A little later, when I was eighteen, I shot a film on the streets of Chicago in which a naïve young gay boy finds himself alone in a body-conscious gay world where no one wants to show him the ropes. One day, out of nowhere, the character gets cruised by a guy on the street. He follows the guy home without exchanging so much as one word, and the guy murders him. The last shot is one of two muscle-queens making out with each other then walking right past the boy’s body, which has been abandoned in a nearby dumpster without anyone even noticing.
“Man” was copied from 16mm onto a ¾-inch videotape, giving it the grainy, several-generations-old look of a snuff film.
I showed it in the student cafe at my first college. The almost exclusively black audience booed at hissed at the men kissing on the screen. They applauded when the boy (played by me) was murdered.
It’s important to say that the audience was black, not to say that blacks as a whole are homophobic, but because the race issue added to the complexity of responding to their homophobia. Quite contrary to the beliefs of, say, some white bible-bashers, the black group was convinced (based on education, mutated by oppression) that homosexuality was a product of the dominant white culture. Homosexuality was, after all, frowned upon by the Christianity which they had come to accept as the source of righteous truth, which they linked to their quest for equality, and any anti-religious message became synonymous for them with an anti-black message, freezing the discussion in an inter-minority limbo where pro-gay equaled anti-black.
In short, I decided, images were too ambiguous. I’d document my life—a micro version of the macro gay experience—with text. I’d start with something really objective and clean like a list. The names of everyone I’d ever slept with, for example.
Beginning was easy enough. The first five to ten entries were pretty firmly frozen in my mind as significant events. But exact dates, number of encounters with the same person and the nature of each sexual activity were impossible to pinpoint. I discovered, nevertheless, that I could note with almost 100% certainty whether or not I’d fucked or had been fucked by each person on the list.
When names became problematic around number ten, I had to set up rules for the list. I decided that anyone who represented more than a few anonymous gropes in the corner must be listed, whether with or without his name. Obviously, any anal partners were mandatory references, as were any partners with whom I’d engaged in oral sex, anyone with whom I experienced orgasm, and anyone who placed his naked body against mine in a sexually significant way (i.e. brushing against guys in the locker room by accident didn’t count).
This left only two problems: the first was memory. Despite my attempts at completion and thoroughness, I feared the occasional omission. Nevertheless, I racked my brains for literally years to avoid any gaps. The second, more critical problem had to do with qualifying my “sex club” adventures, which began around number twenty. During these adventures, I’d often exchanged one or two intense yet fleeting erotic gestures with someone whose name (and/or face) never registered in my consciousness. These erotic “flashes” had the chronological duration of a brush against someone on the metro, yet they were intense, intimate encounters—often loving and passionate.
Having a name for someone did not imply that sex with him was intimate, yet the name alone made him a natural candidate for inclusion in list one. On the other hand, the lack of a name made it difficult to classify an anonymous experience in a more meaningful way, even though completely anonymous group activity sometimes led to the most intensely shared feelings of pleasure.
Not often having access to the names of men encountered at these events, I decided I would start a second list recording the places I’d frequented. The sex club list would include an approximate number of all those with whom I exchanged more than a grope in the dark: an open-mouthed kiss or masturbation, for example. Anything I deemed “too serious” for the anonymity of list two—whether transpiring in a sex club or not—would be transposed to list one, which recognized individual entities out of the masses. Similarly, any fleeting licks in more intimate locations would have to be seen among the club contacts.
This system of classification allowed me to extract the maximum quantity of sexual episodes from the reserves of my brain. The finished charts paint a picture of a consistently and progressively expanding vocabulary of pleasure.
Well, that’s a bit misleading. In fact, the amount of experience had little to do with its quality. There were “busy” periods during which encounters were fast and emotionless, and dry spells during which one encounter left chills for months. Some of the longer single relations were full of exciting, varied sex, while other sexual relationships became immediately routine and boring. Other bursts of random sexual energy resulted in wild satisfying orgies with many eager partners or long gentle sessions with one steady and open lover.
Still, there were many surprising discoveries made in composing the lists, the most immediate of which was that I’d had well under 100 anal partners and that I’d pretty steadily engaged in sexual expression (of whatever quality), even during those moments when I’d felt less satisfied.
Boyfriend Line
| # | Name | Got It | Gave It |
| 1 | Darren | X | X |
| 2 | George (with Warren) | X | X |
| 3 | Warren (with George) | X | X |
| 4 | Jonathan | X | X |
| 5 | Derek | X | X |
| 6 | Bjorn (Paris) | X | |
| 7 | Joaquim (Paris) | X | X |
| 8 | Allan (South Side of Chicago) | X | |
| 9 | Ben (Motorcycle Guy from Berlin) | X | |
| 10 | Greg (MCC) | X | |
| 11 | Kyle (Guy with Limp) | ||
| 12 | Japanese Guy (Sue’s Dorm) | ||
| 13 | Larry (Paradise) | X | |
| 14 | Terry | X | X |
| 15 | Glen | X | X |
| 16 | James (Terry & Glen’s Party) | ||
| 17 | David (Derek’s Ex) | X | X |
| 18 | Don (Drive-in Date) | ||
| 19 | Don (Suburban Punk) | X | X |
| 20 | Redhead Guy (Man’s Country- Lived in Suburbs) | ||
| 21 | Computer Guy (Ram Bookstore) | ||
| 22 | Phil (Man’s Country- New Year’s) | X | X |
| 23 | Painted Guy (New Orleans) | X | |
| 24 | D.C. Bathhouse Guy | X | |
| 25 | Thomas (Austrian) | ||
| 26 | Bob | X | |
| 27 | Uncle Charlie’s Guy (Brooklyn Heights) | ||
| 28 | James | X | X |
| 29 | Anthony (Brooklyn College Gay Group) | ||
| 30 | Frank (Brooklyn Gay Group) | X | X |
| 31 | Tom (Brooklyn Gay Group) | ||
| 32 | Shrink (The Saint) | ||
| 33 | Malcolm (Edinburgh) | X | |
| 34 | Derek (Cardiff) | ||
| 35 | Patrick (Dublin) | ||
| 36 | Karl (The Bar-NY) | X | |
| 37 | Erroll (Pyramid-NY) | ||
| 38 | Dan | X | X |
| 39 | Brad (The Bar) | ||
| 40 | Uptown Guy (J’s) | ||
| 41 | Williamsburg Guy (J’s) | ||
| 42 | Ralph (Pink Panthers) | ||
| 43 | Steve (Copacabana) | ||
| 44 | Pete (Pink Panthers) | ||
| 45 | Gerhard (Bang-London) | ||
| 46 | Shawn (New York Tunnel) | ||
| 47 | Q Nation Guy (LA) | ||
| 48 | Mauro (Rome) | X | |
| 49 | Vito (Rome) | ||
| 50 | Vincent (Amsterdam) | ||
| 51 | Achim (Berlin) | X | |
| 52 | Peter (Bang-London) | ||
| 53 | Philip (Detour-SF) | X | X |
| 54 | Kevin (Blow Buddies) | X | |
| 55 | Thomas | X | X |
| 56 | Jack | X | X |
| 57 | Art (Blow Buddies) | X | X |
| 58 | Brent (Land’s End) | ||
| 59 | Scott (Danish guy) | X | |
| 60 | Siang-tse (Eros) | ||
| 61 | Scott (I Beam Tea Dance) | X | X |
| 62 | Robert (Midnight Sun) | X | |
| 63 | Herb (Dolores Park) | X | |
| 64 | Mike (Church St. Veggie Restaurant) | ||
| 65 | Jordan (Muni) | ||
| 66 | David (1808 Club) | X | |
| 67 | Steve (Corner Café) | X | X |
| 68 | Gerald (Apollo-Berlin) | X | |
| 69 | John (Eros – Queen of Heaven) | X | |
| 70 | Brad (Queen of Heaven) | X | |
| 71 | Dark Hair Guy (Pride Eros) | X | |
| 72 | Sling Guy (Pride Weekend Eros) | X | |
| 73 | Paul | X | X |
| 74 | Jerry (Tuesdays Suck) | X | |
| 75 | François (Exit Jerk-off) | ||
| 76 | Don (Indianapolis) | X | |
| 77 | Daniel (Mandala) |