Summertime Book Picks. Great Fiction for Gay Men Written by Gay Men

The New Gay FictionAfter years of neglect from the mainstream, queer lit undergoes a renaissance
by Edmund WhiteJune 20th, 2006 12:06 PM


At the beginning of the 20th century Rodin said that Americans had just lived through a renaissance and no one in America knew it (he was referring to the advent of painters such as Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Sargent). Something similar could be said about gay fiction right now, which is totally neglected and almost never reviewed by the mainstream press but which has never been more vital. In fact it could be said that gay novels and short stories are among the best being written anywhere now.
Of course there are a few exceptions to the general blackout—the worldwide success of Michael Cunningham's The Hours and the Booker prize–winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty. The action of both of these books, to be sure, takes place outside the gay ghetto and includes many important straight characters; both books belong to what is called "post-gay fiction," a subgenre that David Leavitt may have invented in his first collection of stories, Family Dancing.
The vogue for gay fiction has long since passed after a brief flurry of visibility and celebrity in the late 1970s and early '80s. The market did not respond. Whereas the literature of other minorities (Asian American, African American, Latin American) presents the straight reader with interesting variations on his or her own life by taking up the themes of parenthood, marriage, divorce, adultery, and the intergenerational conflict, the literature of the gay ghetto seems at times utterly alien.
With the collapse of the gay market—and the closing down of gay literary magazines such as Christopher Street and nearly a hundred gay-themed bookstores across the country—gay fiction became invisible, often to the gay community itself. Gay studies as a subject was drying up in the universities (not that gay scholars had ever devoted much energy to contemporary gay creativity). Even the way gay novels are shelved at a bookstore, in a quarantined section labeled "Gay and Lesbian," places a wall around these books that few straight women readers—much less straight men—would have the guts to breach.
Case closed. Except for the inconvenient fact that in the last five or six years gay writers have been turning out some of the most exciting fiction being written today, though it is sold in the small numbers more typical of poetry collections. This spring has seen the publication of an extraordinary novel, John Weir's What I Did Wrong. Weir has written only one other book, The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, which was highly acclaimed in 1989 as a stellar first novel. His new book tells the story of Tom, a middle-aged teacher at a university in Queens, who has lost his lover—a foul-mouthed, impossible, endearing novelist—to AIDS. Tom feeds all his need for love into his charged relationships with his best friend from high school, a drifting straight guy, and with one of his students, an oppressed, apologetic, disenfranchised kid who plays in a rock band and worships Sharon Olds's poetry. This is among other things one of the best books about how ordinary folks live in New York now. His students work at restaurant jobs in Manhasset and blow their salaries at a casino in A.C. They're almost all heterosexuals and Tom studies them as if they were members of another species. "They're outsiders, not pariahs. Their irony is different from mine. The defining crisis for them is their disbelief in other people, while mine is disbelief in myself. Straight guys are conspiracy theorists, wrecked by the knowledge that they can't control the world. Yet I learned early on that I can't control, well, me. I yearn for guys. I am what I want. Straight people aren't asked to justify their yearning. They don't have to boil themselves down to an impulse or an act. Unlike me, they think, 'I am because I want.' "


There are also several recent novels and collections of short stories by younger men that prove the efforts of gay writers to reach out to the world at large. Patrick Ryan's Send Me is about a modest family in the 1970s living near Cape Canaveral in Florida; two of the sons are gay, the older one closeted and the younger one weirdly free of the constraints of the period. This book is full of careful social observation in the manner of Cheever; one of Ryan's stories has been selected for The Best Short Stories of 2005. Actually it's a bit unfair to label it a gay book since so many of the stories are about eccentric if thoroughly heterosexual characters. The first and last chapters in his book, however, are devoted to the younger brother's struggle with AIDS, a theme that lends great depth to a tale of quirky family life. In much of good gay fiction today AIDS plays a role. In Keith McDermott's first novel, Acqua Calda, an older actor with AIDS ventures to Sicily, where he is to participate in an avant-garde theatrical event. During his sojourn he becomes extremely ill but the show must go on and his decision to play his role despite backstage envy and condescension lend him a quiet heroism.
Vestal McIntyre's stories in You Are Not the One are edgy urban tales about young gay men interacting with their straight colleagues at the office or with friends. In one story a young woman decides she needs a gay man in her life (a Will to her Grace, perhaps), but she chooses one who is slippery and ultimately not too friendly. Mack Friedman's Setting the Lawn on Fire is again linked stories that take a young man through a horny, repressed boyhood, up to a summer of canning fish in Alaska and onto a seriocomic career as a hustler. Such a summary does no justice to the elegance and originality of the writing.
Barry McCrea, a young Irish-born Yale professor, has written a rapturous ode to Dublin in his first novel, The First Verse. A gay student at Trinity is manipulated by a strange cult of heterosexuals who use their erotic power over him to induct him into rites and practices of a satanic intensity. More traditional pleasure is provided by Robert J. Hughes's closely woven first novel, Late and Soon, about the art auction business in New York today. It is told from the point of view of a woman whose husband has left her for another man. Now, years later, she becomes friendly with her erstwhile rival, who has in turn been abandoned for a hotter, younger fireman. There are Jamesian delights in the beautiful language and ironies and nuanced psychological observations that Hughes has devised.
I think there is a real phenomenon here, the arrival of a whole new generation of gay writers who've come along to fill the shoes of their predecessors who died too young in the 1980s and '90s. These newcomers are unknown even to most gay men, who are too busy going to the gym and cruising on the Net to read. Whereas being cultured was once the entrance fee for being gay, now the gay community has dumbed down like the rest of the population. But just as the underappreciated American poetry scene is the most vigorous in the world and includes a dozen major figures, everyone from C.K. Williams to John Ashbery, from Louise Glück to Yusef Komunyakaa, in the same way the current gay literary moment is quietly, almost invisibly adding brilliant new names to a canon that is unknown except to the happy few.
Edmund White teaches writing at Princeton and is the author of nearly 20 books, including the recent autobiography My Lives.

Maybe Edmund White is correct in saying that the gay male reader has been dummied down, just like the rest of the reading public to accept fluff. I hope that isn't the case.

I just purchased two gay books that I am beginning to read, The Good Neighbor by Jay Quinn
and Grief by Andrew Holleran. Will let you know my thoughts as I plow through these books.

Happy Shirtless Summer

If you haven't seen it, check out Kelly's blog post challenge and what the Rainbow Flag means.

This post will remain at the top of the page until the end of the month.
Most recent posts will fall right after this one.In honor of Pride Month I made the follow challenge on May 31st.Here is my exact post from that day.
So, I have had a great response to this idea, and I want people to be recognized for taking the challenge. So I am listing all the blogs and sites that I know have posted the above picture. If you see it somewhere not on this list, email me or drop a comment in any of the posts on this blog. I never imagined it would get the response that is has from both gay and straight bloggers, and now I want more. Pride Month is almost half over, and I would like to round out the month with many, many more posts and comments. So I am reissuing the challenge...again pass it along to fellow bloggers, web hosts, online magazines, television stations, etc...get it out there, lets show the world, we are proud of who we are, where we have been and where we are going...Those who have accepted the challenge:1. Southern Expressions, 2. A Spiders Web inThorton Park,3. Strange Shades of Grey, 4.joeydestino, 5. YNAGER'65, 6. The Way I See It..., 7. A Life in the Day, 8. Raging Rainbows, 9. Dewey's Dartboard, 10. Chai and Sympathy, 11. Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun, 12. The Krebs Cycle, 13. Utter Bibble, 14. Life's Colorful Brushstrokes, 15. Hello Waffles, 16. Hypoxic, 17. A Guy's Moleskine Notebook, 18. Orange Maze, 19. It's a Mommeee's Life, 20. JustinFeed, 21. Defining David, 22. The Lewis Show, 23. Rob's Stuff, 24. Dan Turning Forty, 25. Kevin's Space, 26. Gregor's Journal, 27. It's about what we say, 28. the AirFrames Aerodrom, 29. Sherpa of the Banality, 30. My Secretive Life, 31. Voyeur Nation, 32. You Can't Handle The Truthiness, 33. Gay Men Rule, 34. Robert Prather's blog, 35. Into the frey, 36. I'm the Gingerbread Man, 37. Tiger Wasteland, 38. Iotique Jaz, 39. Noted in an Instant, 40. Anakis Oogoo, 41. VJnet, 42. VJ Flickr Photos, 43. Sorted Lives, 44. The Life of Rian, 45. Quantum Entaglements, 46. Who Threw That Ham at Me?, 47. On a Tangent, 48. Memoirs of a Gay Chia, 49. big red dave, 50. Boys Are Ugly But So Cute, 51. The Untraveled Travel Guy, 52. The Short Bus, 53. My New Life, 54. Who Threw That Ham at Me, 55. It's Raining Men, 56. lemon parade, 57. Joel Stuart Living, 58. Weighing In, Without The Cookies, 59. Closetcase.co.uk, 60. effevescentlife, 61. All hail suburbia!, 62. Not Tell A Lie, 63. The Jimmie Chronicles, 64. Let's say you're right..., 65. A Little Happiness Sent to You, 66. There goes my pen, 67. I Keep Smiling, 68. Davids Blog, 69. These Are Me Thinks, 70. Brettcajun

TV's Interpertation of Gay Life has brought the images of Gay Men and Lesbians into the homes of Mr. and Mrs. America

See if you agree with the following article:

Gay themes brought debate to TV
By Rob Thomas
Visibly taken aback by the election results of the night before, Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" was struggling on Nov. 3, 2004, to figure out the key reason that President Bush won re-election. The reason he came up with was not tax cuts or abortion rights, or even national security.
He came up with "Will & Grace."
Stewart was using the popular and groundbreaking NBC comedy, which just ended its Emmy-winning run last month, as shorthand for gay rights issues. After all, in the 2004 election, 11 states had amendments opposing same-sex marriage on the ballot, including the deciding state of Ohio, and many observers felt these amendments brought cultural conservatives to the polls and tipped the scales in Bush's favor.
When Ron Becker, assistant professor of communications at Miami University of Ohio, saw Stewart mention "Will & Grace," he saw he had been given the opening quotation for his new book "Gay TV and Straight America." A single half-hour TV show summed up the key cultural issue that a presidential election had turned on.

UW alumnus Ron Becker will speak at Borders West on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Becker's book, published in February by Rutgers University Press, looks back on how the television landscape changed in the 1990s to become friendlier to both gay characters and gay issues. He'll read from and talk about the book at 7 p.m. Thursday at Borders West, 3750 University Ave.
The book, based on the dissertation Becker wrote while as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, surveys gay themes on a broad range of shows, everything from the expected programs like "Will & Grace" and "Ellen" to "The Commish" and "Seinfeld."
Becker says his goal was not to document the prevalence of gay characters, but to chronicle gay themes on shows even when there were no gay characters present, and to show how they reflected what was happening in both gay and straight America.
"It's about sexual identity even if there are no gay or lesbian characters," Becker says. "The classic example is the 'Seinfeld' episode where Jerry and George are mistaken for being gay. All through the episode, they're saying 'We're not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.' The whole episode is about the politics of sexual identity."
The "Seinfeld" episode illustrates a recurring theme of straight people having to address their own sexual identity as being separate from that of gay people. It's something that characters on television didn't have to deal with before the 1990s (because there were hardly any gay people on television) but became fodder for both drama and comedy during the decade.
Becker deems these themes "straight panic," and what was happening on television mirrored what straight America was dealing with in the 1990s as gays entered the mainstream.
"One of the ways that heterosexuality and homosexuality are related is that heterosexuality, as 'normal,' is defined and established by its 'abnormal' other," Becker says. "So what happens when gays demand to be normal?"
If it seems as if comedies tended to address gay themes more than dramas in the 1990s, Becker says that the anxiety brought on by "straight panic" and other aspects of sexual politics did make good fodder for comedy writers. But he also notes that situation comedies were just much more prevalent than dramas in the 1990s, and in fact both genres addressed gay themes at similar rates.
"Gay TV" looks at several common ways straight TV characters became involved with gay themes, from the "helpful heterosexual" who might use their position to help a gay friend, to the "homosexual heterosexual" who gets mistaken by others for gay.
Becker points to an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" as a clever twist on this theme, where the detectives investigate the murder of a man outside a gay bar, an apparent hate crime. In fact, even though the man was murdered because the killer thought he was gay, he was straight.
N ot surprisingly, the networks didn't throw open the doors and allow gay characters and themes onto television motivated primarily by altruistic or socially progressive reasons, Becker says.
The reason was simple: money.
In the 1990s, television networks chased relentlessly after a coveted young, big-city demographic with shows like "Friends" and "NYPD Blue." The thinking was that these viewers would be lucrative for potential advertisers, and would be attracted to shows that reflected their hip and tolerant worldview. In fact, in putting gay characters on their shows, the networks were more interested in attracting tolerant straight viewers than gay viewers themselves.
"I argue in the book that the networks became obsessed with 18- to 49-year-olds, and 18- to 34-year-olds especially," Becker says. "They perceived those people as being urban and hip and edgy, and that's why you saw a whole bunch of programs like 'NYPD Blue' pushing boundaries."
In that climate, viewers who might object to seeing such shows on television were largely ignored by the networks, Becker says. That changed in this decade; cultural conservatives got much more organized, and incidents like the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show controversy drew attention to the notion of "decent" vs. "indecent" television.
Today, Becker sees more shows with gay themes that seem to be aimed at gay viewers in a way that they weren't a decade ago.
"'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' was clearly made for an 18-to-49-year-old female audience in mind," Becker says. "But they also made it with a gay audience in mind. Whereas with 'Will & Grace,' they said maybe some gay people will watch. But it was made with that young, urban audience in mind."
Becker says it's always tricky to try to draw connections between what people watch on television and what they think in their daily lives. But, as someone who remembers growing up in the 1980s and seeing hardly any gay characters like himself on television, he thinks the emergence of those characters in the 1990s was a positive force, fostering tolerance and acceptance of gays in the straight community.
"Their more open and accepting attitudes did make it more palatable," he says. "It had, I would argue, a normalizing effect."
E-mail: rthomas@madison.com
Published: June 14, 2006

Big Daddy Day Hugs to all my Blog Buds.

Getting More Than You Bargained For

Here is an article from the Washington Blade about guys meeting guys over the internet using hookup sites such as Manhunt.net, Bear411.com and others, and the unexpected results from such encounters.

Online hookup sites see thefts, assaultsCrimes linked to internet sex on the rise, officials sayBy PHIL LaPADULA June 8, 2:49 PM
The smiling young man in the muscle shirt looked like a good catch.


Ray Wenzel, 35, was arrested April 21 in Philadelphia, accused of robbing gay men whom he met on internet dating sites. According to police, at least 15 to 20 gay men fell victim to Wenzel's scheme.
After corresponding for about six hours on Manhunt.net, Joshua Sacks decided to invite the handsome stranger to his home in Washington, D.C., for some fun on the evening of April 12.
But looks, and internet profiles, can be deceiving. Sacks' dream date turned out to be a nightmare.
"Either he drugged me or I passed out," Sacks said. "I think he may have given me GHB."
When he awoke, Sacks discovered that the stranger, who would later be identified as Ray Wenzel, had left after allegedly stealing his Audi convertible, his passport, credit cards and checks. Later that day, Wenzel allegedly used Sacks' passport to cash a check.
On April 21, Philadelphia police arrested Wenzel, 35, after an alleged crime spree that spanned at least two states and Washington, D.C., in which numerous gay men seeking sexual encounters or dates via the internet were apparently victimized.
Wenzel faces charges of theft, possession of narcotics and stealing a car, according to Beth Skala, public information officer for the Philadelphia Police Department. At the time of his arrest, he was also wanted on several other charges, including identity theft and credit card fraud, in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, Skala said.
Most victims cruising sex sites
Wenzel is one of several suspected cyberspace predators prowling internet dating sites for potential victims. In fact, law enforcement officials say internet rip-off schemes related to sex and romance sites are among the fastest growing segments of the overall online crime problem.
"We've definitely seen an increase in online dating crimes in the past five years," said Sgt. Brett Parson, commander of D.C. Police Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit, who was involved in investigating the Wenzel case.
Parson said gay victims of internet dating crimes are "overwhelmingly men cruising for sex" on sites like Manhunt, as opposed to the more relationship-oriented dating sites.
According to Parson, Wenzel is suspected of victimizing at least 15 to 20 gay men. When Wenzel was arrested, police found driver's licenses and other identification belonging to alleged victims in Florida, Parson said. But it could not be confirmed through Florida authorities that Wenzel was wanted for any crimes in the state at the time of his arrest.
In a November 2005 case, police arrested Brett Chasen Wolfe in the lobby of an apartment building in Washington, D.C. Wolfe is also accused of stealing credit cards from gay men he met on the Manhunt dating site.
The D.C. Police's Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit nabbed Wolfe following a sting operation after an undercover agent contacted him on Manhunt and arranged a meeting.
The alleged 'bear' robber
In August 2005, the Broward County Sheriff's Department in Florida arrested Gregg A. Sullivan after he allegedly robbed a man he met in an online dating site for gay men who identify as "bears" called Bear411.com.
Sullivan is accused of stealing Ken Nyquist's wallet and personal items, including his grandmother's 1905 championship swimming medal, and using his credit card to purchase $112 worth of items at a grocery store.
In the Sullivan case, the computer the suspect used to facilitate his alleged crime also created an electronic trail back to him. After the alleged robbery, Nyquist went back online and contacted other customers of Bear411.com. One of them provided authorities with Sullivan's full name and address.
Sullivan was nabbed after he allegedly pawned Nyquist's belongings, including the 1905 swimming medal. He was originally charged with grand theft and dealing in stolen property. The grand theft charge has been dropped and Sullivan is still awaiting trial on a charge of dealing in stolen property, according to the Broward County State Attorney's Office. He was released from jail after posting bond.
Parson said D.C. police have not detected any coordinated effort or ring of criminals targeting gay men via internet dating sites.
"The cases we have seen have been individuals acting on their own," he said.
Besides the robberies, people have been "raped and rendered unconscious by drugs" after meeting people in online dating sites, Parson said.
Anonymity attracts criminals
Parson said the anonymity of the internet is attractive to both customers and criminals. He said many of those who use online dating and hookup sites may be closeted gay men and may be reluctant to contact police when they fall victim to crime.
"Someone who goes to a gay bar to meet people has some level of comfort with their sexual orientation," Parson said. "There is more chance that they will call the police."
Parson said the criminals are often technologically savvy. They create profiles using fake information and other people's photos from cyber cafes or public libraries, making them difficult to trace.
Stephan Adelson, a spokesperson for Manhunt.net, said the company is limited in how it can respond to incidents because of liability and privacy issues.
"We get phone calls from all types of people making all kinds of claims," Adelson said. "We could be put in a liable position if someone's accusations are not substantiated."
Manhunt, however, does delete the profile of a suspected criminal once the company receives a subpoena from the police, Adelson said.
But deleting a suspect's profile doesn't prevent an alleged perpetrator from creating a new one. In Wenzel's case, for example, his account with the screen name "OnTopofYoutoNite" was deleted March 30, 12 days before he allegedly robbed Sacks. Adelson said the words "known criminal" were noted in Wenzel's file.
But Wenzel created a new profile with the screen name "DCupforFun." That profile was deleted April 15 after Manhunt received information that Wenzel allegedly used someone else's credit card to create the account, Adelson said.
Safe cruising tips
Adelson said Manhunt posts safe cruising tips on its website, including leaving a trail behind if you decide to meet someone. Write down the person's phone number, screen name and where and when you plan to meet the individual, he suggested. Leave that information in a conspicuous place in your home.
Ask for more than one picture of your prospective date, Adelson said. Meet the person in a public place and have a friend know where you're going. It's also a good idea to have a friend call you during the date.
Paul Bressen, spokesperson for the FBI Public Affairs Office, said the agency has seen an "across-the-board increase" in crimes targeting people who visit romance websites or personal ad sites based on reports to the Internet Complaint Center (www.IC3.gov), a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.
In addition to the hookup robberies, a rapidly growing scheme involves a perpetrator gaining the confidence of someone through a romance website and persuading him or her to ship stolen merchandise or cash bogus checks.
Jon van Halsing, co-author of "Cyber Love's Illusions," a book about internet romance scams, said many perpetrators never even meet their victims. They often create phony profiles using photos taken from modeling sites. The scammer, who usually resides in Nigeria or Eastern Europe, persuades the victim to receive and ship stolen merchandise or cash phony money orders.
"They'll target gay, straight or anything in between," Halsing said. "Within a week, they'll be in love and they'll say they want to come over and spend their lives with you."
'Prince Charming'
Once they gain the victim's confidence, they'll ask their target to cash a phony money order or to receive and ship what, unbeknownst to the victim, is stolen merchandise.
"They claim they can't cash an American money order in Nigeria," Halsing said.
The money order is usually not discovered to be a fake until weeks later.
"Cyber Love's Illusions" includes detailed psychological profiles of potential victims of internet romance crimes. Halsing said some victims are actually hard-working, successful people who nevertheless find themselves alone and missing something in their lives despite their business accomplishments.
"We call that the 'Captain America complex,'" Halsing said.
But perhaps the most vulnerable are people who have just been through a breakup or other traumatic event.
"The next thing you know, here comes Prince Charming over the internet," Halsing said.
E-Mail this article

So trust your instincts instead of your cock. The net is a great place to meet guys. So many of you I call my friends and enjoy your comments you post here. Without the net, I would have never gotten to know a great bunch of guys. We all have to be cautious whenever net friendship turns to a face to face meeting. But in this small world we call the internet, we can indeed build on such friendships, over the course of time. And big hairy muscle hugs do feel better in person.

A Very Sad State of Affairs: Bareback Video Rentals and Sales Skyrocket

Before I get on my soapbox, here's the article describing the surging demand by gay men for bareback porn flicks.

Bareback sales booming (Gay)Some video stores, porn producers ignore pleas of AIDS activists
By LOU CHIBBARO JR. Friday, June 02, 2006
Despite strong objections from AIDS activists, the production and sale of adult videos for gay men in which the actors don’t use condoms is expanding at a rapid pace, with more studios and retail distributors jumping on the “bareback” bandwagon.
Some AIDS activists, who expressed concern three years ago when gay bareback videos first reappeared on the scene, say they are even more alarmed over the recent trend by porn studios in using younger models, age 18 to 21, in bareback films.
“The message in that kind of imagery and entertainment should be to reinforce safer sex, and that includes using condoms during sexual activity,” said Ronald Johnson, an official with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, one of the nation’s oldest AIDS advocacy groups based in New York City.
“The imagery is a very powerful one,” Johnson said. “I think this industry needs to recognize the power of that imagery and the responsibility they have.”
Representatives of gay adult film studios and retail distributors, including the increasingly popular online sales outlets for gay adult videos, express mixed views over the bareback phenomenon.
Some refuse to produce or sell bareback videos, saying the industry should hold to the practice it established in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when condoms were required for all depictions of anal intercourse.
Others say that, as businesses, they find it difficult to buck a market demand for bareback videos at a time of great competition in the adult gay entertainment industry. They also say businesses that serve gay people, an historically persecuted group, should not be engaging in a form of censorship by denying customers the right to choose the form of entertainment they like.
“Barebacking has become an issue of, if you can’t fight it, join it,” said Todd Brown, a buyer for Blue Ribbon Entertainment, Inc., which owns the online businesses GayVideoStore.com and BarebackVideoStore.net.
Brown said his company places disclaimers in the descriptions of all bareback videos that warn buyers that the practice of barebacking can lead to HIV transmission.
Industry observers say the creation of online distributors specializing in bareback videos, and the recent formation by studios of divisions specializing in producing bareback films, show growing demand for bareback products.
Doug Lawrence, editor of Gay Video News, a subsidiary of the trade publication Adult Video News, estimates between 10 to 15 percent of the gay adult films being produced are bareback movies.
“All the major companies are safe-sex, condom companies,” he said in describing the larger studios like Titan, Raging Stallion, Falcon, Cult, Hot House and All World.
Brown, the buyer for BarebackVideoStore.net, said the larger gay adult studios, while professing opposition to bareback films, have been capitalizing on the bareback demand by re-releasing their pre-AIDS gay porn flicks, where condoms were never used. The videos are then marketing as “pre-condom” films.
“They are making a big push to re-release their old titles without condoms,” Brown said. “They want to get a piece of this money coming from barebacking.”
A spot survey of gay adult video stores in several major cities shows that nearly all are selling bareback videos.
Capitol Video, which operates three video stores in D.C. that sell both adult and general entertainment videos, includes some bareback titles, according to manager Tim Snyder.
Stores selling adult gay videos in New York, Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston have each reported selling bareback videos during the past few years.

This all means that guys want to have unprotected sex at whatever cost. They live for the moment, whatever the consequences of their actions, they don't want to take any responsibility. Such self hatred. And all this for not wanting to take 15 fuckin seconds to put on a condom.

And it also proves that gay porn has failed to provide steamy hot safer sex. The blame goes all around. The producers and directors don't have their heart or cocks into it. The actors are so noninvolved and stoned out of their minds that they don't force the issue, instead they perform like zombies. No wonder the pre-condom sales are rising. Those guys while dead now for the most part, really knew how to have hot sizzling sex with each other.

It seems as if hot foreplay, hairy muscle sex and sizzling nipple play just doesn't do it for these guys. A very sad commentary.