Dec 30, 2006

Gay Sex in the 70's

V and I rented 'Gay Sex in the 70s' from Blockbuster last night - about the dawning of gay liberation in NYC. It's an amazing movie. It interviews some "survivors" of the period, who describe the freedom of the scene back then, the piers, the trucks, the clubs, the back rooms, the parties, the FREE love as only gay men can give it. When these guys, all in their 50's and 60's now, describe their youth, it's overlaid with a profound melancholy (thanks to AIDS) - and at the same time, a secret joy, like they were reliving a wonderful dream. None of the men interviewed renounced their activities, or "recanted". It was like they were living in a magical moment, and they knew it, and treasured it, even WITH all the suffering that followed.

I came out in 1981 - the dawning of the AIDS crisis. I remember furtively reading the 'Advocate' in the school library, and the first press given to the growing "gay cancer". The shadow of death has always haunted my sex life. My life.

The movie interviewed a few modern young gay men - this stood out:
"I can't even smoke a cigarette in a bar, let alone have sex in a park".

Art: St. Mark's Baths poster by Boris Vallejo. Coincidentally, The Secret Gospel of Mark, yep, St. Mark, allegedly included a story about Jesus having gay sex.

Dec 28, 2006

The Mushroom of God

Last Saturday, I read an erotic story called 'Pollination' by Absman420. Absman's an interesting writer - his stories are certainly erotic, but they are more certainly symbolic and mythic. 'Pollination' details the alien "invasion" of a plant that creates a symbiotic relationship with a human male. The plant is penis shaped, and it "ejaculates" pollen into the faces of men who get close to it. The pollen has the effect of transforming the men into massively muscled and dicked guys, who each take possession of a potted plant, and yet who is possessing whom becomes an interesting question. The plant's goal becomes the men's goal: reproduce the seed. By ejaculating on the ground, the men cause new plants to grow, which then pollinate more men, etc. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' as erotic novel.

This is more or less the basic theme of many Transformation stories - the seed only wants to reproduce, it brings more and more men into the fold, and by submitting to the seed's desire, the men get everything they desire. The seeds give men more than just big bodies and big dicks, they give them sexual pleasure, and other strange powers unknown to humans before them.

My hubby and I went on a mushroom tour through a local woods on Sunday. A fascinating journey into the relationship of fungi and woody plants, given by an expert in the field. Fungi are a type of super-organism that live beneath the soil - they are tiny, interlocked white fibers that spread throughout the forest floor, and they may create the largest single "being" of any kind on earth - by mass. Bigger than a whale or a dinosaur, yet "invisible" to us. The visible mushroom is the fruit and reproductive organ of the fungi, it exists simply to create spores.

The fungi live in the forest and provide a service to the great trees (though I'm not sure what that is) and the fungi get carbohydrates from the trees in return. They each cannot exist without the other. Species of fungi are specific to species of trees, or vice verse. Some fungi are parasites, and others are true symbionts. Some are able to keep "dead" leaves alive, in order to use them all winter long.

John the Revelator was exiled to the island of Patmos, which is rumored to be particularly covered with Fly Algeric - Amanita Muscaria (though I've never been there, so I can't say for sure). Were his Revelations the result of eating the mushroom? Would his visions have less value to us if we knew that they came to him via the same psychedelic mechanism used by Native American shamans?

Fig trees are recurring symbolic elements in the bible; Adam and Eve made their aprons from fig leaves, and there is the parable of the fig tree in Mat 21:19. A fig tree has a bizarre life cycle - it cannot exist without the symbiotic relationship between itself and the wasp. Which came first, the fig or the wasp?

I have to wonder - is man created by God to serve a symbiotic purpose? Is man important to God for a very basic reason? Not just romantic love or feudal fealty, but something really, really basic, like a mushroom and a tree? A wasp and a fig? Will it be a symbiotic relationship?

Is a man the mushroom of God?

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