harry Hay in the genesis of the workshops over two decades ago, I have been intrigued by concerns like these.

Recently, someone on a Faerie listserv expressed enthusiasm for a Sex Magick workshop where they could choose other participants according to their physical attractiveness. He asserted that a workshop about sex would just not work if there was not a strong erotic charge at the outset.

Somewhat predictably, polite disagreement ensued. Others weighed in on how unrealistic and short-sighted this fantasy was. But that’s not really focusing on the real issue. This Faerie was expressing a fundamental concern that underlies the question I so frequently get asked: “what if there is not someone there I want to fuck?” There is a temptation to dismiss or condemn these worries as superficial or close-minded. Given the prevalence of this fear, it’s worth examining more closely.

The online thread included a brief discourse on the nature of desire. Some thought that it was dictated by a genetic predisposition to find sexual partners possessing the best reproductive characteristics and that a man with chiseled body and face and cool clothes would be more likely to produce healthy and more robust offspring, maximizing the chances for the species to survive. Really? Others—more reasonably, in my opinion—asserted that erotic desire is heavily shaped by the surrounding culture, especially advertising and the youth orientation. Some described relishing when they found themselves sexually attracted to the most unexpected people. Michael Deva deliciously recounts in “Fire in the Moonlight” finding intense and unexpected

sexual attraction in a man sitting across from him in a circle solely based on his words. Many told tales of the delightful surprise of having an ecstatic sexual experience with partners who were balder, fatter, skinnier, shorter, taller, darker, lighter, blonder, scruffier, younger, older or hairier than what normally turned them on.

Regardless of the root drivers of sexual attraction, Faerie Culture is not immune to the influences of biology, the larger culture, or our own need for validation. Should we aspire to live our lives free from the traditional bounds of sexual compatibility and all its trappings? If so, how do we do this? And by doing so, will we compromise the quality of our erotic encounters? Is there value in pure “animal” magnetism, with little or no authentic emotional connection?

These questions touch on one of the core reasons for why the Sex Magick workshop was created. When they were first conceived by Harry Hay in the late 1980’s sex at Faerie gatherings was dominated by traditional pairing off of men who found some initial physical allure with each other and went off to a tent to fuck and maybe sleep together. Occasionally these encounters would result in a “gathering relationship,” or perhaps a more enduring partnership. More often, they were brief, perhaps one in a series of couplings with men working their way through the inventory of physically desirable Faeries at the gathering. This pattern persists today.

Having multiple sex partners at a gathering is not necessarily a bad thing—it can be perfectly fun and validating. Many have long, established and loving relationships with one or many gathering sex partners. I know. I’m one of them. For many, that’s enough.

Harry saw an opportunity for more. While a Heart Circle allowed us to verbally reveal our emotional vulnerability to each other and could lead to a hookup afterwards, there is frequently a disconnect between the end of the Heart Circle and the beginning of the romp in the tent. Harry proposed a way to explore filling that void.

When Sex Magick workshops began, Harry didn’t quite know what to expect. He came up with a process to delve deeper into intimacy with each other—one of his persistent dreams.

“Paul and Cup” by artboydancing

He declared that we were “exploring new vistas of consciousness together” after the workshop was a few years old. By then, it had clearly exceeded his expectations. The emotional-physical gap was filled with consensual erotic exploration built on a foundation of common vulnerability. Each man had a heart-felt and flesh-felt connection with every other man in the room that was, at least, agreeable. Every association was unique and different. And they had shared a bond in traveling down the road together and bearing witness to each other. A bonus became evident when participants, in workshop after workshop, reported personal transformations. While there are similarities in how they were described, each one was distinctive. Men spoke of finding a new, more loving, version of themselves, discovering an inner wound, renewing self-confidence, or discovering their own

that’s one of the benefits of the workshops. There’s always something to learn even for old-timers, like myself. But what is it that keeps me coming back? Is it the ego gratification of helping men discover unexpressed passion within themselves? Yes, but that’s not all of it. One of the most significant motivations is my lust for continued emotional growth and self-knowledge. Having done so many workshops, I know I can always discover more about myself and my feelings. That’s why I can authentically say I feel fundamentally altered after each and every workshop.

Through Harry’s eyes, I see the marvelous metamorphosis that so many Faeries have undergone. I see the joy in their eyes when they are embraced, as if for the first time. I see the ecstasy when they are physically touched by men they know have a deep appreciation of just who they are. I feel it, too. I love the touch of a man to whom I’ve exposed by barest soul. I see why Harry had so many tears of joy. I see why he felt he had finally come home to his “circle of loving companions.”

Back to the question “will there be someone there I want to fuck?” or, maybe more accurately, “will there be someone there I want to love and who will want to love me?” I believe that the answer is an emphatic “YES!” In 21 years, I’ve yet to be disappointed.

So, if someone is afraid to come to Sex Magick, good. Acknowledging that trepidation, to you as well as others, is a great starting point and an invitation to lasting change.

physical beauty. I saw the joy in Harry’s eyes when he witnessed these major shifts—not because he created the vessel as much as realized the incredible potential of putting a bunch of random, or nearly random, Faeries together in a room and seeing what unfolds.

People often ask me why I continue to help facilitate the Sex Magick workshops. After more than twenty years and dozens of workshops; you’d think I would have “figured it out” by now. Well,

There are some people who have been to workshops who haven’t experienced great change. For some, it’s just not what they were looking for. For others, it wasn’t the right time. And for a few, the presence of another strong personality was an inhibitor. These are all legitimate experiences. The workshop is an experiment in exploring all kinds of intimacy together. It depends on disparate elements coming together and creating a kind of alchemy, spinning our emotions together into a golden vessel in which we are all carried. For many, it’s pure magic. w

“Chas, Shane and Tishml” photograph by John Brennan (Keystone)

Children in the Invisible World

by Jonathan Mack

Onething I worry about a lot is Hasids. Those Hasids have got first-rate mystics. They’ve got mystics you seriously would not want to mess with. What those Hasid mystics say is that from every act of sex a child is born, if not here, then in the invisible world.

Naturally this worries me a lot.

And I think that I had better take it easy now and study up and brace myself because after death there’s going to be, whoa baby, a tidal wave of sudden fatherhood.

Like an old tomcat beneath a tree I die forgotten and alone, and wake to find myself within a cavernous stadium. DADDY! Booms the crowd and stampedes toward me.

Let me explain! I had no idea! I never thought!

Like every father, I make excuses.

I shudder now as I imagine the hunger of my nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine children, born into the invisible world from backrooms and public johns, from cubicles and shower stalls, from steam rooms and alleys. That savage smut-nosed tribe of guttersnipes and urchins, of pyromaniacs and narcissists and honor students gone AWOL. The steaming breath of children conceived in the sauna. The all-seeing children born from blowjobs in the dark. The children conceived while fucking in the sling who belong neither to heaven nor to the earth.

Those conceived in a bed consider themselves an elite corps and are insufferably snobbish.

Every child demands the attention it deserves. Has an argument and an opinion. Artwork for the refrigerator, paperwork requiring a parent’s signature. Is fighting with his sister, wants tenderness, seeks tuition.

My children have learned, as I learned, to survive within their father’s inattention, in the overgrown empty lot of his boundless negligence. Like my father, I have lived as though I were the only one important, while the invisible children were all the time looking on, and crying out, and waving their little hands to no effect.

There is also a small contingent of spectators who were, in the visible world, working mothers. What tremendous pleasure they receive from watching my attempts to maintain, in the invisible world, my homo status quo!

“Thank you so much, dear children. It was really so very lovely to meet you all. Now if you don’t mind, if you’ll just excuse me, I am going to brew myself a cappuccino and settle down for some serious reading.”

HA!

My children. My nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine children. Whose birthday is today, who has allergies, who will eat the crust and who must have the crust cut off? How many cavities? How many bicycles? How much money for bail? For all eternity I will bemoan my children’s vanity, their insatiability, and their jug ears—all qualities of mine.

I will love them for their father, their other father, whom I insist I really did love, even it was just for five minutes in an alley in the dark.

The nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine fathers of my nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine children.

One of whom reminds me of my children now as we stand in the back of the bar and he calls me Daddy and we take turns slapping each other upside the head. w

I shudder now as I imagine the hunger of my nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine children, born into the invisible world from backrooms and public johns, from cubicles and shower stalls, from steam rooms and alleys.

Collage by Donald Engstrom-Reese

In Search of Intimacy & Self Affirmation: Episodes from a Sexual Autobiography

by Honeybear tHisledown

Consolation

Four. The dreaded afternoon nap. So do the adults dispose of me for their own peace. Feeling abandoned, I touch and kiss my own image in a fulllength mirror. The lips are cold, the hands cannot grasp back: loneliness materialized. In bed, wide awake with a stiffy that doesn’t yet mean anything to me. Still, it pulls and I pull it back. My hand’s exploration slides across my crotch and to my butt. In goes a finger, then out and to my nose. Thirty years later, my face buried in some young man’s warm ass, the olfactory memory will, without warning, resurrect overwhelming feelings of comfort.

Discovery

Ten. Exploring with a playmate the banks of an urban creek. He finds something in a bush and calls me. Pages of a magazine: black & white drawings of men in uniforms, shirts, and pants too tight to contain them. Uninterested, my friend walks away.

My heart throbs in my throat, and I linger. Later I go back to take it all in: fleshy mouths seek each other, totemic cocks are caught in every hole, body juices flow liberally, large hands grab colossal asses. Fifteen years later the images receive a name, Tom of Finland.

Taboo

Eleven. At a friend’s home one afternoon. Her brother, in his 20s, much too old to even notice us, crouches nearby to pick something from the floor. His sweatpants pull down and back, enough to reveal a hairy crack. Who knew there would be hair there? The surprising detail flourishes into a fetish and feeds for months my pre-pubescent hunger with visual memories. I uncannily sense their sacred and prohibited nature.

Shame

Twelve. One rainy afternoon at the movies with a friend. Full house, people standing at the rear. On

Photograph by Mark Hufstetler

my left, a grown up man lets his engorged cock flop out of his fly for me to see. My eyes no longer follow the story on the screen. On the armrest between our seats, my hand sweats and quivers. He gently grabs it, places it between his legs, and conceals the deed with his coat. I cherish the warmth and heft then, scared, I quickly retreat my hand. He—only now I know scared, too—stands up and hastily disappears into the darkness behind. For an eternity of months, I recognize the stranger by his ordinary raincoat and flee such figments of my guilt-ridden conscience through crowded streets and off city busses, driven by the sheer terror he might expose my desire to my parents.

Longing

Thirteen. Middle school. A much older boy strokes his large, well-developed hard-on under his desk. He sees me stare. I intentionally drop a pencil and, as I lean down to pick it up, I grab him. It’s thick and throbs heat. Elsewhere, locker-room glimpses of briefs heavy with tumescent crotches. At home, locked in the bathroom, hours of solitary pleasure follow in an effort to placate the craving.

Recognition

Eighteen. On vacation 6,000 miles away from the familiar clutches of home. My first time in San Francisco. The summer before the earliest report of young homosexual men inexplicably dying of pneumonia. The Castro, teeming with heretofore unconceivable promises of being: I am not alone. Furtively approaching the Century Theatre on Larkin at O’Farrell, heart pounding out of my chest. Apprehension as stimulant. Double feature, 8” or More and Dynamite. Representation as validation: I exist.

Self Birth

Nineteen. The motions of a socially acceptable life: pursuing intellectual formalities, while impersonating the son my parents expect. Backstage, I was diligently following in the path of my desire: burning bridges with old circles I might have perceived as hostile, and following the faint signals that appeared on my yet-to-be-named gaydar. Then it happened. I (de)livered myself, auspiciously, on what I used to call May Day and now also know as Beltane.

Harmful Propositions – I

Suffering the unyielding illusions that sex equals love and that love conquers all. A queer boy unknown to himself and the world, I grew up invisible

in a family where love was never expressed physically, but adults always invoked it verbally to justify abuse. When I finally experienced the kindness of another man’s touch and physical warmth, openly craving mine in return, I felt seen and recognized, I felt safe and protected, I felt loved. What I could not understand is that whatever my plight, it was mine to confront. Instead, I spiraled into despair upon realizing that shared moments of pleasure would not translate into existential rescue by another man.

Experimental Interlude

My 20th birthday. Cruisy basement of a gay bar, the only light from monitors showing porn, the only sound from men exploring each other’s bodies in dark recesses. I meet A. Extraordinary coincidence: he shares my name and is himself celebrating his 20th birthday. He is friendly and, unlike me, very self-confident. He courts me, even as I stubbornly pursue improbable relationships—founded on some ill-conceived ideal of physical beauty—with men who live much too far away or are otherwise unavailable. It will be another three years before I deliberately choose intimacy with A over the pursuit of idols whose essence is painfully impenetrable. We embark on our first romantic relationship. Sexual intimacy will come to an end well before the bond is formally dissolved. But for a beautiful long while, we revel in it unabashedly, with the vitality of our young bodies: grabbing each other’s prepotent hardons in streets, museums, concert-halls; maneuvering our pants so as to stick our cocks between the other’s cheeks while riding a scooter around town; competing for who can squirt the farthest and leave trails of spunk on the wall behind the bed.

Wasteland

Thirty. I join the queer reverse diaspora endlessly reassembling itself in cosmopolitan utopias. New York. Brave new world, with such beauteous men and godly creatures! Unwittingly, I continue to hold on to a concept of myself as unlovable weakling. My face pressed against the window of the candy store, the real men inside delighting in one another. Incapable of reciprocated passion, I starve. Griefstricken and lonely, I doggedly fulfill my assumed destiny of invisibility. Spasmodically, in darkness, I steal heat from the flesh of never-to-be-known men.

Harmful Propositions – II

I only exist as a sexual being. I am a man only insofar as other men desire my body. As a boy and young man, I was hurt by those who chose to ignore

my queer self. Those same people openly prized my intellectual abilities, never my body or the emotions that sprung from it. My mind is the cage that others admire. My mind is a source of torment. I want out of the cage. My body, my sexual body, the repository of my real self. My self is only actualized through sex. Otherwise, I am invisible.

Xanadu & The Lotus Eaters

San Francisco. Eighteen years after my first visit, I’m back for good. Determined to find myself and no longer conform to perceived expectations. My arrival coincides with a shockingly unpredicted AIDS diagnosis. Even so, I make my new home the pleasuredome I had longed for. My erotic horizon expands as I embrace the power and beauty of men’s real bodies including, at long last, my own. Desire is freely returned. Like someone who has nearly died of thirst, I drink from the fountain as if it were about to go dry. I had more and wilder sex than I had ever imagined, with more men than I can remember. The city’s topography quickens memories of fuck-buddies and sexual combinations. I fulfilled every fantasy I had ever had, exhausted the pornstimulated library of desires. As well I rode the drug-fueled roller-coaster of boundless horniness until sex lost its power to soothe my loneliness and I nearly lost myself.

Faerie Deconstruction & Reconstruction

In San Francisco, I also find my way into faeriedom. I begin to shed entrenched, unhelpful assumptions like onion skin. In their stead, the unfettered inspiration of men’s faceted beauty and playful queerness. Naked faerie among a hundred naked faeries, drumming, dancing, kissing, fucking in communal celebration: no impersonation necessary, no cliquish exclusivity, no unkind rejection, just be. From urban celebrations of anarchist faggotry, on the sidelines of marketable rainbow conformity, to rural gatherings of intentional communities, where I am truly welcome home.

Metamorphoses

Fifty. Flux. With steps big and small, my quest progresses: forwards, backwards, sideways. A host of familiar misgivings and newfound confidence rise, mingle, dissipate. The flotsam and jetsam of deep-seated habits of the mind. Lust gnawing at my groin spawns spasms of melancholy that rend my heart…the bygone vigor of my body…the ostensible conflict between sexual intimacy and the numbing

demands of daily routines… in the presence of a younger man’s radiance, desire sparks in my heart & kindles pangs of shame but, as we catch each other’s gaze, we flow into an ephemeral dance of mutual flirtation... a chance encounter with the spiritual playfulness of queer sex in nature blows away sorrow like leaves off an autumn tree… the rightful and eternal longing to lose myself in orgiastic rituals with other men…

Sex Magick

Through personal practice and in faerie sanctuary, I rehearse my commitment to deliberate awareness, heartfelt intentions, and loving acceptance. The receiving and bestowing of these gifts cannot be divorced. From this reciprocity, I have witnessed love between men spring forth. SubjectSubject consciousness can open the gates to sexual transcendence. No ecstatic excision of mind from body as, in earlier days, I trusted would make me whole. Instead, the exciting recognition that experiences, feelings, and thoughts have been molded by our bodies and are forever inscribed in our flesh. Sex magick is cherishing myself, my companions, my lovers as selves-in-the-bodies. And even as I stumble: I have listened with an open heart until the other becomes fully present; I have relinquished my fears and exposed myself so I could be seen, and it turned me on; I have embraced another man so intensely with love, without wanting to possess him; I have slowed down time with a faerie boyfriend and felt the whisper of our interweaving selves drift gradually into our flesh, as lips and fingers browsed, eyes gazed, hands held, tongues locked and probed, mouths tasted, and nostrils followed the trails of our commingled scents—reveling with abandon, I forsook later regrets, keeping only the memories of luscious gifts and joy. w

Photograph by Mark Hufstetler

“Ode to Pan” by Wave (Bronze 2012)

A Disclosure Disclosure

by middle

I confess I find conversations about disclosure challenging. Positions taken are often too simplistic or dogmatic. It’s hard to find balance between emotional and logical realities. A questionable premise that seroconversion is the worst fate imaginable seems to loom. Heteronormative framing and a presumption of unprotected intercourse seem common. Risks to HIV negative persons are weighed disparately than risks to HIV positive persons, as if we have less to lose.

For me, the first ethical and spiritual priority is not disclosure but rather the protection of both those with whom I share my life—sexual partners, lovers, family, friends, and my communities—and myself.

I’mvery out about my positive HIV status.

I’ve shared my story with hundreds of people as part of a local “first-person” education initiative. I was among the first few folks to create an AOL screen name or profile that referred to HIV in any way. I’ve outed myself on TV, radio, and webcasts, and in writings for various blogs (and RFD). At coffees and socials and dinners I chat endlessly about HIV issues. My online dating and cruise site profiles go beyond checkboxes to the inclusion of affirmations that I am “poz = HIV-positive = VIH positivo.”

In terms of more casual connections I suspect my status has yielded a lot of missed opportunities, but I don’t believe that it has ever been a major hindrance to my relationships. Only about half have been with other poz men and I’m currently happily partnered with an HIV-negative guy.

As a young, newly diagnosed gay man of 25, my struggle with disclosure had a lot to do with feelings of isolation and fear and a fierce libido. Over time disclosure has become my default course of action, but under certain circumstances I make carefully considered exceptions. What might appear to be contradiction is rooted in my earnest belief that disclosure is not a panacea and that it is only one of a number of ways I can manifest my care and concern for others.

Experiences have taught me that simply disclosing my HIV status is often not enough and sometimes too much.

Disclosure is not enough when the person I’m telling is clueless about what it means due to im-

maturity or ignorance. It’s not enough when the person pursuing me is too infatuated or otherwise intoxicated to make rational use of the information, and it isn’t enough when I’m dealing with someone whose judgment is impaired by emotional distress or mental illness.

Disclosure is not enough when a presumably HIV-negative guy asks me to fuck him without a condom saying, “if you pull out, it will be OK . . . won’t it?” It doesn’t offer enough protection for me or the guy I’m into when his conscious or subconscious intention (disclosed or not) is to just get his seroconversion over with. Disclosure isn’t enough when intuition signals that today’s consent will morph into tomorrow’s regret, or when a lover’s attempt to rationally negotiate the negligible risk I present is overcome by what is on the whole understandable fear.

On the other hand, disclosure can be too much when my trust is betrayed or when people take it upon themselves to carelessly reveal my status. It is too much when someone with whom I’m only considering a connection viciously attacks me. Disclosure is too much when I do it so soon that the target of my affection opts not to invest sufficient time and energy to find out who I really am and what I have to offer. It’s too much when there is no risk of HIV transmission – like when I give someone I’ve just encountered a casual blow job.

Disclosure’s too much when it subjects me to misuse or misapplication of laws rooted in hysteria rather than science, laws which have a counterproductive impact on prevention efforts. Disclosure is too much when it serves to enable the belief that basing decisions about sexual activity on the selfdisclosed status of strangers is a particularly effective way to avoid contracting HIV.

Actual risk of transmission doesn’t play a major role in any of these scenarios, because I’m focused on avoiding that. Preventing HIV transmission is the least important among the many reasons I disclose.

I strive to protect all of my partners, and aggressively protect those of negative or unknown status using layered strategies. More importantly, my partner’s knowledge, maturity, and state of mind determine the extent to which I’m willing to share

decision-making. When there’s a difference of opinion, I reserve the right to opt out based on concern about risk to either or both of us.

I’m fallible, and in the 25 years I’ve been living with HIV there have of course been lapses. Getting clean and sober about half way through that journey has helped me to avoid losing control in potentially harmful ways.

I’m lucky that condoms are useful to me (they aren’t to everyone) and I’ve learned how to maximize their effectiveness. I’ve been on antiviral medications for years and I am deadly serious about taking them. I began basing choices on what I knew

about my partners’ HIV status and the science of transmission long before the term seroadaption was coined. These choices rarely feel like sacrifices. Fortunately, when I seek to experience pleasure, a powerful connection usually overcomes restrictions in the physical plane.

I don’t believe I have to choose between protecting myself and protecting others. I honor the power and beauty of disclosure just as I know and respect its potential negatives. I beseech the community and the cosmos for wisdom as I continue to think and feel about its role in our lives. w

“Gogogo” by artboydancing

Barebacking: Neither Sacred Nor Sinful

by Aaron Stella (Gaff)

This article originally appeared in PGN–The Philadelphia Gay News.

Barebacking.

For most poz folk—myself included—it’s how we contracted HIV. And concomitantly, barebacking is the one sexual act that, postdiagnosis, most violently transforms into a totem of painful memories and regret.

Ever since HIV dawned in the ’80s, LGBT folk have been flung into the contraceptive purgatory of condoms—both for fear of death and rejection. Back then, and still to this day, however, many self-proclaimed “raw only” (aka sans condoms) folk carry out their sexual lives, genitals in the buff, content or unaware of the consequences that may befall them.

Notwithstanding the purely raw folk, many gay men and women continue to bounce back-and-forth between condom and non-condom use, as per the motion of the ocean, if you catch my drift. And while I’ve met people who claim to prefer—if not love—condoms over barebacking, barring any condom fetishists out there, I feel pretty confident in stating every human would prefer skin-to-skin intercourse over the sheepskin chaperone.

So what does the barebacking option look like for HIVpoz folk? What does it become after you’re diagnosed as poz? I remember one gentleman brusquely instructing me to “bag it” from now on after he learned I was poz. (And me thinking, really? Is that what I’ll have to do from now on?) Because after you’re diagnosed with HIV, you feel like a ticking time bomb of blood and cum, that wrapping your genitals in a condom isn’t enough, that you might as well wear a condom tuxedo.

To be sure, in the immediate post-diagnosis craze, you perceive barebacking as a sacred sexual act that, for your sinful behavior, is one from which you shall forever be barred.

This perspective is not only unhealthy but simply not true. And until you can reconcile the act of barebacking in your mind, to accept the sound of that word “barebacking” as beautiful and good and not deviant deeds done under dark, you’ll revile yourself with shame and, from my experience, even increase your chances of irresponsible sexual behavior in the future.

Nothing is objectively bad or exclusive to one people in this world—barebacking included. While it may have been the manner in which you contracted HIV, there is no point to blaming yourself; just take care of how you act after the fact. Meaning, you don’t go out barebacking all over creation to ease the pain of perspective on the act, but think and make choices responsibly.

I for a time suffered from this deleterious mindset and, for it, sought to bareback with numerous HIV-poz folk, thinking that, for our seroconcordance, no harm would be done. Now, barring the potential of double infection or contracting a super-infection, the protracted harm I was inflicting on myself was that I was treating the very act I saw as sacred as deviant and cheap. I lingered in the shadows of my mind to hide from forces I believed would conjure greater torrents of pathos in my life, as if my fate was to live in perpetual sorrow, and barebacking indiscriminately would keep fate at bay.

Really, it was my perspective on love and my low self-esteem that constituted the weightiness of my heart. That’s me personally, not every HIV-poz person. But believing that I was destined to be forever unloved and had fallen from the heights of heaven, happiness and romance sequestered me in the little vagrant-ward in my head, where I could do as I pleased—with other unloved vagrants—scot-free.

Aaron Stell, Courtesy PGN

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Yes. An HIV-poz person can take HIV meds, eventually knocking down his viral load to undetectable levels, bringing transmission rates to their nadir, making barebacking a far less risky activity.

Yes. HIV-poz folk can always, after assessing their strains and other pertinent information, bareback with each other and bypass the potential fear of infection extant in sero-discordant couples.

But despite all those external variables, what will bring you piece of mind is understanding your relationship to barebacking. And frankly, there are

too many debates surrounding barebacking that I can’t even pretend to accommodate all of them. But this isn’t all about barebacking: It’s about our self-esteem, how we perceive ourselves and the way we act, our intentions and goodwill, acting as one whole person to another. So my advice to you is to ask yourself, not just in regard to barebacking but to other aspects of your life: What is my intention? And let your intention guide your actions, not the other way around.

We’re in this together, folks. Go out and talk about it. w

“What I Have I Have Given” by artboydancing

Heart Circle and the Making of We Were Here

by David Weissman

Makinga documentary about AIDS was not something I’d ever imagined myself doing. After Bill Weber and I made The Cockettes I had a hard time imagining another topic engrossing enough to entice me into that crazy process again. Though The Cockettes had something of a bittersweet epilogue, it was ultimately a celebration of so much that I love in life—wild drag queens, psychedelics, hippies, art-for-art’s-sake—and the city that embraced and encouraged it all, San Francisco. I’ve often said that Bill’s and my intentions were that The Cockettes be a “look what’s possible” movie, as opposed to a “look what you missed” movie.

In late 2008, my then-boyfriend David Cohen suggested that I make a film about the early years of AIDS. I initially recoiled at the thought—not only did the idea of intensely re-engaging with that history seem personally unbearable, it seemed like the film would be inevitably depressing, which is not something I aspire to evoke. And it seemed like an impossibly huge topic to compress into a 90-minute film.

But something shifted quickly in me—I realized that it was the right time for this story to be told, and that someone who experienced it, rather than an interested outsider, should be the one to tell it. And I sensed that it needn’t only be depressing, but that it could also be an honoring of a community’s compassion and resilience in the face of terrible adversity. Though I don’t think I realized this consciously early on, I began to make a film that utilized what I love best about faerie Heart Circles, what I consider the “contagiousness” of honest self-reflection and vulnerability.

I can’t say that I “love” Heart Circle. As we all know sometimes they can be excruciating. But like

the unpredictable Grateful Dead shows of old, when Circles are good they can be utterly sublime, and you can’t really get that unless you’re willing to pay your dues. Whether one shares in Circle, or merely witnesses, what happens there in terms of emotional risk-taking and emotional generosity can be powerfully transformative, and “contagious.”

Heart Circles involve a simultaneous giving and receiving: When someone shares in Circle, they are receiving the attention, and hopefully the compassion of those who are witnessing. And they are giving by allowing themselves to be vulnerable, to be real, to take emotional risks in ways that can inspire and even empower others to engage with their own deeper selves. And those who are witnessing experience the mirror image of that equation. Even those at gatherings who prefer to avoid Heart Circle still benefit from the ripples of intention that emanate from that space.

While doing Q and A’s with We Were Here, I was invariably asked how I chose the five interviewees, who so eloquently manage to evoke a history both intimate and epic. My answer evolved somewhat over the year, but I was seeking people who understood both the giving and receiving aspect of being interviewed about their journey through San Francisco’s darkest AIDS years. All of the five people in the film were people I knew a bit, and who I happened to run into somewhere. These chance encounters combined with a strong intuitive sense that Eileen, Paul, Ed, Guy, and Daniel really grasped the cathartic opportunity for themselves in being able to tell their stories, but also knew how important it was for others to hear this history—whether for an eye-opening first time, or for a healing validation of their own journey.

Castro Street 1979. David Weissman second from right.

Interviewees, from top: Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clarkin, Eileen Glutzer, Ed Wolfe, Paul Boneberg. Photographs courtesy David Wiessman

We Were Here will be broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens in early June. DVD/ streaming becomes available via all the usual outlets beginning May 16.

At screening after screening, I witnessed that Heart Circle type “contagion”. The extraordinary openness and thoughtfulness of the interviewees— even emanating from a movie screen–created an atmosphere enabling many audience members to go on a deeper inward journey than they anticipated. The dead silence that greeted me at the end of some of the early screenings alerted me that I needed ensure that the emotional moment that the film made possible was not lost by an inappropriately cerebral or informational discussion.

I began approaching the Q and A’s the way I approach a Circle. Doing my best to clear my mind of any agenda, I’d watch the last 10 minutes of the film—feeling the atmosphere in the room, and just organically waiting to see what came up for me. And then I’d essentially start the Q and A by doing my own heart share, which I think further encouraged people to stay in that emotional state, and share if their own heart called them to do so.

At one screening, an older British woman said that though she didn’t feel guilty that she hadn’t really known anything about those dark years, the film did make her realize that she isn’t as good a friend as she could be when her friends were in need, and that seeing the film made her want to change that. At another screening, a weeping young man said, “I’m 23 and HIV positive, and I am so in awe of what you all went though, what you sacrificed, so that I could have medication and services… thank you, thank you...” At screening after screening, people shared incredibly beautiful and intimate parts of themselves.

The making of We Were Here was also deeply rooted in heart-centeredness. My collaborator and close friend Bill Weber has a long faerie and Buddhist background and this was a deeply bonding experience for us. One of my favorite moments in the editing room was realizing that our frequently copious tears were not so much stimulated by sadness, but by beauty and inspiration.

It’s been a super intense process, both the making and the public presentations of We Were Here. I’m glad to be getting a bit of a respite from it all, but I am so appreciative of the aspects of my faerie/ Heart Circle experience that contributed to the way this story has been told, and will continue to have impact in our own community and beyond. w

www.facebook.com/wewerehere. www.wewereherefilm.com.

Top: David Weissman. Below: Shanti Project, late 1980s.

Gryphon Blackswan Speaks

by Rosie Delicious

The darkness is your desire

Your desire is the darkness

Lighting a candle is your action

In the darkness in your desire

What kind of flame will you kindle in the darkness of your desire?

Watch out children, Be careful

The darkness is naught but anything you desire—the vast pit inside your hole sucking in all it can at a mad pace

churning yearning burning inwardly exploding all cause and effect—RELAX—all is naught so hang onto nothing.

Fire creates ash

how sacred is the dross of your life

the ashen heap of the fires of desires

burnt out like the light of pleasures past

Honor your ash

like you honor your ass

And you will learn compassion

As you feel the burn in your loins and the twitchin in your itchin

Pulsing through like a tide arising

Effulgent flowing ever insistent

Let it rise let it rise

swelling below and rising above

And through your heart’s desires

Touch your friend & Heal them

So Use your heart’s desires

To cast their woes asunder

Lift your cock in joy and

Pucker juicy holes in gratitude

Pumping love & magnitude

Through your hands into them

Healing with your heart’s desires.

AMEN! ASHE! AHO!

Gryphon Blackswan, ibae, (1 fierce BLACKQWEEN who ruled through her sense of design & love of her peeps) became one of my dearest faerie spirit guides in 2001 @ Zuni’s 1st shamans’ gathering during Donald Engstrom’s ‘Aspecting Ancestors’ workshop; as I was walking the labyrinth to meet “an ancestor who loves us beyond all reason” a voice came to me saying ‘ok, grl, do your thing and i’ll come to you’ = knowing what that meant and being at the eastern most place in the outer ring I bent over, flipped my skirt and kissed the sun with my buttlips...got back up and our relationship continues to this day.

Gryphon Blackswan. Photo Courtesy Faerie Ancestors.

Cyrus Cassells: Interview

Interviewed by Franklin Abbot

Cyrus Cassells is a poet, teacher, translator and actor. And he is a presence. His poetry tells out story/ his story in many voices. It brings us clarity and charge about our past and hints at the mysteries to unfold in our future. Cyrus talks to the readers of RFD about his creative process and gives us hints on how magick and duende are interwoven.

Cyrus Cassells is the author of five books: The Mud Actor, a National Poetry Series winner and finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award; Soul Make a Path Through Shouting, hailed as one of the Best Books of 1994 by Publishers Weekly, the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award, and a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize; Beautiful Signor, winner of the Lambda Literary Award, the Sister Circle Book Award (for African-American literature), and a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award; More Than Peace and Cypresses, a Lannan Literary Selection, named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2004 by Library Journal; and The Crossed-Out Swastika, 2012. Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas, translated from the Catalan, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Among his honors are a Lannan Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and two NEA grants. He is a Professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos and divides his time between Austin, Santa Fe, and Paris.

Franklin Abbot: How do you approach the art of poetry? the art of teaching? the art of translation? What are the common threads and what are the distinctions?

Cyrus Cassells: As my hero-poet, Federico Garcia Lorca once said, “only mystery allows us to live, on mystery.” I’d augment Lorca’s dictum: “only

mystery allows us to live and to grow.” Vis-a-vis growth, I find my poetry is consistently two years ahead of my mundane self, so I’ve learned to pay attention, sometimes like a fogbound Sherlock Holmes, to its lures and messages. Whatever my work might signify to the public or my readers, for my part, my verse is a relentless and tireless mirror, an indispensible tool for self-revelation. Usually, by the time a volume is published, I have a much firmer grasp of the why of the book and the place the poems occupy in the meaningful arc of my entire life. The gist of the poetry effectively points me toward my deepest obsessions, fears, strivings, and authentic self; the poems are invariably wiser than everyday Cyrus.

I’m an unusual poet in that I work almost exclusively in booklength cycles; it often takes several years for the full “theme” of the cycle to emerge, which can be both frustrating and exhilarating in terms of the dogged detective work and ever-expanding odyssey involved. I’ve hardly ever written an occasional poem. I seem to require length and structure as a poet; I do have lyric impulses, but they’re always linked to a far-ranging project. I’m a world citizen and inveterate traveler, so crafting my thematic books often involves actual pilgrimage, investigation, and cultural and historical study. I am consistently drawn to the past, to places of trauma, and to stories of hard-won spiritual triumph and endurance. I am also a professional actor and my written work has something of a mediumistic quality; I seldom write from the perspective of Cyrus, and often take on the personae of other people, ideally without appropriation or exploitation, but with true identification and inmost respect. This chameleon impulse is very much how I live; I readily whisk past the usual social and individual boundaries to explore the psychologies and predicaments of my poetic speakers: my life and poetry are centered in an active and purposeful

notion of empathy and identification.

Re teaching: I am committed to the liberation of my students, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, through the fostering of their dynamic relationship to art, creativity, and language. My teaching is particularly directed toward the cultivation of each student’s unique perspective. It is my personal belief that a confident critical perspective (based on a strong and rooted sense of self) is integral to the contribution we need to make in our lifetimes. I continuously urge students to use literature as a compelling mirror of their own lives. I often use autobiographical time-lines, developed by

curiosity and a profound desire to have the potency and beauty of a foreign text available in English. I’ve learned a good deal about Spanish, Italian, and Catalan culture as a result of the detective work involved in grasping and rendering the world behind the poem. In translating the work of Salvador Espriu, I had to study the Spanish Civil War, which severely impacted his life as a literary prodigy when t his language, Catalan, was banned from public use. Learning to read Catalan (one of the four languages of Spain) appealed to my sense of justice.

In terms of common threads between the three, I’d sense the sense of committed presence and of liberating and unchecked permission to speak is integral to all three of these important activities in my life.

FA: Would you comment on how sex magick and duende might be alike?

CC: My take on sex magick is that, in a mostly sex-phobic world, it represents the innate power of kundalini rising to heal our bodies and spirits by sparking the dolphin-spray joy and clarity of the divinity within us. My sense of duende is that of a daring, risk-taking, external force, akin to death in its intensity, that spurs us to create the uncanny and the extraordinary. For me, the two are linked by the questing urge to transcend the everyday self.

Knockout Literary Magazine

Cassells poems from, and an interview on, his latest book of poems, The Crossed-Out Swastika.

http://knockoutlit.org

Texas State University

www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/cyrus_cassells.html

creativity expert Julia Cameron, to remind students how rich and varied their experiences have been, and to bring that richness to their creative work and study of literature. Mark Twain once said that “travel is fatal to prejudice,” and through creative writing and literary study that is multicultural and international in scope, I give my students the means to travel mentally and culturally, always with the possibility of leaving complacencies and prejudices behind.

Re translation: My translation work stems from my deep

TWO VOICES: Poet and Translator

Cyrus Cassells on Catalan Poet ... www.catranslation.org/blogpost/cyruscassells-on-francesc-parcerisas

Poetry Breaks II, Cyrus Cassells

WGBH Open Vault

http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/ ntw-mla000293-poetry-breaks-ii-cyruscassells

Cyrus Cassells. Photograph by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Cyrus Cassells: Poems

Two Men Find a Place Known Only to Deer

Holy of holies, pleasure flecked with weeping for joy, for joy: our cries caught in the soughing trees, our cries seized by a gossiping jay: clement thighs, hips, fingertips, clement kisss of Demerara rum. When you looked into my eyes, my face, on the deer path, saying my beard is not a hunter’s beard, did you know this would happen?: hooves, the splendid voyeurism of the buck, snorting, pawing the earth beside us— it only wants to feel what we feel and your blissful lips, your breath at my nipples.

– from Beautiful Signor

Dove’s Cry

There is a dove whose cry is not now, but simpler, and once we heard Juanillo singing of that dove, remember?

Teresita and Alícia had not yet been lost in the crash. It was the night of Iñaki’s party, In the pool, virile Esai and Tomás held delicate Aicar on the surface— the lithe tendrils of his floating hair the color of bedstraw— moving his limbs in unison, so that his body seemed to open like a remarkable starfish or a winsome flower, a very Hockney flower— Like new bronze, the partygoers, the sublime women and men who seemed the elating best of Andalusia, each with their allotted youth on earth, their unrepeatable beauty— that is meant, dear Lord, to be weatherworn or broken?— I woke in the hospital

with the lush, mitigating memory of that night, Juanillo’s dove, the dream of fullness, but this is the furious, impinging world: the car swerves and rolls, the life supports are relinquished— There is a dove whose sorrow is God no, God no; there is a dove whose cry is not now, but simpler.

from More Than Peace And Cypresses

Jeune homme, listen, in those days, we had the Zazou style: snappy clothes, and longish, layered hair that cost a bundle for upkeep. I met my first love, Luc, on the esplanade, with my bold, impetuous band of Zazous. But Luc wasn’t a Zazou; he had no detectable style, no affectations; he was genial, quick-witted, rather small like me, and lightly freckled, with those long, impressive lashes-And when I listen to Loïc, I think: How two boys fit together, two boys ignite is a burst of summer fireworks, a kept-quiet cartwheel-Embracing in scouted-out basements and fusty attics, or emboldened between burly rolls of cloth in Luc’s meticulous father’s shop— they were purblind, a worldlier Loïc explains, and, in their youth, believed risible Hitler would never enter Alsace; high-hearted Jew and Gentile, they were purblind and thought their love, their passion, made all routes possible.

from The Crossed-Out Swastika

AUSCHWITZ, ALL HALLOWS

Look, we have made a counterpoint of white chrysanthemums, a dauntless path of death-will-not-part-us petals and revering light; even here, even here before the once-wolfish ovens, the desecrating wall where you were shot, the shrike-stern cells where you were bruised and emptied of your timebound beauty-you of the confiscated shoes and swift-shorn hair, you, who left, as sobering testament, the scuffed luggage of utter hope and harrowing deception. Come back, teach us. From these fearsome barracks and inglorious fields flecked with human ash, in the russet-billowing hours of All Hallows, let the pianissimo of your truest whispering (vivid as the crunched frost of a forced march) become a slowly blossoming, ever-voluble hearth— revealing to us (the baffled, the irresolute, the war-torn, the living) more of the fire and attar of what it means to be human.

from The Crossed-Out Swastika

Blue

by Mercury Aquarius

An aria lights the altar Of sorrow and love-Notes descend softly Into the dark Clay--Beyond the hill a Dancer twirls and spirals His legs gracefully

Towards the Blue Robes damp with Earth. The voice grows and rings Holy bells of wood Nymphs and magicians. The first harvest beckons— Life continues to decay.

“Grove” by Arun

Bodies Cavorting

by Raymond Luczak

Young men were idealized in your time. You hung photographs of them cavorting in an anonymous pond somewhere in Vermont. Odd that no one thought men of a certain age sexy, grays and whites creeping the vestigial wrinkles of youth, if not more than these lithe twinks, a dime a dozen in peep booth videos. Sex has lost its mysticism, its wanton mysteries exposed like a magician’s secrets. How the hell can I compete with the body I have?

My body naked full of landmines is this: explosions of tiny freckles underneath my face, no trace of my flesh-colored mole shaved off my nose, a cleft in chin hidden in the tangle of beard, a tiny toad wart on my right index finger, a trio of gallbladder removal scars under ribcage, a shiny knee patch from a scooter accident, my back covered with the poison ivy of fur. Who’d want to sleep with this scarred creature?

These here are undeveloped rolls of memory: an inconsequential note written in his hand, a frayed flannel shirt in spring pastels, a precious email printout, a home video saved to disc, a discontinued IKEA bedside lamp shade, a newspaper clipping with a phrase highlighted in ink, the first movie we saw together in the theater, a receipt from the restaurant where we first met. Sentimentality’s a garage sale. No one’s buying.

The Internet’s become the bathhouse of the 21st century. There’s no romance left in efficient keyboarding. We’re sometimes afraid to show our imperfect faces, so we red-flag our erections, the only bragging right that counts. Everything gets stated upfront. The one-night stand is a pre-prenuptial agreement. We’ve reduced ourselves to pixels and numbers, touching cock but never another human being. We’re just dust, ghosts flickering on the screen.

glitter: a film about Australian Radical Faeries

Stills and quotes from the film directed by Peter Davison

It may sound funny, but I have always loved and never tire of sitting on the veranda, and looking out at that amazing view.

–Tea Cosy

Oh dear oh dear, but, you know, I think it has a sort of tawdry appeal.

–Spider-cutie

Who is this Faerie, who shines like a star?

–Spider-cutie

Faeries have a particular style… have you noticed that?

–Mijimberry

I think the most important thing for me living at Faerieland is living with a family, a group of friends, a tribe.

–Tea Cosy

The Faeries create an atmosphere, an ambience that’s quite conducive for people to connect with each other… There’ll be something special that happens that works to help people meet.

–Stellaray

So, seven and half years ago Australia’s first Radical Faerie Sanctuary came into being.

–Tea Cosy

I guess living at the Faerie community for me was a bit of a fulfilment of a dream of living in a monastic community, and that’s pretty much how it’s been (laughs)… But, I can’t see myself doing it forever.

–Dingo

Now now now, you’re a goddess, remember.

–Phase

Wildflowers of Manitoba

Installation by Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob

Wildflowers of Manitoba is a performance/film installation of pastoral visions, idyllic fantasies, and queer utopias. Housed in a geodesic dome furnished as a teenaged bedroom, the geometric frame swells with projected visions of a tribe of nude boy-folk exploring the Canadian Prairies near the shores of Lake Winnipeg at the Beaconia Research Station.

Their wanderings and homo-

social activity animate a romantic vision of bliss, sensuality and a sexual return to the land. Staged for the camera, yet chasing spiritual transcendence, the set and subjects evoke the spirit of alternative collective lifestyles and Radical Faerie communes, with their spread-eagle experimental communitarianism, environmentalism, and sexual liberation.

The installation has toured the world since 2007 with live per-

formers living inside the dome.

Opening in May 27, 2012 and running until Apr 1, 2013, Wildflowers of Manitoba can be viewed at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts as a part of the exhibition Oh, Canada curated by Denise Markonish.

RFD readers are invited to take up residency in dome during the run of the show. Please contact wildflowersofmanitoba@gmail.com for more information. w

Practicum!

by Rosie Delcious

From the recipe book of the House of Delicious, a set of practical things you can do 2 enhance your erotic/ spirit xxxperience within & without & when sharing with others the overflow of your eros 4 you better offer only your overflow thus keeping your cup full & happy & healthy = look at the 2 of cups in the tarot as a visual of this ideal = happy sexing!

Asana of Sexual Compassion

• especially propitious when feeling sexually out of sorts 4 any reason = or for any time desired

• gather yourself & sit in a comfortable position with back well supported

• relax & take a deep breathe & run your hands together—invoke reiki if you use it

• place the hand you usually masturbate with ON/ AROUND/IN your genitals (whatever body type you have matters not)

• place the other hand on TOP of the sternum—the chakra of compassion—the mid point btw heart energy rising into expression in the throat and relax & breathe & sit calmly IN/OUT . deep/slow . calm/ease . SMILE. release....repeat as often as you want

Tantric Reiki

• especially efficacious 4 those with reiki attunements = but the hand configurations of this one would werq 4 anyone

• INVOKE REIKI as you would normally while lying on your back = or sitting up if you’d prefer

• Keep the hand you’d masturbate with on/around/ in your genitals as you move the other hand up the chakra system

• BREATHE into each & allow the body to deeply relax + especially FUN in the SUN naked = Solar Tantric Reiki!!!

• Try this one inverted on a slope in the sun, thus your head is downslope,

• if you have them, tug on your nuts & watch your shoulders relax more deeply

Rewinding the Inner Coil

this one came 2 me whilst sitting on the lingam @ wolf creek 2 years ago post sex magick workshop for when you’ve gone beyond your boundaries & are wiped out internally as well as physically & feel crappy

• LIE on your back & RELAX, lift your knees so that you can access your anus &/or vagina (if you are so blest with both)

• Slowly massage your butthole with the finger that would most pleasure it, in a slow circular movement whichever direction feels right but not entering

• Meanwhile begin slowly and tenderly give yourself a similar circular massage around your belly button

• BREATHE—relax and slowly pleasure yourself in this way 4 as long as you like + ladies and trannies can include pussies into their circular massaging for that deeeep relaxation

• This massage will rewind the energetic coil between your anus as connection 2 mother earth & place of your nourishment from your own mother (bellybutton) = passing through your 2nd chakra allowing it to get revitalized & relaxed into better energetic flow & bounds of pleasure 4 your sexy future w

Self portrait in eggshell by Rosie Delcious

Continued from Page 21

or hash) calling the directions (a la pagan spell craft) and most importantly, setting ground rules:

Please feel free to move touch and make out but this is ultimately a solo journey. Please do not couple off.

If you and a man find yourselves falling into each other as a lovers connection, please refrain, and move along to rest of your experience. You can always screw later.

Please don’t feel pressure to interact with anyone, be clear with your boundaries and intentions.

Enjoy the sights smells and sounds but please listen to your own body and brain, what are they interested in?

This is not a race to orgasm, but an exercise in your own joy, please show us how much pleasure you can give yourself.

Please stick around after you come and enjoy the show, quietly.

And then everybody jacks off, for usually an hour or so. It is a beautiful sight. There are many techniques to learn and lots of pretty penises to admire.

For each participant the journey is different. I love hearing the stories afterwards. It is not always easy exercise. The ritual provides a container for all sorts of emotions. Fags have a bunch of stuff wrapped up in the sex narratives and exposing yourself to an environment like this can bring up all sorts of personal shit. I go through something different every year.

The sight of all that seed reflecting against the silver of the mirror is spectacular. The glory of the assembled body types deeply involved with their dicks is delicious. The money shots have a grand tendency to crescendo like a storm. Dudes explode, loud and guttural, giant ropes of sacred juice. Guys collapse breathless in disbelief at the power of their own orgasm. It is the definition of faggot sex majick.

After everyone has shot, the scene shifts to very sweet cuddly discussion. The tension and cruising has subsided and the guys are free to bask in each other’s afterglow. Its safe and silly as we scry the semen for hints into the future. The mirror is allowed to dry and kept as an altar. w

Continued from Page 20

tion; and again the final round was one-on-one. The second ritual allowed us to benefit from two lessons we learned from the first ritual. Although theoreti cally it seemed dreamy to get permission to proceed di rectly from feasting on one cock after another, switch ing partners became a little jarring because we were skipping over the opportunity to connect with the man attached to the cock. So for the second ritual, we built in extra time for each new pairing to do whatever they needed to tune into each other, which usually looked like eye contact, kissing, embracing, and some other touching rather than just diving onto each other’s dicks. Also, something about the sudden transition at

the end from the elegant dance of cocksucking for the sheer pleasure and spiritual communion of it to a goal-oriented squirtfest didn’t sit well—it seemed a little mechanical, laborious to some, not so pleasurable and not so communal. So for the second ritual we drew on Body Electric teachings for the finale. After our three rounds of sucking, we lay down on our backs with our heads in the middle and did some breathing together, building up to a Big Draw, taking an inhalation and holding it as long as possible while contracting all our muscles— and then letting go and allowing ourselves to float in the aftermath of whatever our bodies were experiencing. This turned out to be not just a perfectly happy ending but a magical one. w

A Greek krater

Prison Pages

Edited by Myrlin

AsI write this column I am sitting here listening to Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” and thinking about Faeries dancing about the fire at Beltane or some other event. How delightful it is that we all have had memories such as this to buoy us up on days when we are feeling alone or things aren’t going well. We have friends we can count on and ears that will listen to us when we are confused or hurting. We fell comforted and full of trust and hope that tomorrow will be more than today.

Now imagine that you are not free and live in a cage lucky to get one hour out of your cage a day to shower or exercise. Imagine having to ask for the barest of essentials and be dependent on a totally chaotic and irrational system where you are treated almost as less than human, subject to the whims of people who have total power and control. And you live with people whom you cannot trust not to violate your basic rights. You learn to trust no one but yourself and must be on guard 24/7 to not be taken advantage of. So no “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” for you! No hope for the days to come.

Now let’s add to that picture the fact that you are gay, bi or trans and you are categorized as lower than the lowest of the low in other cages. You are open to brutalization just for existing; you can be forced into sexual relations with people you don’t like. If you are young and cute you will likely be raped at least once while in the system. You will find no one in the system you can talk to about who you are and what you are feeling. So you internalize feelings of inadequacy and are tormented by the Preachers words with no one to tell you that you

are all right in the eyes of the Divine and that you have dignity and worth that come with being in this world. You come to need and want someone who will listen, someone who has a free world perspective and the wisdom and desire to share it with you. You want so badly to be able to do the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” with others who can love you in the sense of just acknowledging that you are worth the time to write to.

Why Write To An Inmate

Take a moment to read my introduction and you can see their need for you to love them enough to care. Next consider that you may be opening yourself up to a very positive experience for yourself. You have gifts that you may be able to share that no one in your life has time to hear. Or you may be able to share things about your own struggles with someone else which will help them to grow and allow you to benefit from things they might share back. In the times of my life that I have been loneliest and most confused, it has often been the care and love that comes back from my “pen-friend” that has paved the way for the greatest breakthroughs in my own life. And some of the gifts from their hearts have been the most profound. My home is covered with exceptional art pieces that I have received. The benefits are incredible. Yes care must be taken as scams do occur. But with the ability in most cases to do a quick search on the web to get basic details and information on the person you might write, the risks are less. So I encourage you to consider entering the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” with one of our

Some of the men you will meet in BBB.

Chris Martz (WI)

Connor Sanders (OR) Nasir Davis (PA) Jesus Sandoval (TX)

Brothers Behind Bars.

Just write us at BBB, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095 and ask for a copy of the most recent issue of BBB. The Quarterly list usually contains about 340 ads plus art and poetry. A donation is asked of $3.00 to $10.00 per copy to help with mailing and printing costs. If you have questions you may direct them to me at bbbmyrlin@yahoo.com. If there is anyone who would like to help us by collaborating to create a working Facebook page or web site, we could use the help. Also if there is anyone able to help figure out a way to share data entry and other tasks, let us know.

Changing Hats: I AM ANGRY, I AM VERY VERY ANGRY!!!!!

Truthout. Org has just addressed something I have known for a long time. You can find the article here: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8637-lockingdown-an-american-workforce-prison-labor-as-thepast-and-future-of-american-capitalism.

“Locking Down an American Workforce: Prison Labor as the Past and Future of American “FreeMarket” Capitalism”

Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.

Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.

These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside. All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.

So there is method to the madness of locking people up and for efforts of organization such as ALEC to keep as many people locked up as possible. There is money in prisons. I think I have a right to be angry. How many of the things we buy or services we receive are coming from the very people you might write as a correspondent with one of our Brothers Behind Bars.

It’s time to meet a few of the Brothers Behind Bars. When you receive a copy of the list the ads are similar to the following:

Fulton County Jail

2010 South Seventh

Hickman KY 42050

Bryan Schwartz #223462

BiWM (12/03/87) 5’6 1.2”, 191 lbs, blue/blonde. Hi, I’m a 24 yr old and looking for friendship growing to relationship with that special someone. I’m passionate, caring, versatile and enjoy exotic sexual pleasures.. So if you’re interested I’ll be waiting

Not all of the ads include photos but many do. Brian’s ad appeared in the Spring Issue of the List. On the opposite page are some of the men you will meet in the Summer List.

Imagine receiving an envelope in the mail. They bring a big smile to my face and brighten my day. The interior thinking and dreams of inmates is often revealed in the poetry from behind the walls. I am pleased to include some samples of their writings We hope you will find them of interest and pique your curiosity at finding whatever other gems of beauty that reside with our Brothers Behind Bars. Write and request the list and get started.

I’ll Never Say Goodbye

I Can’t Live Another Day Without Holding You Here.

And I Think I Might Die Without Your Loving & Care.

Emotions Cost Me Floating Above The Sky. Every Moment Without You Makes Me Want To Cry.

Please Don’t Walk Away I Have Something To Say.

It’ll Only Take a Second, It Won’t Last All Day. See The Love That We Have Is One Of A Kind. And If Only I Could, I Would Make You Mine.

I’ve Met Girls Here & I’ve Met Girls There. But None Of ‘Em Comes Close To What We Have

Shared.

It’s Been A While Since I’ve Met Someone Like You.

And I Let You Get Away, I’m Such A Fool.

Now My Nights Are Cold And Filled With Tears.

My Love For You Will Never Die. . . . .

This May Be The End, But I’ll Never Say Goodbye. I Love You.!

By James Talamantes #V-98729

Boy Sea Hood

I remember:

The feel of sunburnt fiberglass under sand grit lycra. The smell of coconut tanning oil, And gull laughs echoing ours.

Secret Cries

So Many Times Inside Me, I Don’t Know How To Show.

So Many Things I’m Hiding, My Mind Is Going to Explode.

There’s Not Enough Words To Describe What’s Inside.

I Wanna Run The Other Way, Close A Door & Hide.

Everyday I Put On A Smile & Tell People I’m Happy.

I Put On A Show & Lie To Their Face Whenever Someone Asks Me.

How Do I Deal With The Loss of Love, When I Don’t Know How

To Let Them Go?

Why Do I Spend Endless Nights Letting My Tears Drain & Flow?

I Wanna Kick, I Wanna Yell, I Wanna Scream & Shout!

I Don’t Wanna Sit, I Don’t Wanna Write, I Wanna Let it Out.

Release The Demons That Hold The Pain.

Ease The Feeling Of Going Insane.

This Is A Poem Of Loving Someone Who Didn’t Try.

It’s the Hurt From Love & The Reason, I Cry.

Why Did I Fall & Drown In The Deep Forbidden Well?

Why Didn’t I Stand Tall & Be Something To Tell?

So Now I Look, But Close My Eyes. . . .

And Let You Hear My Secret Cries.

John Talamantes #V-98729

MCSP/C12-137

PO Box 409060

Ione, CA 95640

I remember: Dune grass forts, and driftwood swords, sand dollar walk abouts and naked sand castle-ing. I remember:

Ancient card table go fish, and Jinga, and other games within sun bleached walls. I remember: Being young, tan, happy; free to roam and play, explore and grow, and be a boy. So to sleep and sweetly dream. To Sea to See I remember thee.

I hear your call but, have only tear salted memory.

Mark Kaiser T8789 A-Zone, 154 Industrial Park Road, Lucedale, MS. 39452

GREEN THUMB

A path grows best In fields of mundane, Popular opinion

In orchards of profane, Ignorance and hate

In April rain.

Scott Ellis #245757 Oshkosh Correctional Institution PO Box 3310 Oshkosh, WI

54903-3310

Issue 152 / Winter 2012 Preview: TRANSGENDER FAERIES

Submission Deadline: October 21, 2012

What do you think of when you hear the word "transgender"? Are there transgender faeries in your community? Stop and think about it.

In this issue of RFD, we focus on transgender voices, bodies, sexualities, magick, experiences, perspectives, communities, playfulness, seriousness, exclusion, integration, resistance, and art. We encourage writings on culture-specific gender identities from people who have roots in those cultures.

Suggested formats include: images of transgender peoples' bodies, first person expositions on navigating transgender experiences in community, erotica, poetry, visual artwork, stream of consciousness, personal histories, interviews, essays, spells, recipes, and comics.

Transgender faeries and elders, this is your issue. What do you want to contribute? Unless you are transgender, we ask that you step back and listen through this issue and support the transgender faeries in your community as we bare our truths and share our stories and perspectives.