by Mark Simpson (Originally published on SHOWstudio.com, 2002) Oscar Wilde famously donned cowboy duds for the Western leg of his tour of the US in 1882, after discovering that his usual dandy garb didn’t go down quite so well in the hard-bitten cattle and gold-rush towns as it had in… Read More »Tailor to the Desert Stars: a Tribute to Nudie
This month’s Details magazine carries a letter (which Details strangely neglected to show to me) by veteran gay writer John Rechy, author of the cult 60s hustler novels City of Night and Numbers, and the 70s plea for homo tolerance The Sexual Outlaw (books I enjoyed as teenager in the… Read More »Sexual Outlaws: ‘Gay For Pay’ Paratroopers
September’s Out magazine features an essay ‘Assume the position’ by yours truly defending hazing. An ancient masculine ritual that almost all respectable people now oppose. Including of course respectable gays. One out-raged reader has already described the essay as being the ‘lowest, most immoral homo-commentary I’ve ever read’. Oh, you’re just saying that. I’d… Read More »Assume the position: a queer defence of hazing
Hanes, the men’s underwear brand closest to the wedding tackle of Middle America, has gone all Sporno on us. I know. What is the world coming to? Is nothing sacred? In its unseemly lust to chase the metrodollar – and recapture some of those young male shoppers who don’t want to be… Read More »Spornographic underwear: look what we’ve got our Hanes on
Mark Simpson gets to grips with a man’s favourite bad habit “WANKER!” A bastard blue van has just cut me up, pulling out suddenly from a side-street right in front of me, forcing me to brake. Hard. So, I respond in the customary English way: winding down the window, leaning… Read More »Wanking On: How Masturbation Became Aspiration