sometimes i get in trouble by expressing my singular views…
i was walking through a park with a friend and told him i don~t believe the world has victims…
we were talking about the homeless here in são paulo…
upon arrival, i saw a woman sitting on the ground with one coin in a translucent plastic bucket
she was rolling it on end around the bottom
and there was a black ring from her doing it so long
“oh, look, i have only one coin…”
by the hotel i was staying at
there was a raised freeway
and under it
the occasional homeless
two black boys wrapt in blankets
in the middle of the sidewalk
writhing a bit
as if they were caught in bad dreams
it was the middle of the day
and people would nearly step on them
and stop, startled,
adjust their paths
and walk around them.
the homeless are easily ignored no matter what
but they are very ballsy here!
as i was saying
we all make choices
and there are many differnt job positions here in the world
as your director or boss may have told you
“there are no small roles, only small actors”
or
“even the mail boy keeps the whole office working”
i like to think we~re all omnicient
and like to play the human game of being lost and confused
not knowing why things are happening
when really
we do.
we~re not victims, none of us
so i like to say
but it still pisses me off…
i think i got ghonnorrea from sharing a water bottle with a friend in SF
i didn~t know it could be passed like this
but someone i gave a blow job to wrote me right after i got to brazil and said he had got it from me
i ignored it, really
thinking >> oh, he~s just blowing things out of purportion, some people are always getting infections and they think they are ghonnorea…<<
but i asked him if the doctors said so, just to be sure…
then i noticed more and more that my throat hurt and my ass hurt and my dick burned
and he did write back and said he was sure…
and had already had sex with a bunch of people
i had to write them all letters…
tail between my legs
i feel terrible, the harbinger of disease
and i don~t want to just go solve it quickly with a pill
i want to cure it with sun
and sage tea…
i want my body to identify it
find it
destory it
and protect me from it
i~m in a strange culture now
with strange bacteria
and i~m travelling and tired
i~m sure i~m already pushing my immune system
and i want to keep having sex with the beautiful brazilians, but…
Oh,
when i walk down the streets
i keep thinking i see dead dogs.
maybe it~s just the heat of the day
they lay there
completely still
eyes closed
i don~t even see them breathing
in the middle of the sidewalks
like they~re dead
but they musn~t be…
everyone just walks around them
they must be used to it now
it~s amazing what we can get used to.
i~m leaving the city.
i don~t know how.
i got some contact numbers from Chad, a traveller rainbow kid i met in italy last year
i~m waiting for the emails to respond
i~m trying to get the phones to be answerd
but sometimes no one pics up
and i sit on the corner sharpening a pencil on the cement
etching down my confused feelings in my little book…
now the sun is gone
and the night is almost here
time to be going
perhaps next time i write
i~ll have a tan.

so my last week or so in the USA was crazy
i was struggling to understand the nature of my loving
with my friend Leo
and at the same time
trying to make money
and satiate my monster sexual desire
in the beautiful but monstruous sexual monster of San francisco
i did pretty well on all accounts
as the currents took me on
Los Angeles was also really intense
i got to see my friend Walter
and directly after, Eli
we have a menage-a-trois of sorts
from a movie we made
which reminds me, i need to give them eachother’s contact information.
but i tell all this just to say: i didn’t sleep much
less and less in the city
as the moon was waning
i just got more tired and more tired
and rushed around doing things
trying to have sex with those i wanted to see before i left
and conversations of other sorts with the others
and of course
i didn’t have enough time and space to make it all fit
my last night in LA i didn’t sleep at all
could hardly keep my eyes open standing still
nodding off in the airport
but it was great
i slept pretty well on the plane
and i know, from the many times i’ve done this
that it’s a great way to travel to a new place
all that exhaustion makes the eyes wide
taking in everything
tired brain doesn’t get a chance to judge
just absorb
the buss ride in from the airport was brilliant
the beautiful river
turn dirty
clogged with tires and foam
the little shack-villages under the bridges by the freeway
similar to south africa
but actually much less
and the city
the old architecture
the new
the small winding streets
the huge ones
when i got into the paulista district
three guys started pointing and hollering at me in the buss
i didn’t have a place to stay
or knew anything about the city
but i grabbed my bag and asked the driver to let me off there
it was, apparently, a pretty rich area
and people stared at me strangely
nice smiles, though
i didn’t feel put out
i bought some bread and garlic and cheese:
Gouda… not with real wax, but dyed on the outside of the cheese to look like it…
hmmm
i walked around and stopped
looked at my map
realized that this wasn’t where i wanted to be
i wanted to be in the gay area of town
there’s always a language to speak there…
so i figured the way
and started walking up the big road…
Consdãçao, i believe
i don’t know how to discribe…
the dirty traffic air
the un-even sidewalks
the rolling ground
strange buildings…
and little snack-shops
i stopped and bought what i later came to know as a “coxinha” or “little thigh”
which is a deep fried potato dumpling filled with spicy chicken
it was amazing!
i was so surprised i loved it so much
and love that they sell these everywhere
i haven’t had a real meal since i’ve been here
just little bites in many differnt places…
anyway
walking up that road
i saw a large grove of beautiful trees
so i turned an followed the solid wall that kept me from them
on the far side
i found the entrance: it was the city cemetary
old and jam-packed
i was totally exhausted
sweating
and had just got something in my left eye
so i walked in and sat down on one of the plots:
there was no ground here
tiny alleys between huge ornate momorials
large sculptures
beautiful trees
i walked in there for perhaps an hour
and on my way out a man stopped and started talking to me
i didn’t understand, of course
and he didn’t understand english,
but, like many of the people here, that didn’t stop him from talking to me
he explained that people came in vandalized the graves a lot
ripped off the plaques and stole the marble facing
!!!!
of course i’d never do anything like that
he shook my hand
and i was on my way.
i figured i’d go to the gay area of town
see if i met anyone intersting on the street
then call some of my internet contacts to see if i could find a place to stay that night
but on my walk i found an old apartment/hotel called the “Albany”
there were a bunch of old men sitting in the small lobby
all chatting
i hesitated a second in front of the window, to see if i could see the prices…
looked like it said
“35 reais a night”
which was almost half as much as the cheapest i’d seen
and the man at the desk walked out and looked at me
so i went in.
he didn’t speak any english
so went to get a friend, Eduardo
Eduardo was very talkative
he’d been in New Jersey before..
anyway
i decided to stay the night
and there were two prices
so i asked him about that
he said he’d give me a discount
i got 3 nights for 80reais
which is about 40 dollars
(grin)
perfect.
the shower drips
and if you reach up to touch the metal that the nozzle comes out of
it will shock you
as they heat the water in the head of the shower here
with wires sticking out, electrical tape splicing…
hmmm
and no toilet paper
but no worry, i went out into the city
found the hustler park
and watched the turtles
tatarunga!
and the men cruising
it was very intense
but i didn’t understand how it worked
so i went to call a kid i’d met on line who was brazilian, but had lived in SF for five years…
he said “what are you doing in that park! it’s very dangerous!, i’ll come meet you right away”
so i was waiting for him and some guy gave me the look
i followed him a bit
he was very passionate
i could feel the energy between us buzzing
too bad i couldn’t understand anything he said
i think he was trying to get me to come home with him
and i had just called adriano..
i so gave it a miss
instead, took off my shoes and introduced myself to one of the trees here
i don’t know it’s name
but it has things that look like roots that hang down from all over it
strong
i could climb up it
and sinewy skin
like a thousand muscles climbing up it
amazing
and it felt so good
“hello tree, introduce me to your land”
‘get out of the city’
“yes yes yes”
i found Adriano
and he was a big beautiful cute boy of 32
http://www.bearwww.com/koorax
very sweet
he introduced me to the bears here
little did i know
they have their own bar, and botique and knick-knack shop
(laughs)
tattoos and piercings too
little did i know
but happy to see
i told i was tired, but wired, as his friend had bought me an espresso
so i thought i’d go back to his house and start my on-line journal
“well, of course of course!”
we walked back, beautiful
the city over the city
deep below the cars rumbled
tall apartments buildings heaving up around us, surround us
this city is very easy to walk around, cept for the occasional un-eaven paving..
it seems small
but huge too.
of course i got no journal writing done that night
and would have loved to have slept with him
but knew i needed a good night’s sleep
and had payed for the room after all..
we said we’d meet in the morning…
but i slept 14 hours!
and will still very tired
i thought it was the morning
so i lazed about…
yoga
shower
nibbling
then headed down to call Adriano
and glanced at the clock as i was leaving the building
4:30?
ugh…
he wasn’t around
so i went to the sauna his friend had given me free passes to…
the subways are very deep here
deep and fast and filled with people
and i didn’t understand at all how the sauna worked
it was many “straight” men
and no private space
and i burned myself on the hot water the first shower i took
i’d not seen a double faucet since i got here
so i didn’t think about it and just turned it on…
but there was lots of great energy going around there
mostly the men all talking
in the actual dry sauna
there was a man giving scrub/bath/massages
and the others would all sit around and talk
very loudly and fast
singing songs a bit
and going on about things i didn’t understand
i met a nice young boy there, though
and when it came to us playing around
he just took my hand and put it over his heart
to feel the pounding
and the love
“listen to your heart, be in your heart, heal yourself through your heart”
i’ve been feeling kinda ill since i got here
but flying always does that to me.
he took me back to the centre of the city
warning me of all the dangers
o
the dangers!
and binladden won’t bomb the US next time
he’ll poison the water
and everyone will die!
oh the paranoia!
and in the bar he took me to
there was a man with a very big face
have you seen the film “Brazil” by terry gilliam?
there’s a mask that the interrigator wears in the final sceens… it was frightening , this guy’s face looked like that…
but i’ve not really been into bars lately
i drank some beer
(ugh, sweet)
and talked with some people
in portugese
which is lots of facial expressions and gruntings and bad spanish on my part
hand signals too
i went home and slept again
with plans for tomorrow
i woke this morning from a dream:
i’d been travelling with some man
we went to Hawaii together
upon arriving
he checked his messages
and found he must be in LA immediately!
“so we must get on the next plane back”
‘but wait, i have to at least get in the ocean!’
—travelling extreme
and next
i was in the back seat of this car with two girls driving
i think they were dykes
and was this still in hawaii?
the driver was an activist
and said she had no connection to god
i told her she really needed to work on a relationship with the infinite… know eternity intimately
then a cop started flashing
and she told me to play with my computer
“you’ve been mouthing off so much”
but i didn’t
i just connected with eternity
and dissapeared
i woke at dawn
and lay in bed becomming one with nothing
then everything
went down stairs for breakfast
there was none
started walking
and came here
it’s taken me forever to write this…
now i’m off to meet people
and eat some fruit
…

So, Because this is my first post
i will do a slight introduction (seeing as i didn’t put one in my Bio yet)
i’ve been travelling for about 8 years at this point.
i grew up in rural indiana, about 30 miles north of indianapolis, 6 miles outside of a small town called Zionsville
surrounded by cornfields on all sides but the left… a row of houses, then more cornfields…
moved into a larger, farther house when i was 10
and left indiana when i was 17
lived in the UK for a year (newcastle-upon-tyne)
and then returned to the USA to start exploring
… NYC, tucson, arizona, portland oregon, and the mountains of california are places i’ve spent long amounts of time
but since i left home at 17 i’ve not been in any one place more than 8 months
and in the last three years, more than three months
(other places in the usa: little rock arkansas, denver colorado, salem oregon, seattle, san francisco…)
though at this point i’ve been in almost all the states…
outside of the USA
i’ve been in south africa, china, mongolia, many places in western europe
and i’m in brazil now, as i write this.
this is my way of life
it’s how i understand
it’s how i teach and learn
it’s how i work
what i do for myself and the world.
we all have our ways of healing and our ways of running
and they are always built into our everyday lives.
i do my best to be as honest and loving as i can
strive for integrity and compassion
and to bring that to those i meet
maybe i’ll change this later
but just wanted to get a little bit of myself out there to start this…
i’ll be telling tales as they happen
but also relating what happened in the past
enjoy
…dominic

Do you know BUTT magazine?
go see:
http://www.buttmagazine.com/
a friend of mine introduced me to it back in 2002 when i was in Amsterdam
the guys who make it also make a really great literary/art magazine called
RE-
which is one of the only mags i’ve enjoyed reading cover to cover
but i include BUTT in there too
it’s a fag rag with big fag sponsoring done to look like a Zine
that interviews interesting homosexuals
famous or otherwise
the guy who introduced me to it is an actor in Holland
he’s on national TV a lot there… and works in and runs a theater company
http://www.mugmetdegoudentand.nl/
when he was in NYC last year (where he comes to relax from his hectic life in Holland)
he asked me if i’d do an interview for the mag
we had lots of trouble with recording devices
so we eventually decided on just writing out the interview
because i’m a faster typer and native in english
i took the keyboard
and this is what we came up with
… the edited verison of the interview, however, is availiable in BUTT #11
along with a series of Photographs i did for Marcel in the photobooths of Zuerich and Berne
http://www.buttmagazine.com/magazine/interviews/dominic-vine/
:
[Marcel Musters interviewing Dominic Vine]
i met dominic again in tompkins square park in the east village
he was too late again, i was just getting ready to leave
thought i would go see a movie
and then he was there
standing in front of me
saying “Oh it is you… i didn’t think it was you… i was trying to
decide if you were a homeless guy…”
Which was funny
i thought he was a homeless guy when i first met him in amsterdam
he was 23 then
long beard, shaggy hair, American.
his clothes all rumpled, like he’d worn them for a week or two or four,
which he probably had.
not trendy, not casual, not really sloppy, unique, in a way that isn’t
something to comment on.
Still looked the same today, now 25, hair grown much longer through
time, he’d not trimmed in those years
he looks like jesus or a muslim or fashion model from the 70’s
or just a hippie?
i forgot my minidisc for the interview so i asked him not to say too
much so we could do the interview the next day
he followed my idea of going to watch a movie, so we sprinted down town
to the Angelika to see Gus Van Sant’s newest movie: Elephant.
we were a little late as well..
and after twenty minutes the movie was finished..
the lady cleaning the auditorium asked if we had a ticket for the next
showing
she was confused
we were confused
: it was showing in two auditoriums, neither of them were numbered
so it was just happenstance
; we watched Elephant for the next two and half hours.
catching odd segments of it
until the next showing started
so we could watch it all the way through
laughing together
at the other people
who walked in the middle, confused about the movie having started
already, or ending much too soon.
our scattered way of seeing the movie
worked well with Gus’s style of editing
following charecters through time, overlapping places and actions
until it all culminated… in a very pedestrian way
dominic commented, during one of our watchings of a part of the film,
about how he’d known all these people, had, in fact, been all of these
people,
from the buhlemic pretty high school girls (his wearing of blouses and
lipstick in a small suburban midwester town) to the characters of the
killer, who were mostly bored and angry with everything
more out of something to do, in all that boredom, than out of political
or philosophical reason for genocide…
but here, in new york city
8 years and 2000 miles from Zionsville, the small town dominic comes
from in Indiana
is a very different place
with many different feelings and understanding as to why we do things
so i asked him: how did he get here?
“your bathroom smells like cum”
he says
when he arrives for the interview this morning
at the borrowed apartment i have on the upper west side
over a half hour late
this is my first interview as an interviewer
and dominic is also someone i know
at least a little
so i didn’t really know where to start
what to ask him, as if i didn’t know anything about him
(or is that imporant? i don’t know)
dominic is always being interviewed by everyone he meets
the simple question
“where are you from?”
launches him into a half hour story
he has lots of stories
and he likes to tell them.
we looked through four different issues of Butt
trying to form, what we thought, would make a good interview
he said
“Everyone they interview in the magazine is beautiful or fabulous or
famous for doing SOMETHING… i don’t really do anything, so.. i’m
curious: why do you want to interview me for Butt?”
well, they asked me… because i’ve told people about you and they want
to know more
so i was going to use my minidisc, but didn’t bring the cord to plug it
in
and he offered his recorder: a little 20GB MP3 recorder that also makes
movies (yes, he’s filmed his own porn)
pictures, and sound files
he said it would be easy for him to burn it to a CD for me to listen to
when i returned to europe
because his Real Father (who he hadn’t seen for three years) had just
given him a new G4 PowerBook a month ago
dominic has been travelling the world for eight years
which doesn’t allow him to carry around lots of stuff like this
he proceedes to tell me his child-hood history in detail
all of which, is lost: as the recorder doesn’t work.
but he makes it clear: things are changing
we sat down at the computer to type the interview out
and i quickly surrendered the keyboard to him
quick with his fingers, and english as a first language anyway
he’s good at typing in the first person for people that he’s not
he says many of his friend’s aren’t good typists…
what, with them being from the generation before commuters were
commonplace…
i want to ask him something now:
MM:
so, i don’t know you very well, but i know that you are travelling a
lot and meeting a lot of people, doing all kinds of things
involved in art things, giving massage (very good ones, i’ve
experienced, it’s how we met), and having a lot of sex, especially with
men twice your age, and twice your size.
that’s so interesting to me, and obviously to many of your friends (his
film-maker friend, Famous Joe (AKA: Eli), recently made a music video
featuring dominic’s footage of him getting fucked by a big bear,
displayed in a room full of people on a cinema screen a the Brooklyn
Acadamy of Music… because he was trying to understand that dominic
LIKED having sex with men like this)
so, dominic, tell me about this…
D:
well, i first had sex when i was 12 with my best friend at the time,
same age, same type of body… thin. young. big dicked, came eight to
twelve times a night, but mostly just handjobs.. a year later i learned
about blowjobs from a 26 year old guy who gave me marijuana for the
first time during the night job i was working at backing up computer
systems: he sucked me off in my dad’s office and i gagged on his cock
in the file room down stairs… all very interesting…
but i really got turned on to men when i was a wrestler in my first
year of high school, a year after that, i was 14, he was 31
he was a new teacher in our school system, a born again baptist
who worked out in the weight room while we practised, and then would
wrestle with some of the big guys after training… just for fun
but i thought he was hot… and more so, i wanted to be a writer and
knew that all writers have really good scandals to write about when
they get older:
it didn’t take me too long to get him on the mat with me
MM:
so you seduced him?
D:
yeah, totally, he was like duck in the water.
and it didn’t take him too long to shove his chest into my face,
insisting i bite on his nipples
i mean, i was about 125 pounds.. and he about 160
he was huge, two inches shorter than me, all muscle, lots of body hair
insisted we had our shirts off
and sweaty already from all the weights and training
we’d spend another hour together after everybody left…
generally until he’d cum, just from pinning me down (yeah, we both
liked the struggling)
hmmm, what was it? about six months later, i’d convinced him to wrestle
me naked, “like the greeks”, he’d come up behind me in the gym
locker-room’s showers and took me to the ground…
in all those year of … “wrestling” with him
i only came once.
i only sucked his dick once.
he never admitted it was sex.
he never admitted he was gay.
but when the whole thing was over…
i realized i had loved him.
stupid me.
MM:
So, are you telling me that this first older man you had sex with has
kept you on older men since?
D:
Yeah, it had a lot to do with my dad
MM:
but why your dad?
D:
my dad never showed that he loved me.
he’d buy me things… but couldn’t like… Hug me or anything.
MM:
you think your sexual preference came out of frustration?
D:
hmm, yeah.
i wanted my dad to love me, i guess he did, but i never felt it
i was always pretending this guy was my dad
it was really intense, him slamming me down on the ground and holding
me in place
kinda brutal and violent
but it really hammered it into me
i needed something intense to get my emotions going
at this age i hadn’t been actually feeling anything for so long…
sex for me had nothing at all to do with … Sex.
it was all about getting love from someone
and knowing what it felt like to be loved… and to be able to love
someone
i have to do it through my body.
i loved my mother as a child by giving her massages
and when i first came to NYC, when i was 19, first lived with a man for
a few months
fucked him for hours everyday
i would sometimes persuade him to lay back and just let me massage him
four hours or so…
it was just to feel love
to feel the world was a good place to be in
MM:
this feels like you want to tell me the whole story,
your whole story
D:
yeah, but i’m not doing that now, it would take a life time
let me catch you up to date.
i’ve been travelling now for eight years
spent a year running around europe
about six years running around the USA
and two months each in South Africa and Mongolia (china on either side)
experiencing life through various other sport, but mostly sex
and i’ve realized over the last year that the only type of sex i
haven’t really done
is monogamy.
i mean, after i worked in the sauna in portland oregon
i learned it’s fine to fuck three guys a day
so long as you love them
so i’ve been loving a million people a year
but never one, for a long period of time
it doesn’t sound practical at all, but it sounds like such an
adventure…
MM:
so you are accustommed to having sex with different people almost every
day
and you’re going to now go try and get married or something?
D:
well, yeah
i’m handing in my wandering boots for a while
giving my van to Eli
and moving to the mountains north of San Francisco to live with a
friend of mine there at a franciscan hermitage
He grew up here in NYC and helped get the pride parades going, the
whole gay lib movement
he’s a total slut
i don’t really imagine that we’ll be.. Monogamous
MM:
and you met him at one of the gatherings you go to?
D:
kind of, yeah
i was living at commune/massage school in the mountains of california
and was tired of being the only faggot around
so, once again, got on-line to meet people in the area
he lived about three hours away… so not too far
and very close to the place where the Billy Club meets
MM:
Billy Club?
D:
yeah, it’s like Radical Faeries, but with your dad, my friend Kwai
always says
MM:
Radical Faeries?
D:
yeah, apart from Bears
the faeries and the billies are the gay groups i really enjoy most
the faeries started in the 70’s by this guy named Harry Hay
who had started a secret society for gay men in the 50’s, i think…
in the 70’s .. people were comming out
so he started the faeries, asking the radical question
“we know we like to fuck men, but what else does it mean to be gay?”
the first gathering was meant to examine all this.. but it turned into
an orgy.. and they talked about how it made them feel…
it’s progressed since then…
there are gatherings in europe now and about five sanctuaries in the
USA where faries live and then hundreds of men from around the area
will come multiple times a year to gather there
there are work=shops, people teaching eachother what they know… dying
clothes, healing work, herbs, techniques for blowjobs, whatever
and talent shows…
some of them take it really spiritually, others more playfully
there are always drag queens.. but not the same as you see in a city
but there are also actors and writers and musicians.
nomad travellers, in all sorts of costumes or just walking around
naked…
MM:
yeah, and you like to get naked
D:
yeah, i am naked as often as i can
i’d love to live in a city
but for i just don’t feel comfortable if i don’t get to walk barefoot
and go naked from time to time..
i love doing that at these gatherings…
where i can be really open, do whatever i want
and people just love seeing me do it
as i love seeing them do it
it’s like an immaginary summer camp for… everyone.
the one in Tennessee has lots of girls at it too… that was cool..
MM:
why?
D:
well, i still can’t say i’m Bi or anything
i’m really only attracted to a certain type of man
but i think it’s really important to have women in my life
i don’t understand them… and it’s thrilling.
MM:
but the billies?
D:
oh, they started in the 80’s as an AIDS prevention thing
the Board of Health in San Francisco got together a list of about 60
gay men who lived in the country north of SF and asked these two guys
to get them all together and tell them about this horrible plague
sweeping through the land
these two guys called eachother “billy” as pet names, they were rough
country folk, but queens too.. it’s cool. so when they sent out the
invitations to all these country gay men
they used the return address for their business: “Billy’s flower shop”
and the name stuck.
similarily, when the gathering actually happened, all these guys who
thought they were the only faggot in the forest were so happy that it
turned into a big orgy
and then it morphed into more of a … community
the massage school i was living at at the time was the place the
Billy’s gather for the new year’s…
their gatherings are more tame than the faeries
more about guys just being together…
but there are certainly drag queens there too…
it’s really amazing, all the creative people…
MM:
ok, Tell me about “bears” and “chubs” and “cubs” and…
i just found out a few years ago (from you) about gay sub culture..
it sounded so interesting to me that i visited all these websites you
pointed me to
to see a completely different world
the internet is such a VAST place
D:
yeah, i grew up surrounded by corn fields
i started meeting people through the computer when was about 13
didn’t really have sex with them til i was 15, though, after i’d
stopped wrestling with my chorus teacher
but it really helped open the world for me
when i returned from my year abroad in England at 18
i actually got on what we now know as the “Internet”
and found out about “bears”
.. that was 1996
and i told you that i really liked this older guy, wall of muscle and
fur
but these guys on line were telling me that bears were Fat.
and i didn’t like fat.
my whole family was fat
and at that age i hated fat people
i mean, the whole midwest of america is populated by fat people
MM:
but now you like fat people
america is a paradise for you, right?
what changed that?
D:
when i moved out to tucson Arizona
i started going to bars
i was 19, but people have always thought i was in my 30’s
and the Bears were all really cuddly
touching eachother
very friendly
simple
not just that
i actually found i liked the sex with them better
i used to tell them, when they asked,
coz, you know, why would a young thin boy like me be chasing them
around?
that sex with them was so nice because of how they got their pleasure
obviously they liked pleasing their bodies
that’s why they were fat!
from feeding themselves with all that succulent food
and all that hair
like little anntenna to feel more
that big belly: Testiment to their pleasure
and they were always trying to act so butch
but i would tell them
“the archetype of the woman is soft and round
the native american mother of the universe is the bear
you are butch… but you’re also a good mamma”
they were mother and father all wrapt up in one.
and i began to understand that these guys just didn’t have the same
kind of attitude
because they were just happy that they could have sex
be loving and playful
they didn’t need to feel better by bitching other people down
that’s not the case anymore, of course…
Bears are just another fashion
and if i go to a big city i often get people telling me i’m not a
bear..
Last year in Paris i wasn’t even allowed into “The Bear’s Den” because
the asshole owner said i was a twink.
MM: what’s a twink?
D: in america we have lots of fake things
one of the staple fake things are “Twinkies”
they’re yellow cakes shaped like long tubes filled with white cream.
and everything about them is fake: you could leave them on a shelf for
100 years and they’d still taste the same.
we use it as a slang term in america to refer to pretty boys…
blond boys… that, you know, are all fake
go to the gym… steriods, drugs, fashion names, jobs they hate, always
putting up a front for people to be impressed by
the kind that have terrible mid-life cirses…
but i mean, Fuck, i’ve got a beard bigger than anyone in that bar
and my hair was well past my ears last year when this happend
he was just upset because i wasn’t fat
or that i was wearing a nice red suede vest with a blue work-man’s
jacket i’d picked up off the street in amsterdam..
army pants and boots
not following the bear fashion code
MM:
i want to know what a bear is
i hear so many people say so many different things..
and theres’s a “cub” and a “chubb” and an “otter”
D:
yeah, i just say i’m a “satyr” because i’m really not into the
name-game.
but a bear, in america, is generally a big guy
usually furry
usually with a beard
what i experienced in holland was different
most of the bears there were just thin guys with beards
which, in america, we call “Otters”
and they had a seperate club, the Dikke Maatjes, for the big guys.
it’s different all over.
in europe all the bears gather in Cologne in the winter for Bear Pride
and you get guys from all over
generally big and hairy and bearded
when you get into things like “otters” and “wolves”
that’s different
and generally “cubs” are a bit confusing
coz a guy who’s 40 might call him self a “cub” just coz he likes daddy
-bears
but generally the term refers to younger chubby guys, bearded or not
and then you got “chasers” or “trappers” or “hunters”
which refers to …
thin guys?
normal guys?
what do you say?
guys who aren’t bears
whatever that is
who like bears…
MM:
and daddy-bears are older bears?
D:
mmm, kinda
they could be real dads… with actual sons
or just older gay men who have grey hair
or big older bears who like playing dad roles…
MM:
so what would you call me?
D:
see. i don’t do that.
i would call you Marcel.
MM:
yeah, but what am i if i go to a bear bar?
D:
well, you could be a bear, sure.
you’ve got a belly, broad shoulders… and a bit of scruff.
MM:
but i’m not hairy
D:
no, but they don’t know that coz you’ve got a shirt on
in the cities, “bear” has become another fashion, like i said
and it doesn’t relate to farmers or mechanics anymore
most of them are computer programers and accountants in cities
just acting like “butch men”
you’re an actor, so you don’t need to…
MM:
ok, enough about that…
i still don’t understand it
D:
i always say
it’s your job to do the understanding
no one else can do it for you
—
i have to slip my philosophies in there
MM:
we can make a whole book like this
D:
well, that’s one of the things i hope to be doing in the new year
i’m going to stop traveling for a while to stay with my friend Leo in
the mountains
turn his Hermitage into a Bed and Breakfast type thing
and between entertaining and hosting travellers and tourists
write a book about my experiences with all the men i’ve met
with myself
and with him, specifically
MM:
ok
tell me some highlights
D:
mmmm,
MM:
are you going to use photos in it as well?
D:
yeah
well, you know i love photos
i’ve not had a camera for years
that’s why i was taking all those photo booth pictures last year
which i gave you because you wanted to do something with them
i started mostly just have them, you never know when you can use good
images
and i love photobooths because they’re like a mirror
it just doesn’t happen real time
and when you asked to make a photobooth project for you
i loved it:
it gave me a good excuse to be really narcissistic
and play with how i presented my self
with the off-hand chance that the images might be used for something
other than me just playing with myself.
MM:
i like them very much
and i hope i can use as many as possible in this magazine
D:
yeah, the photo booths were some of my favourite things in
switzerland…
apart from the farmers…
MM:
what’s your most desireable man for sex..
D:
well, i met a guy when i was 19, living in arizona
he’s a private airplane pilot
and would often spend a night or two in Phoenix with him between his
assignments
i would go up and drink with him, smoke pot and sometimes eat mushrooms
we’d have great sex
and for years afterwards i used him in most of my masturbational
fantasies
he has really big hands… he was an aviation mechanic in the US
airforce..
he’s got a really big body.. taller than me, strong arms and legs,
muscular but big belly
really thick fur, and long
thick full beard
my god, just now, thinking about him, i swoon
feeling myself falling on my back on the bed, him between my legs
something like that
the game i used to play with my travelling was i would keep travelling
until i met a man that stopped me
but, like this guy, most of them were already married… to a man or
woman:
it was never the right time, i always had to keep moving.
so over the years i’ve refined a lot of what i Want from a man
and have come up to a crux:
that the men i’m attracted to sexually are limited in satiating other
parts in my life
like, these big bear daddies that i just melt in front of
i can’t go on hikes with them very often
they’re too old
their legs hurt, their backs hurt
they’re tired
and i can’t talk to them about art and philosohpy and pop music and
cinema very often
what the fuck do they care?
they’re past all that shit
so i need to have the younger sort in my life
and with these older guys
i just love them. period.
with the younger ones
they have to be beautiful
they have to live up to higher credentials
they have to be smart and creative and … Excellent
but i always run into the trouble
when i meet these beautiful young dynamic people
male or female
they want to fuck me
coz i’m hot, and and i’m smart.. i’m beautiful
and i just can’t
i’ve tried
i get naked and lay down with them
and i just don’t get hard
i just kiss them and rub them and ..
i don’t say “sorry” anymore
but they usually give up after a while
it feels retarted.
MM:
that must be frustrating…
D:
yeah, drives me fucking crazy
i don’t know how to change it…
like with eli
i met him back in 97 and he wanted to marry me and have sex with me in
a very domestic setting
monogamy and all that
and i just couldn’t…
we had sex once but…
after all these years of knowing him, though
last year..
MM:
what’s the music you just put on from your computer
D:
oh, that’s a cd eli gave me
i don’t know what the fuck this song is
i don’t know rap
but the last one was Tricky..
MM:
what is that? is that the name of..
D:
Tricky.. he’s the guy who invented trip-hop, kinda
he’s from london, a long time ago. lives in NYC now. i think…
i haven’t listened to him a lot in a while
but loved his first few albums
that song was from his first one
a cover of a Public Enemy song
MM:
well, it’s very strange that you’re not attracted to Eli
he’s the perfect husband, he’s really creative and he’s slim and
mucular and beautiful..
D:
oh, i don’t deny that
he is beautiful
i’ve always thought of him as beautiful
i love his intelligence, his creativity, his emotional …
but i don’t know
i’ve also always put him in the same category i’ve put my female
friends into
does that make any sense?
MM:
yes
and on the other hand it’s very good that a man like you is there for
all those guys who feel like they don’t fit in gay culture at all
D:
yeah,
well i always say that for everyone in the world there is someone who
loves them
and i’m just one of those who loves the bears…
in a certain way i really prefer that
i was totally excited about being gay when i was 14
when i’d never actually met a faggot
only read Wilde and Ginsberg and Whitman
listening to Morrissey all the time
i was convinced that faggots were just better than everyone else on the
planet
not that they just acted like it
i grew up in a very homophobic environment
my dad would tell me stories about beating up faggots when he was a
teenager…
when i first met other gay men
i totally retreated and stopped admitting i was gay
if people asked me
i would say
“oh, i’m not gay.. i like to suck cock though”
and the first people i met from the computer in indiana were all
married men or just strange out-cast guys who had absolutely no style
the sex wasn’t good, don’t get me wrong, but i loved that the guys were
just guys
Men.. i don’t know
they weren’t pretending to be men… they weren’t pretending to be
queens either.
i just liked that there was no pretense on that identity level
they just wanted their bodies to feel good
it didn’t feel like a competition
even now i feel like with the young beautiful ones
i have to earn their approval or something
and it totally turns me off
they can want me
chase me
but i still have to do something to deserve them
and what the fuck is that for?
the friend i am staying with now in Williamsburg is Beautiful
thin, young, big dick, black, he’s a singer
really gorgeous
and i love him
but just… sex?
i can’t
he talks about bears like they’re invalids
i mean, he loves them too.. sexually
but he hates
“they’re fat and insecure.. which is what makes them easy to bed”
and though there is, perhaps, some truth to that
hating our lovers, i feel, is what causes so much trouble in LIFE in
general
it’s the way men treat women in the midwest
and i feel it so often in bars and sex clubs
they dump a load in you
like it’s shit
not the very stuff life is made of
i’m always at odd with what people do and what they say:
if i’m looking outside of me it’s really hard to decide if life is
prescious or like a pest to destroy.
anyway
that’s what sex is about
i’ve learned that it’s about love
i mean, i used to think that was bullshit
i thought the term “making love” was a euphemism for fucking
plain and simple
but in my time in italy last year…
the italians don’t call it anything else… there aren’t any other
words, it’s just “making love”
it gave me the impression
that we’re always making something with sex
be it babies or disease or long term partnership
and if i could be conscious about fucking someone
i wouldn’t want to pump my hatred into them
but love
make love
the world could always use more of it
MM:
you sound like an old-new hippie…
(laughs)
are you a “top” or a “bottom”
that’s also.. those stupid things you see everywhere
i know it’s easy to understand…
D:
yeah
i call myself “Versatile” when i have to click a position on the
internet.
i’m naturally agressive, so tend to fuck more.. if that happens
but these last few years i’ve been trying to get fucked more… just to
learn about what that does.. it’s hard for me… but i want to know.
and… top, bottom…
labels, again.
we always deal with everything by reducing it to bite-size pieces
we look at people and judge them so we know how we should treat them
i was shocked last year in Switzerland how people treated me like i was
a person, when in the USA and in Holland i was often getting people
acting like was a drunk or a bum..
MM:
bum?
D:
street person, homeless…
i like having long hair and wild beard
like i just came down from the mountains
like i’m wild and un-tamed
like i’m saying
“i will not shave.. .i’m only barely wearing clothes that hide my
nakedness, fuck you: deal with it”
i like people knowing that they are wild animals
that’s what i love so much about “bears”
fags who identify with the primal energy of fucking
not… a ken doll.
MM:
but it must be confusing for a lot of people to meet you because they
don’t know…
what you are
how to label you..
you’re always in surroundings where they don’t expect you
like that sex party you were telling me about..
D:
yeah, but i LOVE that
i was walking down a path in indiana with my mother
leather jacket
it was cold
long hair flying
a family was comming towards us on the path
and i could see the mother pulling her children away from me
but as soon as she… got in my aura…
she relaxed, smiled.
i don’t like to scare people
but i’ve taken a bit more joy in it this year
because if they are scared at me
and get close enough to feel who i am
or interact with me in anyway
it blows away their prejudice
it IS confusing
i think the world should be confused a bit more
it thinks it knows things
and … it just doesn’t.
i love being in the crotch of gay culture
the bars
the sex parties
people throwing all their fantasies on me
Jesus.. fairy-tale-prince. taliban. charles manson. rock star. porn
star. john the baptist. druggie. cat stevens. hippie, just like they
used to be. …
one of the greatest things about being like this
is there are so many people who have dreams they don’t live
they just think about them
or do their best to forget them
and when they see me
their dreams all come to life
and they project them on me like a screen
sometimes i live them out for them
and it brings a little bit more light to their heart…
a little bit more hope to their dreams
i learn from it as well
an indian friend warned me about this
i know it’s dangerous
and i’ve been worried.. it is a form of lying to them…
but what can you do?
when i came to europe last year
i’d got back from two months in mongolia
700kms riding horse back around a lake just south of siberia
then back to the USA and the world trade centre being destroyed
fucking crazy
i went to live on Leo’s mountain top while he was in europe for four
months…
i was mostly alone and hanging out with trees and
anyway
i got to europe and was dealing with everyone i met in amsterdam
and kept asking them
“why are you lying”
they all gave me very clever explainations as to how what they were
doing wasn’t lying.
but they were always lying to their lovers about me
or they were lying to me, about their lovers
and i know, from being a young child faggot, that the only way you can
convince someone of a lie
is to convince yourself…
life seems to be about lying
i mean
it’s that bending-not-breaking thing
to work with the lies… without believing them too much
i’ve been trying to do that all this year
i feel like it’s very dangerous to me
the kind of life i live: i’m all i have to rely on, really
and when i start fooling myself… i get totally lost.
i felt like
when i met you last year
all i wanted to do was make the world a better place
i was travelling and meeting people and having wonderful experiences
and specifically doing my best to make everyone i met feel really loved
and i just kept feeling like it was a waste of time
and this year
there’s just been so much bullshit
war and old loves breaking up and people dying
and all the films i’ve seen
that i feel that the world doesn’t want to love
it doesn’t want to be healed
it really likes abusing and destroying itself and
perhaps i should just pitch in and help bring it all down
MM:
yeah, i see both sides of this in you
you have to decide what you want to do
D:
well, the world has made it perfectly clear that there are enough
people destoying it
it really doesn’t need another
the destroyers are completely disposable at this point
but if i keep up the work of healing the world, person by person
help as much as i can
then the world will help me as well
i mean, it’s only through the support of the entire world that i’ve
been able to survive these eight years on the road already
i couldn’t have done it myself
i just get tired from time to time
so i’m going to rest for a while this year
MM:
ok
your fingers must be tired too, from all this typing
and thinking and telling
but it sounds like you know what you have to choose
so have a nice rest
D:
thanks, keep up the good work
MM:
see you next year.
_________________________