Gay Porn Saves Lives

April 26, 2016
By Brendan Patrick

‘If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.’ –Junot Diaz

I don’t hurt other men.

When I see another male body I do not see something that must be maimed, brutalized or annihilated. I have no wish to cause him suffering. I have no interest in bruising his flesh or drawing blood from his veins.

Equally, I have no desire to rape women. Nor do I care to engage in any conversation involving the domination and ownership of her body against her will. I do not view her body as property.

For these reasons, there are some in society who still believe that I deserve to be punished. Because within the confines of a rigidly patriarchal system I am the ultimate aberration: I am a man who loves other men, and in such a system this fact, above all else, cannot be stood for.

Growing up, I quickly learned that all reward was to be attained through the dominance and/or destruction of other males. Through competition, through war, through violence. That was what it meant to be a man. This message was reiterated time and time again by society, by the media and unknowingly, by parents who did the best they could with the information that they had. The male body, a vehicle of competition and threat, was there to be quashed and destroyed immediately, or else forced into submission. Any desire to care for another male body, to nurture it, desire it or afford it any pleasure was an inversion, an abomination. And like so many gay boys growing up, I navigated this discourse as best I could, repressing my desires and behaviors, hating who I was. Like so many gay men before me, there were times when I wanted off this planet. Shame, you see, is not a passive experience. It is a toxic poison that courses through the body like an oil spill. And for the longest time, shame was all I knew.

I was hanging out with a good friend recently and “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective”, just happened to be playing in the background. The climactic scene in this light comedy involves the very public sexual and physical assault of a Trans woman surrounded by a large crowd of police officers. She is trapped, held against her will, intimidated and eventually forcibly stripped, all in the name of hilarity of course. The scene culminates in the entire group vomiting upon discovering her still intact male genitalia. This was made in 1994. And this was the only message that LGBT youths had to go on.

As I grew older I began looking for myself in mainstream entertainment. Any reflection, any representation of who I was. But again I learned that who I was had to be hidden, changed radically or else be subject to intense ridicule or violence. After so many years Society had succeeded in relaying its message to me, loud and clear: “There is no such thing as an aspirational, sexually empowered gay man”. And I believed that message. What other choice did I have? This was my reality, the one I had been prescribed.

My first real gay porn experience came in the form of DVDs. Of course I’d been looking at images online for some time, but this was before high speed broadband and obviously, any foray into this experience had to be carried out secretly and with extreme caution. I remember, like it was yesterday, finding him online. I met him about a mile from my home, an older gentleman who lay claim to a large stack of gay porn movies and agreed to give me some, asking for no form of payment other than briefly pressing his crotch up against mine as he handed them over. I remember walking home shaking, clutching the package to my chest even though it was wrapped in a brown paper bag. I swore I could see the looks of disgust and disapproval on people’s faces as I passed by, desperate to get home. Not only did I harbor these desires, now I was beginning to act on them. I was bad. I was other.

Once I locked my bedroom door behind me and pressed play there was no going back. The rush of sensations that flooded my mind and body ensured that there was no longer any denying who I was, although God knows I tried, and with this came the profound and life changing realization: That this, what I was witnessing, could actually happen. My fierce denial lasted just another year or so, but those powerful images just kept drawing me back. Here was a world so different from anything I had ever known. Men, athletic, powerful and sexual, brazenly engaging in acts I had for so long been taught were disgusting. But they were not disgusting. They were not shameful. In fact, they were fucking beautiful. And most importantly, they represented me. Here was my sexuality, my core, the essence of who I was inside being played out in front of me in the most sublime and unapologetic way possible. It was at this turning point that I started to discover the Al Parkers and the Joey Stefanos of this world. This was when I started to discover Falcon, All Worlds, and Titan. This was when I discovered the Robert Mapplethorpes and the Slava Mogutins. Finally, I had my icons. Finally I was starting to discover my point of reference and my history. A discovery without which I might not still be here.

I was born in the 1980’s, at the height of the AIDS crisis. All those images of young gay men, wasting away in hospital beds and covered in lesions are still seared into my subconscious all these years later. This, it seemed, was the outcome of living your authentic self as a gay man. This was what we deserved, or so the media would so subtly have had us believe at the time. And so on some level, even though I was still a small child, this was the future I had more or less resigned myself to. And although I experienced the war from a distance, I did not fight it. By the time I came of age, integrase inhibitors had already been introduced, largely lessening the sting of the era. I cannot express the degree of reverence in which I hold the generation of gay men who came before me, fighting my battles so that I wouldn’t have to. And even through all of this, in the fantasy world of gay porn these men still kissed fearlessly, they still fucked fearlessly. They were not disgusted or repelled by one another. They did not hate each other or themselves. Here, and only here was to be found some sexual reprieve from the nightmare that so many gay men must have been experiencing throughout those dark days.

But along with the human cost of losing so many lives to the syndrome, the AIDS crisis has also left us with a cultural tragedy. After the many strides forward we had taken in the 60s and 70s, moralism, once again managed to weasel its way back into our sexual ideology, and we have still not recovered from this monumental setback. The inability and unwillingness to explore one’s sexual identity became a badge of honor rather than a mark of cowardice. The sex act, a subject of such simultaneous worship and derision was once again an issue of morality. “Gay men are sluts, and sluts get AIDS”. The message was simple yet powerful and anyone could have been forgiven for rolling with the cultural tide. Fear is a powerful and intoxicating phenomenon. Sexuality was once again to be feared, and as gay men, the degenerates, the great disease carriers, our sexuality was to be feared most of all. We are still dealing with the repercussions of these times, even today. Slut shaming and HIV stigma are both still rampant, sexual expressivity is still paired with low intelligence, and one only has to observe the level of contempt with which the introduction of Truvada, a medication which could forever change the face of the epidemic, has been met, to see that many of the old ideas still refuse to loosen their grip.

Yet amidst all of this, as the division between ourselves and the mainstream became ever more cavernous, we were still not completely without a voice. We had our Larry Kramers, and yes, we owe artists such as Madonna a great deal. Long before ‘Born This Way’ she had already adopted the aesthetics and ideals of our culture, forcing them into the spotlight when such a move would have been met with nothing more than absolute and complete derision…..and it was. Let’s not forget that. Still though, it was (and largely still is) only a primarily straight identified female who could subversively adopt our voice and thrust it forward into the mainstream. Our own sexual representatives were still to be found exclusively within the pornographic medium.

When people ask about my ‘Stefano’ Tattoo, inked on my inner bicep, they immediately and understandably assume that he was an ex. It comes as a surprise to many, that I would have a deceased gay porn star’s tattoo forever branded into my flesh. The next question I am most commonly asked: “Is he someone you look up to?” is usually accompanied by an expression of extreme confusion, as if admiring a gay porn star was such a radical concept.

It’s a difficult question. Do I look up to Joey Stefano? I believe that this kid from Philadelphia was brave. Braver perhaps than many of us (myself included) will ever be. I believe that Joey Stefano was an artist, but had absolutely no idea that he was. And although I do not believe that he was self aware, this does not lessen his titanic impact on our culture.

Male sexuality in general (let alone gay male sexuality) has always been, and still is, a subject steeped in taboo. In 2016, gone are the David Bowies and the Freddy Mercurys from our stages. LGBT performers still permeate the mainstream yes, but any worthwhile exposure depends solely upon our willingness to undergo artistic castration. One only has to turn on their television and witness another pretty boy crooning meaninglessly, robbed of all force and essence to understand that our culture is still being deeply controlled and repressed. And any gay role of merit must be played by a straight identified actor who found the job so deeply repulsive that he must be congratulated endlessly for even touching upon the subject. Yes, the last 30 years have taken their toll and we may be crawling back for a very long time.

But of course, the gay hustler archetype is nothing new in the mainstream. The Jimmy Deans, Marlon Brandos and their later manifestations all cashed their checks from the bible belt whilst throwing enough of a homoerotic wink in our direction to stay both commercially and artistically relevant. Rentboy chique has always featured on our cinema screens, albeit reworked and reimagined for mass consumption. But Joey embodied this archetype fearlessly and without disguise. The western masculine ideal has always flirted with the homoerotic, but he did not just subvert or challenge this ideal, he actively INVERTED it. All because he had the absolute audacity to be a bottom, a sexual identity not even accepted by gay male culture at the time, let alone anywhere else, and he indulged his desires publicly, without reticence or apology. Even the magnificent Al Parker still shielded himself within an identity of absolute masculinity: the big dicked top taking his pleasure from whomever he chose. Joey took his own pleasure through an apparently submissive act and in doing so became a major star, forever changing how we viewed ourselves and our sexuality. This identity, the masculine “power bottom”, so revolutionary at the time was a direct mockery of the patriarchal ideal, a complete re-identification of gender and sexual norms and aspirations, and it was this inversion that proved to be the most exciting, the most progressive and indeed, the most dangerous part of his legacy. Here was a Jimmy Dean figure who refused to just shut up, play along, and assimilate. Here was someone who would only be himself, no matter the consequences. Here was someone who was willing to go farther into his own personal truth than most of us would ever dare. And even though it appears his pain eventually consumed him, he died doing just that. For this, I believe we owe him. And I believe that we can all learn from him.

Like any self-respecting gay man, I like to engage in long, profound and personal discussions with my barber. I had been toying for some time with ideas and titles for another essay, but just couldn’t seem to find the muse. I had just started to mention to him how I wanted to write about the relevance and importance of porn in gay culture when he quickly interjected, “Oh Yeah”, he nodded…..”gay porn saved my life!”…..I thought on that for a few moments before responding “You know what…..me too”. And just like that, I had my essay.

Today, everyone with access to a phone camera and an internet connection is a would be porn star, so stripping down onscreen is hardly revolutionary. But let’s not forget those who came before us. Let’s not forget the stigma, the societal abandonment and the suffering that many had to endure just so that we could have some sort of outlet for our fantasies, some sort of reference point for our sexual identities when none other was available. And while much of society will continue to maintain that I operate within perhaps the most disposable and culturally irrelevant industry on the planet, I wonder how many other lives have been saved as a direct result of of this medium. When the rest of the world was telling me to change myself, to be somebody else at all costs, these images were the only thing telling me to hold on, to be who I was and never ever to apologize for it. And that, surely, has got to be worth something.

I found this essay very personal and very reflective of my own experiences in the 80s and 90s. It's an empowerment piece; be proud of your sexual liberation. Despite the moral shaming and disgust many still foist upon proud and out gay men who aren't ashamed of who they love and what they do, there have been many obstacles and setbacks that still drag us back today and still affect the gay youth of today.