THE EMILE WALTERS DIARIES

INTRODUCTION

2008-07-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

In this blog I have published my memories and reflections of my gay life as it has evolved over the past ten years.

The reader can find some eighty episodes - published from December 2007 until June 2008 - by visiting the "previous episodes" in the side bar at the right.

Emile J. Walters (nom de plume)

The Netherlands

HAS OUR WESTERN CULTURE BECOME OVERSEXED?

2008-06-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Original sin

Some reflections on the hedonistic tendencies of our time

Increasing concern has been aired in the recent past that our western culture has become too occupied with ‘sex’. Even at political level people have expressed their concern regarding this – alleged – trend in society, especially among the youth. Pop culture, magazines and the regular items in newspapers or on TV are far more open in matters of sexual nature than in any previous period of the (post-)Victorian age.

I am not the first one to raise this question, of course. Nor do I consider myself an expert of sexual sociology, which is the discipline most inclined to study these phenomena. But I stumbled on an interesting research paper, dating from 2004 (see reference below), that attempts to identify the main questions in respect of sexuality and society.

The paper makes a clear distinction between men and women and the way we deal with (our) sexuality and with relationship matters. Among others the papers lists the key concerns of young students of British universities in this respect (Pollack 1998). The difference between girls and boys is evident.

Women
1. fear of singleness
2. not having a boyfriend
3. memories of the past
4. pressure from one’s boyfriend
5. masturbation

Men
1. masturbation
2. images on film, videos, magazines
3. the way women dress
4. memories of the past
5. not having a girlfriend

”The first three items on the men’s list are about sexual responses males find troubling that are not directly linked to relationships. Non-relational sexuality is a significant issue and Christian males identify it as problematic for them.”

But, as the paper continues, “…we are made for relationship, and our sexuality keeps us striving for relationship, longing for connection, pulling us toward, rather than away from others. In our maleness and femaleness, in our embodied aloneness, we are drawn toward others.”

Most of the concerns about the issue arise from those who wish to reconcile sexuality and sexual practices or attitudes with their religious beliefs, as is the case of above mentioned paper. For many, the key theme is reconciliation of sexuality and intimacy, of ‘sex’ as an expression (and function) of private intimacy and not as a mass consumption article that can be bought and satisfied regardless of any interpersonal connection or true love. A rather embarrassing example of the latter, in my view, is the late night programming of most of the commercial channels in my own country… just zap and you will only see sluttish girls luring horny men into spending their cell phone credits on totally fake sessions with a ‘young girl’ on the other side of the line.

Paris Hilton: sexism taken a little too far perhaps

Still, if prostitution is regarded as the oldest profession in existence today, it is very difficult, in my view, to think of sex commercials on TV as an outrageous example of an oversexed culture, however distasteful they may be. Today we have the media and the mass access to them to show what people have wanted to see and ‘enjoy’ since the earliest days of civilization and – no doubt - before.

Of course, every trend brings along its extremes and quite a few people readily succumb to them. Hence, whether or not our culture is ‘oversexed’, not every expression of people’s sexual interests is necessarily a healthy one. But it is part of our freedom as human beings – at least within the confines of our own privacy - not to be disturbed by somebody else’s sense of good taste or religious dogma on sensual chastity. I would think that the damage inflicted on many people by the restrictive imprisonment of our senses in the Victorian age has been far greater than the possible damage by a culture that may be a little too eager to buy or zap to sleazy porn. We have no obligation whatsoever to watch it.

Sex has largely become a mass consumption article

My own approach to the contemporary cultural phenomena related to sex and sexuality is that we are not at the end of the process that started with the sexual liberation of the nineteen sixties. This seems obvious. We are talking about one of the most fundamental and controversial aspects of our existence as human beings. It took the writing of an entire Bible to allow people of the past to make sense of it in their own context and circumstances, some two thousand years ago. Today, people are still reading the same Bible, yet in a hugely different context. And it is difficult for many people to escape the confines of our religious heritage, which has equaled sex with sin for such a long period.

But it isn’t the Bible itself of course. It is the entire mental construct created by the succession of popes and prelates and their moral machinery as they reigned over Europe for more than thousand years, or even up to our present time. Directly or indirectly, many people are still affected by the rulings and dogmas that come out of Rome, which largely seem insensitive to the every day (sexual) realities.

Similarly it is very difficult to understand – or accept –the dictates of any religion that go against the grain of human – male and female – equality especially where it concerns our freedom to choose our mate as and when we wish to.

Two ways of writing largely the same story

In a broader context the evolution of human sexuality and of its varied expressions coincide with other profound (r)evolutions, not merely in our technology or in the media, that help to satisfy and to some degree stimulate our natural interests. Liberation has been the key in almost every other cultural, social and political dimension of our lives.

Perhaps the greatest contradiction of our time is not between the prevailing (sexual) morality and our actual sexual habits, but between the claim of increased individualism (a product of liberation) and our remaining tendency to blindly follow the taste of the masses and yet again conform rather than diverge.

“God (or nature, EJW) made us to appreciate, to be drawn to beauty. It is a tragedy that beauty is so narrowly defined by those who shape our desires through the market.” (McMinn, 2004)

I can see a future where fashion is not the mere product of trendy designers but the accumulation of our individual designs, readily produced as and when we wish. Similarly it would be much better, I believe, if we develop our own individual sense of beauty or physical perfection and make this our most personal expression. I would strongly prefer such further development in contrast to a renewed restrictive general morality.

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Source a.o.:
Self Control in an Over-Sexed Culture - Embracing Intimacy in a Broken World; Lisa McMinn, Wheaton College (2004)

A REVULSION OF - CERTAIN - MEN

2008-06-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

Lex Luthor: male ruthlessness taken to some extreme

Rising beyond the selfish animal inside us

Throughout the past ten years I have had many different encounters with young people – girls and boys – whose youth had been (or was at the time) far from privileged.

I present this in a terrible understatement. For the lack of privilege may be one thing; a youth of abuse, of grave misinterpretation of personality and talents, of outright maltreatment or at least a gross ignorance or neglect of parental responsibilities…is another. I have heard and experienced too many cases in which these grave shortcomings play a role.

Most of the shortcomings arise from men. They are men who have no clue or who totally lack any feeling in respect of the rights, the interests and the emotional sensitivities of the youth, whether they are boys or girls. This is especially bad when it concerns their own children, I don’t need to explain. But so many men wish to interfere in the lives of young people, simply because they are out to abuse them.

I am reminded of the story of Christian (21), which I have already extensively covered in previous episodes. What on earth drives a grown up family man to persist in stalking a young boy, or anyone?

Face of Horror: Josef Fritzl, Austria

Men who surrender to this behavior must be a complete wreck inside as is the Austrian man who only recently became a news item for the long term imprisonment of his own daughter plus the children he made her bear. It is very hard to think of more unspeakable atrocities, yet they occur only too often in a world, in which men have developed all kinds of excuses, including outrageous religious dogmas, to do as they like with their children (or children of others).

A religion that even remotely condones the killing by a father of his own daughter for reasons of honor, must stand to immediate correction at the highest level of justice. Again, I would think that this is self-evident, but so many people in our world refuse to accept that.

We have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights but there is no equivalent document to establish the rights of children (note: see comment below). Even in our world this seems a bridge too far if only we consider our own dogma of parental authority (and parental self-righteousness) where in specific cases it can no longer be justified.

The Right of decent Parenthood

Much of the abuse can only grow one step at the time: after one fantasy, the next. But it must all start with a deeply felt insufficiency and huge egoism at the same time. It is the kind of personal uncertainty and selfishness which can harbor in all of us. We all know the stories of men who experienced neglect in their own youth and who grow up with a distinct lack of empathy (let alone ‘love’).

But it is true. Our sense of empathy must be groomed and nourished from the earliest days of our childhood. To ‘think of others’ is not a quality we develop simply on our own. Some people have a natural talent in this respect, but otherwise we have to check and – gradually – divert our basic instincts of survival and selfish love into social consciousness and true interest beyond the mere satisfaction of our own desires.

When this is not achieved (most of all: by virtue of responsible parenthood), gruesome consequences lurk around the corner. Especially in the world of gay men, this deficiency seems rampant. I can not escape this observation. So many men simply surrender to what they want to get (or take), rather than expressing what they actually can give in return.

Thus, even though we have good reason to be horrified by the daily stories of child abuse and human (in particular: male) egoism, it remains a challenge for each of us to effectively rise above the heritage of the Baboon living inside the chromosomes of our body cells.

WE DO AS WE LIKE

2008-06-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

Mating is one thing, but what is a partnership?

The other day I was chatting with a good friend whom I tried to explain the almost daily presence of my ‘good young friend’ Matthew, my highschool chill buddy of 17. I recommend you read my episode 'A gentleman and his ‘good young friend’ - May 2008 - which basically explains my view of this particular connection.

“It would seem we act like a gentle old couple, too friendly with each other to ever have a quarrel”, I said. But we are not. We are not a ‘couple’ of any kind. There is an element of inseparability in our liaison, I have to admit or simply: to observe. His – indeed, almost daily - habit of installing himself on my sofa, either with the TV or the laptop at hand, to watch movies, to listen to music, or to share information with his friends, other boys and girls who come in his wake, - all of this habitual pattern in my home is a mutual pattern, perhaps even an addiction for both of us.

Yet, essentially we are there together both to not disturb each other and to entertain each other. We do not necessarily share every interest or every taste. I can not get him to listen to Bach or Gershwin with any degree of interest. Nor do I particularly like his choice of music or the soaps he zaps through on TV. Otherwise we share quite a lot, our own private milestones, our wider friendships, things going on at the level of our emotions and so on. Things that happen in the world. If this doesn’t sum up to some kind of partnership, what else remains that should be added?

Yet with all this reciprocity, the starting point is freedom, no prior commitment of sharing whatsoever. We do as we like, including the things we both happen to like.

A single partnership that encompasses all the needs of a human individual to me has always seemed a virtual mission impossible, even though I have seen some great examples –throughout the generations. Most certainly we can not count on it to happen in our own lives, and therefore we must be prepared to make special arrangements, and create special connections that serve particular ‘partnership needs’. I have elaborated this concept in an earlier episode (In Search of our Mate – May 2008).

“I feel at home. He feels at home.” It so happens to be, I explained to my good friend.

Matthew is just one example, a prominent one in this period of my life – for sure. But in my life I have a wide range of connections, each representing one or the other distinct ‘partnership’.

“I think the greatest gift is the energy and inspiration which all of these connections generate for me,” I finally explained. Age difference is a totally irrelevant factor and it is the most crucial factor at the same time, not excluding the many friendships I have with people of my own age and much older.

Obviously a partnership with a teenager is of a totally different nature, it has to be, than a partnership with anybody in his or her thirties and beyond. But this is not the point. I am talking about everything within the limits of the law and general morality, not of any illicit dilemma in this respect.

Most people, whether in their adolescence or in their adulthood, struggle with their partnership(s), or the lack of them. Let’s not beat around the bush. I hope my reflections can inspire others to review and enhance their partnerships. Most of all, in my view: by securing that each time, the other can do as he (she) likes.

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE GAY MAN IS MORE TRULY MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD?

2008-06-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

What follows is an essay, which I published in my previous blog ‘Addicted to Boy Beauty’. I can still largely vouch for its content.

Quote

This is some question! According to the Bible, God created man in his own image. But little do we really know of (that) Man. All we have learned is that he was the first to know the forbidden fruits of life - and love - and that he was expelled from Paradise as a direct consequence.

The story is telling in many respects. Most of all it is a reflection of the way people in ancient times looked upon Man's responsibilities and upon his true identity in the eyes of the Creator. The weaknesses of man, and of manhood, are as much part of this as his strengths. Yet the latter all became relevant only out of Paradise, because it is out of Paradise that humanity was obliged to work, to work hard and to truly carry its fullest responsibilities.

Some people might say: well indeed, eating even more forbidden fruits will carry Man further away from Paradise. In their view Gayness is such a forbidden fruit and should be discouraged as much as possible, most notably where it concerns its expression in Man’s sexual behavior. There is some logic to this, of course. Life is about ongoing pro-creation and homosexuality is an immediate slap in the face of it.

Further down the road of history and culture, in fact: many histories and many cultures, humanity has treated gayness – or certain expressions of it – as highly undesirable, punishable even by law. And thus a potentially great variety of human expressions became banned from the image of Man as recognized by human society, particularly in our Western world.

We do not need to defend or attack homosexuality per se in order to discuss gayness as an expression of man, or of manhood. We can enjoy the beauty of humanity, and sure, the beauty of people of our own sex, without necesessarily developing (or actively pursuing) intimate desires about them. Out of the Victorian age we are hard pressed to gradually recognize that beauty and sexual attractiveness may be treated as distinct qualities. “Yes,” I want to say,”you are a beautiful man.” Don’t we all want to say this once in a while when we meet such a man?

And can we even contemplate to look at the image of ourselves and say “Yes, I love you”, whoever we are and wherever we are in time and culture? Of course we can, for if we cannot love ourselves, what love can we ever give to anyone else?

Gayness first of all is about such love. It is about the enjoyment of life. Gayness really is a-sexual to begin with. Before the word became synonym with ‘homosexuality’, it was used by many simply to express warmth, cordiality, happiness even, and most of all: joy.

If the Bible is essentially a story of love (for what other purpose can it have) then the enjoyment of life is its most critical prerequisite. It is impossible to think of life filled with men – and women – only who are serious without the ability to have pleasure, who are responsible without the ability let it go, or who want to educate their children without being able to play with them.

It is a satisfaction in my own life that I have learned to appreciate the playful side of Man, including the playful side of myself, and that I have learned to use it in a fruitful sense, not simply by eating the sweet pieces. Whether or not I believe in God, or in the story of the Bible, is immaterial. But I do hope that in having developed my gay side I have become a better man – as I believe I have – and more fit to further contribute to the better qualities of our human society of men and women.

March 2007

Unquote

Soon after I received a highly valuable comment, from the famous photographer BIRON

Interesting question you pose and the one 5th Century Greeks answered this way: For Plato, of the three ultimate values -- Truth, Beauty & Justice -- only Beauty was revealed through the senses and as such was key to providing a gateway to the image of God. Through the tangible aesthetic appreciation of the male form, Plato could then extrapolate the notion of absolute perfection -- or God. It is the opposite of what is generally considered to be 'Platonic love' -- pure love devoid of the physical. For the Greeks, the notion of pure absolute love (or God, if you prefer) was attainable only through the experience of M2M physical love -- not of it's denial which is an aberration of nature promoted by Christianity. So, to answer your question, homo-erotic Greek aesthetics is a mind/body total experience and the very foundation on which rests the Ancient Greeks' comprehension of God. Sex perceived as a purely physical act is an impossibility even for the so-called lower animals and a Christian perversion of nature.

---

Photo by BIRON

My answer:

Biron, many thanks! As I see it, the conclusions I have arrived at myself through experience and observation are extremely compatible with the Greeks' view as outlined in your mail. God, what a relief that sometimes one can make sense of it all :-)

-----

His reply:

I agree. The Greek and Buddhist perspectives are based on common sense which means they do not betray nature. Christianity has pitted man vs nature. Any morality that is not based on nature is an immorality. What would it take to turn things around when killing is rewarded and sex is condemned. Few are at all interested in making such a change so it would appear by the best estimates the status quo will continue and the human race is doomed.

I also received the following comment from someone else:

“A beautiful essay. Thank you! It's worth noting that the humans were exiled from the garden not for enjoying life or love - they had no shame! - but rather for deciding to disobey God. In other words, for trying to assert their independence from their creator. In a word: pride. It's also worth noting that the first purpose of love and sex in Genesis is companionship.”

In Dutch we would say: “waarvan akte.”
As duly noted.

LIFE IN THE FALL

2008-06-11T14:41:00.001-07:00

Thoughts about the quality of our dying

Have I suddenly turned morbid? Why should I think about dying? The answer is: I don’t. My thoughts about the issue were not triggered by the image of death but – rather the opposite – by my musings about the nature of life.

But as we all know, life and death do belong to each other. Life would have been choked to oblivion in its earliest beginnings if death did not come along in the same measure. We have no problem with this, as the process of birth, life and death is omnipresent in our earthly world. We witness it every day, consciously and subconsciously, in the life and death of flowers and of the leaves on the trees and in the cycle of life of all other living things which we have around us, including people.

But I occurred to me that nature has invested a lot of inventiveness in pursuing effective life forms, largely beyond human imagination, but that it has not paid any attention to more effective or pleasant ways of dying. Life simply crawls to its end, irrevocably and without discrimination. The latter most certainly is true as regards the actual event of dying, whether it is peacefully in our sleep or painfully in the last agony of a ferocious illness. Indeed, dying is an uneasy prospect and one of which we do not wish to be reminded.

Life and death

The immediate explanation is that life does not select for ‘better dying’. It only selects for our capacity to reproduce and to secure a healthy upbringing of our offspring. The cycles of nature require death, but they are senseless to the way we ultimately get there. A good death does not compete any better than a painful death. It just remains a matter of chance. A good life however does have a bearing on our chances of a rich offspring

Let me just get to this example. The image below popped up in my mind.

Autumn in the Berkshires, New England, USA

After summer, the leaves of the trees in the Berkshires turn red an yellow in many tones and in great intensity. I believe the Berkshires are the symbol of autumn like no other place on Earth. Autumn follows the summer. And it ends with all leaves dead and gone.

The coloring of the leaves in the Berkshires is not just a beautiful accident. One might think that the red, orange, brown and yellow (or gold) coloring of the leaves is a quality of their dying process. If so, my thesis would at least to this extent be undermined. But the assumption is wrong. For the red and yellow coloring of the leaves are an immediate function of their survival, of their continued ability to successfully procreate.

The coloring happens for a specific purpose – as a defense mechanism to stop leaf-eating insects attacking them. I take my information from one Dr Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU, UK) who in addition explains that leaf color change does frighten off leaf-eating insects, but he believes this is only one of a series of inter-related reasons for the dramatic color change.

“Evidence suggests that leaf color changes are the result of co-evolution between plants and insects. The majority of insects are not sensitive to the color red and so are less attracted to plants with red leaves. But the color red also helps plants photosynthesize more effectively in the autumn and colder climates.” (source: LJMU website).

The combination of fewer insect attacks plus less leaf damage – either from mandibles or the sun’s rays – means that plants that turn red in the autumn store up more food and host fewer insect eggs. Come the spring this results in a more vigorous, healthy plant with fewer insect larvae compared to those with duller-colored autumn leaves. Changing leaf color is - therefore - crucial to plant fitness.

I refer to this metaphoric phenomenon to make a point about the way we live ourselves and about the conditions we create to enhance the survival of our offspring. This is in the end what counts of course, but I do believe a ‘good life’ has a similar side effect as the marvel in the autumn of the Berkshires.

This takes me to the autumn of my own life, or of anyone in my age bracket. We have a choice. I do not stress this point because I happen to have my own offspring. There are numerous different ways in which we can contribute to the health of the next generation(s). It is not simply dependent on the actual biological relation.

A joyous middle age

A colorful autumn can be translated into a colorful middle age. It is my repeated experience that people who reach old age in good health are those who are productive, colorful and essentially happy until the very end. And indeed, the colors they project invariably make them such wonderful company to be with – and to learn from.

...is the business of living

To increase our chance of a painless and peaceful death equals the quality of the life we lead. So, indirectly we may be fostering the quality of our dying by improving the quality of our living and pass it on to those who follow, like the red and gold leaves of the Berkshires.

ANIMAL IN A CAGE

2008-06-08T07:00:00.001-07:00

Sex is the expression of the nature we share with all mammals

Whatever the merits of our humanity, we need to take care of our animal needs too, such as going to the toilet and having sex. Our culture dictates that we treat both concerns as a matter strictly limited to our privacy.

Counterattacks to that culture are obvious and they are part of the same history. Sexual liberation or restriction have made their mark throughout the ebb and flow of history, including the ongoing shifts in our demography. An aging society tends to foster more restrictive standards of human behavior than a society which is dominated by the young.

It is a matter of convenience too. For instance, in a time of overpopulation it makes perfect sense to largely tolerate homosexual behavior and even allow people to overtly cultivate it rather than to restrict such behavior. But this can be reversed when the need is for population expansion (or retention, as is the case for the species of the western white man).

Behind... a shared toilet

But casting this aside, going to the toilet has not been purely private at all times. Not in Roman times, nor even in recent centuries when people would happily share their toilet with one or two others, reading their paper and perhaps smoking their pipe in well intended chatter.

One could also ask what privacy was allowed for sexual intercourse in early houses with hardly any real privacy and with walls of simple straw or mud. How did (married) couples carry out their sacred ritual if other siblings were around or if they didn’t have cozy bushes to go and hide?

If we take the example of the wider animal world, nothing is private by definition. Humanity, at least in the so-called civilized world, has driven the relief of our animal needs well to the realms of secrecy and shame. Especially our Judeo-Christian legacy is one which is founded on the everlasting tension between the reality of our existence as animals and the command to humanity to rise above it. The animal within us is a caged animal; caged by morality and our sense of sin.

Decency dictates that we keep the animal within us largely invisible for the outside world. What we have learned to call our ‘intimacy’ is the animal we share with our partner or with any occasional mate. In fact, most of what we have learned to call ‘sex’ is nothing but the physical – and mental – expression of our mammalian nature.

"What a piece of work is Man" (Musical HAIR)

In my view, the animal within us is basically indiscriminate in respect of gender. The act of copulation can be seen as just one variety of the many ways in which animals cuddle each other, pick lice, hug or fight, or chase each other, and become intertwined in play and friendship.

Interestingly, man is the only mammal with a bare skin. All other mammals have their natural clothing or fur. Thus, ‘nudity’ must have become a different sensation in the human experience when in our evolution we lost most of our body hair.

The human body preceded our full humanity

Our human body evolved largely before our human mind. Upright hominids walked the earth with the brain capacity of a chimp but with a physical appearance that was almost identical to ‘ours’.

This bare physical appearance has – in the course of our cultural evolution - become almost exclusively associated with the ‘sexual’ aspect of our lives: when we see a male or female nude, we immediately search for their beauty or sensuality. The opposite reflex is to deny the sensuality and ‘sublimate’ nudity to some esthetic level and call it ‘art’. But however artful a woman or a man may appear, the invention of our anatomy far preceded our ability to appreciate its qualities in words and thought.

Not done

Another expression is the way we dress. By and large in the western world have inherited the dress codes of the Victorian age. Women wear dresses, and men wear suits. All of us wake up and put on this essential uniform in whatever variety. Although gender distinction in our dresses is normal, we otherwise hide every hint of the sexual. We do not cover the genital area in much the same way as for instance men did in the Middle Ages, or the way some ‘primitive’ tribes still do with their penis tubes standing out.

Every perfection is beauty at the same time

In our own part of the world, we will continue to frown whenever we see a too ostentatious exhibition of our sexual nature and even of our love for one another. As my father used to say: “No public display of affection.” We may have taken some steps away from this puritan view, but we haven’t abandoned it altogether. Modesty is still a true virtue.

A total fusion of love, sensuality and the animal within

But, one may ask, should we really separate the ‘human’ from the ‘natural’ – or: the civilized from the wild, sexual side of our life - this way? It is almost impossible to address this question without unraveling our entire history from the earliest days of Abraham onwards. Once we declared that the flesh was weak and the human mind is destined to conquer it, we effectively accepted this separation until the end of our time.

My eternal connection with Kal-El, alias Superman

2008-06-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

In my previous episode I have used an illustration depicting Superman and Batman as natural mates in many aspects of their lives. I believe, subconsciously, I have given myself the hint - just a suggestion – to come clean about my own, very personal, association with the Man of Steel.

George Reeves as Clark Kent/Superman in the TV Series of the '50s

For this I have to go back forty five years, to the summer of 1963. I was eleven years of age and my (grand-) parents had sent me out across the Atlantic to stay with my US relatives in New England. It was at this time when I first watched Superman fly over Metropolis in the black and white TV Series dating from the '50s. Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor and countless other characters instantly became the icon in my life of everything American.

Ever since that time I have bought Superman comic books as they gradually became available in Holland. They also influenced my own style and technique as an amateur cartoonist and to this day many of my regular droodles reflect the straight, clear lines of Action Comic heroes.

The last issue - in the mid '80s - that was illustrated by Curt Swan

The basic scenario of Kal-El’s escape as a baby from the exploding planet Krypton and his journey of many light-years to our own planet without aging as little as by a day seems astronomically impossible as do many other feats of this particular line of fiction. Space Travel without oxygen mask, the mysterious (but to most people self-evident) impact of our ‘yellow’ Sun on the extraterrestrial (but still very human) body of Superman, his many superpowers and the emergence of super villains both from outer space and from the Earth all add up to magic but largely improbable stuff to read and look at.

Clark Kent's secret identity has been kept well in the closet for over seventy years

In later years I have often wondered whether my fascination with Superman somehow triggered my attraction to the male body and my enjoyment of gay sex. But I do not believe so. In no way I can associate Superman with ‘sex’. For despite his attachment to Lois Lane and the suggestion of his sense (or power) of love, I have always considered Superman – in all his identities – as a virtually sexless character. Nor do I particularly fancy ‘hunks’ – such as Superman - as potential mates. Similarly I do not ogle at pictures of Tom Welling playing Superboy in the contemporary TV Series Smallville.

Tom Welling as the hunky young Clark Kent

But setting this aside, there is the obvious attraction of Superman’s mighty personality and of his role as a beacon of goodness amidst the whirlpool of vicious criminals and the ignorant masses.

The cover of Superman's first appearance in the world of comic books (1938)

Superman came to life just before WW II. The story of the rocket baby from Krypton was created by the inconspicuous pioneers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Few people can still appreciate the revolution they ignited in the world of human imagination (*). Superman became the archetype of an entirely new class of superhero comic books which has proliferated well into the movies of our own time.

Superman's death in the '90s preceded a thorough renovation of Action Comics, including - obviously - the Man of Steel's reappearance

And even though most of the superhero capabilities defy the basic laws of nature, they have become such a regular feature of our daily dish of fantasies that life seems almost inconceivable without them. In fact most of our contemporary pulp fiction is driven by the idea of the supra-natural and I have no doubt that we will see many great superhero fantasies in the comic books and cinemas of the future.

I have, in the mean time, created my own library of Superman, containing most of the (more recent) movies, memorable issues of The Man of Steel and Action Comics and similar memorabilia. Most of all I cherish them for their artwork, less for the depth or scope of their stories (which I consider rather shallow and repetitious).

Krypton's demise and Kal-El's escape has been depicted many times over

But the greatest story remains the one that set it off – the demise of a distant planet with its Red Sun and the young Kal-El speeding his way through the Milky Way. To some extent it can still count as the most prophetic part of the story. The chances of an extra-terrestrial ‘human’ seem remote, but we can not exclude that one day in the future an alien rocket will touch ground on Earth and trigger many miracles. So far the greatest miracle in the Universe that we know of is life on Earth itself. In fact one of our own descendants may well become a Superman on a planet elsewhere in the Milky Way or beyond.

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(*)

Hercules and his Lois Lane

It revolutionized but perhaps did not create the class of superheroes. One could, for instance, say that the Man of Steel has his classic precedent. Especially Disney’s interpretation of the ancient hero Hercules is highly similar if not identical in many aspects to the story of Superman. Hades is just another Lex Luthor, and Zeus is Jor-El, Superman’s Kryptonian father. In some ways Superman communicates with – the memories of – his birth planet, just like Hercules does with the inhabitants of the Olympus.

Our body and mind are filled with the desire for mating

2008-05-30T13:40:00.001-07:00

Nature's great invention

More than three billion years ago the evolution of life really took off with the invention of sex. In the early oceanic soup of simple life forms this set the stage for a rapid proliferation of life forms in many directions. Plants and animals all have some kind of mating mechanism at the heart of their survival.

So much we already know from the great achievements of science and much more will follow in the future. From our own earliest days we have consciously endeavored to steer the course of evolution in ways to suit our own particular needs, in creating our great crops, our domestic animals and in controlling the habitats of almost all other mammal species. We are on the verge of creating new species by our own hands, interfering most directly at the level of the invisible machinery of life, DNA.

But however this may be and however huge the impact of humanity on life on our planet, sexual difference and thus, sexual intercourse will continue to master the variety of living species in the future.

Given the ancient origins of sex, we could assume that the desire for mating is ingrained in every individual human cell, and not simply in our reproductive organs or in our brains. Scrubbing cells against one another – between two or more people - is a pleasure everywhere on our skin, whether it is by a kiss, or a hug, or by shaking hands.

The heyday of gay sex: Ancient Greece

In many cultures sexual activity is most of all cherished as an affair of men and women when they are set to multiply. It is the Bible’s first command to humanity. All further commands were created in response to the increasing complexity of the human society. In this evolution, the concept of marital faith and the stability of the family are closely related. Without contraception, the rules imposed in civilized societies did everything to curb the natural tendency of males to compete for as many women as they could possibly win to inject their seed, a practice still very much at the forefront of the primate societies of Baboons, Gorillas and so on.

Out of much the same concern rules and legends were created to curb – and preferably eradicate – sodomy - or homosexual intercourse. These authoritarian principles have left us with an everlasting tension between our nature and our social ‘being’.

But in stressing the sexual aspect of human intercourse we tend to underestimate all other possibilities of mating, of scrubbing each other’s cells, even though we have already accepted in our time that sex can exist between to individuals of the same gender.

Although his Kryptionian body cells are unique on Earth, even Superman is in need of a mate

I have called myself ‘addicted to boys’, implying that I have an addiction for sex with boys – or rather: with young men. This is true, to some extent, but I am well aware myself that this is not the real addiction. More profoundly I am addicted to mating. I very much like to ‘rub my cells’ with another person of similar make up: youthful, warm bodied, a joyful spirit. It so happens that I largely find my mates among young adolescent or adult males. But I have female mates too, even though I do not have sex with them. And I have female mates with whom I would love to be more intimate, if only they were free or similarly attracted to me.

Mating in my experience is a highly varied process. It can be purely spiritual, it can be physical of a kind, it can be ’sexual’. I indeed have a great desire for it. I very much like to share my time with my kinds of mate: youthful people, boys and girls, students, buddies, chill mates, young colleagues, young people with the same interests such as history or politics, music and the arts. And young people with whom I can share my nudity. Sure, but this only constitutes 10% or less of the mating that I engage in.

Mating for music

In previous episodes I have already elaborated on the process of finding our mate. Most people narrow their efforts to just a few options. Many just want sex!…and they want it their way only. Few people master the more subtle approach and only few people recognize the great pleasures of mating just by having a nice conversation or listening to the same music, or sharing ideas and thoughts.

Mating of minds

In chat rooms I sometimes use the nickname ‘Brainfucker'. I think this description comes very close to the truth: most of all I relish in reaching the brain, in stirring a boy’s – or a girl’s – emotions, his or her view of life, his (her) ambitions etc. I am largely satisfied in this respect through my existence as a teacher and student mentor. I have no interest whatsoever in mixing this role with any of my other interests. It is too gratifying in itself.

And it is a kind of mating too. Reaching the hearts of the students, helping them to grow and to learn – and getting grateful smiles in return. In my own life this is an act of paradise, nothing less.

For indeed, sex and mating are the fuel of growth and renewal, including the renewal within ourselves. When we mate, in whatever way, we refresh our body and our mind. There is nothing wrong with anyone's addiction to this. I can not have enough of it.

The Sun is a molecule

2008-05-28T11:35:00.001-07:00

The Big Bang

An excursion to the laws of nature with Matthew

Some time ago, I offered my chill mate Matthew (17) an episode of Carl Sagan’s monumental TV Series Cosmos, dating some twenty five years ago, about the Big Bang and everything that followed.

I thought this would be a good idea since Matthew had his physics exam just a few days later, as part of his final school exam.

Carl Sagan was passionately engaged in the history – and fate – of our planet and its stellar environment, our Milky way. In this particular episode - Who speaks for the Earth? – Sagan delves into the predicaments of Mankind.

Humanity has all weaknesses, Sagan declared.

JEALOUSY XENOPHOBIA
HATRED AGGRESSION
GREED VICIOUSNESS
VANITY AND SELFISHNESS

Which could ultimately lead us to self-destruction.

But we have all strengths too, and “our untamable intelligence”.

COMPASSION LOVE
SENSE OF BEAUTY OUR
TRUE PASSION(S)
AND CARE FOR EACH OTHER

Humanity is just a spec on a neutron in the atom of one cell, our Universe. One of countless others. Or so it may be and so it may not be. We have no clue as yet of the true dimensions and scope of infinity. But humanity most certainly is jut a second - or a fraction of it - in infinite space and time.

Sagan’s magnificent presentation once again confirmed its timeless relevance, at least if judged by the response of my young friend Matthew when he and I witnessed the tale of humanity’s understanding of the origin of our evolution of our Universe and of life on Earth.

Matthew watched it with great intensity. With his scant knowledge he recognized the immediate relevance of Sagan’s subject, apart from the origin of the Universe, the existence of fundamental natural laws and the future of our planet. “Our Sun is just a molecule!” he exclaimed.

“I sure want those questions answered,” Matthew continued when he saw Carl Sagan summarizing his speculation of the nature of the Universe and its possible vastly wider context.

Passion, love and the continuity of mankind

I am rather more an expert of (mammal) evolution than of cosmology. And even with my basic understanding of physics, I find it very hard to understand quite a few of the ‘fundamental laws’ of nature, unless we simply accept that they exist.

But however this may be, I was pleased that questions of our planetary survival and the current potential threats coming from our own minds, including ‘cosmic’ possibilities, stir the imagination of a contemporary schoolboy.

The formula that determined the course of the Twentieth Century

It also taught him that physics is not just abstract and distant, but that it is right at hand and around the corner every day. Also we can not contemplate the future of physics, astronomy and Space Travel without a thorough understanding of politics and human emotion. Future generations will increasingly be confronted with them where it concerns some major decisions of the nations of planet Earth going out into Space. Sagan’s TV series can still count as a foresighted and profound introduction to this everlasting challenge.

Christian's story

2008-05-25T02:03:00.000-07:00

Part II

No end, no end

Quote

This telephone call from the police followed a few days later, as promised. I think it was a Tuesday that I would speak with them. This happened to be the day that I would also visit my sister. She knew nothing of my difficulties, and I preferred to let it be this way. But when, after my visit to her, I took off for the police office, I became very nervous. I decided to go back to my sister and I asked her bluntly to help me and accompany me to the police head quarters. Obviously I had to tell her the headlines of my story, but when I finished talking, she cancelled all her appointments and promised me to help.

On our way to the police office she asked all kinds of questions. How did it happen, how long had it carried on, etc. It terrified me, but she was simply very concerned about me.

At the police office two very nice looking women greeted us. We went to a private room. They asked me to tell my story as much as I could. When I was finished, they both had a very serious expression on their face, and they told me that I should officially file a complaint. They also told me that it would take a few hours to fully register my story.

My sister told me that I should also tell our parents. This was the police officer’s advice too. “It will come out anyway,” they said, “as there will be mail from us on your parents’ doorstep.”

I was very anxious about the possible response of my parents. Still, I decided to tell them, and I went to my mother’s office. “Can I please speak with you?” I asked her. And I told her.

My mother exploded in anger. Not about me, but about Martin of course. “They should hang him from the highest tree!” she exclaimed. I cried. If I had known their response, I would have told them much, much earlier! My mother, my sister, and I went out for a walk with our dog, simply to shake it off. Then my father arrived.

My mother decided that she would brief my father, and they went out for a walk between the two of them. When they came back, I was very anxious about my father. But he stretched his arms to embrace me…. I cried….. and I told him that really, this was not what I had wanted.

My parents then took me and my sister out for dinner.

In the same week I got a telephone call from the police station asking me if I wanted to officially file my complaint. I told them that I did and that my father an my sister would accompany me.

I had to give every possible detail of my encounters with Martin. This was very important in case of an official indictment. “.. Do you remember what time, which hotel, room number…”…etc etc. I think we took some three or more breaks, for drinks, tears.. and cigarettes. All in all it took some four hours to deliver my story in its entirety.

They would immediately start to investigate my case, the police officer told me. After three weeks, I got another call from the police. They had arrested Martin.

Through my mail server the police had retrieved all my e-mail exchanges with Martin and they also retrieved quite a number of Martin’s cellular messages. The hotels where we stayed were checked too, as were the cars he had rented. It took a full three months to complete the investigation, and I believe I went on and off to the police station at least five times if not more.

It turned out that Martin had a wife and two children, and that he was forty two years of age (instead of twenty six). All of this came as a great shock to me. He had even dared to invite me to the house of his own sister (without her knowing this, of course)! The father whom he talked about almost every time we met appeared to be long dead. as was his mother. He had lied to me about everything and he had done so for over two years…. I knew by that time that Martin was a sick man.

After some time the case went to court. I went there with my parents. Again I saw Martin… He looked at me straight in the eyes. My mother instantly turned my head the other way. I couldn’t follow all of the proceedings, they were filled with so many difficult words and formalities…

I know he denied much of my allegations, especially where it concerned his sexual abuse.

Then, after a few weeks, came the verdict. Martin was sentenced to six months imprisonment and a suspended sentence of another full year. Of those six months, three had already passed.

Even out of prison he sent me messages. He sent me long letters, some had five pages. At that time I lived with two friends, Jane and Ralph, two wonderful people, who had helped me get through this difficult period. When I got Martin’s first letter, Jane told me to write a reply, stating “that you do not any longer wish to have any contact with him. and every time he tried, I would call the police.” I was grateful for her advice, and I acted accordingly.

Then, three weeks later, I received a phone message (SMS) …. I had just bought a new phone, with a new number…. He told me: “Too bad that you didn’t understand my letter… yours was quite clear…”

Again I went to the police to report Martin’s ongoing efforts to reach me. They told me that Martin was confined to his house with a kind of bracelet around is ankle and a signaling device. He could only leave his home at certain instances. Martin dared to message me and invite me “to have drinks at his house together with his wife..”(!)

He simply wouldn’t stop. Each time he approached me, I reported to the police. But they were incapable to effectively control him. I almost collapsed in despair. I decided to contact the guy who produces a Criminal Investigation Program, quite famous on Dutch TV. I gave him every possible evidence, letters and e-mails. I actually visited the TV Media Park and had an interview with this guy (who incidentally is the same man who exposed Joran van der Sloot’s fantasies about the death of the American girl Nathalie Holloway, not so long ago).

They wanted me to appear in their program, in the Studio. But I couldn’t do this, as I had plans for a long ski-vacation in Austria. But the producer did send an e-mail to Martin to tell him to leave me alone, unless he wanted to be exposed on Television.

I didn’t hear from Martin for some five months. Then came the moment he suddenly added my name on his msn. At first he denied his true identity. But I was quite sure it was him. When I asked him why he couldn’t leave me alone, he told me he wanted to speak with me and clear the whole thing.

Again he insisted, and I accepted it. We agreed to meet. He then expressed his apologies, it was all his wrong doing, and he had deserved the punishment. I said ”OK”, we shook hands and I left.

Only two days later another stream of messages, both on my telephone and on my msn, started all over again. “Hey, can we date?..” or “Hey, I have another Playstation 2 for you..” I could believe it. The man was really a sicko. He wouldn’t let it go.

The whole thing has been going on for six years now. He continues to approach me through anonymous calls, messages, msn, in chat rooms, etc. I feel it will never leave me.

But I would tell anybody: take care that you don't associate with the wrong people through the Internet.

(2006-2007)

Unquote

No need to add any further comment.

Christian's story

2008-05-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

Part I

The onslaught

Below is the story of Christian (21), written by himself. I have already introduced Christian – and his newfound girlfriend - in an earlier episode. The events of his puberty and early adolescence took place some four to seven years ago.

Quote

I was fourteen years of age.

By this time I had become very curious about sex and about my own sexuality. My experience was limited to just a few ‘experiments’ with girls and boys, but I wanted more, one way or the other.

My parents shared a private practice in our house. I didn’t have a computer of my own, so, when they were away, I decided to go and see for myself on the internet where at some point I found a chat site. How I got there, I don’t remember. There were many different chat rooms, and of course I went to the ‘gay chat room’.

My CV immediately drew the attention of some older guys. One of them was a guy who called himself Martin. He was very nice, asking me how I felt and easing my anxiety about the gay scene in which I was making my first hesitant steps. He asked me about my age (fourteen) and he told me that he was twenty six.

I asked him what kind of clothes he was wearing. His answer was that he very much liked Diesel and Ralph Lauren and that he took good care of his appearance. All in all I was very much drawn to him, based on this chat, and I decided that I wanted to date with him. We would meet the following day. I would meet him some ten minutes away from my home. I didn’t want him to know where I lived just like that. But I did give him my cellular number.

This I remember exactly. Next day, at one p.m., I was standing near the apartment building where we had agreed to meet. He called me to ask me where I was. I could see him. I thought… I have to go from here…. This man didn’t look like the guy who he said he was. Shabby trousers, a white Nike shirt, much older than twenty six, a baseball cap. But it was too late. He spotted me then and there!

The man walked up to me and said “hello”, with a shag in his left hand and his right hand extended to greet me. He smiled at me… I saw his teeth which looked very brownish (from smoking) and many of them quite apart, leaving large splits.

What should I do? I asked myself.

“Come on, let’s go!” he said. I asked him where we would go.. and he said that he new a park not very far from there where we could have a drink. He then drove me up to this large park outside the city, where I couldn’t see any place for drinks. Nor did I see other people around. We were totally alone.

He took me to a spot under a tree. There he told me to sit down, and he opened his zipper and took out his dick. Yek! I thought, this is going to be scary, but I didn’t dare to object. He pulled my hand to his dick and told me to jerk it, which again I didn’t dare to refuse. After two minutes we could see someone coming in our direction, still at a distance, and immediately Martin zipped up his fly, we stood up and walked back to his car.

We decided that he would let me go at the spot where we had met. He asked me what I thought of it, and even at this point I couldn’t simply tell him the truth. I answered… “sure, OK..”

“Can we…eh.. finish it tomorrow?” he asked. Mechanically I said yes. We agreed to meet again the next day at three p.m.

The day after…..

It was two o’clock – I remember it very well – and I called him with my parent’s home telephone (something I regret to this day). I told him that I’d rather not meet him.

He then started to work at me, still by telephone, in an angry voice, telling me that he was in the city anyway, and he bluntly stated that I couldn’t refuse.

Submission based on intimidation

“But I do not want to…,” I said, and I really meant it. “I have your number now,” he said. “And I will call your parents and tell them what you are doing.” He hung up.

That week the telephone rang five times or more. One night, I answered the call. I urged him not to call again, and if he wanted, I would meet with him one more time. My mother then entered the kitchen and asked me who it was at this hour of the night. I told her that I had no clue, but I don’t think she believed me.

But from that moment onwards, I saw Martin once a week.

Throughout this period I have seen the most beautiful hotel rooms. What happened there didn’t happen because I liked it. I didn’t. But it was impossible for me to say no. I was having sex with a much older guy against my own will.

I really wanted to quit the whole thing. I was terrified. But on the other hand he showered me with money, a Playstation 2, a cellular phone….. many things that a boy of fourteen can not possibly deny himself.

Whenever I indicated that I didn’t want to date any longer, he demanded me to return all his presents, but obviously the money was spent, including the money on the pay-card for my phone, etc. I really felt guilty, and to make up with him I trodded along to the hotels as he directed me.

The entire episode lasted some two years. When I think back of it, I find it very difficult to believe that it really went on for such a long period. But it is the truth. At some point I sent him a message that I wanted to stop. I couldn’t carry on any longer.

Keeping all that shame in private

He was outraged and he let me know it. What followed was a period of intense conflict. He kept sending messages, sometimes over thirty messages a day!, threatening me to tell my parents etc etc. I begged him to stop. But he wouldn’t. I didn’t know what I should do.

He then sent me a message in which wrote the telephone number of my grandmother and her address. “I will call your granny!” he said. I was shocked. How did he know the name of my grandmother?

He then kept sending messages with the names of my friends, and their telephone numbers. That particular night I was home alone. He was out there, I thought, walking near my house. It all came down on me and I was horrified by everything that could happen. I then took the courage to message him that, unless he stopped, I would call the police.

But somehow he didn’t take my threat serious. He simply continued to stalk me with his messages.

Next day, I drove my bicycle to the nearest police station, which in fact was the head office of the police in my city. Driven by an impulse I decided that I would enter the building and report the harassment by Martin. When I reached the front desk, someone asked me what I wanted, and I answered that I preferred to speak with some officer in private.

Then, a nice looking female police officer approached me and a few minutes later we sat down and I started to tell my story. The officer seemed pretty shocked. She concluded that within a few I would be called by the special department for child abuse.

--- End of part I –

Unquote

A nice boy much like Chrisrian

The story is far from finished. But I leave it at this break. It will carry on in the next episodes.

I am publishing this story, not so solicit sympathy with Christian or with any other person in his tale. I only wish to articulate the question which it has left me with after I first heard it.

How on earth could this have happened, and who is – or who are – actually to blame for this?

Born in the eighties

2008-05-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

Hero of the generation of the eighties

The music file of one of my regular guests contains a song called “Born in the eighties”. I listened to it just recently.

A have a special connection with young people who were born in the eighties. In fact, with their entire generation. In a way I grew up with them. For instance, I ‘grew up’ with my own daughter, who was born in 1982.

My own fantasy in the mean time has taken me much further. My own sense is that it is the first generation (in my own life time) most like my own.

I was born in the fifties. Just prior to the big welfare boom (caused by us, the baby boom). The sixties were full of new stuff, new stuff every day.

This is exactly the experience of our current generation of late teenagers and people in the twenties. They have absorbed the greatest succession of innovations (throughout the nineties until today) since the sixties. They have grown up in colorful plenty. I see only one difference. Young people today are far less politically motivated but have a far more positive social attitude than I remember from my own generation.

They are a generation of communicators.

The latest innovation in communication

It is the next upcoming generation with a voice of their own, which will ultimately include politics, whether they like it or not. And if they really don’t like it, they will change it.

I am generally optimistic about this generation. I dwell much of my time among them, at school in my classes and at home, with my regular guests. I can hear and observe them talking with each other. They can talk at length about their experiences, their feelings, about their wider circle of friends etcetera. They are not necessarily ‘sweet’ to each other, but very honest and direct.

Relaxed about nature

It is not an exaggeration to commend this generation for its ability to communicate but also for its sense of reality. Perhaps this is the corollary of communication. Communication leads to action and response, day after day. They test each other and – one could say – force each other to face oneself.

Still, we can not say which feats of history will ultimately be tied to this generation This is not a simple extrapolation of the qualities of the generation. Most of all it will be a function of the challenges those born in the eighties will face. Some of them, we face already, or we can see them rising above the horizon: overpopulation, lack of resources, clean water, space etc., new political and economic tensions coming out of this, or tensions not being resolved because of this. The social qualities of the generation of the eighties may well prove essential in this respect.

I am determined to stay close to the people of the eighties as they progress in their lives. In part it is the satisfaction of connecting with them and having an apparent rapport with them. In part it is my hope that a truly better future will one day emerge out of their labors.

The different personalities we harbor

2008-05-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

I would be curious to know if there are other people who have had the experience of seeing different persons, either in succession or all at once, in the face of the same individual. I have had this sensation a number of times.

Admittedly, these experiences occurred when I was under the influence of mind expanding drugs. This was the case, for instance, in my days with Jeanlou, when we staged a party almost every night mostly to entertain ourselves and sometimes including other company.

In a previous episode I have already mentioned my astonishment during a night with Jeanlou, when I saw him appear as a boy whom I could not possibly associate any longer with my boyfriend of that time. His entire personality seemed strange and distant. In my own recollection, Jeanlou represented at least four or five different personalities, all of whom took their chance to express themselves. The most curious part of it was that some of Jeanlou's personalities were antagonistic or outright hostile to me, as was the case with his creation of a bitchy girl hunting for my soul mate Alex.

More recently I dated a dark skinned man of some 24 years of age, who – simply on the basis of my first impression – seemed to be slightly withdrawn, as if he had suffered a severe beating some time in his life. It took me a while to get him talking. As our date progressed (with the support of weed), his face began to fall apart in three distinct images. First of all, they were widely different: one was an rather grim looking older guy, the second was a cute boy of seventeen, not dark but light skinned, who seemed to beg for attention, and the third was a women with a shawl and sweet expression.

But what struck me most was the reality of this observation. However much I told myself that I was looking at a reflection of my own imagination, these three images would not go away.

Moreover, the different versions of the guy did made sense, at least in my view. He had a definite feminine side that was out to please. And as I saw it, the younger boy reflected the guy’s remaining memory of his youth (and the hopes or desires associated with it), whilst one could see the somber man as the sum of all his disappointments.

The last time that I had a similar experience was with one of my students who came over for a night to chat about one of his assignments. It was a cordial event, we shared a joint, and he was happily chatting his way on my sofa when at one point I couldn’t ignore the change in his appearance. It is one thing to see different aspects of the same face (younger, older, darker, lighter etc.), but again I observed a total change-over. Instead of a gentle student of twenty five, he rather looked like a sturdy youth with a definite dark expression, not vicious, but serious and ready to defend himself against some awesome, but invisible, adversary.

In a way, this image wasn’t entirely surprising. I knew at least of one or two major difficulties in the life of this student, which indeed required considerable courage and strength to counter. But the darkness in his face reflected a longer standing battle in his life, as if it had followed him from his early youth.

I never shared my experience with the individuals involved. I feared it would embarrass them or estrange them from me. But it most certainly doesn’t occur every time I smoke a joint. There is not one single explanation. I have booked it as a distinct experience, largely real and without any doubt in part imagined.

Better than a fairy tale

2008-05-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

A young man finds his true mother

When I was in the 4th grade, about ten years of age, our teacher at school read a story that I would never forget. It was the story of an impoverished young city boy of about twelve who had spent his life thus far - from home to home - with foster parents. His mother had given him away at his birth, and of her, nor of his father the boy knew anything. His only possession was a medallion with two portraits – of a young woman and a young man, both good looking.

The prospects for the boy seemed to turn when the boy bumped into a likeable fellow who was willing to give him shelter. This guy recognizes the picture of the man in the medallion (he knew nothing of the woman). It appeared they had been buddies when they were still young, and the man – the boy’s father – emigrated to America. The boy’s protector then decides to go to America and find the boy’s father.

But the most touching part of the story is about the mother. After the boy’s friend sails off across the Atlantic, the boy is left to his own resources, refusing to live in a juvenile institution, and he ends up, exhausted, in the gutter. There he is picked up by a woman who decides to take care of the boy and help him regain his strengths. The woman is a famous pianist who travels around the world for performances. She too spots the medallion and is shocked… to see her own picture.

The boy’s name is Kruimeltje, or: Little Crumb. When he wakes up one early morning, the wonderful woman who saved him, sat crying on his bed. Tears of everlasting happiness flow abundantly. Little Crumb is finally united with his parents when his good friend returns from the States with his father.

I was strongly reminded of this wonderful Dutch children’s classic – which, incidentally, was inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” – when one of my young friends, Carlo, 22, announced that finally, he had found his – biological - mother.

Carlo was given away to adoption immediately after his birth. He was shipped out of the country to an other continent, where his adoptive parents lived. He thus grew up as a Dutch boy, visibly from Latin American origin, and all through his life he had no clue of the origins or the fate of his real parents.

Two years ago Carlo, by the time he was twenty years of age, decided to find out about his parents. Adoptive children have certain rights, which were largely withheld in the past, to access information about their biological origins. As he grew up, the issue for Carlo became more than just a biological curiosity. For him it was decidedly a mission to recapture part of his own identity.

In his own conception he would have to go out to the inlands of Latin America and find some aging woman sitting under a tree, living on the edges of sustainability. This was the picture he had framed in his mind as the ultimate moment of truth, tracing his mother somewhere out there, across the ocean, in arid, poor land.

Then, after more than a year of plowing his way through the adoption bureaucracy both in Holland and overseas, a message came from the United States.

Soon after he finds himself talking through the phone, then via the Internet – through MSN – with a woman who presented herself as his mother. She made herself visible with her webcam, and this is how Carlo came eye to eye with a youthful, beautiful woman in her early forties, apparently in good health and not living in a shed of any kind.

Imagine the smiling face of a wonderful woman who tells you that she is your mother

Suddenly, Carlo’s life had a real history. At once, he had an entire family. For the first time he shared his emotions with the woman of whom he had only dreamed all of his life. In the past two months, he has talked almost daily to her. She has shown him numerous pictures of herself and other relatives, including a charming half-sister of thirteen.

But the other side of this tale is equally miraculous, of course. Imagine a woman who spent more than twenty years with the painful memory of carrying a child that she could not even hold in her arms after his birth. How would anyone in a similar situation respond when this baby suddenly appears, a fully grown young man with a grateful smile. How much joy can a heart take?

Carlo’s youth has been far from easy. It was filled with disappointment and broken trust (read my previous episode: Reflections on an escort date). He nonetheless persevered. A religious person would say that God rewarded his determination. His past has changed, and so has his future. Indeed, more beautiful than a fairy tale.

A gentleman and his 'good young friend'

2008-05-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

Olivier B. Bommel and Tom Poes

When I grew up, two symbiotic relationships between an older male & a younger one were highly popular – and groundbreaking – in the world of comics, of Belgian and Dutch origin:

The relationship of Tintin and Captain Haddock, as conceived by Hergé (George Remy);

The relationship of Tom Poes – a young white cat - and Olivier B. Bommel, the gentleman bear, created by Marten Toonder.

Haddock, Tintin and Professor Calculus

Both relationships were highly respected in every society of avid comic strip readers, which is almost everywhere in the world.

There has never been a question of ulterior, especially sexual motives in above main characters. In the world of our fantasies, as in comic strips, - at the level of spirit and adventure - all human connections are considered possible, if treated respectfully. Why, even the relationship of Superman and Lois Lane!

This is how I would wish to introduce my current connection with Matthew, 17, whom I have briefly mentioned in my previous episode.

We are very much like a middle aged Bommel and his energizing companion Tom Poes. Indeed, we are chill-mates, as Matthew himself has dubbed our connection. We share our experiences, our friends and our joints. Our common adventures are mostly movies.

He knows all about me, and I know all about him. We have been honest and straight forward with each other from the first moment we met. In calendar age we differ almost forty years.

Heer Ollie and Miss Doddeltje

And I even have a “Juffrouw Doddeltje” in my immediate environment, a very dear young lady friend of 36, who in almost identical fashion offers me the feminine advise a man sometimes needs to keep going.

My actual casting, or self casting, is flexible. For Matthew I am like ‘Heer Ollie’. But for some others I am rather more a kind of Granny Queen.

My selfportrait as 'Granny Queen'

This is my role when I bring tea and cookies and a grandmotherly hug to the younger of my pupils, my dancer boy Andy (not yet introduced), and my cuddle boy Shane (already introduced).

The image of my role as “Granny Queen” and her ‘god-grandsons', is an image I would love to further explore. Granny Queen can tell the young lads a lot of useful things about life, good manners and about how they should take care of themselves as a boy, and as a young man growing up.

We (I believe especially men) all to some extent have failed in our growing up as a man. I think it is the common experience of all men that somehow we feel inner failure in the extent to which we really have grown up. We want to, but sometimes we can’t.

In my (so far virtual) act as Granny Queen I envisage an individual who has the wisdom of all grandmothers to express her dismay of the male kind, but who also exploits his – her - thorough understanding of what drives boys – or withholds them - in this animal and human whirlpool called the life of men.

Humor, sexiness and a good deal of life experience could make a wonderful theatre act of this Granny Queen and her entertaining but also educational exercises in the generation of her boys.

I don’t think I can compare with men like Hergé or Marten Toonder nor with their creations. Still, in my own life they have been most fundamental to the natural connections which I have thus far entertained with an entire army of ‘good young friends’. It happened most certainly through another avenue than those of true gentlemen, I do recognize that.

Sometimes we can not avert a little trouble

It is the ongoing struggle in ourselves between the gentleman and the playing boy in us that makes our life experience unique, and painful or joyous in whatever dose or succession. For each of us in our own way.

I cherish my ‘Gentleman Bear’ role as much as I cherish my infrequent but still very gratifying enjoyments as a cuddly little wolf. I do not mix these roles into one single ‘role’. I keep them separate. My companionship with Matthew equally is footed on that clear separation, whatever we tell or don’t tell each other about the events in our further privacy.

But on the prospects of a performance as Granny Queen, I still have an open mind.

The objects of our preferences

2008-05-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

As I was considering the subject of my last episodes
- the hunt for our mate –
It struck me that perhaps there should be an easier way
To explain my point.

If someone asks you: do you prefer boys or girls?
You should always first ask:
In what respect?

This is what I said the other night to my friend Matthew, 17. He has a girlfriend and he has a boyfriend.
And he has many other friends too.

Matthew calls me his chill mattie, “chill mate”
My apartment serves as his second living room
In which he hosts his own friends,
Mostly other boys and girls.
I have in the mean time
Hosted his father too.

A mate for making music

We often talk about the conventions
Which I have already discussed in my previous blogs.
Matthew is totally clear in his own mind
That he is 100% gay (or: 'homo'),
But he doesn’t follow the rules.
The girl is his buddy
And the boy is his mate.

So I continued.

I love the cuddle of a woman
As much as I love the cuddle of a man.

There are things I like in particular of women
Which I would not seek in men.

And there are things with – or among - men
That you can not have with women.

It is ridiculous to prefer a boy over a girl,
or vice versa,
just like that, full stop.

In part it may be this, in part it may be that.
You have to clarify
The specific issue of preference.

As a company for travel and theatre
Or as a company for a heart to heart talk
As a companion of discovery
A partner for celebrations…

A partner for meditation

In al these respects we can court a person
Of any gender. Regardless how we handle things in bed.

In search of our mate

2008-05-03T16:14:00.001-07:00

Part II

Men waiting in the wings for a rich widow

Our cultural conventions guide the process of finding our partner but they can also stand in the way of it. First of all most of us are fixed on the idea that it should be a male or, depending on our standing preferences, a female. The conventions of the gay scene equally dominate our behavior in the partnering process.

Secondly, we tend to focus on one partner only. You either have a partner, or you don’t.

The Biblical ideal

I do not necessarily seek a partner. Nor do I exclude bumping into one. It is not the big objective in my life. Still, once in a while I crave for a mate, a buddy – and a body – to cuddle. Male of female, both are possible. I hunt for any youthful character, curious and naughty, with bright eyes and with a similar interest. You could also say that I hunt for needles in a big haystack.

Otherwise I have no partner-strategy. My life is geared to enjoy – and retain - the various connections I have that all fill in certain aspects of a ‘partnership’. We all deal with it in our own way.

Once in a while however, I am reminded of the different possibilities still available for men of my age, if only I care to consider them. There is much loneliness among men and women, in almost every age group. At the same time this is exactly what I consider the great turn-off. I have seen too many people struggle with it. This includes all their efforts in dating- or partnership websites. You don’t normally seek out someone and decide ‘to try a relation’. But many people do. It is the worst possible starting point.

The other option that came to me just recently is the prospect of courting a – rich – widow. I never really contemplated the option until I heard someone specifically state that this is what he had set out to do.

"Dynasty" was the story of a future rich widow as well.

At the risk of appearing opportunistic, which is not my basic attitude, I nevertheless have to confess that the idea of looking out for obituaries of rich men with young wives – or widows – suddenly dawned to me as a sensible if slightly morbid prospect. In fact, I know a few couples whom I wish eternal happiness, but I would not mind taking care of the widow if the need arises. Still, all of this is a far cry from the search of a true mate – and the joy of finding one, even if it is just a brief encounter.

"Self expression" - what 'mate' would this man attract?

In the final analysis it boils down, not to whom we want to find, but to who we want to be. The partnerships we will most of all attract are the ones that match the actual expression of who we want to be – or who we really are. We have to invest in that expression first of all. So many people tend to ignore or neglect this, as we are all so focused on what we want to have, to get, or to satisfy.

Mating is a manifold of expressions

We all choose our own - individual - expressions. They may be multiple and rich, they may be restrained and dark. When we experience disappointment in the search for our mate, we stand a better chance to win the ultimate battle if we are critical about our own, often unnecessary failures too. Particularly our failure to really express – and offer - the value of who we are.

In my experience, once you have made a clear choice, entire armies of potential ‘mates’ suddenly emerge. You may not always get response when you go around stating what you want, but you will always get it when you state what you have to offer.

This picture at least captures a moment of soul mating, however brief it may have been

There is a multitude of people for whom we can add value in their lives. And it works fully reciprocal. We can share many different things with many different people. This – again: in my experience – is almost boundless. Connections may shift, some may be intense initially and less frequent thereafter. Other last, but in a very specific way. There is always the potential for new connections, new ‘mates’ in whatever aspect of an individual’s life.

We shouldn’t be waiting in the wings for rich widows. Of course not. But we shouldn’t close our eyes to any option, any occurrence of a soul with whom we can share, or mate, if only for just a pleasant afternoon on the sofa of a recently widowed Baroness.

In search of our mate

2008-05-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

Part I

Angels sent by God

A few nights ago it was the eve of Queen's Birthday, one of the main national celebrations in The Netherlands. In all cities and towns we color our streets in Orange. Most of all it is a celebration of freedom and free choice for everyone.

I had not yet decided what to do. A plan to go to some Club with Shane (24) – I wrote about him before – fell into pieces when he found that the tickets were all sold out.

The Orange gaiety of Amsterdam on Queen's Birthday

Then another of my boy-friends, Christian (21), called me. He told me that he had some 'seven people' in his house, and I was welcome too. I didn’t hesitate. Christian always offers a nice selection of friends, younger and older, and his kind of company was exactly what I needed to pass the night.

It turned out to be the most wonderful evening. The company that Christian had assembled was entirely new to me, and most surprising. It consisted of some four young women and an other friend, with his new found girlfriend at the shining center. It was the first time I met her. She seemed perfect-at-first-sight.

While I turned my attention to the rest of the company, the two new found lovers had the best of times together. In my mind they are a perfect match, as if it had been conceived in Heaven. In fact, in both her looks and character the girl very much resembles the female version of my friend. And I realized that this is what most of us are after in our own life. To find our mate, our perfect match or ‘other half’.

Expression of love, of the love of souls

“God has sent you two as Angels for each other,” I told the girl. She radiated.

I have witnessed quite a few partnerships, temporary or lasting, of similar kind. They are especially interesting when they are partnerships against all odds. This is true for Christian and his girlfriend, since he has so far spent his adolescence as 100% gay. But perhaps true partnership is one which defies the regular rules of gender or sexual preference. Another self-acclaimed gay boy-friend entertains a similar close friendship with a 100% ‘lesbian’ girl.

In a different category I am reminded too of one of my best friends in my years as a student. To this day the partnership between him and his wife, whom I greatly appreciate ever since we met some thirty-five years ago, stands out as a connection of eternal lovers. Their embrace still echoes the love-at-first sight appearance of their friendship in its early days.

And in many ways this is how I feel of my – brief – partnership with Jeanlou. Although I have other ‘soul mate’ type connections, I find it very difficult to dissociate from the sense that – however unlikely our companionship may have been – he still represents my other half, even at our current distance in time and space.

A good business partnership is a partnership of the souls too.

It happens, hopefully, once in each individual’s lifetime that we find a true mate and that we experience – what Jeanlou called – a (exclamation:) fusion totale! with another soul.

But only for just a few this mate will be our life’s partner too. It may happen once, for a certain period of time, or it may happen in a fairy tale of living happily ever after.

Our mate can be anybody. I am beginning to see that souls do not necessarily operate gender – or gender role - specific. My friend Christian found his mate in a girl. There was all good reason why this was a highly unlikely prospect. Gaiety is his second nature.

I have dwelt on this theme of sexuality and the great variety in our expression of it more often in - the earlier episodes of - my diaries (see links at the right). Christian found the mirror image he was craving for. I asked him:” Do you have so much vanity that really you have all the time been wanting to find your twin? You found your twin in a girl. So what?” He laughed.

Sexuality above all is self expression. It is the way we see ourselves first of all, as sexual animals with a certain kind of appetite. It is about whom we fundamentally want to share our lives with that we express all other qualities of our humanity. This is what the mating of men, of women, of men and women is all about.

The true expression of gaiety is not specific to one single variety of our sexuality

And this is how I have come to see ‘gayness’ as such expression. “Gay” to me means: joyful, optimistic, educated, sociable, aware of the world, creative and above all: expressive. Nobody needs to know all my sexual appetites, but in this broad sense, I have no trouble being labeled ‘gay’. Why, most of our architecture, and most of our landscape was created by people with a high degree of gaiety.

Reflections on an escort date

2008-04-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

One of my boy-friends (Carlo, 22, a student) came to me one day just as I was preparing myself for an escort date with a guy of similar age. My friend made his own record of this occasion, which I print below.

QUOTE

The boy from the Caribbean

I was visiting a friend who told me that he would soon have an escort date. He had arranged it through the Internet. I am an unquisitive guy, so I proposed that I would stay for a short while, have a peek, and leave. My friend agreed.

When the doorbell rang, my friend went downstairs to brief the guy about my – temporary – presence. He didn’t mind. He came into the room, a young man about my age, dark.

What did I feel about this .. encounter? I once did escort work myself. It has enriched my life and it has badly damaged it. I can well understand the situation of this guy. I can sense his anxiety, his feeling of being used and, potentially, begin humiliated. I remember the fear of losing control.

Somehow I have influence in this situation, I was thinking. I could let him feel the humiliation, if I wanted to. I knew he was suppressing it.

“Do you do this more often?” I asked him.
“Infrequently,” he replied.
“I have been an escort too, not so long ago,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to get him to feel at ease.

The rest of our conversation is not so relevant. I felt my own sorrow.

Does this guy really want to do this? I asked myself. If you positively decide to do escort work, fear of humiliation is unnecessary. But when I did this work, I was not in control. There were no positive motives. For me, being an escort boy ruined me, it exhausted me to the bones, physically and mentally. It numbed my feelings. I became passive, almost like a machine. This is what happens when you are not in control of yourself and go out for escort work. Will it happen to this guy too?

I am actually in a funny situation, I thought. I sympathized with this guy, but I also sympathized with my friend, who was, after all, our host. It was almost as if I was standing opposite me. Should I make choice? Which side? Perhaps I should simply go home and forget about this dilemma. I have to tell my friend that this encounter stirred my emotions.

It touched me, much more than I expected.

Signed: Carlo, dated some time in 2007.

UNQUOTE

I remember this occasion well, but of the actual escort date I have very little memory. I only know it passed as a rather uneventful but not unpleasant conversation after which I let the guy go. Likeable, yet he wasn’t my type of mate.

Carlo showed me his record of this afternoon, and I am very grateful that he made it. It allowed me a view of the other side too.

Your wish is my command

2008-04-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

Part II

What is the nature of the 'Master'?

It is out of sheer curiosity that I pose this question. Although ‘slave-master’ encounters are not necessarily my thing, I find it an intriguing expression of human nature that some people can venture very far into the extremes of their physical possibilities. But it is not just physical of course. In fact most of what passes between people in this context is mental.

But let’s assume that one would wish to find a real ‘master’. One could ask what such a person is like. For instance, he may be a disappointed grown up ugly boy who wants to project his anger at weak and submissive men. Or – a some other end of the scale – he could be an intelligent and playful man, without grudge, who well understands the depth and contradictions of human desire and who knows how to exploit them both to serve his own pleasure and that of others.

I don’t have the answer. Most likely there are many different kinds of men who can put up a credible performance in the capacity of ‘master’. Still, such credibility is hard to come by as I have noticed in a quick scan among those who pretend they fulfill the requirements. All the way one has to recognize that there are different kinds of slaves too.

The other option of male submission

SM in gay sex is not necessarily a dirty or barbaric affair. The very little experience that I have made clear to me that in fact, it can take place in an atmosphere of considerable dignity. I reject the idea of a ‘master’ who is prepared to inflict lasting scars, but I do not object to the idea of being tested to the utmost.

Submission in early Christian times

Still, the preferences differ and people are mostly inclined to one particular role and perhaps to one particular set of experiences.

Some men might be attracted to truly vicious sadists because this – in their view – would be the only realistic challenge. If you know that in the end a ‘master’ backs off from pressing further, or lashing even harder, there is no real fear and therefore no ‘turn on’. Still, such ‘masters’ may exist, but they are an exception. Most of those who publish their availability to willing slaves rate somewhere between the brutal and the civilized. They are one, nor necessarily the other.

It takes talent, on both sides. Talent, and intelligence. This is what I believe, merely out of reasoning my way through the subject. The men engaging in Slave-Master events must be intelligent enough to understand the value of play and to exploit this. They should understand the nature of sexual and mental satisfaction. And they should be intelligent enough to take their role seriously and exploit its possibilities and challenges. (*)

I have no experience to speak of, either way. But even the modest actual encounters I had at least gave me a glimpse of this notion. Play it well, or don’t play it. Don’t just pretend, but play as if it were for real. You are entitled to expect this from the other as well. Effective 'Slave-Mastering’ means applying full logic. All the time. The right punishment for a true transgression; the right reward for obedience.

When I asked someone else, in the chat room, who posed himself as a slave, “what quality should your Master most of all have?”, he answered with just one word: “merciless.” And he carried on: “he should have a commanding personality and he should be able to progressively increase the pressure, in a careful balance between reward and punishment.”

Commander

A good master will lead you to the point where you do not wish for anything else than serving him, in all respects.

I don’t think it will ever be my thing. In the end I am seeking quite different gratifications. But there is no harm in trying to get some understanding of the variety of gratifications available in our lifetime as a human being.

(*)
One shouldn’t assume that being ‘slave’ is low and pitiful. It is an art too, of submission and endurance. Not easy to play or to endure. A real test of character.

Why should men not care about their looks?

2008-04-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

The other day I was chatting with a 40plus man who was going for the “old fashioned real guy”. Not the sissies who shave their pubes, but tough guys with hair on their chest who sport a thick moustache. Those guys.

Old fashioned indeed, I said.

He then replied: “But I don’t want these modern fashion boys, with muscles and smooth bodies and all hair trimmed.”

QUOTE

EJW: “Fashion boys” have been around since ancient times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most men were fashion boys with wigs and perfume, and colorful dresses. But I have to admit that I rather dislike the sissies among men too. So perhaps, we are not in full disagreement.

Eighteenth century norm: wigs and perfume

He: I think many men exaggerate the energy they spend on their appearance. Everything should be clean, fit and shaven these days. It is disgusting.

EJW: Well, perhaps. I do not participate in it myself. But then, I am gradually moving to the old fashioned generation :-) However, when I look back at my younger days, I feel – by hindsight – that I could have done more to ‘look good’. I would have worked a little harder to have a more attractive body. But it was not a concern of my generation, at least not in the segment of society where I grew up.

The norm for men: muscles and abs

He: People grossly overrate the attributes of ‘looking good’. Including the standards for decoration such as watches, necklace, jeans, shoes and so on.

EJW: I agree. I prefer more natural guys as well. Moreover, my focus is on character, not (just) good looks.

He: I believe it is a great plus if a guy is not too self-conscious about his looks. When people become aware of their beauty, they often start to act as if they are Gods of some kind. Not my favorite.

EJW: Sure, there is downside to beauty. I have read or heard about the lives of beautiful men who actually live in a hell.

A candidate for hell

He: I have the impression that you want to live like a boy, not like a man of your age.

EJW: No, I don’t think that is true. I have largely remained true to myself. I didn’t kill the boy in me. But otherwise I enjoy being fifty five. There are many men who actually die when they turn thirty. I didn’t want to be that kind of man.

He: That is when they get married, when they become tamed predators.

EJW: I have been married for almost twenty years. Only after that, I could be a real boy, for the first time in my life, when it was still possible. That phase has passed, of course.

He: I understand what you say. My partner has been married too. But even though he still loves his (ex-)wife and children, he had the feeling of being part of the wrong movie.

EJW: It takes a while before you really understand it. Understand yourself, and understand your kick. Each of us has his own niche, so to speak.

He: My kick are big guys with a lot of hair and preferably a moustache and a beard. Shaving is taboo in my life! That must be clear!

EJW: Sure, you made your point :-) But do I detect some frustration there?

He: Perhaps, to some extent it is frustration. It seems like people who do not ‘shave’ are condemned as if they carry a bad disease.

EJW: For me it is just a matter of difference in taste, and difference in heritage. I happen to be a man who has retained a hairless boyish body for most of his adult life. But I do agree that making smooth and trimmed, muscular bodies the norm for Idols is stretching it too far.

He: You shouldn’t think that I am just a bum, a kind of clochard who doesn’t care about his appearance. But I do not follow the fashion.

EJW: I think you are a man of civilization first of all.

UNQUOTE

As a final note I would underscore: be yourself. Find yourself, if necessary. There is nothing wrong with emphasizing who you are by investing in your ‘looks’ or appearance. Nobody will succeed with muscles and abs only. If that’s the single focus, chances are you will become a very lonely, fat old gay in no time.

Your wish is my command

2008-04-19T13:18:00.001-07:00

Part I

Being willing to turn sides

This is a rather awkward situation. I am dating the exact opposites on the same day, posing me for a choice.

One is a Slave-Master session with a man of sixty six, free of charge.

The other is some good lovemaking with a horny morocco boy of twenty two, on a so called pay date. Yet, he is a promising guy for more. The kind of boy for whom the escort fee often turns into an entrance fee. Most of all: the entry to their friendship.

Indeed quite the opposites.

We all have our niches in the places where the men and the boys gather and exchange their ‘stats’.

Through the gay chat rooms the Internet in particular serves as a great hall of the sexually active male humanity. It is just a parade, and a market; an ongoing virtual and physical interaction, indeed greatly facilitated by the world wide web. Seventy percent of my current social life is ‘caused’ by the internet, not just sex of course.

Only through the internet we can hunt in our own very special niches. I happen to be active in two - if not many more. I have many other – mostly intellectual - pursuits to satisfy too.

How we wish to be hunters like him

Still I now need to make this choice, take this decision. I am quite sure that the meeting with the boy can be set at another date. I am in no hurry with him. He interests me, but not urgently.

The Slave-Master ‘thing’ is a different matter. But equally flexible if I so wish. Still, my role in this connection is different. I do not have so much …. No, I have nothing to wish, according to ‘master’. I am there to obey, and to follow the orders. To be at his house at 15:00 pm. Sharp.

So my decision has in fact been taken in this matter, not by me but by someone to whom I promised by obedience as part of my exploration of this particular sexual niche. Go where your fantasies go, I always say. At least go there once. In the end, it is play.

I then have to admit to a second truth. It would not be the first time for me to venture into the darker niches of male sex. I have once submitted myself, fully, and enduring pain up to a certain level. Which was not enough. At least I have dared to test myself in this respect.

Still I concluded thus far that my liberal and anti-authoritarian mind, which is strongly driven by the independence and self-sustainability of man, stands very much in the way of being credible as a submissive slave. I find that next to impossible.

Nevertheless. Why not have another try, and test my limits a little further? It is a mistake to think of 'submission' as something passive, and for the weak hearted only. On the contrary, I consider it as a test of character and endurance.

This is how I can still reason, even at my advancing age. As long as I can attract people – in whatever way! – I will continue to enjoy my own special niches, mostly as a hunter, but sometimes as a prey :-).

Beautiful women

2008-04-18T13:59:00.002-07:00

The beautiful Halle Berry

When - decades ago - a teacher at school asked us, schoolboys of fifteen or sixteen:

What would you choose:
A beautiful girl, or an ugly girl
Both equally intelligent.

I – stupid me! – insisted that I would choose the ugly girl.

But was it so stupid? Probably I could only imagine an ugly girl falling in love with a boy like me. So, subconsciously I chose for certainty, and for being chosen in return.

Still, I do remember the occasion as one at which indeed I felt rather indifferent to the sexual qualities of a girl, not because I was unable to appreciate them but because I had no clue what to do with them.

Seduction (copyright Ambient productions)

I remained sexually uneducated for a considerable time as I have already explained in the earliest episodes of these diaries (December 2007). Apart from my marriage it is only the experience of my later age that I have met women who genuinely look joyful when they see me. Today I have women around me who wholeheartedly smile at me :-) every time we are together in a way I seldom experienced in my youth (or I have been highly insensitive to it). And they are the most beautiful women too. (*)

By the same token I am happy when I see my boy-friends hooking up with girls. I generally encourage my boys to cherish these friendships. Only recently one of my supposedly 100% gay boys fell in love with a girl. He is head over heels, having become totally infatuated with her.

Miracles do exist, one might say. The same is true, in another way, of one other boy-friend, again supposedly ‘100% gay’, who has a long standing close friendship with a – supposedly 100% - lesbian girl. They even talk of a relationship, kids etcetera. And even though the odds are against such friendship, at least initially, it is only growing stronger, most likely because the bond between their souls simply overrides the prevailing cultural labels of sexuality.

But then there is the story too of one of my lady-friends, who is already well in her sixties. She had been married for some twenty years, without a dark cloud in the sky, when one day she was seduced by another married woman. They both separated and have lived together ever since. Had they suddenly turned lesbian? I don’t believe so. In my own mind people are generally susceptible to a wide range of seductions even though many of us might never experience them as much as many people would not admit (or succumb) to them.

Even families like this can be broken up by seductions of 'the other side'

Of course there is the other end of the scale. I have met quite a few examples of the male human kind who think of women only with disgust. In many cases this is not because of some traumatic experience with a woman in their early life, but because they simply can not conceive of women as a viable option for intimacy, even if it is just a kiss. Or there is a mix of explanations, possibly including the way some men perceive themselves. Of this I have little experience for they are not the kind of men I readily associate with.

Looking back, I am much more self-assured in addressing beautiful women than I was in my youth. This is not to say that I can more readily conquer them. But at least I have more ease in gaining their friendship.

(*)
Current age range: from one year old to well in their eighties

On the institution of (gay) marriage

2008-04-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

I think that gay people should show respect for those who reject gay marriage on the basis of their religious or other - well founded – convictions. There is no reason, in my view why one can’t think differently on the subject of marriage. Either way, it is not a sin.

Why am I saying this?

This week I published my opinion on gay marriage in one of my Dutch language blogs (under my normal identity). The context is specific: should it be mandatory for public servants who arrange for the municipal (civil) marriage formalities, that they do so in case of gay marriages as well.

The general opinion is that it should be mandatory. Those who refuse to ‘do’ gay marriages are acting against the Constitution. There can be no discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation. This is so readily accepted as the only true logic, that we forget to think about t.

I consider myself gay friendly even though I do not particularly applaud the institution of gay marriage as if it were the same as the marriage of a man and a woman. In my case, this is not a religious conviction but a conviction based on – my own – logic. Most certainly, my opinion is not based on discrimination of people by their sexual preferences.

First and foremost I am thinking of the institution of marriage and its prime functions. In my view society has a definite right to foster marriages as institutions per excellence that best serve our continuity, i.e. the future of our children. We do not exclude gay partners from parenthood, at least I do not. But the marriage of a man and a women is the most ideal context, many people feel, for children to grow up. I believe their should be tolerance for that opinion, especially among gay people.

In fact I would applaud any gay couple who will publicly state that there is no need to punish people who have a different view. Especially, we should accept public servants to opt out from servicing gay marriages if they so wish.

The greatest contribution to this issue would be if the gay community explicitly accept the position of people who believe that marriage is an institution for the union of a man and a woman only. It would be much better if everyone – gay or straight - just respect that opinion, instead of condemning it.

But indeed, tolerance should work both ways. My personal view on gay marriage in fact is irrelevant. Besides, I find it totally acceptable that the law in my country facilitates a long term bond between people of the same sex. However, I do not accept any rigidity in this regard: gay marriage protagonists do not have the ultimate truth on their side. No one has.

What would you do

2008-04-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

In the position of Emile Walters?

How and when should he tell his own daughter?

Those who have followed these diaries so far must be aware that I have a daughter, who is a wonderful young woman of twenty five, graduated at Masterlevel, and going for the top in consulting.

She has met quite a few of my friends, both boys and girls, over the past years and is well aware of my highly intense connections with the younger generation. In those terms, I do exchange my experiences with her.

But I have so far not shared the actual story of ‘Emile Walters’ with her. She has no clue of these diaries. Should I show her? Should I do that, in fact?

My daughter likes me the way she knows me. We are good friends. She obviously knows that there are certain aspects of her father’s life, of which she really doesn’t ‘need’ to know the details. Those have been her own signals.

Even so, should I leave the whole story as an item that she may find, and read, after I am myself no longer there?

That is the other option.

Can any one advise?

Gayness and the arts

2008-04-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo's David

I am a habitual collector of things gay on the internet. One of my collections – the pictures published through my blog ‘Addicted to Boy Beauty’ - has in the mean time attracted some fame among web visitors. But the pictures are just part of a much wider archive of images, cartoons, movies and works of art.

Although once in while I do come across some outstanding work – in all categories – most creative expressions of gayness are second rate at best. But perhaps this is true for all art. Still, I can make some general observations.

Henry Scott Tuke (1858 - 1929) - male nude, but gay?

Gayness is generally treated in immediate association with – male – homosexuality. It thus closely follows the prevailing cultural conventions of our time. Other attributes often identified as gay, such as joyfulness, creativity and power of expression remain vague or totally absent most artistic representations of gayness. The world of gayness is largely portrayed as a world of its own, as if it is consumed in a society of sexual and cultural apartheid. Most movies and other works of art focus on the extremities of the scale. Ambiguous sexuality and the social-cultural conundrums that go with it get very little attention.

Painting by Philip Warbrick (classified as 'gay art')

But perhaps I am looking at it from the wrong angle. We all know masterpieces of art, which are not classified as ‘gay art’, but which do reflect gayness or at least ambiguous sexuality. The masterpiece David of Michelangelo is just one example. Also, we should not forget that many great works of architecture, design and fashion in fact are the product of overtly gay people. Seen from this point of view, gay people rank among the very top of our world’s masters of creativity.

Gay's the Word - Bookshop (source: Guardian)

And isn’t this true for literature in the same way? It is not so difficult to name great writers of fiction who were (or are) either closet gays or outright homosexual. Even Shakespeare is rumored to have been at least bi-sexual. His courtly sonnets devoted to one particular young man may be a testimony of this, but scholars differ widely in their interpretation of them.

Thus, one could say that the great works of art, which either wholly or in part can be classified as ‘gay’, at the same time transcend this classification because they have been accepted by humanity as universal masterpieces. Even outright ‘gay literature’ can potentially be accepted by the wider public, depending on the context and wider content of the story. Some writers may fear that they limit their readership if they include anything ‘gay’, and thus – perhaps – some potential gayness in our world’s literature is shunned.

Otherwise, one might say that ‘gay art’ is a contradictio in terminis. This would apply to ‘straight art’ in similar fashion. What is classified as ‘gay art’ most often presents itself as a mere variation on the theme of the male (or female) human body and its sexual expressions. Any ‘gay’ painting therefore borders on gay porn on canvas. How would Rembrandt have treated gayness in a painting? Just by showing a beautiful male? I don’t think so. Male beauty does not equal homosexuality, however often people confuse one with the other.

Indeed, what remains is mere porn. But there are quality distinctions in this segment too. Over time I have collected gay porn (and discarded it in large quantities) and gay themed movies (which is yet another segment). It takes some effort to trace good quality clips and movies, as I have done for the past few years, but the residue is acceptable. All recent gay porn is horrendous (no story, too much lighting, sex is depicted as purely technical or physical etc.), but some recent Gay Themed Movies have most certainly risen above the cornfield. Examples are Mysterious Skin (2004) and Brokeback Mountain (2006). By and large the movies in this category are a variation of the coming out story of adolescent men.

As a conclusion of this inventory I cannot escape the contradiction. True art, whether paintings, fiction or movies, must defy any gay (or straight) classification. But this doesn’t mean that gayness does not contribute. As I made clear: much on the contrary.

About a boy

2008-04-13T13:56:00.001-07:00

In one of my earlier episodes I mentioned the friendship of Shane, my ‘cuddle boy', and Jaime (read episode: Humans are animals who think they are different – March 15). Their friendship in the mean time has passed. Jaime was the first to find a new boyfriend. His name is Jimmy. A very nice young man. And very vulnerable.

Not long ago I had a chat with Jaime. He told me the headlines of Jimmy’s story, who was only 17 at the time.

Jimmy’s father had died when he was some five or seven years old. His mother had a hard time making ends meet for both herself and her two sons, including Jimmy’s older brother. In fact she lived entirely on social security.

Without mentioning much detail, Jaime pictured a youth filled with abuse and alcoholism. Jimmy most personally had been inflicted much pain by unspecified individuals, not his parents. This even went op to court, where Jimmy was awarded a considerable financial remedy.

Drawing by Oliver Frey

The story impressed me as all but “Sweet Seventeen”. I couldn’t believe that such a positive, nice young person could emerge out of so much darkness.

Jaime took the boy in part to provide him a safe haven. This is how I saw it. Nonetheless a – continuing - nightmare was haunting Jimmy’s sleep.

The value of his financial remedy was secured by a cheque, which he could cash – personally – at his eighteenth birthday. However, his mother had pressed him to commit his full entitlement as a bond on her behalf, so she could finance a car. “I have done so much for you,” she had said, “I deserve it”.

In addition, his mother had forbidden him to take a job that would earn him any income higher than some 200 euros, because otherwise she would forfeit - part of - her social security payments. Jimmy only got a small fraction of the monthly child allowance that the government credited to his mother's account.

I was stunned by such parental egoism. But I found it perhaps even harder to accept that no sensible lawyer had intervened throughout his mother’s financial abuse. He did get some psychological help at the time of the abuse, when he was very young, but otherwise he had been left very much on his own.

All of this happened a while ago. I do not know the subsequent events of the story. I may get to know them one day in the near future. Or I may not. But if I do, I will let my readers know.

YOUR FEEDBACK IS HIGHLY WELCOME

2008-04-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

There is a daily readership of these diaries of some 1200 – 1500 (visits). Origin: world wide. I get some feedback, almost all of them in highly complementary terms, for which I am very grateful. But I would appreciate your critical feedback in much the same way.

I publish these “Emile Walters” episodes because I feel (and I hope) I have something to share with my readers. I am making a serious effort to be truthful, but this doesn’t mean that ‘truth’ is always on my side.

You may also wish more detail, or other emphases. Please let me know.

Emile J. Walters

The story of the black panther

2008-04-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

The Verdict

Part III

The end of the road

In my friendship with Brahim I soon had set myself a special mission on his behalf. For a while I truly thought that I could fulfill that mission successfully. It was to have him understand the essence of our civilization: human equality.

Equality

I made many notes, throughout this period, of my discussions with Brahim. I also wrote some ‘letters’ which I largely did not actually send. They were all addressed to him. And they were written in highly critical terms.

Quote

All I wanted to say last night, Brahim, was that giving a compliment to somebody for his (or her) command of a certain language is not an expression of racial discrimination or anything like that. In my life it is an expression of admiration and profound recognition. But you wouldn’t allow me to say it.

I consider it absolutely intolerable – whether between friends or in any other social context – to block someone (anyone!) from telling his version of the truth. It is an outrage against truth itself.

Submission Red - Copyright Jennart

If you don’t understand that all I am trying to do, is to help you find your own truth (even though I do not always know the truth myself), then really, what is the purpose of our friendship?

Unquote

Heavy wording. I didn’t send this. But I meant every word.

I jotted down particular incidents. Or I wrote down my conclusion of them.

Quote

“I hope you understand that I have never been a ‘colonial’, nor have I ever been corrupt.”

“Analysis always precedes advancement.”

“I don’t know is the only healthy attitude of a scholar who really wants to find the answer and hasn’t yet found it.”

Unquote

Brahim held me in high esteem, but he didn’t actually listen to me. He listened to hardly anyone else but himself. He wasn’t stupid. He was hopelessly stubborn.

After our friendship, I met his old teacher of his native country, who had known Brahim since he was eleven. He was a man of the highest civilization.

I told the teacher that in my view, Brahim had proven himself incapable of living in our Dutch society. He agreed with me. “Yes,” he said, “and the sad thing is that this is true for his homeland society too,” It was a terrible verdict of two men, who genuinely harbored the best of wishes for Brahim.

I respected Brahim, and most certainly I tried to demonstrate my respect with even more emphasis. He appreciated that. But he couldn’t understand that my respect was not a matter of loyalty, but a matter of equality. Of equal recognition. He only vaguely understood. For him life was largely a project of submission. In his case: of being the enforcer.

Our last encounter, unfortunately, was the most vivid expression of his untamed desire to submit. He may not have fully meant it. He may have realized afterwards that actually, his behavior was abysmal. He nonetheless acted the way he did. There was a dispute about money that he – rightfully – claimed from a friend, but the way he claimed his right was brutal and totally out of proportion. Also he had highly disturbed a gathering of friends at my house, which included the presence of my daughter, by demanding undue attention to himself or to his needs. I told him that here was the end of the road. I could do nothing anymore for him.

Nevertheless I am very grateful for having enjoyed the opportunity of an experience in our immigrant society. A society so strange to most of us, western people. I haven’t written this story of Brahim to devaluate the African mind, or the African man. On the contrary. I have already written my story of the Africans as God’s chosen people, some time ago on the internet. Thanks to Brahim, who gave me entrance to an African party not many white men will see in their own city of Rotterdam. An unforgettable party of wonderful black people.

But a friendship must have a useful purpose for both. I could not see a useful purpose any longer.

The tragedy of Brahim’s life in my view is his talent. He would not have been sent to Europe if he would have been a little less intelligent and talented. He had good looks, he was bright at school, a good sport.. in his own birthplace. Out of Africa, he failed. This, despite some very good teachers, both in France and in Holland.

I have never heard from him, or about him ever since I broke the connection. I don’t even know whether I am curious about his actual fortunes. It is probably best not to know.

But if anyone has a different opinion, or advice – please do not hesitate to respond.

The story of the black panther

2008-04-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

Part II

All that Reggae

Music is an important aspect of my life, even though I am not an active musician. I am rather omnivorous. Classic, Rock, Pop. I will listen to anything, depending on the mood of the moment. In part, music triggers the memory. We can relive certain periods of our life, simply by listening to the songs of that particular time.

My time with Brahim will forever be stored in my memory as a time of Reggae. It is his music. There is the story coming out of East Africa, which ties the Africans to the Reggae of Jamaica. It happened many decades ago, when the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie came to visit the island. It hadn’t rained for a long time, but when the Emperor descended his airplane, rain came poring out of the sky. It gave the Emperor a status equivalent to the status of a Savior. It created the culture of the Rastafari’s, who celebrate Africa as the birthplace of mankind. Reggae, which has its roots in the Rastafari ideology, became widely popular throughout the world.

The young Emperor Haile Selassie

Brahim took me even closer to our African roots by singing songs of his birthplace. They were love songs, chants really. One song was about a boy and a girl and the need to ban jealousy from our lives. He could sing it most beautifully, without any instrument to accompany him, with a sad undertone, longing for affection.

In almost all of our encounters, which were mostly in the presence of one or more other of Brahim's African friends, I could sense that ‘home’ was out there, far away, in the Dreamland. But when I raised this point with one of them, he said: “We may not be at home, but I need this civilization”. He said it with dignity and conviction. It puzzled me, to some extent, that Africans would be attracted to a civilization, which did so much to destruct their own. But perhaps this notion was rather born out of my own post-colonial romanticism than out of the realities of Africa.

Lucky dube

In the mean time, the music of Lucky Dube and Sizzla and many other Reggae singers kept filling the background. “They believe in something,” Brahim had explained to me. “Reggae people are religious. They are not like regular artists.”

They build no schools
They build no hospital
They only build prisons

Sizzla

In a way, Brahim lived in a self-imposed prison. Our of Africa he had come to France at the age of thirteen, which in his part of Africa was a kind of tradition among the better situated families. Going to France meant going for better education and for better chances to learn a decent trade or skill. Unfortunately, without the continued immediate presence of his parents Brahim did not complete his education and went adrift in Europe after he was sixteen or eighteen, at which time he landed in Holland. He told me very little of his actual occupation in those years, and I gather not all of it was necessarily straightforward. However, in the city of Rotterdam, where we spent some of our nights out in the weekend, he evidently enjoyed a high degree of notoriety in many bars and cafés. Many people, both male and female, greeted him most cordially. They had either been his early conquests, or they had been his regular clients, as I gathered was the case with most of them. Although he never told me so in precise terms, it became clear to me that Brahim had been a drugs dealer probably throughout his life in Holland. There was no other way for him, I figured, to sustain a living even to the days when we spent time together. But I decided never to broach the subject. I considered it his private affair, of which it was better for me to know very little.

During our nights out I made my own little rounds among the public. I never stayed too close to Brahim. He appreciated my independence. It left him free to do his own thing. He would settle in a corner and invite the various women to his ‘throne’, have a chat with them and either discard them or add them to his list as a potential mate for the night.

Seduction, painting by Thomas Sekowski

“Girls want boys who say: you are mine!” Brahim claimed. The process of seduction included a lot of body language and whispering, I noticed. He once gave me an example of the things he would put into the ears of innocent women, and indeed his words seemed absolutely irresistible. I would have given a lot if I had been given those lessons at an earlier stage of my life. How a man commands a woman to side with him in his tent.

In a similar, commanding tone Brahim claimed the hands of my daughter simply on the basis of her picture on my desk. I didn't reject it, of course. It was not my decision to take. I simply told him our rules of procedure.

All of these experiences indeed were very useful lessons. I don’t think there is a better way to understand the lives of people of different backgrounds than simply to share the life with them. Even for just a while. But I had to face the downsides of my friendship with my African companion too. On these I will elaborate in my next episode.

The story of the black panther

2008-04-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

Part I

A tribesman from Africa

At one point in our joint endeavors, I viewed him like a kind of African King. He seemed to have all the makings. A strong face, pitch black, a lean, athletic body and intelligent. If he had been given the right opportunities and guidance, my African companion would have enjoyed a good future.

Fit for a King

But when I met him, a few years ago, that future was very remote at best. At first he told me that he was a student in accountancy. But then I began to notice that there were no books on accounting in his apartment, nor could I see any other evidence of studious work. I never asked him, then or later, why he had lied to me about his actual occupation. It was obvious that he wanted to impress me or to put up a smoke screen to conceal his personal embarrassments. Brahim, 28, born in East-Africa, is a man of pride. In our five month companionship I learned quite a few objects of his pride.

I didn’t really care. Whether or not he was a student didn’t matter in our friendship. We both sensed a definite value in spending some time together. He wasn’t the regular boy or young adult that I would normally attract, but I appreciated his forceful character, even his apparent arrogance. He was very relaxed and open, I felt, about his background and interests, despite the lie(s?), and it proved an eventful connection almost from the start.

With Brahim, a regular pattern grew of visits to his apartment just ten minutes by bicycle away from me. He would have his personal salon, the way I imagine African tribesmen sitting in a circle, protected from the sun by a large tent in which they exhibit all their personal treasures.

Brahim didn’t have many treasures that I could identify. His place was largely dark, with two sofas facing each other, and a desk with a computer. His book case had little to offer, as did a little cabinet with souvenirs. We basically talked. Or he talked, and everybody else listened.

He entertained a small circle of friends, mostly African, but also Arabic. All of them lived as immigrants – very much between themselves - and most of them – men and women – had a decent job. They were very likeable, easy people. I got along with them without any difficulty.

But we took the greatest dive into the lives of our ever increasing immigrant population when Brahim took me to the bars and cafés in the city where they all come together. Very few people of my background have – or take - this opportunity, to go and look for themselves. There is great estrangement in all cities of the Western world between the white population and the rest.

One party we attended was a purely African party, a celebration of a kind with people of all ages, in which I was only one of just three or four white males. I was treated with the greatest courtesy. At no instance throughout the night I had the idea of not being welcome. The place was totally black, men, women, children, and they just accepted me as one of their own during the singing, the dancing and the chanting when they carried one particular African flag through the room.

Brahim showed himself to be a superb womanizer. I didn’t delve into his private life, but I reckon he had a woman in his bed almost every night, and it wasn’t the same woman each time. I saw a few of his women, and somehow they puzzled me. For instance, I couldn’t imagine why this slim, athletic African panther would have sex with outright fat women, or old women, but he had. And even though he courted some beauties too, the outward appearance of a woman was not is highest priority. As I saw it, they all succumbed to his authority, or: his rather commanding sexuality.

Brahim's parents lived in Africa. His father had been high up in de local hierarchy, or so it was presented to me. When Brahim talked about his father, almost invariably it concerned his father’s male prowess. I realized that in our culture, sons are much more reluctant to boast about their father’s sexual conquests, for they have their own mother to think of. But Brahim did. He was born in a polygamous tradition. He would almost count the number of women on his father’s record (and maybe, compare it with his own).

And if women were not around, a boy’s butt would do too for him. Thus, one evening, I found myself in the company of some five black men, all evidently ‘gay’, who amongst themselves were happily chatting about Brahim’s physical attributes, with him making jokes about it.

Or rather: fit for King kong

Although further down the road of our friendship I came to see the darker side of his qualities too, I couldn’t deny that he was a highly skilled manager of his own pleasures and relieves.

One of the most memorable parties in this respect was the birthday party, somewhere in his neighborhood, which we gate crashed. I met the most wonderful people, young and old. And so did Brahim. In one hour, some girl had found her way to him who gladly served Brahim’s needs on the stairs at the back of the house.

By then my own main strategy of seduction had become the strategy of words, not of looks or physical strength. And when I thought that I had ‘a catch’ – a naughty young woman of twenty five – she disappeared. Only later I could put two and two together. It was the same girl who ended up with Brahim. Most likely we both had the best of her.

No “Standards of Good Chatting” exist

2008-04-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

But should there be? So many people seek good chatting.

I Googled “good chatting”, and found greatly varying expressions of the wish we all have for good chatting.

We know the opportunities the internet offers, and we very much desire to use them well. Internet is not there to waste our time, it is to make our time more adventurous and gratifying.

Chatting on the internet is a highly pleasant social exchange; it can be quick, brief, pointed, and it can be endless, wide and filled with fantasy. The kind of fantasy a human mind needs to have a life.

I wrote about good chatting in one of my earlier episodes, and then afterwards I continued to think about it. What exactly is ‘good chatting’?

I described my – personal - strategy of chatting. But does it actually measure up to the current standards of good chatting? And where do I find them?

It would be interesting to make some inquiries into the current standards of good chatting, I thought.

This is what I found. Nothing.

There is no sentence on the internet, accessible via Google, with the string of words “standards of good chatting”. As to “standards for good chatting”, or simply: “standards for chatting” the same applies.

Apparently I am touching an issue that very few people so far have raised as an issue on the internet.

Should we all sign something like this regarding our behavior on the internet?

A standard could be that never should there be any such standards. It is not impossible. At present, liberty reigns.

Or is there something like an emerging good www-manners”? One of my younger friends tells me: “we will make our standards, our generation will do that.”. So – according to him - it is up to the future generation to set the standard of good chatting in their own time. That's fine with me.

I will therefore simply present my own standards of chatting as an example, just an example, not as a norm. But if any reader wishes to comment, please do not hesitate.

A night at Shane's

2008-04-08T14:19:00.001-07:00

On tea and a cuddle

On the spot I decided to spend my Saturday evening with Shane. It had been a while since we last spent a moment together, just between the two of us. In fact, most of the time we had been in each other’s company, for almost six years, there was other company as well, his boyfriends or other friends of mine.

When I was in my car, on my way to Shane, I realized how much I felt attached to him. We have been such good friends all those years, never too close, but quite close enough. When we hug, we really mean it.

He had warned me that he was ‘out of his roof’, having spent most of the night chilling with himself, or so I understood. Never mind. I said, I’ll see you anyway.

Shane was busy chatting when I arrived. And this continued when we came to sit on his sofa, behind his laptop.

I told him about my latest adventures, and so did he. And we didn’t let go. We never loosened our embrace. I held him tight, stroked his back.

Shane wanted to talk about pleasant things only. He had enough worries, “but today is Saturday,” he said with his naughty smile. I cuddled him, and gave him a little massage in his neck.

Since we met some seven years ago in Amsterdam I have played many different roles in Shane’ life. We have been boys among boys, we went out and enjoyed ourselves. I have been a kind of coach or older brother. And sometimes I say the things only a father would say. Shane has his own father, but he was crippled by a heart attack not long ago, which left him a wreckage both mentally and physically at the age of barely fifty.

I have never heard Shane tell about his mother. As far as I know she has been out of his life for over ten years. He doesn’t like to talk about her, so I don’t ask. But it is obviously a subject filled with pain and disappointment.

And I contemplate all this, sitting on a huge white leather sofa in Shane’ pleasantly modern apartment, and Shane himself cuddled next to me. Our little hugs are the hugs of good friends.

But it is as if I do pass on .. something. I believe it is my energy. In a way I can feel it. I have long known that my hands pass on energy, or warmth. But I never really saw it as a special faculty. Many years ago it became obvious that my wife wanted me to massage her troubled neck. She was asking for my hands.

My hands pass on every energy that I can spend to the benefit of people I love. And I do love my Shane. I probably love him the way a father loves his son. But the other way around I believe it is different.

Most likely Shane loves me the way a son loves his mother.

Not so long ago I had Shane in my house, together with one other of my young pupils, and I was standing there, watching the two of them on my sofa, whilst I was bringing in the tea. At that point I wondered whether in fact I wasn’t more like a grandmother to these young men than just a friend or even a substitute parent.

My right hand was holding his shoulder, my left hand rested on his leg. The energy my hands passed on to him was the energy of good faith and hope for a sunny future. It is a prospect at great distance from the realities of his life.

I told him the story of a dog, the night before. I had been with friends, and one of them had a very restless dog. I started to massage its neck, and in one second it felt like my mind was traveling to the soul of the dog, and she was greeting me. Somehow our energies connected. And I am quite sure that my hands are an important key to this.

We shared a joint. My mind took off to my second floor upstairs, the hemisphere of my fantasies. Did I ever discuss God with Shane? I asked myself for no apparent reason. I don’t think that it is in my power to make him accept even the vaguest concept of God. There is no reason for him to believe in any God.

God is a creation of the human kind, and many Gods have accompanied – or still accompany – all of mankind’s past and current civilizations. It is difficult to establish whether, for instance, our God was created as people gained confidence in themselves, or if, on the contrary, God was created because it became apparent that there was insufficient grounds for such confidence. In other words, can man truly live without some notion of ‘God’?

There are few pleasures such as these: the companionship of my Cuddle Boy – which is how I have classified Shane – on a sofa, watching mindless TV-shows, talking very little, just floating on our private lake, in friendly embrace and without any pressure to move left or right, lit by the moon and just a few candles.

When I think of it, Shane has been one my of most consistent connections in the world of young men as I have come to know it in the past ten years. But I do realize that is has been my own consistency first of all that made our friendship possible. When we met I consciously decided not to succumb to any seduction on his part whatsoever. I didn’t want to be his sugar daddy. We never exchanged sugar. He was a notorious hooker and I was the only adult male in his life who, next to his father, had no ulterior desires, or should I say: no ulterior motives?

Of course, one may ask whether indeed I do not harbor such desires in respect of Shane. He is twenty four years old, still a boy, very attractive and very sweet. And then I think, but yes! This indeed is so! And for this very reason the prospect of a lasting friendship with such young man, as we grow older, is vastly more gratifying than any thought of a one night encounter in full nakedness. It would spoil the connection. We would know exactly what we shouldn’t know of each other, even if we might somehow enjoy it.

Purity is the very fountain of our friendship. Purity, and trust.

At 02:00 hrs. AM I take my leave.

Internet is the meeting place of the souls

2008-04-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

The other side of “Fusion Totale!”

Without Internet my social life would be vastly different. By rough estimate I could say that 70 percent of my current social circle is a direct result of chatting on the world wide web. The remaining 30 percent consists of family, old friends and people with whom I socialize out of my daily work environment.

Many sites offer a fine parade of men and women
Or just men,
Or women.

I have been on and off chat boxes on the Internet for nearly ten years. In certain periods one could speak of an outright addiction. It wasn’t difficult for me to throw away an entire weekend by chatting. I chat because I want to catch. Chatting for me is like hunting.

I visit many of those sites,
And think…
So many young people
Who are doing their best
To look good

I have this black T-shirt, tight and sexy, with the head of a wolf printed in front. This wolf is my mascot. The animal in me is a happy little wolf who is almost like a puppy. The T-shirt is a museum piece by now. But the wolf is still there.

A wolf is a hunter, a predator. And since I can not see my chatting as mere grazing, then I must be such predator too.

There is nothing wrong with that
With beautiful people
Men and women.

What catch do I go for?

It is custom to have a nickname when you are chatting. I sometimes use the nickname Brainfucker. I hunt for interesting minds. And in my experience an interesting mind generally is a handsome or even beautiful person on the outside too. I don’t need to look to know. I know by chatting. It is the purest way through which human minds can meet. We do it in the utmost anonymity, without any knowledge of our visual characteristics. No prejudice stands in the way of connecting minds which somehow find interests in common.

Many years ago, I had a chat friend in the United States: a sixty-odd years old grandmother with a husband, who still wanted some adventure in her life. “Oh you’re sooooooooooo sweet,” she kept saying to me. I was her only chat partner who didn’t want to fake with ‘chat sex’ and those kind of things. We just chatted, and we had the greatest fun.

The boy who was the first to embrace me out of pure affection, was a boy I had picked up in the internet. He was a student with whom I immediately touched ground in his own academic field.

This global parade of half naked bodies
Of millions of faces
Millions of futures
Parading on the internet

My friendships with Jeanlou, Gabriel, Shane, Alex – they all came out of the club scene or any other regular social interaction, not the internet. But many other important connections in my life did come out of it. We would never have found each other in any other way.

Good chatting means chatting with a clear purpose or focus. Another important principle for effective chatting (or: effective hunting) is: do not fake or cheat, even in anonymity. There is nothing to be gained by bing dishonest about age, looks or real interests. I use a nom de plume, which I consider a legitimate means to protect my privacy, but otherwise I never fake.

Also, in my so-called CV, I never state what I want. I only state what I have to offer, and to whom.

My targets are manifold, but I never set more than one at the same time. It could be an escort boy just for sex, or a boy-for-my-circle, or simply to have a nice conversation with any one like minded.

You have to be patient. As a rule, in any arbitrary group of 1000 people online only one fits the profile. So yes indeed chatting is a time consuming method to enhance one’s social connections. But the ‘hits’ I have made in the mean time have been such that I am not ashamed of this expenditure.

My connections span all my interests, and all my possibilities. I do not have a full partner in my life at present, but my social connections all add up to a partnership widely exceeding any partnership between two people.

Some of my connections never passed the stage of the internet. And either they never will, or at some point there will be a real-life encounter. We do not know. But they are not less ‘friendships’ because of this – actual – distance. They are the pen pals of our time.

One of my connections is a young man with whom I had been chatting for some time before we actually met. We share a particular - academic – passion on which we spent hours of highly spirited discussions. In this sphere we became real soul mates. But when he came to visit me, I found that the image I had constructed of him totally contradicted the actual guy standing in front of me. It just didn’t add up. It took me a while to re-focus. Most likely I would never have noticed him in any regular social context. But our souls had already reached each other. The lack of immediate visual chemistry could not stand in the way of it.

To me this experience confirmed once again that honesty – especially on the internet – is the key to successful hunting, whatever our actual purpose and actual possibilities. On this basis the internet is a magical place to satisfy the hunger of our soul for its fusion with another.

Are you gay? So what?

2008-04-06T10:10:00.001-07:00

Just an arbitrary chat

Nigel 24 says: Hey
EJW says: Hello
Nigel 24 says: I am not online for a long time. Just 20 minutes...
EJW says: Haha... I feel warned well in advance.
Nigel 24 says: How are you..?
EJW says: Very good, too good I think. Just visited one of my lady friends with whom I have shared my most recent adventures.
Nigel 24 says: Ah Haha. What did she say?
EJW says: She knows me well, I believe she likes the stories. She is over sixty five and a woman of some character.
EJW says: But what is happening on your side?
Nigel 24 says: I enjoy my vacation, until next Friday. And then my school starts again. But I am not ready yet..
EJW says: I see… Iyou didn’t tell me what you did at school
Nigel 24 says: I study law.
Nigel 24 says: Bachelor level
EJW says: Interesting! That’s some kind of coincidence. I do some part-time teaching for bachelor programs too.
Nigel 24 says: Cool, I knew you were a lawyer of some kind. And no problems about being gay?
EJW says: I am not a homo.
Nigel 24 says: Bisexual?
EJW says: I am who I am
Nigel 24 says: But did you tell them?
EJW says: What should I tell them?

Nigel 24 says: I don’t know ….
EJW says: …. Should I tell them that I have many friends? Young, old, male, female? Sure!
EJW say: .….. Should I tell them that sometimes I have sex with young men? Of course not! It’s not their business. I keep it totally separate. No funny things with students either, of course.
Nigel 24 says: I understand… if it is just the sex and perhaps some social contacts in the gay scene, I don’t think I would tell it either.
Nigel 24 says: But I expected you to be very open about it..
EJW says: Sure, but not just to anybody. There is no reason to bother other people with my life style.
Nigel 24 says: I don’t tell everybody that I am gay either. But every time I meet somebody new, I will tell him (her).
Nigel 24 says: So I don’t need to mention it ever again
EJW says: Yes, of course..
Nigel 24 says: Just the boy with whom I fell in love… I don’t dare to tell him….

(Note: I asked him about the boy, and we discussed what he could do)

EJW says: But you are still young. You look at it from a different perspective. I have been a family man, the father in a small family of three. I am, or have been, so many different people at the same time. In my professional life, I am a professional, not a teenage boy.
EJW says: And I don’t use the label ‘homo’ on anyone.
Nigel 24 says: Indeed!
EJW says: I’d love to win the attention of a young woman
EJW says: The way I do it when I catch my boys Hahaha..

EJW says: I seek character, which is not determined by gender. But it so happens that I find these characters especially among boys. And yeah.. I still enjoy the intimacy, but isn’t this common to almost all men?
Nigel 24 says: You may be right
EJW says: Sorry, I am talking too much
Nigel 24 says: That doesn’t matter at all.
EJW says: Any way, I may have an interesting escort date tonight...
Nigel 24 says: You do? Hehe, who is he?
EJW says: I have no clue. He’s got the right ‘stats’ and I think he is bright. That’s what I hope to see. Some new brightness ;-)
Nigel 24 says: I bet you do. Have fun
EJW says: Thanks, see you later.

Living without prejudice

2008-04-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

An introduction to Book III

I believe that I have already marked my diaries as a kind of trilogy. The first book – about being a boy – ended with the exit of Jeanlou and of my devilish existence in the wild life of sex, drugs and other youthful pleasures.

The second book can best be characterized as a story of further experimentation and reflection. I exploited the capacity of my inner world to enhance my grasp of the human condition – la condition humaine – in its broadest possible context, and move away from mere temptation and the satisfaction of youthful lust. And perhaps it is more truthful to say that I learned to balance these interests rather than simply erase the latter out of my private life.

That part of my story came to a close when I was the given the opportunity to start afresh, in a new job – with new and challenging perspectives – and in a new rhythm. Most of all I was happy that I wasn’t written off prematurely. It felt like re-start of my career for which I could look ahead yet another twenty to thirty years. The fact that in this job I would be surrounded most of all by young people in their late twenties and thirties was a further benefit.

Breathing fresh oxygen

I my social life I could gradually re-open my windows and breathe clean oxygen. Most importantly I could again invite friends and family and host them in a reasonable fashion, however modestly. There was no particular pitch. I wanted to move step by step and see where it would get me.

In the mean time my life regained focus. I had a job in which I could express myself in almost every direction. As a man with a mission (a friend’s observation), but also as a man with a heart.

The difficulty in writing about Book Three is that the story hasn’t finished yet. I am still in the middle of it, or perhaps near the closing end, but then I do not know the outcome. I know where I want it to go, of course, but I can not predict, let alone determine where I will end up.

For the time being I call my third book “The Pantheon”, a working title. It is the name I give to my own place, a refuge for every sentiment, every opinion, conviction or logic, every passion – every impulse. My home is a shared living room for many who pass by. We chill, watch movies, play music, write or paint, dance… sleep and celebrate.

The usual translation of ‘pantheon’ is: dedicated to all Gods. From the point of view of religious tolerance, the temple therefore serves as one of the most inviting places on Earth. I can not think of any contemporary building specifically designed as a meeting place for all religions. And it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Religion in our time ignites many disputes, conflicts, even terror. They fuel the black and white images that we have of one another. And inevitably they trigger an uneasiness among many people, especially in Europe, with the increasing presence of people with different religions, and different life styles, in their midst.

Over the past years I have had the opportunity of socializing with – mostly young - people of highly diverse origins. It is not so difficult, because they live right around my corner. But in offering them my hospitality I can at least make my own effort to understand the differences – and our commonalities – beyond the standard prejudices of our time.

Thus my story moves on to the many stories that have been told by my visitors of whom quite a few have become close friends. Stories like the story of Damian and Jeanlou, or Alex. The stories may seem similar, but in fact they are different every time. In a way, my diaries will rather become their diaries.

I will tell you about my Black Panther, about the boy who wins every time he visits a casino, about my History boy and my Dancer boy. There will be my Bar Boy and my Philosophy Boy. And the stories of many other boys – and even some girls – will be passed on through my diaries.

My writings are published in their honor most of all. And I hope that, for the time being, they will be never ending.

Then suddenly - a new mission

2008-03-31T09:16:00.001-07:00

Going for the next generation

The story of which my diaries on this website are a reflection could be interpreted as a rather long stretched tale of transition as occurs in the lives of so many other people. It is recognition I expect, not estrangement.

But the whole world entered a period of transition, ever since that fateful day of September 2001. I am quite sure that many people will want to forget most of this period, once the page is turned indefinitely. In my own private way, I hope to say: thank God, the years of George W. Bush are over.

I don’t blame George Bush. He happens to be the icon of my sentiment. And the page has not been turned yet. How can a man of our time promise to deliver democracy and freedom, and send in an entire army to enforce it? And why does he call it a ‘War’? Fighting terrorism and helping Iraq to regain its pride and self sufficiency are two distinct missions. You can’t compress them into one single process.

My own life has been only indirectly affected by the greater transitions of this decade. I have already explained my most pertinent observation: my experience and skills had become obsolete. I needed to substantially re-invent myself.

I wanted to get away from the illusion of happiness through good government policies. I had seen too much goodness turn into ghastly oppression to believe in sensible policies as an effective vehicle to make our society more equitable and productive. But it had been my main interest for almost thirty years.

I also knew that I didn’t want compromises for myself either, but that these might become inevitable. Financially, in terms of status, whatever field, or interest… etcetera. My mind was firmly opening up to new and unexplored opportunities.

I have called this period a hibernation. It was to a certain degree. I had to sustain a living on very limited means, and I concentrated on keeping my mind at work. Not my body, nor any single bodily part. That shop was firmly closed.

So I was still in communication with people, at different levels, in different directions when unexpectedly I was called by a good friend with whom I had shared a number of years working for the same employer.

“This is something for you,” he said.

And he mailed me the description of an absolutely charming little job, which indeed seemed to be exactly made for me. Again I heard the echo of my confessor, the protestant minister “… to really do something good for young people…”. What and how would that be: really good?

The answer to that question was finally put in front of me. By somebody who had the great sense to point it out to me.

“Decide what you do with it,” he said. But it became all to clear that he strongly advised me to go after this job.

So, I went after this job – and I got it.

This is a long story cut short. The whole process took some two months. There were some two or three other options floating at the same time. I could suddenly make a real choice, take a real decision.

One option was to get into legal stuff and thus go – back – to my original interest. I really considered this a second best option, yet it was a genuine exploitation of one of my talents.

The job that was thrown onto my lap was my favorite option from the very first moment. I would be in the center of the world where they nourish future leadership, a new generation of creative and innovative people – or rather: the world of high school education.

I was to run a service organization for education programs in high schools. These programs would be add-ons to the current curriculum. Their main aim was – and is – to link the various subjects at school, like mathematics and science, to their relevance in the ‘real world.’

With all my experience of – and professed dedication to – the younger generation, I was given the official task to help broaden their horizon. This included opening up the horizon of the many teachers who were involved in the effort. As I would discover later, most teachers at school spend their time in total ignorance of the outside world. They should be the main agents of change and growth, but quite a few of them largely live in an atmosphere of stagnation.

It wasn’t just a challenge of itself. It also challenged many of my pre-conceptions. Did I really understand the younger people, boys and girls at school, well enough to be successful in this job? My social experience of youth would most certainly help me, I figured.

After further consideration I decided that my entire remaining life should be geared to helping our youngest generation get well on its feet. On their own terms, preferably. I saw a tremendous task ahead of me.

Thus came the summer of 2004. I took a deep dive in the sun - well into France. Next I started my new existence in the world of secondary education.

Valentine, weed and the psycho-analyst

2008-03-30T05:07:00.000-07:00

Another chat with Alex

Emile W. : Heeeyyy…..
Alex : It’s Valentine Day
Emile W. : Happy Valentine
Emile W. : Kiss the girl
Alex : I would........
Emile W. : If you could
Alex : But I can’t, so I won’t
Alex : Hehe
Emile W. : A very beautiful girl is upstairs. I fell for her some three months ago. And she is here visiting my upstairs neighbors. But she is with her 55 year old boyfriend
Alex : Kiss the girl!

Emile W. : Yeah I would
Alex : Hehe
Emile W : And I could
Emile W. : But I won’t
Emile W. : Say it…
Alex : Well I’ve been figuring eh…. They let people with 1 kilo of coke go.......without punishment..... So why does anyone care if I smoke weed?
Emile W. : Who cares anyway? Apart from your mom….
Alex : I’ve been to another addiction consultant
Emile W. : You have....?
Alex : And the mommy…
Emile W. : The mummy returns :-)
Alex : Yes well.......what can I say....
Alex : Or do..
Emile W. : What do you want... quit the weed?
Alex : Cut down maybe.....but certainly I don’t want to stop this mind-expansion...
Emile W. : Exactly. Don’t stop the mind expansion.

A psycho-analyst's view - drawing by Marius Escher

Alex : I had been using coke for half a year till end of last year. Did I tell you that?
Emile W. : Well, yes you did tell me vaguely, especially in the time you were with Raphael
Emile W. : But coke has no value, it breaks apart what weed pulls together
Alex : Well yes, and also the fact that I had an employer that had access to 100 pure Colombian marching powder
Emile W. : Wow... shit
Emile W. : Coke is bad, you shouldn’t do coke, Mkay :-)?
Alex : Hahhaa
Alex : I had enough....It’s been almost 2 months now..
Alex : Never had an addiction problem though..
Emile W. : If you use weed well, you can really keep your mind at 'psychic level', but if you take too much you get depressed
Alex : Yep
Emile W. : I’ve been reading a lot about it lately
Alex : Ok..
Emile W. : So how are you otherwise?
Alex : Just dandy.....getting ready to work hard on my school...
Emile W. : Last sprint. Isn’t it?
Alex : Exactly...
Alex : I took an easy pace getting here...

Alex : Now finish it!!!
Emile W. : You could say that
Alex : Kind of like Mortal Kombat (game)
Emile W. : I got two telephone calls today about possible new projects, so yeah I hope to be up and running full speed soon too
Alex : When your opponent is done, you always get the message Finish HIM
Emile W. : I wish I had today, with the opponent I had this morning. But I wouldn’t have gained anything. So I had to control myself.
Alex : Well finish him!!!
Emile W. : I wish I could
Emile W. : But I won’t
Alex : In the law there’s isn’t any writing that you can’t make someone’s life miserable....
Alex : So actually we’re still nowhere...
Emile W. : Hehe sure enough
Emile W. : But in a money world, you have to be careful whom you finish and whom you don’t. You might end up empty handed
Alex : True....but we are the creatures of thought.....we shouldn’t be after primary survival (money)
Alex : It’s cliché every animal does this we don’t have the need for this...
Alex : Not anymore..
Emile W. : You tell me! Absolutely right, but the world is being constructed totally around the amount of money you and I have
Alex : The thought of jumping off face first of my roof comes across my mind more often.......... but up until now I have still reconsidered...... stop smoking that weed and philosophical thinking is dangerous..
Emile W. : Hey man! I know what you mean, but get out of that cycle!
Alex : One thing I did notice about me and my friends today...
Emile W. :......
Alex : Raphael, Rens and me never had a lot of friends nor do we easily make contact with people our age.....but we do get along with a lot of older people..... My age group has worries or problems which I can’t even imagine about
Alex : Funny enough..
Emile W. : Like what? For instance..?
Alex : Well....... from a lot of girls I get this “what I’m gonna wear shit”..... what they usually discuss doesn’t appeal to me....
Alex : Actually I haven’t come to words with it yet to be honest...
Emile W. : That kind of things ..yeah… Stupid things. Small talk.
Alex : They also like arguing a lot.... I never have a problem with anyone...
Alex : I take my rich ass to the poorest living location on this island....... and even if someone wants to do me harm, they wouldn’t do me harm nor Rens or Raphael, because we know how a lot of this capitalist shit works... just by a few words they know we’re different...
Alex : I’ve been looking at myself a lot lately..
Alex : But haven’t come to words with it yet....
Emile W. : …………
Alex : Maybe that’s also because there have been a lot of turbulent events lately..
Emile W. : You suggested something like that already....
Alex : Hehe
Emile W. : What’s the turbulence?
Alex : Well I’ve been busy.......and the school-thing..
Emile W. : I sense you’re not happy, or you’re unsure
Alex : Well we got somewhat busted with weed at school remember
Alex : That’s why I saw that counselor today..
Emile W. : Ah I see..
Alex : So Ranesh is also having a bad week... His mom really doesn’t like me now.. He probably said the joint was mine...
Emile W. : Ranesh’ mother likes nobody
Alex : Haha

Emile W. : She is a prison keeper
Alex : Well I’m gonna go now...
Emile W. : Big hug man
Alex : Lots-a-love!!!! Don’t forget it’s Valentine!!!

Things I didn't tell about my relation with Jeanlou

2008-03-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

Part 2

Living with an ongoing travesty

At times moments of total physical fusion and mental unity in the very early days of our connection were interrupted by fierce tension. Jeanlou pursued his various obsessions with great tenacity. Nothing could stand in his way. He would brush aside any objection on my part or demand my full co-operation when he had set his eyes on any desirable item: clothes, perfumes, oils, make-up – anything, and any one.

His greatest show of a spoiled brat would come out when he cross-dressed into his favorite travesty as Cheryl Pin-Up Girl. But in this capacity he was most seductive at the same time. He demonstrated every talent as an excellent performer. Jeanlou conquered my soul mate Alex by playing on him with a sweet motherly voice. Soothing and cuddling he finally found his way to the big blond lady killer. I was less than amused but I couldn’t stop him.

In Amsterdam Jeanlou entertained his own circle of friends, which in part we shared. But more than once he would go out and have his own extreme sessions with God knows what kind of guys. His preferences were rather vulgar, as I had noted when occasionally he tried to draw me into some orgy with big muscle hunks or similar – in my view: brainless – types.

But it wasn’t just the sexual extravaganza that made Jeanlou unforgettable. He opened my mind to many other things, such as a great variety of popular music, movies, TV Series and – of course- shopping. Jeanlou effectively altered my own preferences, if not my entire lifestyle.

Twelve Monkeys

These were some of the movies and TV Series he introduced me to:

The Twelve Monkeys
Dark City
Swimming with Sharks
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Absolutely Fabulous
Southpark

We would watch the movies as a part of Jeanlou's carefully prepared daily schedule of entertainment, which invariably ended with the songs of Whitney Houston accompanying us to our sleep.

An example of multiple personalities in the same individual

My identity – towards Jeanlou and towards those whom I met – gradually evolved over time, throughout this period. I may have been a gigolo of a kind, as Jeanlou saw it at the first instance. By the end of this period most certainly I had lost all remaining naïveté. Otherwise I was still the same adolescent middle aged young man. My personality did not change.

But Jeanlou's personality did change, all the time. There were numerous different individuals compiled in this one young Frenchman. A well educated spoiled little brat, a jeun homme de culture, ‘a truly professional whore’ (as one man once observed), an imaginator, a passionate lover.. And he was a sad, uncertain young boy too, an intellectual, a joyous compagnon and many other boys – all at the same time, but each intermittently. These many different personalities each took their turn during our many crazy nights out in the Caribbean and after that at my home in the last months of our active friendship.

Personality number ten: a spoiled little brat

At times he got me totally confused. It happened one night that I simply didn’t recognize him. I couldn’t any longer match yet another crazy personality with the Jeanlou I had thus far known. He appeared as an emaciated, scary little boy who kept telling me that he was about to have a heart attack. No way this was the same Jeanlou. He was my French precocious high school boy and my first and only ‘boyfriend’. Un garçon cultivé et très pervers.

He was my twin brother of the Dark Side, a semi-Persian prince for whom I was the servant and facilitator. One could also see him as a misguided version of Little Lord Fountleroy, not out of England but out of the coastal regions of France.

In a previous episode I have stated that Jeanlou revived the boy in me. He was immensely entertaining and obviously immensely devastating. I do remember my own little nightmares of reality when we were together. Just in my own privacy. I did think of the downsides, and how to not end up in total disaster.

Yet, we also did serious things, like visiting professionals of different kinds. They were mostly in the arts and in other creative professions, and part of my own network. We wanted to develop a kind of portfolio which would table his ambitions for the future, for which - as Jeanlou at one point decided - he would have to return to France.

Not long ago we bumped into each other in MSN, which happens rarely (Jeanlou is not an internetboy).

Emile W. : It remains impossible to loose touch
Jeanlou: Our story is special.
Emile W. : I often try to recapture it
Jeanlou : Let it flow
Emile W. : I will, I do. I will not be chatting too much. The magic of silence must do its work too. But I m happy to chat with you occasionally.
Jeanlou : Me too.

Things I didn't tell about my relation with Jeanlou

2008-03-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

Linguini, the maitre de la cuisine in Disney's Ratatouille. Jeanlou was not dissimilar, but he was a maitre de la vie.

Part 1

The Devil and his Birthday Boy

In my memory – as in my diaries – the days with Jeanlou loom large as a period of exploration, discovery and immense confrontation. Never before had I experienced such huge exposure of almost all my attributes as a human being, physically and mentally, to just one person. After more than seven years our unique companionship, though very much a reality of the past, has retained its relevance in my feelings, in my opinions and my sense of pleasure, in my music, my friendships and so non. In fact, I should say that my former French boyfriend Jeanlou still serves as a feature of who I am.

Jeanlou never failed to surprise me with his savoir vivre and his ability to make himself the center of attention in almost any circle and direct other people, myself first of all, to serve his own needs.

He was 18 years old when we met, and already he had an impressive history of adventure and extravagance behind him. Born as the only child of unmarried parents somewhere in France, he had developed a mind of his own at very early age. His stories of private enterprise and experimentation exceeded any boy’s dream (or every parent’s nightmare) and they included the seduction of as many men, boys and girls as he could set his eyes on. And he would proudly tell of his – almost successful – hunt of a famous movie star, his arrogant response to teachers at school who tried to control his mental and sexual energies, and his final escape from parents and teachers to Amsterdam. There he found the Bonanza he had been looking for, both as an escort and as a party boy.

Our first month evolved as a succession of wild and intense sexual encounters, largely at my own place. We had taken full possession of each other without having the faintest clue of the real nature of our mutual attraction. I knew that Jeanlou represented the dark side of me: desirable and dangerous at the same time. It was the Dark Side that I had foreseen or had expected to encroach my life for some time already. I was totally infatuated by him, in all respects. I could eat him, drink him, embrace him for eternity.

And even with the thirty years between us, Jeanlou’s attachment to me was genuine from the start, however unbelievable this may have seemed at the time (or still may seem by hindsight).

The apotheosis of this initial month of passion and intimacy came the night before his return to France, which would prove to be a defining moment in our companionship. Jeanlou had persuaded me to buy some four to five grams of hallucinatory mushrooms, a substance of which I was totally ignorant.

I felt I was in a theater with a balcony all around and people watching from above, hanging over dangerously to get the best view. Of us, I think. Of Jeanlou and me sitting on my sofa, talking. We talked - and we laughed. Paddo’s have the effect of a strange play with your visual observation. All furniture, all colors, all shadows start to move into ever more complex and wondrous scenes.

I kept my senses. But Jeanlou went through hell to a virtual re-birth. He had quite a journey to fulfill. And in his fantasy I gave him his new life. That is what he said and what he kept referring to for a long time thereafter.

Jeanlou in fact ordained me during this night as his birth-giver, as a guide and not as a lover. Our true relationship was born two days before Christmas 1999, one month after we met in an unusually passionate manner. But I still had to understand it. At that moment I did not. I wanted to be his boyfriend. And he already knew that he wanted something else.

When you were a teenager, did you ever have a flirtation, you know, with sex?

2008-03-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

The statistics about the sexual practices of young people have offered a great deal of insight for many decades. Many of us did not have flirtations during our teenage years that included sex, and quite a few boys and girls still don’t today. I didn’t, for instance.

I had girlfriends of a sort. They were rather like buddies and soul mates. I still keep in touch with a number of them. As years pass, these connections become more precious. The girls of our schooldays perhaps know best who we are.

But as a teenager I had no sex, not in the least casual way. It wasn’t meant for me. That is how I felt about it when I was seventeen, eighteen, and even after that. It didn’t bother me. I was just vaguely aware of the whole concept of it anyway.

Many schoolboys of previous generations grew up without the slightest notion of the birds and the bees.

It seems unthinkable nowadays, but quite a few people of my generation grew up without even the most basic understanding of sex. There wasn’t the abundance of information about that teenagers have access to in our current time. We didn’t miss what we didn’t know. We were a very happy generation.

We were happy about the music, happy about the course of history taking a firm turn towards increased freedom, about East versus West, and left versus right, and about the world that seemed to open up a new bouquet of colors every year.

And yes, our youth – in the nineteen sixties - was the time of the sexual revolution. It happened right under our nose. But this does not mean that all of us immediately benefited from it. Many of our parents still had to come out of the rigidities of the pre-war years, that entire epoch of false shame and good manners.

The subject of sex therefore remained fishy at best and it remained most unsuited as a topic for conversation at home or anywhere else. But it was as I said: we were kept largely ignorant, so we didn’t miss it. It was such a great time for many other things.

I have already given my testimony of a rather late awakening to the idea of sex in my own life. It comes with a price, for you can not actually turn back the clock.

But I was very much re-assured when, many years later, I spotted my own teenage daughter flirting with a boy of her school, somewhere in the bushes not far from our house. In my own privacy I gave her a clean bill of health.

Never again in a traffic queue

2008-03-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dutch high way in a snow blizzard

It so happened that I was on the road today. I had to go east, some 150 miles from my home. And today was a big chaos on our high ways. A total of 600 miles of cars in queues across The Netherlands, where 150 miles are normal during peak hours.

I am reminded of an old ambition never again to line up in a queue. The notes below date from some time in 2003. They reflect the lowest ebb of my emotions. Foggy, but not hopeless.

Quote

It is nine o’clock already. Again the alarm went off without effectively waking me. It bothers me, this lack of regularity. But there is nobody waiting for me. I get up, take a shower, make a full can of coffee, log-on to internet. This is my regularity.

My desktop pc is my refuge, my hiding place. I stay very close to it. Internet is my window to the world too, of course. I can visit almost every place, across the globe, and even beyond. What magic!

My homepage is the International Herald Tribune. I surf other newspapers too. I see a picture of some twenty cars all smashed against and on top of each other. One person dead. This morning, in a thick fog. The picture fits my mood. Confused, battered, stifled in the cold damp of the morning… these cars… and yes, this is how I can feel about my world. I find it incomprehensible that people are prepared to queue up in their cars, day in day out, moving only slowly to their work many miles away.

Sure, it is easy for me. I don’t have to crawl into a car each morning. I am lucky. It will be increasingly difficult for me to just line up, anywhere, or to fit the standards of convention in one of those big glass office buildings. Only yesterday I was in one of them, a law firm. It felt strange and very familiar at the same time. I grew up among academics, lawyers and doctors, we come from similar cradles. Yet they felt far away too. I am not hungry anymore of big houses and big cars. And the people around me still looked hungry for material things and status. I could hardly conceal the loose threads of my shirt or the fact that I had borrowed my neighbor’s car to get here.

I don't want to be this kind of lawyer

It does not trouble me. There is so much I can look back on. I consumed my material pleasures to the full, and I am not out for a refill. I’ve been there. I’ve seen the world of great plans and policies and big high ways. I don’t need to go there again. Passé, as they say in French.

A big car and a big house: not for me anymore

I am not depressed. I really look forward to being useful in whatever way. There is no need for me – nor any wish to that effect – to lock myself up simply in the books of memories. I still want to exploit them, and add new memories, new adventures.

But one thing I will always avoid: to drive in a fog.

Unquote

For many, sex is a routine that fails to fill the emptiness

2008-03-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

Devil worship (Source:Book ov Pleasure)

I may be occupied with quite a few obsessions, and sex is one of them, but to me they all count as passions with a creative, expressive intent. Only my high level of cigarette smoking could be seen as a habit that does not give any true fulfillment.

As to sex, one habit has grown in its wake: surfing gay sites on the internet. The links in the column at the right are a reflection of this. It takes some trouble to find good sites. Along the way I cannot escape the impression that for many men, gay porn and everything associated is like pouring milk into a can without ever reaching the top. There is a big hole in the bucket that we can not fix.

Icon of our time: digital self-pics in mom's bathroom

Lots of funny habits have sprung up with the rise of internet. Digital camera self-pics of half clad boys are the icon of our time. What’s the excitement? No doubt teenage boys have a thrill when they portray themselves through the mirrors of their parents’ bathroom and show off their abs and other attributes. But to me this parade of self-pics is like watching a big herd of cows in Friesland or zebra’s in the African savannah, where it is the monotonous repetition that in the end becomes the real fascination; this unending parade of adolescent bodies, just hoping they all fit the standard and the expectations of many anonymous onlookers across the globe. Only the exceptional boy will avoid this hopeless repetition and express something truly authentic of his own making.

The same applies to the rather more sleazy versions of gay picture sites but also to the large herds of grown up Rhino’s who seem obsessed with dicks and holes and every other meaningless sampling of their flesh in infinite monotony.

My assessment may be a little too rigid, I’ll readily admit it. But in all honesty, I can’t see the excessive exposition of rather uninteresting looking nude men in countless websites as any way different than a huge investment in total darkness. What goes in, doesn’t come out.

Humor is one of the key aspects of our humanity. Humor and the ability to create meaning by the force of our thoughts and the force of our words, of our smile and different gestures, our ability to express our ideas in the way we dress, in our drawings or in our music – etcetera – all of this is where we define our humanity and our individuality. And all of this is so glaringly lacking in most of the gay pulp on the internet.

I have the same experience of the behavior of quite a few men in the mainstream chat rooms. If you can’t show a solid six to seven inch dangling below, you’re out. I don’t mind being taken out of the equation for sex, but that doesn’t preclude a decent chat, does it? In too many cases it does.

“Gay people talk much too much about sex.” It is the main criticism expressed by straight people, not the principle of homosexuality itself. I tend to agree. But it seems almost inevitable when sex is the only subject on which gay people have any – immediate - common ground to start with.

I am not proud of The Netherlands and The US being on top of the world wide statistics on the occurrence of animal sex. How vulgar does it need to become? I do not oppose the idea of extreme (if creative) sex, but such practices can only come from the lowest pit of emptiness.

Paiting by Donald Stuart Leslie Friend

How can our own animal or carnal occupation become more satisfactory and creative most of all? It is a question that opens up a wide spectrum of possibilities. But I do believe that they all start where most of our pre-occupations start: between the ears, and not between the legs, however we may at times think or act otherwise.

Unselfish behavior is the heartbeat of Paradise

2008-03-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

The expulsion from Paradise

Some of my readers may be familiar with the writings of Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982), who came out of the Revolution in Russia to naturalize in the United States in the decade before WW II. She is known mostly for her individualism and for her fierce belief in extreme laisser-faire capitalism. One of her famous novels – The Fountainhead – is based on this political philosophy:

Egotism is the fountainhead of human progress

Ayn Rand rejected the idea of altruism. There is always a personal interest at stake. Otherwise people are not true to themselves. According to Rand, the individual "must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life” (The Voice of Reason, 1962). To her ‘egotism’ was the ultimate expression of man’s creative powers (to be distinguished from mere ‘egoism’). And she saw it as a duty of society to allow these powers their fullest opportunity.

I too believe that mere altruism is a false premise. In my own life I have seen too much goodness turn into oppression to really believe that history can be made on the basis of good intentions only. It can’t.

But a world which totally surrenders to the dictates of the market is bound to perish as much as the world which hails the dictates of the State.

Thoughts of this kind can apply to societies and even to the history of an entire civilization, and they can apply in any small community of friends. For if goodness fails among friends, how can one ever dream of a world that is largely governed by it?

In my own life the opportunities and limitations of being good, of sharing resources and of putting the interest of someone else first came in abundance.

For instance, in the days of my adventures with Jeanlou, we did take consideration of the differences between us in respect of money available and of the various (individual) needs to be fulfilled.

“So let’s go out and put all the money we have (or wish to spend) in one basket, first of all. Then we decide what it is that we all need, and subsequently what it is that each of us needs for himself.”

There was a good reason to make a point of it. As a rule, it was my money we spent to go out or buy clothes and food. Both Jeanlou and my other companions at the time obviously enjoyed the many free rides on my wallet, but they were embarrassed by it too. Jeanlou earned some money of his own along the way, and so did most of my other companions, but I let them free to largely spend it just on themselves. So, in order to address their embarrassment and the undue pressure on their ‘gratefulness’, I made the subject of money a matter of joint commitment, whatever actual contribution the others could make. What mattered, was the psychology of having something to share between all of us.

Still, it did take some time before Jeanlou accepted the concept. That we need to be willing to share first of all, before we take.

Being ‘good’ is not so difficult, but to sustain it, against all initial evidence, is another matter. The ultimate challenge of society, or a group of friends, is to understand that human happiness is fuelled – first of all - by what we give and – secondly – by our trust that this principle fuels the actions of every other member of society in equal measure.

Jeroen Bosch' depiction of Heaven and Hell

Having said this, I often contemplate Ayn Rand’s egotism. Are egotism and unselfish behavior in contradiction? The answer most likely is somewhere between yes and no. I would find it difficult to conceive a world which does not first of all promote individual expression and creativity. What could we possibly have to give – or to share - without the incentive to exploit our talents and personal dreams to the utmost?

On the other hand, if we allow egotism to blindfold us from the joy of promoting and rewarding the success of others, to give way when needed, to co-operate where it makes sense, to help – and so on, then indeed we will self-destruct at the very instance of our greatest achievement.

We would live and die in an unloving world of solitary predators.

The story of Damian

2008-03-22T08:16:00.000-07:00

Reminiscent of Damian in his days as a Club boy

Whatever adversity we meet
we should always be prepared
to blame ourselves first of all

There is one important connection in my life which so far I have only mentioned in passing. It is my connection with a young man who called himself Damian when I first met him almost ten years ago. He was twenty-one years old at the time.

Damian taught me some important lessons. By all accounts he is a joyful, intelligent and outgoing individual. In his best moments I saw the promise of many natural talents: charm, authority and service-mindedness. But I have also seen some of his worst moments and aspects of his life that stood firmly in the way of a successful career and of private happiness.

There had been very little happiness in his youth. His family background is very modest. His youth was black and white in the most simple – and thus: rude – version. One of his memories is a big fight at his parents house, with his father stabbing an other man with a kitchen knife. When he is thirteen, Damian's mother dies of cancer. Successive ‘aunts’ try to fill the gap, but his father could not sustain the basic stability of a family life, and thus, around the age of fifteen, Damian is out in the street. His fate is sealed. Without diploma's and lacking every basic education, he has to find his way in life all by himself.

When we met, Damian worked at a Boys Club somewhere in the city of Rotterdam. I occasionally visited this club, but – having some other ‘favorite boy’ to attend to - I never really took any notice of this young man. He seemed intrigued by the conversations I had and more than once he tried to intervene.

After a while this Club was shut down. I can’t remember why (probably a drugs mix-up or some other criminal situation). Only months later, I saw Damian again, in a different club, and this time it was in Amsterdam. We were immediately drawn to each other. He looked genuinely happy to see me, and somehow it was vice versa on my part.

The following months he lived with me in my newly acquired apartment after the break-up of my marriage. It all came quite natural. “I could fall in love with your character,” Damian had said in those first days when we were still half way between dating on escort basis and meeting in friendship. We did not pass to love, nor did we pursue the sexual scuffle of those first days. Of course not. But we did become genuine companions. It was Damian who sent me out to the street and make myself less dependent of pay-dating.

He too was the one who first introduced me to the secrets of drugs (see previous episode A push for the senses – January 2008). It was not only unforgettable for that reason. The picture is still very clear in my mind. Damian had filled my head with unknown substances, and in his presence this opened new and tantalizing visions which I had never before experienced.

A God of the Olympus - my drug induced vision of Damian

We talked about friendship, youth and the way people relate to one another. And throughout the night, I saw him grow. Damian didn’t look like this funny, attractive escort boy – which was how I had seen him first of all. I saw a grown up man of great strength and persuasion. He suddenly seemed huge, almost as if he were a God placed on a pedestal at the summit of the Olympic.

Whatever neglect and abuse had tainted his life to that point, it had not killed his real potential, I thought. And I was right. He did show this potential not so long thereafter when he got hold of a wonderful job in a first class restaurant where he became involved in catering & party-management for business clients.

Damian was an admirable host

I became a kind of coach for him in this job. It was the first time in his life when he was surrounded by genuine, responsible and well-trained people. It triggered the best of his talents as a host and as a manager. Sometimes we had heated discussions. He would still very much respond in black and white where tones of gray were more appropriate. To many people, his logic and his sense of responsibility would appear very harsh and without reconciliation.

But to me, Damian’s clear cut sense of “blaming someone else and blame yourself first of all” perhaps in the end is the true foundation of friendship, of real and lasting commitment and of personal responsibility.

The job did not last. Unfortunately the restaurant was taken over by owners with a far less scrupulous management philosophy, and Damian couldn’t accept that. He couldn’t accept the need to respond politically and let go of his own ultimate ‘truth’.

I am telling his story, because by the end of 2002 both of us had reached the end of our rope. And again, he came to live with me. This period lasted for over a year. After Jeanlou, and then after Gabriel, it was Damian, for a second round. But this time it wasn’t about the joy of new life experiences. At this time we were not huge or filled with potential. We had exhausted ourselves and I needed all my energy to focus on my own future, which to me was nothing less than ‘the remainder of my life’. Damian’s life had not even properly started. He had so far been offered very few real chances.

Living together, but living very much apart too, we developed a daily routine that was mainly geared at survival and social hibernation. I was drawn inward, in my writings and in my increasingly desperate efforts to find a new job, and so was he. The Social Service nor any other societal institution was capable of effectively guiding Damian out of his fixtures, which included an excessive marihuana intake. I had no capacity to fill that gap for him either. But our understanding of each other remained supreme, as it has been to this day.

Hibernation indeed is the best description of the period that followed for him – and for me. The next chapter would open only two years later.

Even a Goddess can be jealous for no good reason

2008-03-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

One extreme push of my self-confidence

The other day I was talking to a guest, a girl of seventeen, who is a regular companion of one of my young friends when they have a chill at my place. The atmosphere of our discussions is open and truthful. For them it is the occasion to reflect and enjoy. And sometimes I tell a story of my adventures.

We had a conversation about self-confidence. The girl is most beautiful, I can’t say it differently, but she is not so sure about that herself. In fact, she told me that she harbors a nagging jealousy of other women who in her mind are more successful, more attractive and better with the boys. I was surprised to hear it, and I explained to her that jealousy is the worst of our instincts.

But it is true. People can be jealous without proper cause. Jealousy and self-doubt can visit us in many situations. They cause pain most of all where it concerns our dreams of love and being loved in return. At a rather more basic level, it happens when we want sex and do not ‘get’ it.

Gay sauna's reflect age-old traditions

So I told her about my experience one night in the gay sauna of Amsterdam. It is not a tale of jealousy. It was quite the opposite.

“Gay Sauna’s can be seen as an age-old reality,” I said to her. I gave her my description, the way I saw it when I first visited such sauna. “An unending - almost ritual - parade of male bodies, their eyes in perpetual search of a suitable partner, anticipating – and consuming.” In my view, the wish of men, particularly young men, to meet, to measure and ultimately to mate, must be as old as humanity – if not older. It is the most primitive expression of our desire to live out the animal inside us. She understood what I was trying to say.

But however this may be, I never forced myself to the very center of this ritual. My measures are modest. Most men would turn their eyes away from me. I am a rather compact, slim little fellow, not a muscle stud. No use crying over spoiled milk, I said to the girl. She smiled.

Then I told her about my exceptional encounter with a young man, of whom I knew that he earned his living as an escort boy. It happened during a night out in my days with Jeanlou. We had made our usual round in the gay scene of Amsterdam and ended up in Thermos Night. As I recollect Jeanlou had his own program to pursue while I strolled around between the bar and the Jacuzzi bath.

Then, this boy came up to me and grabbed my arm. I was most surprised. We walked up the stairs, passing the silent herd of men who were looking at us with great curiosity. The sauna was very crowded and all cabins seemed occupied. The boy, still holding on to my arm, pushed me into a cabin in which I could see one man smoking a cigarette. He stayed put when the next moment I found myself immersed in a hefty sexual exchange with this unexpected companion. There is hardly any light in these places, so I didn’t notice much of the surroundings of our encounter. We became pretty occupied in the small place that we managed to get hold of. The boy broadly had my measures. It was quite a match. We were like two puppies in total fusion. Absolutely wonderful!

“You got something going there!” the man next to us remarked. We didn’t respond. But after some five or ten minutes - it may have been much shorter – I looked up. And then I looked right into the eyes of some twenty to thirty men, all staring at our performance with the greatest interest. My ‘boy’ had left the door of the cabin wide open, and of this I only became aware at that instant. We didn’t stop. I didn’t stop. Why should I?

The image of our 'audience'
(picture from a crew of the Musical 'Naked Boys Singing')

Who could ever dream of such audience, being a middle aged man engaged in intimate sex with a 20-odd year old escort boy? For free! I couldn’t visualize a better experience of being accepted – at this late stage in my life – as ‘one of them’. I took it as a tremendous boost for my self-confidence.

So, confidence can arrive out of very unexpected corners. After the session, we got up, we walked out of the crowd and I did not speak to the boy again. In fact, no words were spoken whatsoever during the whole exercise.

What about my 'Addiction to Boy Beauty'?

2008-03-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

A Renaissance expression of innocence lost between two boys

Many sites still list my URL under its former title “Addicted to Boy Beauty”, and perhaps there are some of you who are disappointed to find a lot of boy related philosophy in my current blog but no evidence of this particular addiction.

Others may think that this addiction has somehow dissolved into mere cerebral pleasures or that in the process of my final coming of age I have transformed into a latter day monk.

Let me address this in full honesty.

The whole story centers around the definition of ‘boy beauty’. I believe that my previous blog and the pictures of my collection as published between the summer of 2006 and December 2007 have already been a reasonable reflection of ‘boy beauty’ according to my own definition. First of all, it didn’t necessarily include boy nudity. Secondly, I never published a picture which didn’t have a face and a genuine individual expression as its true core.

Individuality, stamina, drive

But I have always realized that a truly authentic, youthful expression also holds a promise beyond mere facial features. For instance, when I search for escort dates on the internet, I don’t need to see genital attributes or nude torsos or anything naked above or below the waist. A ‘face pic’ will do. “When the face is good, the rest is fine too.” I have relied on this rule of thumb for quite some time and I have never found the facts to be in contradiction.

Addicted to his eyes

Still, my greatest pleasure I derive from seeking out young men with character, individuality and adventurism written in their eyes. Never mind the sex, it really has become quite secondary. Nor do I “ogle” at every possible picture of nude young men, whether sexually agitated or not, as they are published in numerous gay sites across the web. Many of them in fact are a solid turn-off. In general, frontal nudity - in my view - is far less fascinating than the promise of beauty when it is still concealed. This applies to men as much as to women.

Beauty does not increase by taking off one's clothes

By the time I passed my second youth I had enjoyed almost every variety of boy beauty: in bed, in going out, in sharing thoughts, in trying to discover – and exploit - my own ‘boy beauty’ (or what was left of it) and in developing an acute sense of boy diversity – this infinite experience of connecting with new and different characters of the male human kind.

Why has this become such a true addition? In the final analysis I may not yet have the full answer. I simply know it when I see it. It has given me unforgettable moments of real physical but most of all spiritual bondage, which I have rarely experienced with the female human kind. And I am saying this as a man who considers himself as much a man-for-women as a man-for-men. But whatever love I have for the women of my life (whom I profoundly cherish), it has remained a widely different experience than my companionship with the men – and boys – with whom I have shared the successive phases of my life in the past ten years.

A view with a promise

When I see a beautiful boy, I do not necessarily want to share his bed. I want to share our souls. I want to connect our brains. I profoundly desire to be his mate above the waist. Perhaps - or should I say: with great certainty? - that is my ultimate addiction.

Gaiety and the evolution of our humanity

2008-03-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

The great majority of the readers of my diaries do not come out of The Netherlands. A solid thirty five percent log in from the United States, followed by France and Germany (each between five to ten percent). The remainder are scattered across the world, in almost every continent.

It is fascinating, as you can imagine, to have such diverse audience, especially if one can surmise that this is a reflection at the same time of many different attitudes or values regarding the main subjects of my diaries.

I have already indicated that I am a Dutchman of a kind, who has been influenced by other cultures and languages from his earliest childhood. Differences in culture are at the core of my professional interests as much as they are part of my private life. I have lived among Muslims in Asia and Catholics in the Caribbean. My friends represent all colors of the rainbow and not everybody is necessarily ‘gay’. You can read about my background in the first episodes of my diaries (see previous episodes at the right).

Remembering the satisfaction

Over the past ten years I have incorporated ‘gayness’ as an irrevocable component or aspect of my life, first of all because I found pure satisfaction in it. Let’s not beat around the bush. And I was happy at the turn of my first half century that I had thoroughly responded to my private fantasies when it was still possible. It became evident to me that this is an experience shared by many men, whether married or single, in many parts of the world.

But it must be clear that my adventures among people in the gay scene triggered an awareness of the huge diversity of human nature far beyond the boundaries of my existence before that time but also far beyond pure gaiety. Thus, my story is not simply an account of a man going through his second boyhood (which in part it most certainly was) but of a confrontation with my entire humanity. It could have been triggered in an other way, no doubt, but this is how it happened in my case.

The world beyond our traditions

Nevertheless, I sense that my story does touch upon experiences of others, which most likely belong to a universal experience of men (I can not speak for the experience of women) and more in particular those men who have a chance – or simply take it – to step outside the fixed traditions of their culture and who allow themselves to build their own traditions – and values – along the line of their own observations and their own logic of life.

By the same logic I have developed my own critique of gaiety. I do not believe that in our Western world we have yet reached the point where human sexuality and human culture are settled in their proper place. I find it strange – in fact: unacceptable - that our sexual habits and preferences should create any cultural division at all. But then I realize we are still moving away from a situation where differences in sexual habits constituted a difference even in terms of legality (as in some countries is still the case). We haven’t yet reached the point where any reference to ‘sexual inclination’ is taken out of the law (for today we still include it as part of an explicit defense of sexual diversity) and thus is made irrelevant altogether.

The other part of gaiety is the part that in my view should not be the exclusive territory of ‘gay’ (or: homosexual, lesbian) people only. Who ever came to the idea that ‘straight’ people could not be gay, i.e.: happy, joyful, extrovert, creative, pleasant, warm blooded?

I will touch upon gayness as a social and cultural phenomenon many more times in future episodes. One can read this essay as a kind of intermission, an evaluation of the lessons that I absorbed in the memorable years of my second boyhood, not so very long ago.

The following years were far less memorable, or they were memorable for quite different reasons. But I do hope you stay with me. In my own mind, it is a story without end.

At fifty all men meet Abraham

2008-03-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

Rembrandt's Abraham and Isaac

My scribbles at completing half a century

Human enjoyment
And the responsibility for life
Should go together

If only we can make responsibility
more attractive, more pleasurable
In our human mind
We could avoid the world becoming
A mass of childish robots
Entertained by foolishness
Hunting for things to have
Working towards their self destruction
Forgetful of who we want to be

Who wants to live in this big Toy-game
This blue-ish painted world of plastic,
Abundant with needless things
Restless for its gains and earnings
And their consumption just-in-time before
We die

Suffering - Japanese mask

Who wants to stand in this world
So arrogant and self-centred
We travel from ravage to ravage
Untouched by the suffering of beauty
And without a purpose
That inspires all mankind

When you see Abraham
you are reminded that from now on
you cannot make a mess of it any longer

But have I really seen Abraham?
What wisdom will inspire me
Uphold me
What sacrifice is yet expected
Of me
- and to what end?

Pleasure is not achieved
By pursuing it as a purpose of its own,
It is achieved as the desired effect
of all other sensible pursuits

Purpose - painting by Marie-Paule Olinger

No society will survive
Which is just based on ‘enjoyment’
Societies survive because of their purpose

Freedom is not granted to do as you like
It is the opportunity to be responsible
And make it work to the benefit of many

Thus only if you make something meaningful
Of yourself
Your love for the other
will gain its true value.

Amsterdam, Summer of 2002

Humans are animals who think they are different

2008-03-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

Notes taken on a night out in the summer of 2002

I was at the place of my two love boys, Shane (19) and Jaime (24). They are my love boys because they are a team, and they are lovers. We had been out to Amsterdam and at two o’clock in the night we were back, exhausted, watching some movie with our legs stretched out, shoes off, on their big sofa. My mind was set on infinity, half following the storyline on the Television screen, half observing my two boys, who lay cuddling and kissing next to me.

Since I had been the driver for the night, I was still sober. Shane held a joint in front of my mouth. Should I let it go? I asked myself, not sure yet whether I would stay for the night or move on to my own place. But Shane insisted that I share the occasion with them. He was one of the boys of Why Not, who in the previous months had gradually become a special pupil. A boy out of the province, he had left – or lost – a regular family life and the normal care of his parents at a much too early stage. By the time we met in the wake of my expeditions with Gabriel, Shane had already worked his way up in the hierarchy of the gay scene by exploiting his boyish beauty to the full as a kind of délicatesse among the escort boys. He made regular photo shoots, which reached a wide audience on the internet, and thus one could see him as a true, if notorious, example of this young and adventurous generation with little inhibition to fully use our modern tools of communication to their own immediate benefit.

I was well aware of Shane's various interests, of course, and initially he expected me to open my wallet and solicit his services to suit my own needs. But after he came to understand that in this particular circle of boys I had vouched for total celibacy, we gradually developed a relation of trust and mutual respect. And this is how we came to share our nights out, together with his boyfriend Jaime, who helped Shane to balance his volatile lifestyle with a minimum of peace and stability.

I took a good few puffs of Shane’s joint and he threw his legs on my lap. No words where spoken. It was a quiet threesome, with Shane and Jaime lying in a sweet embrace as I was gently massaging the younger boy’s feet.

Then my eyes followed the restless movements of their dog, a stocky little fellow, and their two cats who chased each other through the living room as if they were undecided which of them was the mouse and which was the actual cat.

“Hey, keep quiet!” Jaime shouted at the cat, a little irritated by their noise. And in an instant, I imagined that I was the cat, looking at three humans on a sofa, all dressed up, looking at this big box with images and surrounded by all this lifeless material, no grass, no trees, no mice to eat. What’s the fuzz? I wanted to ask. Why wouldn’t I race around and have my own fun? Don’t yell at me!

Was it a good thing for us cats, I wondered, to seek the protection of the human kind and submit ourselves to a life of tamed predators, like pigs or cows and chickens? Why didn’t we stay free, out there in the wild? Does any cat still have a concept of life in the wild, a faint memory of it perhaps?

The joint crept into my brains. Humans too had ascended from an animal existence, but when did man first separate himself from the animal world as a distinct ‘human’ being? We may have our own definitions of that dividing line, somewhere in the distant past, but more interesting – it seemed to me – is when – back in those hundreds of thousand, if not millions of years, our ancestors themselves became conscious of the attributes that distinguished them from the other animals in their lifetime? I was imagining this dawn of Man, some early morning long ago, a mere speculation about the first day on Earth that a creature not unlike us, with legs and arms stretched out to the Sun, thinking – roaring perhaps – “Yes! I am different. I am not an animal. This world is ours to conquer!”

My two love boys are true children of Man, I mused. They are pleased with their bodies, their arms and legs and all their other attributes, now intertwined, and with their living minds filled with sense and thought. It so happened they fell in love - or was it lust and the fear of being alone? – and I stumbled into their lives as a casual observer of their homely partnership. Truly, I had no fixed idea about my attachment to these boys. It felt like a natural friendship, I didn’t harbor any ulterior motives in respect of either them.

As if reading my thoughts Shane suddenly said: “You really belong to us here.” I smiled, thinking that perhaps I had just been promoted to ranks of their dog and cats, an other animal in their house to keep them company.

Shane knew that many people would see our connection with different eyes. I am more than thirty years his senior. By all accounts he had the life of an escort boy written all over his face and his slim, agile body. Who would believe that I didn’t have my share of this?

A boy like Shane

I took some notes (there is always a pen and some paper in my vicinity), and Shane asked: “Are you going to write again? About us?” I replied that I was contemplating the dawn of humanity and the nature of human happiness. Shane giggled. By then he knew that my thoughts traveled almost everywhere in vague and distant clouds much beyond his grasp. They had both seen me jump up more than once, in the middle of a conversation, and grab a piece of paper, or scribble some words on the back of an envelope, almost obsessively. But I didn’t want to forget this lovely night, the peace of it most of all, at a time when my own life seemed to run into darkness and when perhaps I wouldn’t mind being a cat chasing a mouse, or a restless dog wagging his tale.

As the early morning approached and daylight slowly awoke the world of sleeping families – it was a Sunday – I decided to go back to my own house. Jaime was fast asleep, his arms around Shane, who was still awake. He followed my movements when I tied the strings of my shoes and searched for my jacket. I kissed him on his forehead. “Be back soon,” Shane said.

On the way back in my car I realized how much I needed the gentle sweetness of a night like this. For the following day I had to face yet again the reality of my existence as a human animal desperately short of any mouse to chase and living on the last remains of his previous abundance.

A visit to my Confessor

2008-03-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo, Sistine Chappel, Rome

What has God got to do with it?

If someone would ask me if I were Religious, most likely I would say no, but with an elaborate clarification. It all starts with the definition, or at least: the common understanding, of the term ‘religion’.

No, I am not Religious, but I do have a harbor in the Church.

By all accounts I am a Protestant, with no Catholic or Muslim forebears in sight for over four hundred years. My youth was entirely non-religious. As a young boy I had once attended Mass in a Catholic Church, on a Sunday morning, and that was my only sin.

Too much imagery, but similar light

A good Protestant, of course, does not have a notion of ‘sin’. That is a typically Catholic obsession, and one which has persisted among great many people – including those outside the Roman Church – for a good number of years. We are only gradually struggling out of it.

But we do have our notion of responsibility and of the difference between right and wrong. I, for one, have been trained - or educated - as a lawyer.

Only later in my life I had a more or less profound and purposeful connection with ‘religion’. I was twenty five, and I had just lost my mother, who died suddenly at a relatively young age.

Somehow her death inspired me (too). I wanted to follow the light that shone brightly, a true white light, the day after her death. The light came with the person who would take up the religious part of my mother at her funeral. Almost as if she was a messenger out of heaven.

This was my true experience, even though I was rational enough to know that it was all the ‘figment of my own imagination’ (Ratatouille).

So I joined a learning group, with men and women, friends among them, largely of my own age, which was led by a minister of the Protestant Church. He was youthful, wise and above all: humanitarian. God was a subject you could discuss.

He has become the man whom I call my harbor in the Church. Even in retirement, this minister remains my first and foremost confessor. It was time I openly discuss my wanderings –and the right and wrong of it - with a man of humanity, principle and wisdom.

I had a question to answer. And I needed his guidance. He gently allowed me his time one pleasant evening in the autumn of 2002. We exchanged our stories on shared hobbies, writing in particular, and I gradually briefed him on the drift of my life and my various experiences.

Sin?

He listened attentively. He poked now and then. And with great clarity he responded, not by diminishing the dubious aspects of my story, nor by condemning them.

He simply stated: “Whatever it may have been, the only thing that counts is what you learn from it, and what you do with it. You could set an example (including the warnings), and really help young people.”

The essence was in really help. Not in the way I had been trying (or had been stumbling with) thus far. It seemed as obvious as it was a challenge to fulfill.

It was a solid push to head forward, and not keep looking behind.

Turning the boy into a man

2008-03-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

The two of me, 2002

Struggles at middle age

Once in a while I stepped out of my Twilight Zone of pleasure and apprehension to have my brush with the world of normal people, plowing their way through their normal careers, raising their normal children and having their parties with their normal friends. I had no difficulty to blend with them as a normal man, telling normal stories and making jokes about any regular if trivial matter as it pleased me.

Having to conceal a year of almost total unemployment obviously became an increasing challenge. My main strategy was to tell nothing that could raise eyebrows or that would make people around me, especially my family, worried about the actual conditions and prospects of my life. I could still keep up the appearances for quite a while.

But in another way I was at my best. I remember a birthday party of a very good friend of mine. I had known her since our school days. She celebrated her 50th anniversary with a great number of old connections, men and women, most of them dating from our years at the university.

I noted many gazes in my direction. Not from the men, but especially from the women. They had all been very attractive girls when we were at school. I never got any attention of them at the time. But now – with so many years in between - they all smiled at me, as if – somehow – I had changed into an attractive man. Indeed, I must have been different in their eyes. My clothes and haircut had changed. At 50 I looked fresh and clean shaven. I didn’t wear a stuffy old suit or tie, and all in all, I felt that I had less difficulty smiling my way to them.

So, whether or not I kept silent about the main experiences of my life, it must have been apparent to many that I had changed, and that this wasn’t necessarily a change for the worse.

Nonetheless, my actual existence was still firmly footed in the gay way of life, and the notion that, perhaps, my identity in my ‘normal’ life was bound to change too, only gradually dawned to me. What man did I want to be – or become?

I realized that my greatest investment throughout the previous years had been to become “a nice boy” – a boy among boys. And to some degree, it was difficult to deny this, I had succeeded. I had somehow retained – and revitalized – my boyishness in a credible way, notably in the eyes of women who would otherwise simply have passed me without noticing.

The inevitable process affecting us all, sooner or later

Yet on the other hand, I knew this wouldn’t do. Just being young or nice and radiant ultimately would make me look – and feel - ridiculous. I had to reconcile the nice boy in me with his actual responsibilities and somehow turn myself into a credible man, a good man, of middle age with sufficient vitality to last me for another few decades.

But what ‘good’ could I do?

Dreams of past and future

2008-03-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Next Generation

I have to come back to the world I shared with Gabriel, mostly at my own place and in our visits to Amsterdam. The circle of boys we had assembled around us, largely out of Why Not, remained at the core of our social life. My position evolved from casual buddy to a steady private counselor for almost all of them. At this stage, I couldn’t care less about my remaining personal desires, or I satisfied them outside the group.

Gabriel was still working in the escort business. He did, however, make his first attempts to escape from its ultimate predicament. He could effectively separate the execution of his services and their associate emotions from the pleasure of friendship, party and shelter. I sometimes assisted him in making his client arrangements or in simply driving him up and down to his various appointments.

At home, Gabriel had his favorite Television programs. MTV was on almost the entire day, or night. But in my view it was a time of high quality pop music, with great songs for instance, of Kyle Menogue, Daft Punk, Usher, Spice Girls and so on.. Michael Jackson had been Gabriel’s greatest hero ever since he did a playback when he was a boy of twelve. And even if Jackson was already on his way out, he would look forward to every new song. I won’t forget Gabriel’s unmistakable disappointment when Jackson’s last album ‘Invincible’ appeared with the clip “You rock my world”.

Michael Jackson "You Rock My World"

But he was most keen to watch the successive episodes of Stark Trek The Next Generation. I can imagine that a world most far away from our own would attract him as the world of his dreams. Gabriel couldn’t possibly count as a privileged young man. Throughout his youth – or the largest part of it - he did not have the environment to stimulate and support him through the school system at the actual level of his intellect. He wasn’t stupid. He projected himself as a gentle, civilized young man, insecure, strong, handsome, dark, with a friendly, often happy face.

The key issue for him, behind it all, obviously was the total insufficiency of his childhood and education. His civilization had come out of a short period of living – as a child - with an upper middle class doctor’s family. We could discuss almost anything. Indeed, out of the dreams came substantive ideas for his future.

But issues and incidents of the past still haunted and, unfortunately, hunted him. There was a one month (or more) prison sentence standing out on him. As a teenager of seventeen or eighteen, Gabriel had driven a car in a joy-ride, without driver’s license, and ended up in an accident. When for some trivial matter he got in touch with the police, he was swiftly reminded of it.

So, Gabriel suddenly disappeared behind bars, his life as yet non-started and halted – again – for reasons beyond his immediate control. I began to see the major shortcomings of our society in dealing with (and in particular: in helping) young people, who for some reason have been deprived of basically responsible - and basically capable - parents.

Gabriel was free again after a month, and after that he got to settle back on his own. His struggle with past and future and with the dreams he cherished was in perfect contrast to my own, yet similar at another level. I had enjoyed a life filled with privilege and opportunity, but now I had reached the end of my dreams. I was driving on a dead end road.

Unless I was able to drastically redirect the focus of my life, I would have to face my own life-long imprisonment in nothing but my memories. There was little – and certainly no immediate - prospect for me of any sustainable contribution to our future world, whatever dreams I continued to keep floating in my mind.

The Road to the Abyss - II

2008-03-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Fortuyn and the Dutch political theatre of 2002

Part II

Facing the new reality

Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that my only professional assignment of this period was a consulting project on behalf of one of Holland’s management associations. The assignment was to help create a context for revitalizing its services to member companies and their management staff. The project had a working title that couldn’t have been more appropriate: New Reality.

To me it was self-evident that many processes in the area of management development had exhausted their usefulness. The upcoming information and communication age was bound to create many new – and different – networks, which required a highly flexible supporting infrastructure. If traditional intermediate organizations were to survive, they would have to adjust.

It became very clear however that the organization and its diverse membership were not ready for such overhaul. My principal in this project, who was the director of the association, finally had to concede to this innate conservatism. I took it as a sign that in the broader context of our society, whether in the public sector or in the private industry, the mood was still to hold on to the old realities.

Some time early 2002 I wrote an essay on liberalism and the need to safeguard our natural resources. I tried to answer how we should translate the principle of a free market economy and social freedom into political concepts that would foster sustainability and thus: more severe limitations on outright materialism. With an increasing scarcity of key energy resources and other natural resources required for the continuity of our western world (if not our entire Planet), I felt that this was a rather pertinent question. So far, the preferences of the Dutch liberal party had been largely conservative, hailing free economy and private wealth without undue limitations.

Dutch Social-Democrat Leader Ad Melkert, 2002, who couldn’t believe that Fortuyn effectively ousted him from any political future (he is now a director at the World Bank)

But as I was moving to the left in my own mind, the mood of the country was preparing for a massive surge to the right. Pim Fortuyn had his greatest hour in March 2002, when he publicly exposed the lethargic attitude of most of the political leaders of that day. He did it in a masterful way, during a televised debate between the five or six leaders of our main political parties. Fortuyn demonstrated that humor and politics could well go together (his openly celebrated gayness was not a disqualification). That night he slashed the predominance of both the social-democrats and the conservative liberals in one single blow.

Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis, jointly lynched by an angry crowd, The Hague 1672

Then, in May 2002, something happened that had been unthinkable in Holland for at least 230 years (i.e. since 1672, when the people lynched our then ‘prime minister’ – chief counselor – Johan de Witt). A miserable activist took three or more shots and gunned Pim Fortuyn down in the city of Hilversum, where he had just recorded an interview. He died almost instantly. The killer was apprehended and duly sentenced. We do not have the death penalty in Europe. (*)

Another victim of public vengeance, killed in 1326: Sir Hugh Dispenser, friend (and lover) of King Edward II of England.

In my life all glasses broke to pieces.

Even though I would note vote for Fortuyn (I decided to remain loyal to my own party, for one more time), I sincerely regretted his loss as I still regret this to this day. In May 2002 our national politics lost the opportunity of humor and intellect. Instead, we saw the rise of rigidness and superficiality.

Similarly the opportunities which I needed for my own liberation were lost too. Jobs were moving even more rapidly away from me.

I was almost 50 years of age, well talented, heavily out of my way, playful, inquisitive, soon approaching the bottom of my financial pit, and, perhaps, irresponsible.

-----------

(*) The other memorable political murder in Dutch history was the official beheading, at age 72, of Holland’s great Statesman, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, 1619. This brutal slaughter was condoned, if not actively pursued, by Maurice, the Prince of Orange of the day. Fortuyn’s explicitly broadcasted prophecy that his assassination would, at least in part, be the Dutch Government’s blood hands too, is a faint echo of this. Fortuyn openly discussed this eventuality in televised interviews, largely to help secure his own safety.

The Road to the Abyss

2008-03-08T15:34:00.000-08:00

Part I

On a slide, but not without hope

In my own timeline the events of September 11, 2001 constitute a watershed moment similar to November 22,1963, the day that John Kennedy was assassinated. I have a clear recollection of both. They are great divisions in my sense of history.

Some time before I had made my own assessment of the trends of our time and I compared the situation of Europe and the United States and the legacy of the 20th Century. Where had the history of the Western world taken us, on either side of the Atlantic? Obviously, this was not a scientific exercise by any measure.

My view of the Western world, spring 2001.

As I saw it, Europe and the US gradually drifted apart in the focus of their basic investment. On our side of the Atlantic we were embarking on a major expansion of our European institutions and the EU Membership. The US, on the other side, was moving towards a new phase of military and corporate expansion. I had no illusions about the drift of the Bush agenda as it was being set.

At societal and political level, “9/11” meant a definite goodbye to the ‘post-sixties’. The underlying development was already there. The big blast in New York did not cause it. It only triggered it, the same way Kennedy’s death triggered an existing, emerging trend into a higher gear.

The echo of 9/11 would ultimately resound almost everywhere, including my own country. When the ‘War on Terrorism’ was declared, many other fires were ignited in its wake. The paradigms of reason, democracy and social responsibility, which had carried us through the previous three decades, suddenly began to shift.

The above development symbolized the disintegration of almost all fixed or secure beacons as I had known them in my private life. I sensed that I was facing a steep downhill slide, including the total depletion of all my remaining financial resources. How long would it take before I could no longer ‘get away with it’ myself?

A vision of madness

For a time I continued to live in denial of the emerging economic adversity. One could still see the events of 2001 as a passing phase. A full swing ‘War on Terror’ was another year down the road. New hope of innovation in my own country arose when, by the end of 2001, a self-styled (and self-appointed) political Messiah, named Pim Fortuyn, took up the challenge against the stifled leaders of our political establishment. He was rapidly hailed by a considerable (otherwise silent) segment of our society for preaching a substantive overhaul of our system of semi-socialized public entitlements (health, education, social security), but also of the prevailing social and cultural divisions in our country.

Right at the time when Pim Fortuyn stepped on the stage of Dutch politics, I met him in a gay sauna in Rotterdam (where he lived). We knew each other from an encounter some years before, when we briefly teamed up in our – shared – ambition to shake up the leadership of the Dutch liberal party. He was most amused when he saw me in the sauna, especially when he spotted my company of two young friends. We happily chatted for a while, as he was measuring up ‘my boys’. I chuckled when I noted that he seemed kind of jealous.

Pim Fortuyn, self-styled political Savior, 2001 - 2002

Nobody could foresee the madness that would follow the ascent - and tragic demise – of Pim Fortuyn. Most certainly I did not foresee it. In fact I was looking forward to some degree of success on his part. In many ways I felt that his agenda of political and institutional reconstruction largely served my own, and I remained highly optimistic about my future – professional – opportunities in the wake of these upcoming trends.

Blue blue sky

2008-03-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

This boy of nearly 50 – Amsterdam, July 2001

The Summer of 2001

Although in the year following 2001 I would still go out and have my little private enjoyments, my youth ended in that summer.

In my wanderings through the gay scene I was increasingly pondering its nature and underlying dynamics. Emancipation and tolerance of homosexuality had done nothing to actually normalize our general understanding of it. In a certain way I came to see the gay scene as a perversion (with institutions such as Gay Pride), but as an inevitability (in what other way can people seek and find each other?). I walked almost everywhere, the way you see me walk in above snapshot of that summer.

Yet I had no idea where I was going. I was only half way the transition (or my midlife crisis, as other people might have called it) in many other aspects of my life too. The ongoing process of memorizing my father, the life of my daughter, who had now become a university student, my family and friends, my obsession with history and politics, and most of all: my professional life.

I had not succeeded in obtaining a substantive job or assignment for over half a year. Competitive shoot-outs had grown more fierce. My professional abilities as a management generalist, largely focused at the public sector, were no longer in need. There was an emerging atmosphere of stagnation, of political exhaustion and apathy. The society of Information and Communication was still in its early adolescence. However, change was ongoing at operational and technological level. I could see that my skills rapidly became obsolete.

But a serious re-definition of one’s career and professional identity does not come overnight. Nor does it happen by itself, obviously. It would take me another three years to fully complete that cycle.

So, in a way, the summer of 2001 was the finale of my gay way of life as I had grown accustomed to it throughout the previous – almost – three years. Surely, I didn’t know this at the time. As already indicated, I had no clue where I was heading.

But I did pick up the themes, which I hope will carry me through a lifetime: education, youth, parenthood, love and sex – or: sexuality, yes that too, all of it in the broadest possible sense.

I am sure that in this period I continued to have every pleasurable encounter. But I have no distinct recollection of most of them. And even though I sensed tough times ahead, I didn’t loose my optimism about the future of our world and ultimately, my own future.

Gabriel and I remained companions for almost a year. After that, I had to drastically narrow my focus.

Still, I did not relinquish the life of a ‘man among youth’. It persisted, and evolved along the way.

What was happening to the happy feelings of the nineties?

The summer of 2001 was a kind of Last Party for almost our entire world. Soon our perceptions of future, of liberty and security, would be severely shaken by a blast out of the blue blue sky.

The day he became a prostitute

2008-03-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

About a boy I gave the name ‘Jeremy’

Throughout the period of these diaries I continued to make my own, private excursions in the boy scene. They were encounters of all kind. They happened either through internet, out of the chat rooms, or in bars and clubs where I made my own rounds as Gabriel did his.

Amsterdam Nightlife

They were less and less sexually directed, and more intellectually. I remember having made great fun with a young history student, when we met dancing in the Exit. I predicted “A new Middle Ages!” right in his face. "But do not think that the Middle Ages weren’t fun too, " I added. He was most amused (and I was a little stoned). But it struck me that such an ‘insight’ – who ever would think about our future in those terms? – would occur to me in an exchange with youth.

Talking to this young man energized my thinking.

Photo by Richard de Chazal

And even the infrequent dates with so called escort- or pay-boys - more than once - became instant meetings of the mind and not of the flesh. I recorded a particular conversation. It was a meeting with a boy whom - after almost seven years - I do not remember by face or actual name. In my notes of that meeting, I dubbed him “Jeremy”. But this is what we discussed.

A picture out of my collection "Addicted to Boy Beauty"

QUOTE

“The day I went to work as a prostitute was the day I hated my father most,” Jeremy looked at me with anger streaming to his face. “Why didn’t he take me out? Why didn’t he come here and drag me away?!” He paused and searched for my response. Not in words. He simply wanted to be sure I understood. He regained his friendly expression.

I stared at my companion. Indeed, why? I immediately grasped his anger. It was inconceivable for me ever to have become a prostitute in my life. I had a great father. And I am a father myself. I have a wonderful daughter. Most certainly I would drag her out of a brothel and do everything in my power to stop her from even remotely needing it.

But what an easy thing for me to say. It simply wouldn’t occur. Impossible. Not because of me but because of her.

I wanted to see for myself and meet Jeremy’s father. He was probably my age. I simply wished to absorb the mind of a man who had no problem launching three or more children into this world and totally ignore them.

But what about all the other boys I had met in the past years? And what did I do?

UNQUOTE

I left that question unanswered then and there. Surely I was not a Saint!

Still close at a distance

2008-03-01T07:25:00.000-08:00

Catching up with Alex

In these diaries I have only briefly touched upon my friendship with Alex, my seventeen year old ‘big brother’ of the Caribbean. When I left, early December 2000, we had a hard time parting. We both realized that our experience of joint spiritual exploration, during many endless tropical nights filled wine and marihuana, had come to an end and that it would leave us with considerable emptiness for a quite a while.

Even with thousands of miles between us, this is how our minds connected

In the mean time Alex had broken up with his girlfriend Christine, who had occasionally shared our nightly travels under the stars of the Milky Way. It was understandable. Alex had an insatiable need to hunt all remaining females on the island. At seventeen, one could say, he wasn’t yet finished. I am not sure that Christine knew of his escapades, or the extent of it, but I always felt that she was the kind of young woman who could accept and even tolerate this and at the same time exploit all her charms to have the greatest share of him. But, as teenage love affairs go, it didn’t last.

We kept in touch largely through e-mails and MSN.

...............................................................

EJW: ………..Hey Alex

Alex: Eyah, what’s up?

EJW: I have thought about the beginning of humanity

Alex: You know when man became ‘human’? Tell me

EJW: Yes. I think it was when people defined ‘crime’. When they became conscious of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in a moral, pre-legal sense.

Alex: Great thought keep it

EJW: And when they called something a crime, God was created too. To stop us from committing it.

Alex: Hyeah great

EJW: Just saw this movie. A perfect crime against perfect policing. Like a game between two ‘equal’ men: one bad, one good……

(probably it was the movie of Al Pacino and Robert de Niro, Heat, of the mid nineties)

……………

Alex: I have these fits of depression lately

EJW: Depression? Too many joints?

Alex: No I was sober for a change :-)

EJW: Anything bothering you?

Alex: I dunno. Just this feeling. We went to Campo… and I started crying

My interpretation of Alex' mood

EJW: Campo.. (a kind of secluded village with bars and whores in cabins. A social meeting place where everybody can meet everybody without questions being asked)

Alex: Yes but it was ok later

EJW: Had fun?

Alex: Yeah it was ok

EJW: But what are you thinking of ...?

Alex: Dunno… Some family shit came up. But it doesn’t bother me.

EJW: Somebody hurt you? Took away something?

Alex: No as I said, I don’t know what it was. But it doesn’t really bother me now. I'll sleep it out.

EJW: I miss you a lot..

Alex: Hehe, I am over you

EJW: 'Over' me?

Alex: Well It was more difficult, I mean I was more upset than I expected when you left..

EJW: I see…

Alex: I was less upset because I expected to see you back soon but it is harder now for me. The longer I don’t see you

Alex: Let’s change the subject: I am called for dinner

EJW: Ok

Alex: Greet all around you

EJW: Ever yours xxx

................................................................

A typical exchange of two wandering souls. But truthful. We never beat around the bush. But he seemed more withdrawn, keen to forget about the greater and smaller pains that had inflicted him, including - possibily - the pains he had caused himself. I was too far away to be able to assess his true situation or appreciate the sense of darkness that I detected in his mood, as if he was bordering on some kind of abandonment.

Yet I was happy to note that our friendship and the memory of our joint tropical semester apparently meant as much to him as it meant to me. To this day, in my own life, Alex represents the greatest possible expression of a connection between human souls unaffected by the difference in age, experience and actual interests.

Out again in the gay scene

2008-02-29T09:09:00.002-08:00

Fruit machine

A new pattern emerged of bars and cafés, but it also occurred at home, with different music and other enjoyments. Gabriel demanded attention in his own way, but far less exuberant than Jeanlou.

After ‘The Other Side’, which in our program served as a private place most of my own, we would move to a bar almost opposite, where Gabriel had his favorite fruit machine. Invariably he would be short of coins, so I dutifully added a few coins of my own simply to let the good spirits float.

It was also the kind of place where we would meet with others, and each night we found ourselves in a group of some four or five companions, all out to enjoy life in a cordial atmosphere, without much hassle or in-fighting. We normally visited some two or different bars before ending up in one of the clubs which would take us through the remainder of the night, ending up on the dance floor in Club Exit.

Although he was a white boy by heart, Gabriel’s physical attributes and flexibility were definitely Negroid, in a slender, elegant way. He was most at his ease when he could move hid body on the rhythm, and he did so very gently - with a highly personal, relaxed style of dancing - and always with a friendly smile. And perhaps this was the reason I felt so much at ease when I was dancing with him, which meant: being there together, but also on our own. We did not embrace or dance close to each other in any way. It was a ritual of friendship, on a floor we shared, with people we shared. My style of dancing drastically changed with the influence of Gabriel’s movements and his constant rhythm. It actually greatly enhanced the health and flexibility of my own small body.

More than once, when Jeanlou and I went out for the night, we found ourselves in the center of attention. Or Jeanlou did, while the public took me for granted. With Gabriel it was different. The enjoyment was our privacy, not our public visibility.

Nevertheless Gabriel had to swallow a few critical comments about his – apparently much older – company. I didn’t notice it, I truly didn’t. But I did, gradually, develop a sensitivity about the kind of people who would start a conversation with him, or who were otherwise keen to get to know him. It grew on me inadvertently. And I realized that he began to mean more to me than a mere accidental, or temporary buddy. Somehow we dwelled on the same ‘level’. The dancing came only naturally as a result of this.

White Party, Amsterdam

The pattern became a habit, and the habit became an addiction. Out in the gay scene, we soon shared this entire program of going out with friends, or being just the two of us, sitting in my car somewhere on the Herengracht or Keizersgracht of Amsterdam, talking and puffing a joint or some crack, about family, about youth, about life. We talked about his, and we talked about mine.

Inevitably we also talked about our mutual friends, mostly young men or boys, for whom we cared much in a similar way.

A life just aimed at physical and sensual enjoyment thus – step by step – became a life more specifically dedicated to the future of young men, young people, where much repair too had to be done in their entire outlook on life and the memory of their childhood, of their parents, and of many opportunities lost or talents wasted.

I was there to learn those lessons, out in the gay scene. And Gabriel was my next companion to guide me – and accompany me – through it.

The Other Side

2008-02-27T14:14:00.000-08:00

Our center of gravity. A map of the inner city of Amsterdam, with all the coffeeshops.

With Gabriel it soon became a habit to team up in Amsterdam almost four nights out of seven. And either we went out together, or we would meet some place, if Gabriel was already in Amsterdam – in the city – for his ‘work’.

And thus we regularly met in Why Not, the boys club. Everybody knew we were just good friends, everybody respected it. And I respected everybody else too, obviously. Another line was drawn then and there too. This would be a social circle for me, and nothing else. It would be a lot of fun, nonetheless. Quite a number of them I still see, or hear, or ‘meet’ , for instance in MSN. We keep in touch. And some are still very close to me.

This gradual cycle of fun and retreat, amidst some very wonderful, sometimes tragic young men, to me was the ultimate gift of a new life. Even after Jeanlou.

Reguliersdwarsstraat, Amsterdam

And it is only appropriate that for me, time and again, this cycle started with a few puffs of a joint at a table in ‘The Other Side’, a coffeeshop in the Reguliersdwarsstraat. My favorite coffeeshop.

In this coffeeshop I sought my inspiration for the night. A theme to ponder, or new themes to discover.

"The Other Side"

And I remember a pleasant conversation with an American couple, both in their thirties, about the phenomenon of the coffeeshops in Amsterdam and Dutch permissiveness on soft drugs in general.

He could not understand that we officially ignore our own legislation. Our crime, in his eyes, was more than just permissiveness.

I found myself on the defensive, at one point. And I remember having painted a very broad and colorful picture of Dutch history as I know it, and of the city of Amsterdam, the city of free burghers, in particular.

So I came a long stretch out of my liberalism to reconcile his common sense with the reality of our drugs policies.

I still believe in good liberal pragmatism, which in my case, incidentally, is founded in a very progressive, 25% American mind.

But regardless these arguments, it truly is The Other Side where one can meet the most wonderful people, the most unexpected minds, and the most unexpected but welcome little missions. And such became the mission of Gabriel too.

A final note about coffeeshops in Amsterdam

In Holland, tobacco will be banned in all public places, including cafes, bars etcetera. It has affected the coffeeshops too. But the decision is: tobacco is banned, not weed.

So, as long as you don’t mix your weed with tobacco, it is alright to smoke in a coffeeshop. It is simply disregarded as truly 'smoking'.

Can you imagine.