Number 175 Fall 2018 • $11.95 QUEER MEDIA AND YOUThis issue we’re hoping you will dust off your old photo album or flip through your In- stagram and find us images which reflect who you are and what brings meaning to your life. You can also share a story about a fixed memory, a written image that you’d like to share. A poem as image— think of the early Imagist poets like H.D.—where your poem reflect a visual moment. We’re hoping to use this im- age to reflect our diversity and how varied our community is— so please reach out to everyone you know to show the world a queer community with reflects the rainbow. We especially welcome sharing images and reflections of images which reflect us at various parts of lives—young and old but also windows into unique com- munities or moments and how our community has also reflected movements, actions and deeds which deepen our pride, resil- ience and fierceness. In some ways we’d like to think the issue will be a visual chronology of how the communi- ty has grown, expanded and re- shaped itself while also honoring and valuing our past with pride. So close your eyes and think of the images that most encour- age you and share them with all of us! Please share this widely! Issue 176 / Winter 2018 IMAGES OF OURSELVES Submission Deadline: October 21, 2018 www.rfdmag.org/upload Harry Hay photo-mosaic built out of radical faeries and queer activists by John O’Leary RFD 175 Fall 2018 3 Raddish Fagrag Draghead Vol 45 No 1 #175 Fall 2018 In this issue we asked our readers to reflect upon being queer, how queer media exists or existed and how we are reformulating ourselves and the media around us in shaping queer space to reach out, reflect ourselves, and be a bea- con in some way to our existence. We’re thrilled to reflect a panoply of different approaches to this theme. From founders of gay periodicals, to readers of gay porn, to writers, to people being shaped by the queer media they experience, to readers reflecting upon the landscape of what queer media has been, to shaping new forms of out- reach online. You’ll also find poetry and art work as well as images of gay periodicals in the collections of the authors or from the Queer Archive Project. Please see the blurb about the Queer Archive Project on our ad pages. In the coming issues RFD will have spent nearly a decade here in New England and the collective would like to extend hearty thanks to the brave souls who helped us on that journey—Mountaine Jonas, Sister Soami, Michel Dubois, Bambi Gauthier and Matt Bucy and our many former and current Board members. And much thanks to generous RFD readers who have donated money to help keep this project alive. In the constant flow of media overload with Trump tweets and the harangue of injustices so many people face, it is refreshing to return to our simple task here at RFD, to reflect our readers ideas and visions. Please consider ways of reflecting that vision by sending in your theme ideas for upcoming issues. Oth- erwise we make stuff up! In the warm summer breezes of the Upper Valley we send you blessed greet- ings and a prayer that you enjoy the Queer Media you help sustain by being an RFD reader. Please share RFD widely. You can always direct people to our website—www.rfdmag.org. From the crew who managed gin and tonics (it was a hot summer night and we were at a birthday party) and margaritas (it’s a tradition when we wrap an issue) all in one weekend and proofed this zine! —The RFD Collective Between the Lines4 RFD 175 Fall 2018 RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative life- styles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volun- teers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, P.O. Box 302, Hadley MA 01035-0302. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $9.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive it four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Hadley, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and as- sociated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001. On the Covers Front : “Faces” by Richard Vyse, Back : One cover, courtesy Queer Archive Project Production Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier Art Director: Matt Bucy Visual Contributors Matt Bucy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Richard Vyse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover, 11, 57 Timonanda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Submission Deadlines Winter–October 21, 2018 Spring–January 21, 2019 See inside covers for themes and specifics. For advertising, subscriptions, back issues and other information visit www.rfdmag.org Drawing by Matt Bucy RFD 175 Fall 2018 5 CONTENTS Submitting to Porn .......................Natty Soltesz ..........................4 A Love Letter to the Queer Press ...........Nikita Shepard ........................6 Reflections on a Gay Literary Era ...........Phil Wilkie ............................9 The Cock and the Carpenter ...............e.c. patrick ...........................11 White Crane Spreads Wings ...............Toby Johnson ........................12 Paper Revery .............................Andrew Ramer .......................15 The Lost Art of Communication. . . . . . . . . . . .c. huilo c. ............................17 FaeNet: Making Faerie Space In the Clouds —A social network for Radical Faeries ...Bulbul of the FaeNet Stewards .........19 Queering The Map .......................Lucas LaRochelle/Lawn ...............22 Two Poems for Nick ......................Bambi Gauthier ......................23 Allen Young Interview ....................RFD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 A Return to Gay Sunshine .................Leo Racicot ..........................28 Queer Media .............................Don Shewey .........................32 Christopher Street and Its Kind ............Jon Weatherman .....................36 My Blue Neighbourhood: Coming Out of the Closet With Troye Sivan ..........Michael Nied ........................38 Poison Ivory .............................Simon Maddrell ......................43 Imperfection .............................Malik Shakur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Poem ...................................Tolth ................................45 Poem ...................................Greg Banks ..........................45 The Garden of Arden .....................Jessica Dickinson Goodman ...........46 The Mountains We Avoid .................Jessica Dickinson Goodman ...........46 Inventory ................................Jason Roush ..........................47 A Place for the Sun And the Moon. . . . . . . . . .Fadrian Bartley .......................48 The Secret China Gathering 2018 ..........Mata Hari ...........................49 A Love Letter to Faerie Camp Destiny from Rock River .......................Moon Morgan .......................53 Omnivore by Nature ......................Fran-Claire Kenney ...................58 Gone Political ............................Raymond Luczak .....................60 Story Telling meets Community: The Story of Queer Tell Our Visions (Santa Cruz) ...Kwai Lam ............................636 RFD 175 Fall 2018 Submitting to Porn by Natty Soltesz T he internet came of age as I did—“came” being the operative word, because it was my main source for jack-off material as a teenager. But my first exposure to gay porn was from two issues of First Hand, which were digest-sized sto- ry-and-illustration magazines. My older brother found them in a dumpster and brought them back to his college apart- ment where I was vis- iting. He’s straight, as I was assumed to be, but he thought they were “funny.” Funny is how they made me feel, but I wasn’t laughing when I got unfettered alone time with them after he went to bed. Some- how the apartment wasn’t submerged in cum by sunrise. Around then I began accessing the internet and discov- ered The Nifty Erotic Stories Archive. If those magazines were a revelation here was one anew: a seemingly endless array of queer fantasies, loosely categorized in all their permutations. Also anybody could send something in and, bar- ring lenient guidelines, expect to have their story visible to the world. I used my father’s dot- matrix printer to keep a ream of my favorites in a locked trunk in my room—the better to enjoy “Saved by the Bell” fuck fiction without worrying about getting caught. When I moved out of my parents’ house I began to buy porn magazines. I found an issue of Handjobs in a Phoenix porno store—boy did that blow my mind. (In the back, a homespun- looking ad for a gay “country journal” called RFD). When I moved to Pittsburgh I would buy issues of Men and Freshmen from Jay’s Bookstall, an independent, gay-owned bookstore. (Once when I brought my spank rags to the counter Jay smirked and asked if I’d had a good Valentine’s Day. I blushed.) But more than ever I was on the internet, sift- ing through the muck to find the pearls. The internet offered a sense of DIY pos- sibility before I even thought of myself as a writer. I’d already found (via AOL cybersex) that writing out my fantasies gave me a thrill akin to reading fiction, with the added satisfac- tion of having created something. The Nifty Archive was full of terrible stories, why not add my own? Porn magazines weren’t as inspiring in that way. Print media felt like the old guard; less acces- sible to amateurs, rife with the possibility of rejection. I sent my first erotic story to the Nifty Archive on September 16, 2001 (strange week, that was), a fan-fiction take on two characters from the NBC soap opera Passions. 1 It was such a satisfying experience—presenting finished work the world, getting emails of praise from strangers—that I continued to write and 1 In 2006 the porn director Joe Gage plagiarized dialogue from this story for his Titan Media movie “Lifeguard! The Men of Deep Water Beach”: the old guard pilfering the new, before I’d even realized my stuff was worth stealing. RFD 175 Fall 2018 7 post more. My confidence grew and in 2005 I submit- ted for the first time to a print publication: First Hand, aka the first gay porn magazine I’d ever read. They accepted it and the circle was com- plete: the masturbator had become the masturba- trix (or something like that). Even better, I got a check. Handjobs was next, and while they didn’t pay (they gave you a year’s subscription), I had such admiration for that magazine that it was enough to see my work in its pages. I was in college and waiting tables at a Syrian restaurant. One of my regulars, an avid reader named Dwayne, liked to offer advice on my nascent writing career. I told him it was my dream to get into a magazine like Fresh- men, which paid $300 a story but seemed attainably glossy. “You should submit to them,” he said. “You might be good enough.” He was right, and over the next three years I had seventeen stories published in the glossy porno mags. The Unzipped Media ones like Men and Freshmen paid the best, but the $150 checks I got from Torso and Mandate weren’t bad either. T hose were my sal- ad days, and they were already wilting. By 2009 the magazine publishers started to disappear: first Mavety Media (First Hand), then Unzipped Media (Freshmen) then—most tragi- cally in my eyes—Avenue Services stopped print publication of Handjobs. Losing those outlets— not to mention those checks—sucked, but I’d leveled up writing-wise to where I was getting published in print anthologies like Cleis Press’s Best Gay Erotica series. These didn’t pay much but you got the prestige of seeing your story in an actual book. By 2011 there were significantly less of those, too, as publishers folded or moved to ebooks. And so the internet had subsumed print, or at least the part of it I’d been cashing in on. I wrote my first book of stories and published it through an independent press, then delved into self- publishing. My 2011 Amazon-published ebook Str8 but Curious brought in so much cash that I dreamed of quitting my day job, but it turned out to be an anomaly, the crest of a Fifty Shades-era boom set off by the popularity of ebook readers and the ease of consuming porn on them. Today I still self-publish ebooks and the money I get from them seems comparable to what I used to get from the magazines. But now it feels like if I want to get paid for my work— including my books published through independent presses— I’m forced to hack my way through the Amazon. Amongst the negatives of being be- holden to a corporate behemoth are Ama- zon’s restrictive and mysterious content policies, which I en- countered when they rejected my collec- tion of incest-themed stories without a whiff of explanation. I still publish stories on the Nifty Archive and in other weird corners of the inter- net that are free from corporate oversight (or as free as they can be). Who knows what will happen with the repeal of net neutrality, but I have to believe that whether online, in print, or handed from person to person, independent channels will exist so long as there are people to create them. And money, for me, has always been beside the point. The only tan- gible reward from writing is the process of it, and the idea that somewhere, some reader—maybe a teenager, getting their first taste of porn—is get- ting off.8 RFD 175 Fall 2018 S ummer 2001 . Nestled into a comfy, threadbare armchair rescued from a college dormitory dumpster, I’m posted up in the back of the little alternative book store and community center the next town over from where I go to high school. The anarchists and graffiti artists who staff the space as volunteers don’t mind me taking as long as I like to leaf through used books and magazines, read- ing the hours away while the scorching Carolina afternoon heat gives way to the relative relief of early evening. Plenty of stickers and posters proclaim this as a queer-friendly space; indeed, I first found out about it from my first lover, who sat on its board of directors as a preco- cious high school junior. Yet nonethe- less I feel a quiver of anxiety as I flip through the pages of this publication, perched against my knees so as to block its cover from view: XY Magazine. It’s a glossy, upbeat, feisty magazine by and for queer boys, with ar- ticles on health and dealing with parents or classmates and stories from lives not so dissimilar from my own. The quiver I feel in my stomach glimps- ing the pictures—sent in, presumably, by readers of themselves—leaves me a little giddy and a bit em- barrassed. Another customer walks by, and I shuffle another book on top of it with awkward abruptness. The volunteer behind the counter raises an eye at the noise, then indifferently returns to her book. She’s got my number, and it doesn’t matter a bit to her; I’m not the first nervous teenager who’s come in here for a clandestine peak at the queer lit- erature. I relax a bit. Then tentatively, with a furtive glance to make sure no one’s watching too closely, I flip back to XY . I’m not quite seventeen years old, newly out of the closet to a gradually growing list of friends and acquaintances, and not fully sure of myself. My internet access at home is limited, and both school and the pub- lic library block most websites with queer content. In the city where I live, I don’t know where to find contemporary read- ing materials that speaks to the experi- ences of other queer kids, and would probably feel too vulnerable to read it there even if I did. So this expedition to a nearby town for the day contains a secret thrill that goes be- yond the concert I’m ostensibly in town to see—my alibi for borrowing the car. I’m also here to cocoon myself in the cozy arms of a radi- cal book store to see if I can find myself in the pages of the magazines and books they’ve got here. For me as a nervous teenager, the queer press is a lifeline. F or my whole life I’ve always been a reader. Whenever I had a problem to solve, yearned to A Love Letter to the Queer Press By Nikita Shepard Courtesy Queer Archive Project RFD 175 Fall 2018 9 understand something mysterious, or wanted to es- cape to a different reality, the printed word provided the pathway for me. Since my adolescence the gay press in particular has held a unique place in my heart: conveyor of forbidden knowledge, window into alluring alternate worlds, map to the secret ter- rain I share with fellow travelers, my accidental kin among those who answer affirmatively that innocu- ous southern question: “Are you family?” The summer between high school and college found me interning at an LGBT political organiza- tion in the state capital. One afternoon my boss and I, on an errand to the local gay bookstore, walked through to the crowded back room where the The Front Page, the state’s gay newspaper, was pub- lished. The editor, a dedicated (but, I’d been warned, notoriously cranky) activist, paced around between stacks of papers, griping about whatever antagonists had ticked him off that morning. Though he intimi- dated me, I admired his encyclopedic knowledge of statewide gay organizations and people, and the razor-sharp edge of his opinionated diatribes. I became a regular reader of the weekly newspaper, which fleshed out my understanding of local and state politics, while exposing me to the diversity of southern queer culture. As I emerged into punk and anarchist subcul- tures in my late teens and early twenties, I caught the tail end of the vibrant zine culture that had exploded in the 80s and 90s. If you had something to say, a typewriter and a glue stick, and could figure out how to reprogram a Kinko’s photocopier to your advantage, you could put out your own zine and release your own experience and opinions to a far-flung network of fellow zinesters and readers. Queer zines were particularly special to me, offering personal stories I could relate to written in a DIY format, with topics and aesthetics all over the map. I put out my own first zine at nineteen and contrib- uted articles to others, and collected ones I picked up off merchandise tables at concerts or from rotat- ing metal racks in alternative bookstores. Titles like Anonymous Boy, Black Maps, Fag School, You’ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania, and dozens more whose names I’ve long forgotten lined my shelves, and the ones I liked best I re-copied and distributed myself. Like the title of an anthology of early English gay writing, these zines truly were “pages passed from hand to hand” for my alternative queer generation. I stumbled upon my first Radical Faerie gather- ing at Short Mountain in 2005. After the profound sense of connection I experienced there, I hungered for more—so one of the first things I did was to subscribe to RFD. Each time a new issue arrived was a cause for celebration, prompting me to seques- ter myself in my room to read it cover to cover. Through the stories, poems, and articles I encoun- tered there, I did my best to rekindle the feeling of intimacy and freedom I’d felt frolicking amidst the faeries. At twenty-two I moved north for the first time in my young adult life, to soak in the relative anonym- ity and freedom of Washington, DC. A substantial and well-heeled gay community sustained two free gay weeklies, The Washington Blade (a more traditional newsprint offering) and Metro Weekly (a glossier, entertainment-focused magazine). I read them with some skeptical distance; my radical politics often left me impatient with the city council debates on marriage regulations, and my relative introversion shied away from the pictures of gaudy evenings from the city’s fabulous nightlife. Yet de- spite my critiques, I read both of them each week on the subway to work, keeping up with news develop- ments and getting acquainted with the cast of local politicos, columnists, and drag queen emcees. Even if I rarely set foot in the bars they depicted or the meetings they announced, the experience of holding the physical paper in my hand and reading it week after week seemed to solidify me as a member of the secret club of same-sex desire, hidden in plain sight. The gay press made tangible the imagined com- munity I shared with the legions of other miscel- laneous queers sprinkled throughout the city, from the elderly couple who lived next door to the waiter I cruised on a lunch break to the faceless throngs I took in, wide-eyed, at my first big city Pride festival. Moving back to the South after my urban so- journ, I took a job managing the little alternative book store where I’d huddled with XY as a teenager. One of my favorite chores was opening the box of each month’s new magazines, lining the shelves with Out, Curve, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Trans- gender Tapestry, The Advocate, Lesbian Connection, Instinct, and of course good old RFD . (I took par- ticular joy in recommending the latter to customers looking for something queer off the beaten path.) Once I’d set out the new issues, I stripped the covers off of the unsold copies to return to the distributor for credit—and loaded the cover-less back issues into my backpack to take home and read. Over the years that I worked there, I made a point to try out any LGBTQ-themed publications I could get, through distributors if I could or on consignment from locals, and read most of them. Even living in a smaller town, I felt connected to a broader Next >