The Phantom

I received a copy of 'O Fantasma' from Amazon in the mail last week. It is quite a surreal piece of cinematography. The main character is a loner - listless, restless - a hot young Portuguese garbageman named Sergio who descends into a confused world in between reality and fantasy - triggered by his confusion of who he is and those whom he fixates his carnal desires on. He has a particular affiliation with dogs, and ends up devolving into one himself. In the end, he has destroyed everything of his previous life - his 'girlfriend', the boy he obsesses over, his job. He ends up a destitute sub-human existing in the landfill. And that's where the movie ends.

There was hardly any dialogue, most of the action takes place at night or in dark places, and some scenes are very long and drawn out (which adds to the distress the main character is going through as he loses touch with reality), but the descent is fascinating and disturbing to watch. The opening scene has Sergio dressed in a black latex catsuit fucking a guy that is gagged and cuffed. His random and dirty sexual romps increase in intensity and risk, and by the time he has kidnapped Joao, he is wearing his latex 24/7. The scenes of Joao's abduction and kidnapping are particularly disturbing. I think once Sergio grasped what he had just done, he completely goes over the edge, transforms into a dog-like animal and escapes to the landfill.

Rubber Roots

I think a lot about where my fetishes developed. Fetishes are so weird from a human behaviour aspect for me. Why do we develop an attraction to such strange things? Thus are the complexities of who we are.

I've recently recalled memories back to my early childhood when my gay nerd sensibilities were rampant - playing piano, reading LOTS of books, writing stories and drawing. I loved to draw.

I drew lots of men. A lot of superhero types. Always in skintight suits...

I remember one series of fantasies I wrote into a story that I also illustrated, inspired by some pictures of scuba divers and Hazmat suits I had found in the encyclopedia (yes, I was that nerdy). The story went something like there was some sort of chemical spill and the technicians had to go in to investigate the accident site. Their chemical hazmat suits were made of impermeable thin latex - skintight, bright yellow and had all the accessories attached including the boots, gloves and masks and included s.c.b.a's on the technicians' backs and a chemical analysis lab in a suitcase-sized carry case. The group had to approach this site from quite a few miles away which required going through ponds and mud to get there. This was a very exciting suit that I had drawn and the adventure of wearing it and moving towards a target in that fashion was a great fantasy for me.

That damn scuba diving picture series in the encyclopedia were definitely a start in the fetish, I recall - I looked at it quite often and fantasized about wearing those frogman suits.

Another fantasy which I had actually started writing a rough screenplay about was a space adventure with two Han Solo-type cargo runners who in one scene had to land on a desert planet à la Dune and wear water retention suits, but unlike the Dune ones which were sort of tight and black, the ones in my screenplay were white, skintight (tight tight tight!) latex. Very hot.

Do you remember the made-for-TV movie series 'V'? There was a short-lived book series that came out soon after the movies that I also collected. One book described a micro-thin fullbody sheath that the aliens could wear so they wouldn't get infected from the bacteria the Resistance had introduced into the ecosystem of the Earth. It was complete coverage - the membrane was thin enough that air could move through it, but nothing bigger. When the wearer breathed, the air would seethe through the material. I thought this was very hot! Subsequently, I wrote another fantasy screenplay utilizing this for what I had hoped would be an episode of the 'V' TV series. In this scene, a bunch of these suits are found in an abandoned alien hideaway and are then taken to a lab for investigation. A group of scientists study the suits and even try them on.

I could probably write these ideas into a great rubber fetishist/porn movie today! HA!

Hmmm....I wish I still had those stories somewhere. I went through a guilt phase in my mid-teens, I think due to not understanding who I was and why I had these bizarre sexual attractions. Rubber, condoms, rubber gloves, breathplay, anal play, lycra, pantyhose, speedos, ballet tights -- I truly thought I must be crazy to need to play in all these 'unnatural' ways. The shame of being so different from everyone else I knew was very intense at times. In venting my frustrations, one day I destroyed a whole bunch of my stories, personal drawings and commercial pictures I had collected over the years of beautiful men in skintight clothing, whether from catalogs or magazines. Remember, it was the 80s, so I had a lot of material to work with.

Now that I think of it, those stories may have ended up going through this unfortunate demise.

Today, I think that was a big mistake to destroy all of those things. That collection of stories and pictures was such a big part of my formative years and defined what I am today as a rubberist, fetishist, gay man, and sexual being.

I'd like to see those pictures again for memories' sake, but alas......

I am much better now! ;-)

I truly appreciate being a person that has the opportunity to explore my sexuality and fetishism as far as I can, and I want to continue. I know I am part of a large albeit exclusive club of rubberists and lycra fetishists, and I'm pretty excited to see where things are going! I'd like to take advantage of this special opportunity to the fullest. I think it's my life's calling to explore my rubberism, if there is such a thing...we'll see where it goes.

Speedophobia

Mark Simpson undresses the tortured relationship between American men and their swimsuits. Out Magazine, February 2007

If the stern, killjoy rubric of the warning sign ("Prohibited: In the City of Cape May the wearing of skin tight form fitting or bikini type apparel or bathing suits by males over 12 yrs. age"), erected in the 1960s by the good people of Cape May, NJ, sounds like a way to rain on a gay beach party, that's because it was.

Cape May, a resort town a few hours south of New Your City by car, had become a popular gay haunt by the 1950s, nicknamed "Cape Gay" by the cognoscenti. According to a 1969 article in Philadelphia magazine, "their public displays of affection, particularly among men wearing women's bathing suits on the main beach...turned off the townsfolk." The city council, eager to protect its flock from glimpsing the terrifying outline of adult male genitalia, was moved to pass a law forbidding bikini bathing suits on males over age 12 - a "phalliban", if you will.

Now, of course, such a sign is inconceivable. Or rather - unnecessary. After all, everyone knows that male bikinis, or to give them their trade name-turned-generic moniker, "Speedos", are unofficially banned from all main beaches in the United States, whatever your age.

You may think them practical and sexy and iconic. You may consider them the single most perfect and pithy item of clothing ever designed for the male body. You may consider them the only thing to wear on the beach. You may even consider yourself slightly overdressed in them. But if you do, it's probably because you're gay. Or foreign. Speedos, otherwise known as 'banana hammocks', 'marble bags', 'noodle benders', and 'budgie smugglers', are apparently as un-American as Borat's body thong.

Speedos on a nongay beach are the surest way to earh yourself angry stares, abuse, and plenty of room for your beach towel. As a result, Speedos have in the United States become a badge of gay pride and exclusion - as overt homophobia declines, rampantly overt Speedophobia is bringing US gays and Brazilians together, hudding together at the far end of the beach in their lycra.

Male celebs like David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Daniel Craig may now be nicely filling out their Speedos on their beach holidays - but none of these fellows are American. Speedos and even more revealing male swimsuits are popular in South America, Asia, much of Europe, and especially, of coures, in the land of the pert-butted lifesaver: Australia, the place where the 'Aussie cossie' and much fo the beach lifestyle we know today was born.

The Speedo is more than just "gay" beachwear: It's a symbol of sexual freedom and rediscovery of the body after centuries of clammy Christian morality.

Bathing and swimming are undoubtedly pagan passions. The ancients invented the seaside resort and spent a great deal of gold on, and time in, their blessed public baths, where the men bathed and swam naked. Not because they were indifferent to nakedness, but because they esteemed virility. Every night was wet jockstrap night (without the jockstrap) at the Roman baths, and especially well-endowed bathers were likely to be greeted with a round of applause; during the reign of notorious size queen Emperor Elagabalus, those who hung low at the baths were promoted to high office.

Alas, neither swimming nor bathing nor size-queenery survived the decline of the Roman Empire. Medieval Christianity, with its ghastly suspicion of the body, rendered water - the sensual cleanser of limbs - suspect. As late as the 16th century, bathing was thought to be wicked, unhealthy and, er, filthy. (Even Catholic baptism used only 'holy' water, water that had been blessed, symbolizing the cleansing blood of Christ: sin was the deep-down dirt that Christianity was angry with).

The English were the first to rediscover the lost art of swimming, largely as a result of their exploration of Polynesia in the 18th century where swimming was common amongst the blissfully naked natives. By the 19th century, swimming in rivers, lakes, and the sea was almost as popular in England as it had been in Rome - frequently naked, male and female, sometimes at the same time.

Christian moralists, their influence having resurged in the late 19th century, were naturally incandescent at these displays of wanton happiness. They successfully campaigned for local bylaws banning daylight bathing, or insisting on the use of 'bathing machines' that allowed the bather to enter and depart the water unseen, or requiring "neck-to-knee" bathing costumes (New York State had such a law until as late as 1938). A typical swimming costume comprised a pair of woolen knickers extending to the knees and a sleeveless jersey. Not a good look.

To their eternal credit, it was the Australians who struck the first blow against the 19th-century phalliban. With typical Aussie obstinancy, the men of Manly Beach chose simply to disregard the pissy-prissy laws banning daytime bathing. Faced with this seaside insurrection, local authorities threw in the towel and lifted the ban in 1903. The rest of Australia followed swimsuit. Though precisely what kind of swimsuit was still contested. Many male bathers disregarded the neck-to-knee ordinances, either rolling their one-piece down to the waist, or wearing trunks, frequently improvised. Good Christian folk found this intolerable. There was a strident campaign by decent, upstanding, if slightly pallid, Christians to get male bathers to wear modesty-preserving bathing 'tunics'. Protests by angry crowds of male bathers at Manly and Bondi Beach - wearing ballet skirts and sarongs - put an end to the phalliban.

So it was in Australia, a warm country where most of the population tenderly hug the coastline and pay little attention to busybodies (perhaps because Australia began as a convict colony), that the bodily freedom of the modern beach lifestyle ("surfers rather than serfs!") was invented, anticipating by decades the sexual revolution of the 1960s - giving men's packets and asses freedom of expression. It was this, not Kylie Minogue, that was their greatest contribution to world culture. Australia, a country fond of casually abbreviating English, abbreviated the male bathing 'cossie', and with it Victorian morality.

The institution that did more to export this vision of a sandy, nicely rounded utopia than any other, smuggling millions of 'budgies', was originally called MacRae Knitting Mills after the family who founded it in Australia in 1914. Among the first companies to produce specifically "athletic" designs (i.e, swimming costumes that didn't double as sea anchors), MacRae changed its name to "Speedo" in 1928 after staff member Captain Parsons coined the slogan "Speed on in your Speedos".

In 1955 Speedo introduced nylon into its fabric for competitive swimwear (unwittingly inventing a whole new branch of fetishism). The 1956 Melbourne Olympics provided a sensational debut for the new sheer style of brief briefs when Speedo sponsored the medal-sweeping Australian team. By the time of the 1968 Olympics, and through the '76 Games, almost every gold medalist swimmer wore Speedos. Naturally, men all over the globe wanted to enjoy the sensation for themselves.

Even in the United States. Up until the early 1980s, Speedos were a common sight here, both on the beach and at the pool. Everything was lovely, and snug and nicely outlined. But then something horrifying happened. Sometime in the late '80s men's swimsuits began to grow in length and bulk. Year by year they crept down the thigh toward the knee - and beyond - all the while billowing clownishly downward. Now US men wear, of their own volition, not even the knee-length woolen knickers that the Australian men of Manly heroically protested in the early 20th century, but bloomers, a voluminous form of female attire last seen in the 1850s (and generally regarded as ridiculous back then). In the water, today's Speedophobic males are half-man, half-jellyfish.

Unfittingly enough, the tragic trend began with someone wearing two pairs of shorts at the same time. In the '70s basketball shorts were skimpy (almost like Oz football shorts), but Michael Jordan popularized sexless long shorts in the NBA in the late 1980s. "He wanted to keep wearing his lucky [University of] North Carolina shorts under his Chicago Bulls shorts", explains Australian academic David Coad, author of an upcoming book on sexuality, gender, and sport, "and decided to wear a longer pair to cover the shorter ones." Because Jordan was Jordan, others copied, and thus baggy shorts became fashionable. It seems that this evil trend spread to male swimwear.

There was, I'd venture, another, weightier reason for this swimwear elephantiasis. The late '80s was also when male obesity became a big trend in the United States. Baggy shorts hide baggy buttocks. They also wear higher, and their large profile makes a baggy stomach considerably less obvious than when hanging over the waistband of a Speedo.

Moreover, "board shorts" hide the chicken legs of a car-centered society in which men watch sport (while eating) instead of playing. Is it simply a coincidence that when many young American men saw their bodies losing masculine definition they started wearing ladies' bloomers?

The '80s also saw the rise of the male as appetizing, idealized, media sex object. The bar for male beauty was being set higher and higher as the reality was getting heavier and heavier. The tyranny of "boardies" is an expression of male self-consciousness, self-loathing - and paranoia both of being "checked out" and not measuring up. The '80s saw a steep rise in the American male's awareness of gays - and with it his desire not to be mistaken for one by in any way signalling that he had an ass and a packet. Baddy shorts are a deliberate and cruel affront to homos - but it's nice to know that straight men are thinking about us so much.

Gays are, of course, flamboyant Speedophiles. They are less likely to be overweight. They are more likely to be worked out. Hence their wearing Speedos really rubs people's noses in it - in every sense. Gays are more than happy to advertise the highly versatile, sex-object status of the male body: and a Speedo screams Cock! Balls! Ass! - in any order or combination you fancy.

It's as obvious as a badly smuggled budgie that despite the pagan passion of pop culture and an enthusiastic uptake of the beach lifestyle, the promise of sandy sexual liberation had come slightly adrift stateside. The painfully unequal sexual division of labor on US beaches, where women wear little more than eyeliner and men wear tents - without the pole - is a sorry testament to that.

The phalliban spirit of 1960s Cape May has triumphed.

My new video

At the request of some of the Guyzingear rubbermen, I've made a video on my rooftop shined up in natural light. It's pretty good, I think!

Rough rubberslave training

These videos are so hot! Excellent hardcore rubbersex!

Find more videos like this on guyzingear


Find more videos like this on guyzingear


Find more videos like this on guyzingear

My new purchase...again!

Well, since the Latexa purchase was so successful, I'm emboldened to carry on with my next purchase. I have talked to Bob Merton about this suit before, which I had only seen in pictures, but now he has a video of it.

It is a custom-sized transparent ultrathin fullsuit from Cocoon. He had described it to me in our conversations on Gearfetish, and now that I've seen it in action, I think I'm going to get one. It is so hot!

Second Skin

I absolutely love this picture. I think it's my favorite of myself. How vain is that? It is just so bizarre and perverted and skintight and glossy all over. It makes me look freaking awesome! I'll be so appreciative of having had the opportunity to own this suit and take this picture when I'm old, flabby and decrepit and remembering how young, tight, and fit I used to be!

It looks like I have a second skin on, like I was always supposed to look like this, and I think that exemplifies this fetish for me.

Complete isolation from your surrounding environment. I believe that is the true crux of this fetish for me -- being completely removed from everything around me within a constrictive sheath that moves when I do -- once again, my second skin perhaps?

If I had to analyze this psychologically for all of us that enjoy enclosure fetishes (whether constricting or not -- eg., skintight/wetsuit rubberists vs. apron/cape/hazmat suit lovers), it must have something so do with this complete removal from our environments in a form that is bizarro-world pseudo-human. Lying immobile in a vacbed - if you can reduce the noise of the vacuum and get relaxed rather than stimulated - can be an otherworldly, zen-like experience.

I think there's an intensity to it as well that I appreciate. My 'normal' life is very very busy and my energies are stretched to the limits most of the time (that damn Type A personality once again). When I get a chance for some down-time, if it ends up being a rubber play session it tends to be as intense as my active life, just in a more private, introspective, fully-stimulated way. A few hours in a vacuum-bed can be as stimulating and rejuvenating as time off of work, in my opinion. Sometimes those few hours are all you have to pleasure yourself. I enjoy having all my senses stimulated in rubber as a form of escapism and removal from my normal life. It's a completely fantastic experience for me. Don't get me wrong, I require real down-time occasionally as much as the next guy. That's what getaway vacations and sleep-in Sundays are for.

The bizarre, transforming aspect of rubber clothing and masks adds another dimension to that removal. You end up being transformed into something unrecognizable as yourself anymore. A new identity, or possibly, a lack thereof.

There are many fetishists that completely get kicks from the transformation perspective of the enclosure fetishes, thus such interests as the cyborg fetish on Malebots.com (a growing curiosity of mine), the ballooners, furries and rubberpups and many other flavors tying into such things as breath control, filling orifices, bondage, etc., etc.

The variety of material fetishes such as lycra, PVC, leather and rubber are another consideration in addition to the enclosure fetish. I think I'm so attracted to rubber particularly because of its intrinsic properties -- it's stretchy, shiny, squeaky, smelly and completely airtight. A true barrier from everything around you, whether solid, liquid or gas.

Even the differences between black rubber and transparent rubber are significant to me. I always remember being transfixed by the shininess of condoms and rubber gloves, and how you can see through the material despite it being completely impermeable...especially once things inside get sweaty and wet and you can see the movement of the fluids against the skin. So hot.

Black rubber makes you otherworldly, transparent rubber keeps you looking human but modified, protected. If you are completely covered in black rubber you can't see the world outside your sheath, but with transparent rubber you are not completely sealed off. You can see the outside world but in a detached way. And don't even get me started on polished rubber! ;-)

I still appreciate lycra as a fetish material because I think men with the goods look absolutely stunning in it and it feels so great (plus it is so intertwined with athleticism, jocks, and male dancers), but as I've mentioned before, with the sports I do it has become a lot more utilitarian for me than it was ten years ago.

In the summer I'm literally in lycra everyday in a non-sexual context -- not that the fun has been taken out of it for me -- the colors, styles, and material compositions are as varied as the clothes themselves. It is literally my required uniform and things tend to be rather serious in racing and training situations. The fact that all those muscular men I race with are also in this required uniform is not lost on me, mind you!

My affection for skintight rubber has really intensified over the past few years, maybe because it seems to have become so much more easily available since the advent of the Internet and online fetish stores, there are so many rubber-specific sites and discussion boards than there used to be, and also because I can finally afford it in some volume. I've really grown my experiences and collection of rubber, and I can only hope that that will be able to continue for a long time yet.

Rubber is truly my second nature and my second skin.

Black and White

Here is my first attempt at B/W photo shoots. Let me know what you think.