Bobby Pyron Was a Friend of Mine

Bobby aka Lee Ryder

 30 years ago on July 11th 1991, my friend Bobby Pyron passed away. We were not great friends with an enduring relationship or anything like that, but we were always very friendly toward each other and had a good deal affection for each other. Bobby picked me up at a gay chicken club in Hollywood called the Odyssey. We left the club and drove all the way down to his place in Laguna Beach where I ended up spending a couple of days with him. Bobby was about a year older than me and I was 18 at the time. His worldliness was about 1000x mine though and he was completely at ease being gay. I always looked at him as something of a mentor. He took me around Laguna and completely scandalized me by wearing jeans with cuffs in them. I thought that was the gayest thing on the entire planet and how could he possibly be flaunting himself like that? Nobody gave a shit. Bobby was conventionally very good looking, sort of on the rugged side. While he was obviously gay the minute he opened his mouth -- he didn't even have the gay voice -- it was obvious that his rugged good looks are what sold him. That and That Thing.

Bobby apparently lived in Huntington Beach for awhile which explains how he ended up knowing some of my high school classmates. He introduced me to Kenny Thornton who I had seen at school and was just utterly in lust with. He was a blond gymnast, lithe and strong. Kenny and I boinked a number of times but our paths were very obviously going in different directions as he was into the Hollywood entertainment scene of which I had no interest in. He also introduced me to Greg Martin who became a running buddy of mine, usually sniffing around for coke and getting in trouble in Hollywood. We even somehow wormed our way into Alan Carr's place in Malibu. Greg was really good looking too, but I always got the impression that he was sort of a gay-for-pay type. We fooled around a few times, but not much. Bobby later told me -- probably in 1990 -- that Kenny had died of AIDS. Greg and I drifted apart and I never knew what happened to him. Did he die of AIDS too? Did he get a wife and have kids? Maybe both? Who knows.

Bobby knew all about the goings on in Laguna. He was rather dismissive of the A-Gays there calling them "tacky queens". The fledgling gay porn industry made possible by the invention of VCR's was centered there with Catalina Video. He told me that quite a few of my classmates rotated in that universe but was really protective of me not to get caught up in it. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that Huntington Beach would be fertile ground for gay boys going at it on film because there were lots of us and there were some ridiculously good looking surfer boys. Bobby and I drifted apart as he moved around quite a bit, but we'd bump into each other from time to time and were always friendly to each other if not affectionate in brotherly kind of way. 

I had started my career when I was about 21 and was super busy, especially 1985 onward. Unbeknownst to me Bobby had become Lee Ryder in 1984, joining the industry he made sure I kept away from. Apparently he was very well known and it's hardly a surprise because That Thing was huge. I never knew if he was a total top because it's a lot easier to catch HIV as a bottom, but I'm sure that's the only thing he did in porn. His stuff is still out there with the magic of the internet and I'm not going to lie that he was good at what he did, just pummeling bottom boys. It's really weird seeing it though. I'm not certain I knew he was doing porn while he was alive -- most likely  -- and I am positive I never saw any of it while he was alive. I didn't care of course, because to me he was just Bobby.

I saw him every once in a while in Laguna. I knew he ran a flower stand, but I never visited it. When I saw Bobby the last time around 1990 I knew that he had it. It was probably the time he told me that Kenny had died. He had The Look which you can't hide. He was probably the first person that I knew firsthand who had AIDS which is pretty amazing but that was how the suburbs were: unlike the city where you went to their funerals, in the burbs people just disappeared never to be seen again. I don't remember how I found out how he died. I think he died up in LA so I would have no connection.

It's funny how people who you interact with only a little can have an oversized influence on your life. Bobby was like that for me. He set me on a course of getting over my internalized homophobia which was severely at odds with the guys I had the hots for which was pretty much the gayer the better. Most people will only know Bobby for being Lee Ryder but I knew him for being out, proud, sarcastic and sassy, and being an altogether nice guy. Love ya, hon.

Howard

Howard, in the middle with Kevin to the right and Ken on the left

I've written about Howard Arthur Faye on many occasions and how he intersected my life at a critical juncture, but I want to put it into a single piece for the AIDS Memorial on Instagram/Facebook. Howard was one of the most brilliant people I've ever met and I have met many, many brilliant people over the years. He was about a year older than me being born in 1959. We met online on the gay Usenet newsgroup soc.motss (motss == Member of the Same Sex) which was the first gay newsgroup on the fledgling internet created in 1983. I started posting to it in 1991 way before anybody knew about the internet and Howard was there. We met in person in LA probably the next year or maybe a bit later and became friends. I had never met anybody even remotely like him. Howard always handled me with kid gloves which was funny because I was hardly a shrinking violet. 

Howard was mercurial and lived in the moment because that was all he had. He had a depth of knowledge of food and wine that was ridiculously deep. A group of us started calling ourselves the Cabal Noir with Howard as the unofficial head. Howard raved about a Chateauneuf du Pape wine, Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe, so that became our official wine. Howard could get very animated and was convinced taking away his foie gras and veal would spark revolution. He ate lustily and greedily but for all of this he wasn't a food snob. He was just as happy having a greasy burger in San Leandro as he was eating quail stuffed with foie gras in a huckleberry reduction. 

Howard lived in Hollywood and was the first person that I had really interacted with who was obviously sick. I had some interactions with Bobby Pyron (written about many times on the AIDS Memorial page, aka Lee Ryder) but those were mostly in passing. In Howard I saw upfront how devastating living with HIV was. I had moved in 1994 to San Francisco and Howard had always loved his North Beach boys so he came to visit when he could. I remember helping him infuse himself with his stent which made it all very real for me. But he was always very upbeat and enthusiastic about the next project or find.

One time he came up and I decided to throw a big party for him -- the HAF Bash -- with about 30 or 40 people for dinner with all kinds of fabulousness. I had just met a really cute guy, Aric my now husband, who I was majorly in lust with who I invited. Aric had told me that he was poz which was a little weird for me but in reality I had probably had sex with dozens of poz people over the years and just didn't know it. Aric was completely convinced that I would dump him because he was poz because that is what happened to poz people and that he'd be alone when he died. On my back patio, Aric poured his heart out to Howard. Howard responded by saying that I was not like that. I responded by not being like that.

I was a big Burgundophile at that time and pretty much a snob about it. Howard and I would go wine shopping together all of the time when he was up. Howard decided that I needed to appreciate Bordeaux more so we arranged a trip up to Rutherford Hill in Napa for a fabulous Lite Lunch (tm) at Auberge du Soleil. After, as we were driving to Gueneville to shoot some pool at a gay bar, Howard asked how I had liked Napa's best. This started a huge row but not between me and Howard, instead between Howard and his lover Ken. I'm not quite certain how that came to be but it was hilarious to me because of how much deference he gave me that he gave absolutely nobody else.

Howard wanted to go to Barcelona one last time because that is where he made love to the love of his life, Kevin, who had recently passed. He was convinced that he was skinny enough to throw himself out of the spires of the Sagrada Familia to die in a suitably dramatic fashion. He wrote about his aspirations in a post on soc.motss soon after Greg Louganis disclosed he was positive. We took the trip in March of 1995 but Howard was not among us because he was too sick to make the trip. When we went to the Sagrada Familia, Aric stood in for Howard to squeeze out of the spire windows with Ken holding his legs so he didn't go overboard. I was in abject horror.

We called Howard from the Barri Gotic telling him about all of our adventures including going to a restaurant he was raving about in Perpignon called Le Chapon Fin and stopping by the Dali Museum in Figueres. Aric and I on our way back to Paris stopped at Vieux Telegraphe in Chateaunef du Pape to the mild astonishment of the proprietor with our Vieux Telegraphe t-shirts on. "OH Kermit Lynch!" referring to the negociant in Berkeley where Howard had discovered it.

Howard's Memorial in Paso Robles

Howard died in June of 1995. He had figuratively passed the torch to Aric who survived but wouldn't become undetectable until 2003 due to resistance. Who knows whether protease inhibitors would have helped Howard. I had the honor of writing and delivering his eulogy at Forest Lawn. It was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. For somebody I only knew a relatively short amount of time he had a huge impact on my -- and hundreds of others' -- lives.

In closing, at gatherings after he passed we would always open our dinners with a simple salute: "To Howard".

Epilogue

In retrospect it's pretty clear to me that I was falling in love with Howard. When I met him he was essentially asexual so it never occurred to me to think of him that way. And of course he was sick and I was very new to knowing somebody who was dying of AIDS. But thinking back, he was just my type: a wee cute bottom boy with a reported big 'ol flopper who I would have cuddled and loved and furiously made love to. It would have been wonderful and amazing and everything good. And terrible. There is no possible way it could have worked. We were way too bullheaded: A-personalities and both of us with huge tempers. He could have only have treated me with kid gloves for so long before that veneer wore off. Which would have been fine since who doesn't like a good donnybrook? We would have probably tried and failed miserably and had huge belly laughs after the fact -- yes, of course we would have continued to be friends. Gay guys have a huge capacity to be like "what *were* we thinking?!". Well, it's thinking with our dicks which is great while it lasts. And then funny in retrospect. Would that I had that chance.

The Fight As It Were

 

[this is a post that Howard wrote on soc.motss shorty before he died. it touched us all really hard. he didn't make it to Barcelona unfortunately] 

Howard looking over the Grenache at Joseph Phelps

From: foucault@netcom.com (Howard Arthur Faye)
Subject: The Fight, As It Were
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 02:22:26 GMT
Sender: foucault@netcom16.netcom.com

The recent, angry response I made in the ongoing discussion of
Greg Louganis' revelation of his medical situation provides me
with an opportunity to reflect on my own situation, which I have
been convinced by my caretakers to regard as "wondrous". I
think they are fooled by a few good test results and the fortune
I have had in retaining my mental acuity despite the place on the
timelime of disease progression I find myself (somewhere between
"late stage" and "end stage").

I am profoundly unhappy that Greg Louganis or anyone else would
discover they are infected or that they are under the clinical
spectre of AIDS. At the same time, I am not so sure the quality
of life as an infected person cannot be kept quite high for quite
a long period of time. I have been symptomatic for more than five
years. When I began to feel ill, I was en route to Agrigento in
Sicily and I visited a Carmelite convent overlooking the sea. On
the bus I was sweating profusely and sliding against the bus window
lubricated by my sweat, trying to avoid being sick on my fellow
passengers by counting olive trees and anticipating the reemergence
of the sea after crossing the island stopping only long enough for
orange juice in Enna.

I told my companion, who was as impractical and romantic as I am,
that it would be perfect to die on a cot resting on those terrazzo
floors before a giant arched window facing the sea. At almost every
interval where I was feeling poorly and I found myself in a place
I liked, I had the same sense of impending demise. Attended by
WhoresWithHeartsOfGold/Nuns/Goatherds/RetainersOfBaronessRothschild,
I faded away swathed in a white sheet, mumbling nonsense verse.
[I recently amended by fantasy death throes after seeing _Queen Margot_
where Charles IX --Jean Hugues Anglade-- is borne on a silken litter,
sweating blood as death nears.]

Such opportunities have come and gone a dozen times in the last five years
ruined by the equal and opposite experience of visiting the Clinic, mostly--
nah, completely-- devoid of healthy fantasy. That such places are perfumed
by antiseptic cleaners and are inhabited by people obsessed with insurance
forms and patient identification cards doesn't help.

I almost feel guilty that I'm still here.

But even as I prepare to march through favorite cities in foreign places
again (a trip planned both as a gift to my Ken who has never satisfied
his passion for Joaquin Sorolla [!] and Arne, who needs to be in a place
more suited to his schedule *and* as a potential suicide location-- I
am just thin enough to squeeze through the open windows at the top of
Sagrada Familia's steeples), I spent the afternoon with a home care
nurse and a social worker making preliminary preparations for being
attended at home, powers of attorney/No Code/DNR, morphine drips, and
even more interesting spiritual questions that inevitably arise
around death.

How can this be? I still have cases of good claret to drink! Is this
kinetic energy, like a cartoon character that runs off a cliff but begins
to descend only after realizing the ground is no longer there? Zilch CD4's,
anemia, horrible edema in the ankles and feet. Shouldn't I retreat to
my goose down comforter and urinal?

I would love to have a witty phrase to delimit life from its terminal
phase but I don't. No one-- from all of the doctors, clergy, psychiatrists
and reasonably intelligent lay people-- has been of any help.

I had a momentary pang of practicality and considered not
going. But of course I am. It doesn't matter where I expire and I have been
hungry for oily squid and prawns in garlic and Asturian cider. The best time
of my life was making love with Kevin in the Hostal Palermo just off the
Ramblas in Barcelona. That won't happen again but now I can concentrate
on the food and drink.

I sincerely hope that Greg Louganis has the will and passion for life
to sustain him and keep him healthy for a long, long time. I attribute
my own longevity to such a passion, a regular ration of red wine and
using the minimum number of medications possible. Oh, and closeness
to my family. And maybe baseball (this year might kill me!). Maybe
Monteverdi too. Oh yeah-- foie gras plays a role, I'm sure.

--
               Howard Arthur Faye * Los Angeles, CA

'Wine is the professor of taste, the liberator of the spirit, and
        the light of intelligence' -- Paul Claudel

Howard's Eulogy

 [Howard Arthur Faye's eulogy I gave at Forest Lawn in LA]

   Every once in a while, a person will come into your
life and succeed in changing your entire outlook, or
cause you to rediscover passions long buried. That was
the effect that Howard had on me. Howard was a mercurial
spirit who never ceased to amaze me with the depth and
breadth of his knowledge. His passion for life was
remarkable, especially when you consider the pain that
he was constantly experiencing.

 Howard was one of the first people to make contact
with me on soc.motss. He was, I assumed, one of those
nameless people who "send me all kinds of supporting
email" that you always hear about. Of course, this was
completely wrong, as Howard was a regular poster for
quite some time. He shunned controversy, and this was
his ostensible reason for not posting (much) to
soc.motss. Really, I think, his mind was elsewhere:
his love of food and wine were the preeminent concern
in his life. Soc.motss was mearly a fertile recruiting
ground for similarly minded food queens.

 Arne and I came along within a month or so of each
other about 4 years ago. Howard remained a rather
enigmatic person to both of us. Arne told me that Howard
made and broke several dinner engagements before finally
making it to one. I didn't know this at the time, but
when Howard finally arranged a dinner at a Japanese
restaurant in Hollywood, it became clear why he phased
in and out of net life. (this was also to be Arne's
debut singing Ethel Merman at a Karaoke bar, which
mercifully was monopolized by a wedding reception).
I met Howard's Kevin, who I thought was very charming.

 Things remained somewhat distant for quite some time.
This was mostly of my doing, as I was in the midst of
a major change of life, and getting up to LA was not
generally high on my list. We did manage to get to know
each other better in those years, and had dinner on
a number of occasions. I was always impressed by the
depth of his knowledge -- I had never met such a walking
encyclopedia complete with lusty sound effects!

 Howard loved San Francisco, having lived here quite
a while. Mostly he loved North Beach, having met Kevin
at Rossi's Market, and having many good memories
associated with it (not to mention strapping Italian
boys, which he loved so much). After I moved, Howard
came to house sit for friend. Howard, well, Hurricane
Howard, was there for nearly a month.  We ate and ate
and ate and ATE. La Folie was probably the most
memorable; Roland Passot's magic is just too fabulous
for words, and Howard couldn't get enough of his
marvelous foie gras in a huckleberry reduction. Or was
it the squab stuffed with quail that he liked so much?

 I still remember Howard coming over to my house for
the first time. Howard had bought a Muni FastPass and
was determined to milk every penny out the thing. I
explained to him that my house is on the side of a cliff,
and told him the least exhaustive way to get here. When
Howard arrived, he was practically a ghost. "Did you
go the way I told you, Howard?", I asked. "No! That
was two blocks out of the way!", Howard replied in his
normal stubborn demeanor. Typical Howard.

 I threw a party in Howard's honor, which was the first
of many parties that my poor recycling bin has witnessed
in the last year. Howard and I shopped all over the
place, and we put on a feast worthy of Luisa Tetrazzini,
whose great nephew I had met in New York earlier that
year. We shopped for wine all over the bay area, and
I still remember him transfixed by the selection of
old Sauternes at the Wine House here in the city. Howard,
in his humility relegated himself to my unassuming sous
chef (yeah, right) as he watched the horror and indignity
of Ireland beating Italy in World Cup Soccer. My long
lost love of food and wine was coming back to me in
full force, and having Howard around was high octane
fuel for that smoldering fire.

 Howard and I spent hours on the net and on the phone
talking about everything, but mostly about this dish,
or that wine, all the while giving me an education on
various wines. At the Las Vegas motss.con, there was
the perfect moment when Howard and I traipsed over to
the Mirage to take a look at the white tigers. While
looking on with the million and seven other tourists,
we simultaneously wondered aloud what wine one would
serve with tiger.

 I enjoyed Howard's unsnobbish and eclectic love of
wine. I think some of Howard's best moments were his
delight in finding some bargain basement wine at Trader
Joe's that he could drink with impunity. His own
mortality was always there in front of him ("this wine
will outlast me!"), but he still couldn't resist buying
for the future. This was, to me, the essence of Howard's
tenacity in life. Enjoy the present, that's all we're
guaranteed with; don't give up the future, since we
may yet live to reap its benefits.

 I had always wanted to make a trip to Europe. Since
I was officially bumming around, I figured that this
was the proper time to do it. I had never really been
all that excited about Paris, but Howard raved about
Paris, and Richard Johnson (practically an ex-patriot)
was going to be there at the same time. I was amazed
at the beauty of Paris, and even more amazed at food
and wine culture.  I kept thinking how much Howard would
have loved to be back in Paris for Richard and my dozen
or so Lite Lunchs (tm).

 Quite accidentally, I arrived from the Metro at St.
Sulpice and found an ACT-UP demonstration marching from
Montparnasse to Odeon as part of the World AIDS
Conference. I decided to join the procession, but unlike
most of the rancor around me, I could barely even speak,
let alone take part in the chants, hoots and jeers.
I just knew that my trip there was likely to be Howard's
last connection with the city that he loved so much.
It was all I could do to contain my grief and start
bawling in the street. At one of the clubs were bulletin
board-like sheets of paper where people wrote what they
liked, usually about loved ones departed. Practically
shaking, and about ready to burst into tears again,
I wrote an inscription to Howard vowing to be his eyes
and pallet. The Eiffel Tower that week, in the City
of Light, had a red ribbon done in lights. Paris grieved
with me.

 Upon my return, Howard enthusiastically decided that
we must go to Barcelona. It was his favorite city in
all of Europe, and besides he thought that he could
just fit through the openings in La Sacreda Familia
to have a romantic end. I had a lot of foreboding about
this trip, but Howard was very upbeat. I finally
relented, in part because I was intent on taking my
Aric to Europe too. Howard became seriously ill in
January, which was to be his final battle. We hoped
against all odds that Howard would be able to make it,
but the reality of the situation finally became evident
weeks before the trip. Howard insisted that Ken and
Arne make the trip, even though we were extremely worried
about him.

 We tasted the oily squid that Howard pined so much
for again. Arne and I timidly viewed out the portals
of La Sacreda Familia where Howard imagined his end.
We had one of the most fantastic dining experiences in
Perpignon, at a restaurant that Howard insisted we try.
Aric and I even managed to visit one of Howard's favorite
wineries in the Rhone: Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe.

 The missing element was, of course, Howard. I could
easily visualize him eating in his signature way:
messily, lustily and greedily. Such was Howard's spirit.
His love of life, and the good things to be experienced,
was tremendous. It was truly an inspiration, and a note
to everybody that life is too short to put off happiness.

 Howard's spirit, I know, will live on through the
people that he touched, and hopefully in the people
that we touch in return. I miss him already, and the
loss is tremendous, but I think his memory should be
toward the celebration of life. Howard's spirit will
live on through the never ending cycle of vine to grape
to bottle, and the toasts to our friends and our love
of life. This, I am sure, is how Howard would want it.

13 years ago, I was finally legally married

 On July 15th, 2008 Aric and I were finally legally married. We chose the day because it coincided with the day we met in 1994. We have been on a long tangled road toward getting married. We had been domestically partnered in San Francisco in the late 90's. This was actually quite a big deal since it meant that I wouldn't be a stranger in the eyes of the law if Aric were to get sick which was a pretty big worry. I knew that his family wouldn't be shitty, but shittiness doesn't have to come from family with the fucked way governments and other institutions can screw over gay people in relationships too. We didn't do anything special as I recall which shows on its face that DP is in no way equivalent to marriage. It's just a legal contract. That's true of marriage as well, of course, but there is a lot of cultural significance to marriage too. 

At Stowe for our Civil Union

 

Vermont legalized civil unions in March of 2000. After thinking about it for a while we decided to take vacation to the Northeast to do some leaf peeping in 2002. We drove up from Boston through New Hampshire and then over to Stowe Vermont where we stayed at a cute B&B that I can't remember the name of. Civil Unions were basically marriage without the title marriage. So for that we did have a small ceremony with a local justice of the peace and the proprietors. It was a great all around trip where we got to see our leaves, stopped over in Amherst, MA to visit with our friend Jagu and finally down to NYC.

Great pic of Aric at Stowe

 

We had dinner at the Union Square Cafe where I first had their fabulous lamp chops "scotta ditta" which translates to "burn your fingers". Our friend Doron took us to see Hairspray on Broadway with Harvey Fierstein as the Divine character. One crazy anecdote was that I'm pretty sure this was the trip we ended up at this leather bar on the west side called The Anvil (?). Aric had taken some pills earlier and they were exploding in his stomach. There were a lot of people smoking cigars so this made a perfect storm for his stomach and he needed to puke. Bad. There was a mile long line of leather queens waiting to piss and Aric went by all of them to their scowls. He daintily went to the sink, barfed, rinsed his mouth and sink and walked out. The leather queens were impressed and clapped.

 

Fast forward to February 12th, 2004. That evening Mayor Gavin Newsom, in reaction to George Bush's call for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, married Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin who had founded the first lesbian group, The Daughters of Bilitis. The catch was that this wasn't one off. They were allowing anybody to get married. By the next morning the internet was buzzing as well as the whole city. At about 7am I woke Aric up with my proposal: "you can sleep all morning or get your sorry ass out of bed and get married". We quickly got dressed and headed down to City Hall. There was a line snaking around the building of couples getting licenses and an impromptu set of people doing ceremonies on the veranda and elsewhere. Every time a couple said their "I do's", a huge ovation would go up to announce the fact. As Aric and I were getting closer to the office, the national media was all over this story. We saw CNN and a bunch of others when Jean Elle of NBC asked Aric if they could tag along with the process. Sure we said, and she interviewed us along the way. We got our license and headed up to the veranda and were married.

The video went viral and was the face of gay marriage on NBC for years after. We heard from friends and relatives as far away as Oslo and Sao Paulo. Marriages kept happening for about a week or two until a suit was filed and marriages were halted. The state Supreme Court soon after invalidated all of the licenses but invited the defendants that this may well be worth reviewing. The lawsuits materialized in the form of "Re: Marriage Cases". The original ruling was in our favor but was overturned on appeal. The California Supreme Court heard the final appeal and ruled in our favor in May of 2008.
 

Getting Married on our Patio

So it was legal in California. There was a dark cloud hovering over all of this in that there was a proposition being circulated for the November ballot. They had stupidly (from their standpoint) not made the proposition language retroactive. This caused a mad rush of couples hurriedly planning and executing their weddings on very short notice. We were no different. We decided to do ours at our house which has been the scene of countless parties over the years. We planned out all of the food and drink and in the spirit of all of the giving over the years asked some of our friends if they'd be willing to help out in the kitchen and serving. It was totally fitting for a Casa Sanchez party as we called it. 

We had one glitch in that our State Senator, Mark Leno, was supposed to officiate it but got stuck in Sacramento. Our friend Derik filled in to take our vows instead. We were so new to this that we had completely forgot to think about what our vows should be or having a best man and that sort of thing. So when Derik read our vows in the standard issue form, I knew that he'd get to the hated "forsake all others" part. It was a pregnant pause by I decided not to be a drama queen and rationalized it away. The party was a huge success with two different shifts for the reception and lots of wine and food to go around. I was forbade to go into the kitchen or have any part of running the party which our friends loved. 

So it was finally legal and done. Sure enough Prop H8 passed stopping people from getting married. The California Supreme Court had no jurisdiction so ultimately it was sued in federal court. After putting on an utterly awful case where the defendants couldn't find anybody who would testify for them and one of their expert witnesses admitting that nobody was harmed in court, Judge Vaughn Walker ruled for the plaintiffs. It was put on stay pending appeal which went to the 9th Circuit and then to the Supreme Court where on 5-4 decision court ruled that the plaintiffs of the appeal didn't have standing, dodging the underlying case.

Marriage was legal in California again but while all of our drama was going on, another cases was winding its way through the courts: Obergefell. By then it was practically once a month that another state would legalize marriage which made for high drama each time there was a decision or a vote. The big prize though made it to the Supreme Court. Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority and did not dodge and considered the particulars of the actual case. On June 26th, 2015 gay marriage was legal throughout the US.

It was a very long journey to get gay marriage starting all the way back in the 70's when a case made it to the Supreme Court (Baker) and was pretty much laughed out. Lots of people back in the 80's and 90's thought that marriage should be the last of our priorities, but I always felt different. First of all with AIDS there were absolute horror stories about shitty families, so the harm was real and acute. But the real thing for me was because it was also symbolic. It was utterly and completely important to Homophobia Inc and I always though that if we won marriage, it would break their back. I've been pretty much vindicated on that front. Yes there has been some sniping around the edges but the great culture war on gay people is for the most part dead here in the US.

In conclusion I'll quote from Anthony Kennedy's decision:

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions.  They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

On this day on June 5th, 40 years ago, the LA Times reported that something fucked was happening to young gay men in LA

 

June 5th marks the day when we first started to recognize that a global HIV pandemic was underway. The CDC had put out a report about a strange pneumonia (PCP) being found in young previously healthy gay men in West Hollywood. The same day, a doctor in New York City reported to the CDC about young gay men who had contracted Karposi's Sarcoma. The LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the AP picked it up and ran it that day. Information moved very, very slowly in those days but the whispers started and the word started to get around the something really fucked was happening.

The pandemic ripped through an entire generation of gay men, and so many of them were the gay men who caused the transforming changes that happened in the 70's after Stonewall. AIDS is a disease of young people and always has been. There was a distinct pattern for gay men: arrive on the scene at 20, dead by 30. I always thought I was on the trailing edge, but I was completely wrong. I was right in the middle of it. It had been circulating for many years by 1981, most likely in the mid 70's.

On a personal level, I was still working at a country club and in school. I had a torrid affair with one of my co-workers and easily the most electric encounter I've ever had. I have always been extremely fearful of what happened to Rick as he was a dancer and the arts were devastated by AIDS. Another affair with a high school mate, Kenny, I know for sure died. I almost certainly had sex with a huge number of people who had it. It's only the miracle of dumb luck that I didn't get it.

The damage didn't stop with the initial wave of people who died which was horrific but also emotionally scarred the generations that followed. They were scared to death of sex and never knew what joyful carefree sex was like. That continues to this day, even when the likelihood of bad outcomes is in the, now, distant past.

We can finally end this. If you are sexually active, get tested. If you are poz, they will put you on meds and you will become U=U and the safest person anybody can have sex with. If you are neg, get on PrEP and you will not only be immune to HIV, but part of the generation that finally puts an end to this horror. Take PrEP and have fun again. It's really that simple.

Special shout out to @NathanielHall who is doing god's work trying to end the stigma of HIV, and to my beautiful husband @AricOlnes who cheated death against all odds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       fds

The Gaymbrian Explosion

Fossilized Gaylobite

 

The conventional wisdom is that Stonewall changed everything. I think that is somewhat overblown in many ways because there had been many incidents before like Compton's Cafeteria riot in San Francisco and the Black Cat incident in LA. And of course the Mattachine Society had been peacefully picketing for a good long time before it. Something clearly was in the air around the time of Stonewall because a Gaymbrian Explosion followed in the aftermath which like the real Cambrian Explosion caused a massive creation of gay everything.  Gay discos, gay restaurants, gay bowling leagues, gay fricking everything. It's like the gay eucaryotic cell had been invented that allowed the speciation of the gay tree of life. Stonewall itself wasn't particularly profound, but it happened at the right time and gave people something they could point to immediately turning it into legend and myth. If it weren't Stonewall, it could have been something in San Francisco or Hollywood because they were all ready to explode.

The most direct effect of the explosion was the advent of memorializing Stonewall the next year with parades, marches, activism, but most importantly visibility. New York City had its gay pride march, but so did Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.  I wasn't old enough to understand any of this at the time so it's remarkable how this came to be. It was less than 10 years that I would hit the gay scene in Hollywood and to me it was like there had always been open gay bars, a huge scene, and all manner of gay culture. I really didn't realize at first that this was really, really new.

Beyond everybody getting laid, there were probably two major threads at the time. There was a political thread with an explosion of activism, and there was culture change with the changing of the guard from the old school furtive life with speakeasies and piano bars to the brash and in your face discos and bars blaring with music. I actually rather like piano bars and went to my first time when I was about 18 up in West Hollywood when I saw the legendary Rudy de la Mor, but they were definitely in decline even then. I think in some ways the culture change was far more important than the political change because the very act of just being out to whatever degree was political in and of itself. 

The culture change gave gay guys and especially kids like me the way to find our people and add to the momentum. Before Stonewall, it was very difficult to find your people and if you're living in the boonies you might have heard whispers about San Francisco or New York City, but after Stonewall it became more and more widely known.  By the time I arrived in 1978 it was just expected that there would be a gay part of the city where the clubs and nightlife were. We went from being in the shadows to proclaiming to the world you were a gay establishment with big windows for all of the hets to see,  like gays in a petting zoo.

I've always marveled how exactly this happened in such a short amount of time. The politics mostly predate me, though I was around for some of the more dramatic aspects of it. How exactly did it happen? How did it play out? Why was it so freaking fast? Part of the reason I decided to write this is to try to suss out how it happened for my own education. The ten short years that built an edifice that not even the bulldozer of AIDS could tear down.

 Gayborhoods

The gay center of the universe

One of the key innovations after Stonewall was the rise of gay ghettos. Sure there were gay neighborhoods before Stonewall, but after there was like a Siren call that emptied all of the rural and suburban gays and their miserable lives to be not a practicing homosexual, but a professional homosexual. Until you actually live in a gayborhood you really don't understand what it's like to be, well, normalized. Where you can cruise somebody on the street and not worry that they might be straight. That you can flirt openly with your boyfriend and nobody cares. You end up with dozens of gay friends who you socialize with and see out and about. Then there's the tourists making their pilgrimage, often getting their first breath of what it's like to be truly gay and free. 

Some of the gay ghettos were literally ghettos that were gentrified, often becoming a victim of their own success. The Castro was in deep decline when it was taken over by gay people. But it seems that every reasonably sized town had them, not just the gay Meccas. Chicago, Philly, Boston, DC, Seattle to name just a few. Usually they had some number of gay bars, a bunch of gay friendly businesses like restaurants and the like, and often book stores and gay tchotcke and erotica stores. If you were from out of town they were where you aimed. 

Having lived in the Castro for 25 years, I have seen more than a few tourists standing at 18th and Castro basically going "is that all there is?". On the face of it, yeah that's sort of all there is with bars and kitchy gay this and that. But what the tourists don't see is that there is a living and very interconnected community (and by interconnected yes, in that way big time). San Francisco is population-wise not a very big town at less than a million people. However that still leaves about 100,000 gay people in the city, many of them crowding into the Castro. It doesn't take much to be one degree of separation from others, and even less for two degrees. Everybody knows everybody or knows somebody in common. 

The connectedness was instrumental for politics and organizing too. It simply couldn't have happened unless there was this critical mass of gay people all in the same place. If something bad happened, you piled down to the neighborhood's defined meeting place to show your support and solidarity. Cleve Jones was asked recently whether gayborhoods are outdated and he was emphatic that we still need them for exactly those reasons. We still need places to show our strength and our solidarity. Heck just seeing the huge party like reaction to Biden's win last November in the Castro that made national news shows that having a critical mass of people is still important and gives hope to the next generation of gay boys stuck in some trumpanzee infested swamp that there is a place to escape to when they can.

Music 

 

God could he belt it out

The music of 70's was flamboyant to say the very least. From Glam Rock in the form of David Bowie and Elton John, to thrumming discos filled with hundreds a gay boys dancing furiously and looking to get laid. Disco music was the backdrop of every bar and club, played at full blast. Disco remained completely in control even when the wider culture had moved well on to other things like New Wave. It was even more puzzling that it was extremely rare to hear even Bronski Beat which is probably one of the gayest acts ever. Disco was well entrenched by the time I came on the scene in the late 70's, and seemingly was there practically from the beginning after Stonewall. 

I don't hate disco, but I think a lot of it is tired junk. We started to refer to pointless disco as "fag disco shit". But there was some really, really good disco. My god, I have vivid memories of Sylvester driving up to San Francisco the first time in the Central Valley blasting away on the stereo. Donna Summer had a huge gay following even though she was reportedly pretty homophobic. Gloria Gaynor's _I Will Survive_ is practically an anthem to gay men that "bitches, ain't nothing you can do to keep me down." When I first took Aric to Paris he was serenaded to _I Will Survive_ in the basement of a gay bar with thick French accents. 

And of course there was the Village People which played to every gay stereotype. It had a massive crossover to the mainstream who were by and large completely clueless. I once caught my stepfather humming YMCA and was like "god if you had any idea that this is really referring to cruising and having gay sex...". But the 70's in general played footsie with gay in a way that the 60's didn't. Nobody thought anything odd about Elton John and his outrageous outfits and flamboyance. I mean if you or I were walking down the street looking even vaguely like that you'd certainly be thought gay, but on stage everybody just suspended disbelief. When New Wave arrived it further tested the boundaries of gay in mainstream culture. I mean Fred Schneider from the B-52's was so obviously gay, and Ricky Wilson was the perfect twink who would be consumed by the first wave of gay people dying of AIDS. Sigh.

Film/TV

My 14 year old self couldn't believe what I had just seen

There wasn't nearly as much with film as there was with music but it was there. One of the most influential -- and often reviled -- was Boys in the Band. That this film was made at all is remarkable because it subtly broke the standard Hollywood formula that gay people were either a swishy stereotype comedy device, or either evil or otherwise ultimately punished for being gay. Boys in the Band is neither of those. Yes, it's dark and catty and yes it doesn't necessarily speak to your experience but it spoke to a slice of gay people's experiences. Going to Hollywood enough it was easy for me to say "I know these people". 

On the other end of the decade came Cruising which was sort of back to Hollywood's trope of gay people deserve what they get, but it was a semi-realistic look at the gay leather scene of the time, and looks like it may have been filmed at the Spike in NYC, or at the very least patterned after it. If I recall correctly, it has scenes in the Rambles of Central Park which is a notorious gay cruising area. So even though it followed the Hollywood formula, it was at least accurate which was quite an accomplishment.

Mid-decade produced two films that were absolutely radical and even to this day. The first is Blazing Saddles. Not gay specific, of course, but it features the normalization of gay as something that can be lampooned with all of the rest. It's easy to say that the Dom Deluise scene was homophobic in its stereotyping but that is exactly the point: the entire movie is about making fun of people's perception of stereotypes.

The second, of course, was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was 14 when I first saw it with friends and came out of the theater after going "what in fuck did we just see?". Back then it wasn't that gay roles were played well, it was that they were played at all. Rocky Horror was just so out there that, like Glam Rock, people suspended disbelief. That it became a cult classic and midnight revival favorite shows that the larger culture was getting more comfortable with things that were pretty damn gay at least from afar. They may not have been comfortable with it in the flesh, but on film and stage it was starting to become more normalized, if it's even possible to use the word "normal" anywhere close to Rocky Horror.

And then there was John Waters. John Waters was actually sort of part of a genre with the likes of Russ Myers and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. But Waters was uniquely himself. His use of the drag queen Divine was pretty out there. The wooden dialog is not bad casting or writing, it's the point. I think. The 70's defined Waters' early period with, in  my opinion, his signature piece Female Trouble in which Divine literally fucks herself and gets preggers with Taffy. It's just so out there you're constantly saying "what am I seeing"? Waters eventually started to go more Hollywood with Hairspray and then later Serial Mom. It's not that his movies are gay per se, it's just they have a gay vibe in their craziness.

As far as TV there wasn't much that I remember. Paul Linde and Charles Nelson Reilly pranced around the little screen. They weren't out per se, but they were as believably straight as Liberace. That did fit the Hollywood dandy formula where it's ok to be gay for laughs. Charles Nelson Reilly even had a kids show called Lidsville where he was the evil magician. Again he wasn't out but yet but nobody blinked an eye that I know of. Paul Linde on Hollywood Squares was outrageous and pushed the gay boundaries often. I've always doubted that the answers were spontaneous so he probably had time to figure out how to get away with stuff ahead of time, but they were clearly tossing him softballs that he could hit out. Oh and Soap with Billy Crystal's anemic gay character. Ho hum.

Last but not least is porn. Gay porn completely exploded in the 70's. I think at first it was mainly magazines but when VHS came around in the later 70's video took off instantly. California was really ground zero for gay porn I think both in SoCal and NorCal. There was any number of genre, but the SoCal variety typically focused on blond twink surfer boy types, where the NorCal porn focused on sort of the Castro Clone types. But there was plenty to go around for everybody. I think the premiere twink porn factory was Catalina Video which was based in Laguna Beach which I had many brushes with.

Bars and Discos

The Stonewall Inn itself, though not terribly popular when I've been

 

Bars and Discos were the beating heart of the gay community, and especially in gayborhoods. There was an explosion of them after Stonewall and they went from underground shady operations to openly gay to the point that the Twin Peaks bar in San Francisco became the first bar with windows for all to see. It later would be known as the Glass Coffin owing to its older clientele. But gay bars were everywhere at least in California. It was not at all unusual to see them in the suburbs as well as the gayborhoods. In Orange County, there were probably going on 10 or more of them spread out, and served the purpose of not having to drive all the way up to Hollywood. I don't know if that was as prevalent outside of California, but the Bay Area had them sprinkled all over too, so it would not be surprising if that were the case in other city's suburbs. 

The gayborhood bars on the other hand were usually concentrated and much more specialized. Leather bars, Levi bars, twink bars, dance clubs, even cowboy bars. They were used not only by the locals but bridge and tunnel types coming in from the burbs. And of course they were a big destination for tourists looking for fun and the locals seeing fresh meat. 

For me, bars and clubs were mainly a vehicle to get laid. I put up with the shitty disco playing too loudly, but for a lot of people they were a place to be completely gay and completely open with friends and strangers alike and dance your booty off. You didn't have to worry whether the person who you were eyeing was gay, as you do outside the gayborhood, just whether he was into you or not. Bars were also vehicles for getting the word out and would be vital once AIDS arrived on the scene because there was really no other way to get it out. But AIDS was only the latest in a string of events that bars did their part both formally, but more often informally to transmit information about protests, vigils and the like.

Bars could be classy or trashy and everything in between. You could literally fuck in some bars and while that's not very common in America these days, it's still pretty common in Euro gay bars. As I mentioned, gay bars in gayborhoods speciated into catering to different clientele. Piano bars where quite popular, but when I arrived they were seemingly already in decline. I'm not sure if piano bars predate Stonewall, but it would be really odd to be in decline just 10 years after if they were not. When was their golden age? I don't know. Piano bars usually catered to an older crowd with the old gurls getting together for dinner and to occasionally show off their new boy toy. One bar in LA was specifically for men of a certain age (think studio execs) and their boy toys for rent called The Numbers. The Numbers had this ridiculous mirrored stairway that you had to descend from to get in. I was 18 when I first went there and was scared shitless because I was under 21. A little flashed chest hair and nobody cared.

Lots of bars were just the standard issue have a few drinks, dance some, find some boy that you got their attention, and then go home with the new Mr Right Now. They seem to have popped up almost immediately after Stonewall as they were completely normal when I got there. The first club I ever went to was a gay chicken club called the Odyssey. I had heard about it when I was 16 and waited a year and half to go not knowing that I could have gotten in then. I knew (read: slept with) one of the managers who dazzled me with his 928.

Clubs and Affinity Groups

Smear the Queer

In the 70's a curious thing happened: we came out of the shadows and started to feel better about ourselves but society at large still shunned us. A lot of gay people who were in the closet had interests like in sports and hobbies and other things but now out of the closet it wasn't the most comfortable thing participating with straight people. The solution was to create gay versions of just about everything under the sun: gay softball, gay bowling leagues, gay rugby, gay mens' choruses, gay neighborhood and business organizations, gay political organizations, gay street patrols, gay D&D and gaming clubs, gay professional associations, gay, gay, gay. 

One of the most interesting and fun gay organizations started on an Easter Sunday 40 years ago in San Francisco which were a bunch of drag nuns called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They caused (and still cause) a lot of hysteria with straight Christians and especially Catholics who find them blasphemous. The joke is really on them because they are a hell of a lot more Christian in their behavior than your average bible wielding bigot and their twisted Prosperity Gospel, not to mention that they aren't diddling young boys as an organizing principle.  The really are a great organization who fund  raise for the community as their community outreach. I had the privilege  to know many over the years and they are just great.

The other thing that happened in the 70's is separation into various tribes. Twinks and bears, leather men, Castro Clones, Levi types, elegant disco bunnies, punks, gym bunnies (though that as a fad didn't really start until the 80's).  They all got their start in the 70's. Studio 1 in West Hollywood catered to another type: sort of the sweaty 20 something dance boys butching it up (usually badly). The scene was sort of like what is called a Circuit Party nowadays.

Gay professional groups made a huge difference in pushing companies big and small to change their HR rules to be more gay friendly. This had a big effect in Silicon Valley which started small and then snowballed. One of the reasons that the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade is so insufferably long is because every company in the Valley wants to show their support. This all grew out of the modest roots of the Gaymbrian Explosion.

Baths and Other Sex Emporiums 

 

Bette and Barry at the Continental Baths

I never really went to the baths or sex clubs until I was quite a bit older, but in the 70's they were legendary. They were probably only second to bars and clubs for finding people to hook up with. While I've never experienced this, apparently they could be very social and just a place to hang out and gossip with your friends, both old and, uh, freshly acquainted. People would spend hours and hours hanging out, lounging, chatting, cruising and of course having sex. I did go to the baths once with my first boyfriend in San Diego. It was pretty deserted so I don't think anything happened. The surreal part about it is that I was watching Alien in the film room. Uh, yeah.

The most legendary of all was the Continental Baths in New York City. Bette Midler got her start singing there and the list of others is almost endless including Barry Manilow. Apparently it was relatively short lived though as in closed in the mid 70's. The comedy movie The Ritz is patterned after the Continental Baths where Rita Moreno's character is clearly channeling the Divine Miss M. I both wish that I hadn't been so prudish back then, and am thankful I was because a lot of the people that visited them would die off. It's sort of hard to know how much of an impact they really had because everybody was fucking everybody in and out of the baths.

Politics

Activism was on the streets and just being

I saved politics for last because it's vitally important and completely unimportant both at the same time. For the vast majority of gay people politics is a very distant last on their list of things to care about. But to be gay is to be political in and of itself. Coming out is political as well as being personally liberating. But there was much, much more than that. Since I don't remember the early days, I have to piece it together. Almost immediately after Stonewall a huge burst of activism followed. Probably one of the most significant changes was removing homosexuality from the DSM of the American Psychiatric Association in 1973. There was just so much work to be done that a lot of it seems just sort of like bits and dregs in hindsight, but they were hugely important. There is still ongoing problems with police, but back then raids and especially entrapment were huge problems. Finding any politicians who were friendly was extremely rare, and often even if they were privately friendly they wouldn't say so publicly. Then there were the fights over sodomy laws which literally criminalized us. 

 

There really was no mythical age of kumbaya with gay liberation. It was always fractious. People fought about how political we should be, and what those politics should be. There weren't group hugs with lesbians who had their own priorities. The assimilationists fought with the more radical in your face gays. One binding quality however was sex positivity. That we could love who we wanted to love, and fuck how we want to fuck. The general feeling was that we don't need to ape heterosexuals so we shouldn't. Here again, the personal was the political.

By the mid 70's something happened: we got a lesbian elected for the first time in Ann Arbor starting a trend. The end of the 70's culminated with the election of Harvey Milk with him and many others fighting off the nascent reaction to gay rights in the form of the newly minted Religious Right. There were always Jesus Freaks as we called them, but they started organizing and that culminated with two very high profile events: the Briggs Initiative in California barring gay teachers, and the Anita Bryant led repeal of gay rights ordinance in Miami. Harvey Milk of course would be assassinated the following year in 1978 and led to the rage of the White Night Riots when Dan White, a fucking ex-cop, got a slap on the wrist for murdering Milk and Mayor Moscone by claiming he ate one too many twinkies or some such bullshit. The White Night Riots neatly bookend the decade: 10 years earlier where we were throwing rocks and stuff at cops for a bar raid. 10 years later an openly gay politician would be murdered in cold blood and bitches, we were not taking that sitting down because over that decade we gained power. Not a lot, but not a little either.

The course of the decade also produced one key element: learning how to organize. It was vastly simplified because everybody was moving to gayborhoods to live free, but in those neighborhoods it was also to push back at the homophobic establishment and other haters. Coors beer was boycotted, orange juice was boycotted, Carl's Jr (a burger joint, aka Bigot Burgers) was boycotted. The Coors boycott went on for decades and even after it was declared done, lots of bars were reluctant to serve it. Our organizing would prove vital in the years after the 70's with the AIDS crisis as the government utterly failed us and we had to fend for ourselves. 

Conclusion

Come out, come out wherever you are!

 

The 70's were a fascinating time for gay people. It went from practically nothing to being able to live happy open gay lives, and not necessarily just in gayborhoods. I burst on the scene in 1978 and the gay we know today was pretty much fully formed by then. There were huge battles to come, of course, but GenZ kids would  recognize it just like those of us of the latter part of the decade. The 80's are the decade that young people wouldn't recognize. The 70's was in many ways was very much like Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin: carefree, slutty, and huge amounts of fun. But in the end it was just one simple political act that trumped almost everything else: coming out. The more people knew gay people, the harder it was to hate them. That remains true to this day.

“Every gay person must come out,” Milk said. “As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell your neighbors. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. And once they realize that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do, you will feel so much better.”

 

Amen.

GaySexOverIP (GSoIP) Problem Statement and Requirements [nsfw]

Drastic Times Require Drastic Measures

M. Thomas

Mtcc

P. Rank

Grindr

April 2021

Abstract

The global pandemic of 2020-2021 has caused entire countries to shelter in place. The side effect is that millions of gay men who don't succumb to Covid-19, will succumb to the DSBU's (Dangerous Semen Build Up's). This draft defines the problem space, and lays out a standards based architecture for gay sex over IP in an interoperable fashion for various pieces of remote sex equipment (RSE). While the straight sex equivalent is obviously desirable as well for those who partake in it, the authors' lack of practical experience requires limiting the scope of this draft to only the gay sex problem space. Likewise, since the entirety of gay sex is vast, this draft will focus on gay penetrative sex. It is expected that if taken up as a working group item, this draft can serve as a basis for further collaboration in both the entirety of common sexual activity, but also the specifics of Penis in Vagina (PiV) sex as well. Also out of scope are the actual rendezvous mechanisms which are likely in the SIP [RFC3461] bailiwick.

Status of This Memo

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.

This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF community.  It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7340.


Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors.  All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document.  Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.

Terminology

• GSoIP -- Gay Sex over IP protocol
• PBE -- Precious Bodily Fluids such as ejaculate, chiffon and dish
• DSBU -- a condition in which a male explodes due to insufficient release of PBE
• RSE -- equipment which is required to partake in GSoIP sessions
• TOP-R  -- the insertion module
• TOP -- the physical manifestation of the insertion device
• BOTTOM-R -- the receiving module
• BOTTOM -- the physical manifestation of the receiving device
• GSoIP-TRAPEZOID -- the architectural element of TOP->BOTTOM-R->TOP-R-> BOTTOM control flow

Problem Statement

High bandwidth sexual encounters have been sharply curtailed with gay sex due to the Covid-19 pandemic requirement's to socially distance. This can lead to severe consequences of the men in confinement due to DSBU's. However it can be observed that with a wire there is a way for almost all human endeavors. The simulation of gay sex, however, is possible with the proper use of RSE and controls and parameters to specify the various physical aspects of the sexual event. Ideally RSE from different vendors should be able to interoperate, such that vendors who specialize in one experience to be able to interoperate with vendors that specialize in others. For example, some vendors may specially in bottoming and users may have preferred brands. Tops may prefer brands that implement the BALLGAG protocol. All should interoperate with each other while preserving a diverse and personalized experience. 

The exact means of making the rendezvous is out of scope but it is imagined that Grindr or other apps can be used, as well as IETF standards such as SIP. Also out of scope is straight sex of any kind since it is specifically excluded from the charter and is all around nasty. For actual sessions the protocol is free to reuse other protocols such as MGCP or SIP for media setup, but it need not reuse other protocols for the GSoIP control and monitoring channel.

General Requirements

1. The protocol MUST allow for a variety of devices, and be extensible for future additions
2. The working group MUST determine how media streaming fits into the architecture, as well as the larger architecture with rendezvous protocols and their media setup capabilities
3. Existing media transport protocols MUST be used as applicable with liaison to the MMUSIC working group as needed for sorting through the expected crush of new codecs (eg, a codec for causing physical movements on remote device as captured by local sensors), etc.
4. All of the normal positions of anal sex MUST be accommodated
5. STD transmission MUST be supported
6. The protocol MUST be able exchange size and various other measurements so as to simulate choking and small dicks banging around a loose bottom
7. The protocol MUST be able to accommodate more that 2 participants
8. Oral sex MUST be supported
9. Frotting and other non-penetrative sex MAY be supported in future versions
   
10. The protocol MUST support real time exchange of telemetry information on both sides including stroke rate, depth, attack angle and the like
11. The protocol MUST support communicating the swelling of cocks before orgasm
12. The protocol MUST support other indications of imminent orgasm
13. The protocol MAY support lighting a cigarette after orgasm
14. The protocol MUST support exchanging turgidity measurement as well as gap analysis for bottoms
15. The protocol SHOULD be able to exchange whether the bottom is laying there like a wet burlap sack
16. The protocol SHOULD be able to relay whether the top is actually looking at the bottom or is disinterest in the bottom's needs
17. The protocol MUST be able to relay the bottom's position if any at the beginning of the session. 
18. The protocol MUST be able to relay the weight of the bottom's legs, and the lengths of both tops and bottoms
19. The protocol MAY relay bottoms filing their nails or eating bon-bons
20. The protocol SHOULD support updating HIV status to match the desires of other participants
21. The protocol MUST be able to relay the "pass" of a messy pass around party bottom
22. The protocol SHOULD support double penetration
23. The protocol SHOULD support "centipede" configurations with feedback for harmonizing motion
24. The protocol MUST support the basic mechanism for start/stop/pause and fast forward. RTSP MAY be used in its stead. Rewind MAY be supported
25. The protocol MAY support exchange of the risks of STD's in a terminated session
    

Security Requirements

Since this draft deals with intimate relationships, security is of utmost concern

1. The protocol MUST protect the privacy of the participants
2. The protocol MUST provide authentication of the participants as needed
   
3. The protocol MUST be able provide anonymous participants from the standpoint of one or more of the participants
   
4. The protocol MUST be able provide knowledge that participants are of a legal age
5. The protocol MUST provide safe-words, with the defaults being 'no' and 'stop'
6. The protocol MUST be able to report messy bottoms
7. The protocol MUST be able to relay bottom hysteria and immediately terminate the session
8. The protocol MUST facilitate ghosting after the session terminates
9. The protocol MUST support top theft avoidance measures including mammal eyes and clinginess detection
10. The protocol MUST support prolapse avoidance and relay any impending events; tops falling in is unacceptable
    

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the useful input from r/askgaybros and all of their hysterical queens which inform many of the security requirements

Informative References

None at this time.

Thinking About Sin

[Foreword: this is not a review and this is a little disjoint not exactly on purpose, but because it's flowing from various takes on the series rather than trying to be coherent whole. sew me. also: Aric here is my husband] 

Olly and Nathaniel as cute as can be

I've been going back and forth with Nathaniel Hall, one of the stars(!) of the new series It's a Sin, about what it was like being gay back in the 80's. Russell Davies' (RTD) perspective struck me as off at first, but then I remembered that he was in London, not the west coast of California like me. I just got done re-watching the episode where Nathaniel was Ritchie's boyfriend set in 1986. If It's a Sin is accurate about what it was like there, it's pretty stunning how ignorant they were in comparison to LA and San Francisco. By that time we knew it was a virus that was spread with anal sex and that all of the hysteria about getting it in the air or by contact, etc was wrong. In 1984 they discovered the actual virus HIV and in 1985 the first tests came out. So to be set in 1986 with that level of ignorance still persisting is really shocking in a huge cosmopolitan city like London. Aric knew all about it when he got to the Castro in 1986 and I certainly knew about it years earlier out in the suburbs of LA. 

Of course hysteria doesn't end just because the right information was available so maybe I'm being a little hard on London here. The thing that was so contradictory at the time is that we all had to know that in the bars there had to be infected people among us -- how else do you get it? -- but it didn't stop people from going out. So why was it when somebody finds a little KS splotch it all changes and they need to be treated as lepers? I mean, it's not like people were fooling around with obviously sick people, so it clearly had an incubation time. It doesn't make any sense in retrospect, but that's how hysteria works I guess.

One of the things that RTD got exactly right is the hassle of condom use. They interrupt the moment, they are hard to get on and often are a bone killer, they're easy to forget in the throes of passion, and nobody actually liked using them. The revisionist history these days that condoms are wonderful and feel great, blah blah blah is bullshit. They were the only thing we had beyond going celibate which wasn't happening. While condoms used properly have a good success rate, they aren't perfect and they most certain aren't used properly all of the time. Condoms basically stopped the tide, but it would be PrEP that finally turned that tide.

Another thing about It's a Sin is it is not The story of what the 80's were like for gay men, because there were many many different stories in many different locations. Maybe they can even do an American version! There was no public internet back in those days so information spread very slowly and extremely unevenly. The small town experience was very different from being in one of the big gayborhoods and took a long time for basic information to get out there. And as I elaborate later, even being close enough to big gayborhoods was a hugely different experience than being in one. We were all affected by it, but the way we were affected by it varied widely.

One of the things that was done in some places was to shut down bathhouses. That turned out to be a big mistake because bathhouses were a community resource for the distribution of safe sex information, testing, and generally getting the word out. There was more than a little homophobia associated with those closures and I've always resented Dianne Feinstein's (then mayor of San Francisco, now California Senator) crypto-homophobia when calling for it. Yes, it had Randy Shilts's fingers all over it too, but she was very glad to oblige. And for all of that all it did was push men having sex underground to sketchy sex clubs and the worst place of all: home. Yes home. Some people were getting infected whoring around at sex clubs and the baths, but most were getting it the old fashioned way: dragging people back home.

I asked Aric if the Pink Palace rang true with the number of friends, etc, in their orbit and he said yes. At the time of Nathaniel's episode in 1986, I was living in Orange County and working long, long hours so I really didn't have all that many gay friends other than maybe bar acquaintances. They were see-at-bar hi-at-bar kinds of friends. But Aric had a large group of friends who all hung out together and drink and smoke dope. Wait that's another huge difference: where's the dope in London? I only saw one joint!  In any case, it makes sense because when I moved to San Francisco in 1994 I made a huge new set of friends, many from bars but unlike the burbs we'd invite them over for parties. Ok, so that lines up too.

One thing that struck me even from the trailers was the outright denial. Denial that it was happening at all. That is definitely something that was very different from my experience. There was definitely suspicion of drug companies, but that's different than saying it's some sort of plot to stop gay men from having sex. We knew something fucked was going on although what was going on was rather mysterious. It was probably around 1982 -- maybe 1983 -- when I first saw inklings of what was going on in West Hollywood down in Laguna Beach but there was nothing actionable so we just carried on (and on). By around 1984 and definitely 1985 it was a lot more established that you needed to use condoms. So outright denial seemed really odd to me and Aric didn't remember that either. I asked a group of people many of whom lived through that time too and they confirmed that denial existed, but looking back I realize that most of them were foreign. If you were here in the US close enough to gay ghettos, it was pretty hard to deny what was happening. There were plenty of other ways to look the other way though.

One other interesting detail/difference is that while some people holed up out of embarrassment not everybody did. Aric in particular told stories of seeing people in the Castro who had The Look. While I didn't see it on a daily basis, I too know what he's talking about. I bumped into a friend in Laguna I hadn't see in a while (he had turned into well known porn star since I had met him years before) and I remember him having The Look. Thinking back there was one boy named Kenny who I was sort of dating for while in college back in the late 70's, maybe 1980 who kind of had that sunken look and who told me that he had a close brush that put him in the hospital. I've always wondered looking back whether it might have been HIV but we lost contact. I also remember vividly seeing Rock Hudson on Dynasty going "oh shit he has it!" because of The Look.

Having HIV is often/most of the time much more drawn out than it looked in It's a Sin which is what makes it so insidious. You don't just get KS and die, you get nickled and dimed with shitty diseases as your body fights a long losing war of attrition. Some people certainly got really unlucky and died right away, but in some respects the long drawn out fight might have been worse. While it gave you some hope to make it to the next drug, it was also extremely hard on people as it was one insult to your body after another. Another stint in the hospital, another course of IV drugs and little by little until there was no fight left. Aric was one of those who proved that it could actually be beat, but he was a huge outlier. His T-Cells were really low when I met him but he made it to Protease Inhibitors in 1995 only to become resistant to them too. Aric was very much an outlier in that he had some AIDS defining diseases, he was never in serious danger of dying. I was fortunate to be able to force him to finally stop working at his shitty retail job with all of the weezy-sneeezy tourists. Not everybody was so fortunate. In the process he lost all but one of his friends out of a group of probably a couple of dozen.

Another huge difference between California and the UK is section 28 which was a hugely homophobic law. It was particularly insidious as it muzzled telling kids about safe sex among other things. Kids out of high school are the demographic that HIV loves to prey on because they are emancipated, horny, and stupid. The US was no paragon of enlightenment of course, but we never did have something national like section 28. People certainly tried to "save the children", and many many bible belt school boards forbade teaching anything about homosexuality or safe sex but it wasn't uniform like in the UK. Maybe the UK criminalized being HIV positive too (or more precisely laws that make it illegal to not inform a partner), but I doubt that would have played out the same as in the good old US where trying to penalize The Gayz in reality turned into yet another way to screw black people.

For me the AIDS crisis played out really different than big city gayborhoods. As I said earlier, I knew about it from around the beginning and stayed roughly as informed as you could be at the time, but the urgency seemed way less because I wasn't seeing the outcomes like you would living in a city. That was also part of the experience: not an experience at all, at least up close and personal. It didn't play out like denial in the form of it wasn't really happening, but more in the form of it was far away and easier to ignore. But it was in fact happening in the burbs. By about the early 90's 1500 people had died of AIDS in Orange County, which is a pretty big chunk of the gay population which was probably about 50000 at the time, most of whom probably didn't go out at all. Ceasing to see somebody around and not really noticing was part of the reality too, and I still have questions of old flings and what happened to them.

The "it's far away" was mixed up with fatalism that we all probably had it because of our whoring around, so it caused a really weird brew of ways to cope with the threat. And coping with that threat meant carrying on carrying on which I did dutifully. To put a point on it, one of the first things I did when I moved to San Francisco was to go to Randy Shilts's funeral (And the Band Played On). The train from the Castro was packed to Civic Center and what did we do? We cruised each other, that's what we did. There was a huge flame war on soc.motss (a gay internet forum) about the propriety of cruising people at the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It's hard to describe the contradictions.

I didn't see it upfront and personal until around when I had moved to San Francisco and in a year's time Protease Inhibitors were starting to make a big dent giving a lot of new hope. Even though I really never saw much, the one that I did see deeply scarred me so I can't imagine seeing that on a nearly weekly basis. That was the real trauma, and that trauma infused everybody because we all knew people who had been through the wars even if we didn't see it first hand. Finally seeing it first hand was traumatic. Howard was one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. Getting casually asked if I'd help deal with an infusion stent made it all very real. It's one thing to know what was happening intellectually, but quite another to see it day to day. Howard told Aric that I wouldn't reject him because I wasn't that type of person. I steeled myself and wasn't that kind of person. In some ways I felt really guilty since I had it so much easier so I felt it was my duty as a gay man. But I was in love too, so that makes up for a lot too.

One peeve I have with Queer as Folk which bleeds into It's a Sin is that while procuring gay sex is easy, it's not that easy. I mean I suppose if everybody was on ecstasy bumping around maybe -- I've never been to a gay rave or circuit party -- but bars and clubs were never as easy he makes it seem. Admittedly I'm rather shy and introverted until I know you, but I didn't see people bouncing around tonsils a-tickled like that. Even Aric who is very extroverted and extremely brazen was definitely an outlier. Ok, yes, tell me to fuck off because it's Hollywood and that's what happens with Hollywood. I know, I know, but even the truth was pretty out there especially if you are straight. Note however I did not find the carrying on at the Pink Palace was unrealistic. That is entirely believable, if not first hand believable. Did I just admit something? La!

A uniquely different aspect of my experience is that I had internet access in 1991 and the internet really changed everything. It was extremely uncommon to have internet access in the early days and it had barely been opened up to entities beyond government and researchers at schools when we got it. I think we had UUCP access before in the late 80's, but I didn't find the gay Usenet group soc.motss until 1991. Having that contact was a hugely consequential thing for me. Usenet's gay group may have had analogs on things like AOL and Compuserve, but probably not to the degree like Usenet. My understanding of the other online services is that they were mostly about hooking up -- sorry apps, you didn't invent dialing for dick -- so the lifeline may have been less. The free flow of information about sex in the time of AIDS would have made a huge difference even if it had just been 5 years earlier. Gen Z people don't understand how hugely consequential the lack of information was.

The Race Against Time

There are a couple of episodes that could have been made. One post Ritchie's death set in like 94-95 with characters in the circle who are poz. There was a race going on at the time because Protease Inhibitors (PI's) were on the horizon. Nobody really knew for certain about the long term efficacy, but for those who were really sick, it was just trying to make it to the next drug to literally live to see another day. As it turns out PI's were part of the cocktail of drugs that finally turned things around for a lot of people. But for some people it was just too late. This played out in real life for me with Aric and Howard, Aric making it across the finish line and Howard just missing it. It was heartbreaking to be so fucking close and yet so fucking far. In Aric's case it turned out to be another live to see another day since he was so resistant and almost 10 long years to finally finish the race.

The other story I wish they had explored is Ritchie having hinted he might have had unprotected sex after he was diagnosed. That would be its own psycho drama and brings up some uneasy questions that are easy to moralize about, but harder when you're caught up in it. I say hinted because I don't believe that he explicitly said he was going bare after diagnosis, and "how many people have I killed" could be referring to all of the people he infected before. But it's perfectly possible he was. There was a lot of Thelma and Louise (or better: The Living End) going on in those days with fatalism and might-as-well-have-fun attitude. Ritchie was no angel, after all. He was a young person in a terribly fucked situation. Maybe Russell couldn't go there because like me he managed by some miracle to stay negative and would be hard to get in his mind.

So does It's a Sin get it right? Aric thinks so and he lived in the closest analog to gay London (ie, in the Castro), perhaps more so because they never exactly say whether the Pink Palace was in a gay ghetto or not. For me it's totally believable despite my quibbles with this and that. The right balance is struck between just being a total downer kind of AIDS film because life did in fact go on for a lot of us. It could have been me, it could have been Russell, it could have been any one of us. Sin was fun. Lots of fucking fun.