Hump! Straight Dudes Gay Porn
In 2005 Dan Savage organized the Hump Film Festival. Savage is a sex columnist and founder of the “It Gets Better Project” I mentioned a few weeks ago with regard to Hachette Books in a post about Hachette and Amazon, and Oyster E-Books. The basic premise behind the Hump festival is interesting. Average people film their own five minute sex scenes that are shown at the festival. They compete for prizes, and this year Savage decided to do a Hump Tour in the US with 20 short films by these amateurs.
The most important thing I read was this, about straight men watching gay porn:
The gay sex scene was so hot Rick Santorum would get hard watching it, yet for every explicit moment or funny joke, there was an intimate moment that balanced the scale, allowing hearts to warm as well as genitals.
Best of all, the festival taught straight dudes to get down with realistic gay and lesbian porn. One guy, Ben, saw gay porn for the first time at the festival.
The second most important thing I read was something I have always tried to do with gay erotic romance/fiction. I’m talking about making it funny, or sexy and intimate. And sometimes trying to find a balance between the two. I’ve written a lot of intimate love scenes in books. But I also go for funny or silly…even though a lot of my critics have missed that point over the years. They actually think I’m being serious. But it’s hard to blame people who don’t have a certain amount of sophistication. You really can’t blame someone for not knowing the bread plate is on the left at a dinner party. You can only try to show them politely.
The most difficult thing to do is combine funny and sexy…or intimate.
Tim, another audience member, told me his favorite aspect of the festival was that “the films were both sexy and funny, which is hard to achieve—it’s usually one or the other.” This is what Savage was going for. “The films were meant to be both sexy and funny, which is how sex really is,” he explained.
I couldn’t agree more. When I wrote the one sex scene in one of the Virgin Billionaire books where Jase and Luis had “literary” sex and laughed about all the worst literary sex phrases in books ever written I wasn’t doing that by accident. Sex is a serious thing, but it’s also a funny thing, too. Or it can be funny if handled the right way. And what two people in a book do (or even in real life) in the privacy of their own bedrooms is often joked about.
In any event, it’s an interesting festival and article. You can read more here. They get into more details about sex toys, sex advice, and how people can actually learn new things from these short films. And straight guys can learn that gay sex films can be both sexy and funny, depending on how they’re executed.
Gay Twincest Porn
In an unrelated piece about the darker side of porn, a straight ex-con, Taleon Goffney, who did gay for pay porn with his identical twin brother, Keyontyli, when they really needed money is turning his life around. The article talks about why he did gay porn…twincest…and what happened afterward.
Even after shooting Mark and the Twins, money was still tight for the brothers. So they resorted to burglary. In February 2008, they were arrested in Philadelphia after Taleon broke into a beauty salon and stole $10,000 from an ATM while Keyontyli stood watch.
During the trial, Keyontyli pleaded guilty to being an accomplice to his brother’s crimes and, in the process, cut a deal with authorities to implicate his brother and avoid major prison time for himself.
Taleon is going to write a book, and try to help others now.
Cop at Utah Gay Pride
A cop who refused to ride in the Utah gay pride parade in Salt Lake City recently resigned. I find it interesting because my brother-in-law, Tony’s brother, and his family live in Salt Lake City and they tell me it’s very different from living on the east coast near New York and Philadelphia, but they find it gay friendly and they aren’t even gay.
The officer, whose name has not been released, had cited his religious beliefs for balking at the assignment that called for him to be among the Salt Lake City Police Department officers riding in front of the parade.
His attorney said he felt uncomfortable with that role, did not want to be seen as a gay pride advocate, and asked for another assignment.
I know he’s claiming religious reasons. But I’m starting to wonder about that. It sounds more social and political than religious to me. No one asked him to support gays. They only assigned him to ride at the parade…part of his job. And aren’t we all supposed to be objective and professional at certain times in all of our careers? I doubt anyone would have thought he was a gay advocate…I don’t think anyone would even have cared or noticed him.
To have that much hate in your heart that you’re willing to lose your career just baffles me. I wonder how he’ll feel when he realizes that the world will continue to grow and move forward in spite of him, and that allowing gays equal rights didn’t do a thing to harm or change his life. He did it to himself.
You can read more here. I would imagine this is going to wind up in court and it should be interesting to see the outcome.
