"Double Pumping" at Kinky Camp 3!

Eat, drink, scream at the (four) screens and be merry!

Saturday 9/29 at midnight at Monkey Town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

http://www.monkeytownhq.com/contactinfo.html

A Double Doc Bill featuring Dustin Robertson’s “Pumping Velvet”:

Smalltown boy, rockstar, bodybuilder, circuit boy, menace and icon. Dustin Robertson has ascended from being continually gay bashed as a kid and abusing drugs, to becoming a competitive bodybuilder and working as Hollywood’s top music video editor for divas like Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, and Madonna. His personal experiences from his often-tumultuous life are documented through the innovative use of full color animation, narrative and fantasy sequences, erotic images, film and TV clips, music videos, and other forms of mass media.
--Matt Dy

SHOWN SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH

A “silent” version of that classic softcore Schwarzenegger flick “Pumping Iron”:
He’ll be back. Slicked in body oil.

Preceded by Kurt Koehler’s “Hung Frankenstein”:
Mel Brooks meets John Waters. Enough said.

Come one, come all, come campy!

Personal Jesus

I went from reading Susan Sontag’s “Notes On Camp” to a “New York Times Magazine” article on catastrophe insurance and found a defining thread, that of logic. Everything in life is logical, from sensibility to gambling odds, regardless of whether or not we’re consciously aware of it. (There’s arrogance in the word “miracle” – a subtle supposition that if we in all our “glorious human wisdom” can’t see it and explain it, it must not be logical.) This idea was perfectly encapsulated in a quote from that same magazine’s profile of the visionary music producer Rick Rubin (the Billy Wilder of his industry in terms of genre reach). As a kid from Long Island Rubin fell in love with magic, but he was more concerned with the logic of the perceived “supernatural.” “I always think about how things work, the mechanics of a situation – that’s the nature of being a magician.” Later in the article he admits, “I do not know how to work a board. I don’t turn knobs. I have no technical ability whatsoever…My primary asset is I know when I like something or not. It always comes down to taste.” While this is undeniably true, Rubin’s taste isn’t something mystical but a result of a particular obsession that led to learning and finally to a subconscious “knowing.” (Like a boxer whose muscles know how to throw a right cross instinctively through years of training.) Outwardly, Rubin’s brilliant decision to have the late legend Johnny Cash reinterpret industrial Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” and new wave Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” at the end of his country music career seemed odd. Even Rubin acknowledges, “I still never assume that anyone will like any thing. But I can’t imagine that they won’t either.” Rubin isn’t merely secure in his own gut feel faith. He finds that faith in knowledge.

Crime and Punishment

“The New York Times” published an Op-Ed column by Laura M. MacDonald entitled “America’s Toe-Tapping Menace,” in which the writer, referring to the recent scandal involving Senator Larry Craig’s solicitation of gay sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, high-mindedly declared, “Clearly, whatever Mr. Craig’s intention the police entrapped him.” Say what? As evidence, Ms. MacDonald suggests that the arresting undercover officer had to have “responded” to Craig’s “coded signals” for Craig to have been nabbed in the first place. This is like saying that if a dealer goes up to an undercover officer posing as a junkie and offers him drugs and the guy “responds,” playing along that he’s an addict before the arrest, it’s entrapment. MacDonald is disregarding the very fact that Craig – not the officer – made the first move. If this is a case of entrapment like MacDonald believes, then a heck of a lot of streetwalkers deserve to have their criminal records erased.

Which brings me to MacDonald’s second erroneous point. “Public sex is certainly a public nuisance, but criminalizing consensual acts does not help.” What world is Ms. MacDonald living in? Society criminalizes consensual sex all the time – notably with regards to whorehouses where no innocent person has ever accidentally stumbled upon a sex act (unlike, say, in a Minneapolis airport bathroom). This is not a gay rights issue. Public indecency, lewd behavior, be it gay or straight, is against the law. (And yes, soliciting sex in itself is not a crime and the airport sting is most likely unconstitutional, blah, blah, blah. Regardless, this case has zip to do with sexual orientation.) If one cannot walk around flashing others, why should he be allowed to engage in public sex? No one, especially a gay homophobic statesman, should be above the law.

Beyond Sontag

There’s a difference between “high camp” and “low camp,” between a witty, smart, mostly gay (excepting Radley Metzger) style and a physical, primal, mostly straight (excepting John Waters) sensibility. It’s not that gays are generally more intelligent than heteros – just that they’re forced to work harder, to subvert society through code (i.e., to sculpt it to conform to their own reality). Watching Metzger’s soft-core sex farce “Score,” I was reminded of Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” – both being tales of an older couple artfully dragging an unwitting younger couple into their games. (When I later learned “Score” was based on a stage play it all made sense – how brilliant of a “pornographer” to use a theater script as his foundation!) Radley Metzger is the thinking man’s Russ Meyer.

Kinky Camp 2 this Friday 8/31

Summer camp ain’t over yet...and the midnight movie monkey business has just begun!

Friday 8/31 “Kinky Camp 2” at Monkey Town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

http://www.monkeytownhq.com/contactinfo.html

Start your Labor Day weekend off right with a round of “Mixed Doubles”:

Score

“A highly entertaining sexual roundelay, really a sex farce based on a play originally set in Queens, New York. The action was moved to the once pristine, now undoubtedly destroyed Yugoslavian coastline, standing in for the French Riviera. (As Metzger has said, "Who wants to see sex in Queens?") Presented as a fairy tale, the film shows sophisticates Elvira (Claire Wilbur) and Jack (Gerald Grant) attempting to seduce an allegedly naïve couple -- Eddie (Cal Culver, aka the late gay porn star Casey Donovan) and Betsy (Lynn Lowry) -- in an elaborate series of sex games.”
- Images: The Films of Radley Metzger

Lord Love A Duck

“The weirdest sex scene on record anywhere has Barbara (Tuesday Weld) shopping for sweaters with her wildly incestuous dad, played by Max Showalter. His uncontrollable laughter sounds almost exactly like Warner cartoon voice artist Mel Blanc. Weld goes totally orgasmic in dizzy Dutch angles while Max distorts his face like the sex-mad playboys of Metropolis. The scene has to be seen to be believed, especially Max's laughing and Weld's squealing. Weld recites the names of the various cashmere colors: Grape Yum Yum! Pink Put-On! Papaya Surprise! Periwinkle Pussycat!”
- DVD Savant

Come one, come all, come campy!

Gender Identity In Five Parts

I. Anorexia Saved My Life

Growing up, the notion of being transgender never crossed my mind any more than the idea of being a director. I liked boys so I was a straight girl and I loved the theater so I’d become an actress. If only life were that simple.

Anyone who’s ever had an eating disorder knows what it’s like to be utterly uncomfortable inside one’s own skin. The ultimate goal of therapy is to get the patient to the point where she can accept herself, where she can live inside her body with all its flaws and imperfections. And I can proudly say that after a decade of hard work, I reached that goal. And then I dug deeper.

Puberty is hard for anyone, but it’s especially tough for a teenager who finds herself longing to be the very same guys she’s got crushes on. “Luckily,” anorexia like any drug can calm that confusion. But when the numbness completely wore off ten years hence, I was left with all the same questions – save for one difference. My years of therapy taught me how to enjoy my own skin, to be comfortable being a woman. And I am – even though I don’t feel like one inside. That’s the beauty of achieving peace of mind. I’m comfortable with the disconnect. I don’t need testosterone injections and a crewcut to be who I am. I don’t need to see my soul reflected daily in the mirror when I can feel it in my heart. I refuse to believe that my female form is a mistake. It’s not. It’s me in all my perfect imperfection.

II. Man Enough To Be A Woman

It wasn’t until after I’d recovered that I discovered I wasn’t like “other girls.” My big awakening came after reading Jayne County’s autobiography. Though Jayne dressed and lived as a woman she drew the line at having surgery. After trying hormones she realized she was just going along with her transgender crowd, was conforming to peer pressure, not listening to her inner self. Jayne knew she was a woman – but she also knew she’d spent a lifetime in her male body and had grown accustomed to it and – horror of horrors! – liked her genitalia! She was “Man Enough To Be A Woman” (the title of her book) – and I nearly broke out in a cold sweat from terror after reading it. I had never considered myself transgender, yet I completely recognized myself in Jayne. No, I was sure I wasn’t a girl inside but I also wasn’t about to let all the hard work I’d put into recovery, into feeling comfortable in my skin, go to waste on a sex change! That was when I made the decision to let society conform to me rather than vice-versa, to accept my own limits, to do the best with what nature gave me.


III. An Undercover Agent In The Mainstream World

I don’t dress like a boy for the same reason fat people shouldn’t wear string bikinis. I dress to flatter my outside even if it doesn’t mesh with my inside – to draw less attention, to fit in. In this way I’m an undercover agent in the mainstream world, able to do more damage (to the status quo) in disguise. I hate the term “Gender Identity Disorder,” as if being transgender, two-spirited, is a sickness, something to be cured with hormone pills and operations. The Native American communities never pushed their two-spirited members to have sex changes, to conform. Why was my being mismatched something that needed to be fixed?

Indecisive about my gender in the womb I’d chosen both sexes, which put me in the unusual position of inhabiting a biologically female body – yet having not a clue as to what it felt like to be female. But I’d grown tired of fighting this disjunction, certainly not willing to take up arms of hormone pills and operations. I’d come to accept my experience as necessary, a requisite path.


IV. The Discovery Channel

A Sundance Channel documentary series on transgender college students stayed in my head for days. Watching a female-to-male transsexual named Lucas struggle with the decision to inject testosterone, seeing a male-to-female named Raci living in fear of being unmasked as a man broke my heart – and made me as outraged as the punk youth I once was. Lucas was surrounded by hormone shooting transsexuals, “friends” encouraging him to transition with drug pushing peer pressure. (Were they afraid if Lucas “just said no” they’d have to question their own reliance on chemicals to make them men rather than trusting in their male souls?) Raci didn’t realize that even if she passed as a woman – what had she proven? Her friend Apple who didn’t pass was more of a real person than Raci. You could see Apple’s seams, her “flaws,” making her the courageous one, the individualist who told society “fuck yourself – I am 100% woman, dick and all!” Raci was merely an “idea” of what a woman should be. Raci didn’t exist.

Transgender people need to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. That is the key! I myself have chosen to live as a boy in a girl’s body – and not fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place. I refuse to view myself as a mistake made at birth. I’ve learned to embrace both my female body and my male soul. I don’t need to choose one over the other. We need to stop mutilating ourselves to conform to society’s decree, “inside must match outside.” Yes, life would be much more sensible if I were born a boy, but I wasn’t – and I’ve made peace with that. I’m comfortable living with the longing inside. The minute you start popping hormone pills, the second you opt for a sex change, you’ve given society the power to define you. The terms of the debate have to change!

It’s time for the transgender community to separate from the gay community at large for its own mental health. Historically, transsexuals bonded with gays because gays were the only “club” that would have them. But this “club,” like the majority of society, is made up of men and women whose insides match their outsides and who believe overall in the myth of “Gender Identity Disorder” – and that it can and should be cured through medical innovations. (And, ironically, I’m of the transgender minority that is actually gay. Most transsexuals affiliated with the gay community are in reality straight women in male bodies and straight men in female ones. What do these transgender people know about being attracted to the same sex anyway?)

There’s a huge difference between expressing oneself (one’s gender through clothing and such) and mutilating oneself. But my viewpoint on gender is also alarmingly subjective, so I decided to solicit the opinion of my male-to-female transsexual friend Rikki who was scheduled for surgery. Her response? She agreed with me completely – but she herself was tired of fighting society and just wanted to live her life as a part of it, no matter how messed up it was. Knowing Rikki and her conservative Cuban upbringing I sympathized. She wasn’t the restless rebel that I was. More importantly, Rikki made me doubt. In a way, wasn’t I as much of a conformist as she? No amount of surgery would ever allow me to pass as a guy the way pretty delicate Rikki could pass as a girl. I had the bad luck of genetics. No hormone pill could create the 6’3” bodybuilder with the 10” dick I had inside me, no level of surgery ever would make me the male I dreamt of becoming, the guy I saw when I looked in the mirror. If my opting to be a cute chick over a petite sissy wasn’t conforming to societal standards what was? The truth is I enjoy the perks society grants me as a pretty girl – it makes life easier. Though I’m a romantic idealist, I’m also a pragmatist, a realist. Those transsexuals who opted for surgery knowing they’d still never pass – were these the true rebels or merely the hopeless dreamers?

I cling so fiercely to my belief in gender bending over passing because gender bending is all I have. My view of surgery might be very different if surgery could make me into a stunning man. If the possibility to live inside a body that looked like any of my former lovers’ were within reach I’d snatch it in a heartbeat. For me, it was either embrace my female form or spend a lifetime being jealous of people like Rikki – whose ability to construct her outside to match her inside was a dream that really could come true. Rikki said she was tired of being an “unfinished work.” How funny that I’d always considered myself a “work-in-progress,” a more hopeful interpretation of my soul.


V. The Mission

There’s always a love-hate relationship with the community you see yourself reflected in that renders you invisible. Rikki felt the same way about her exclusion from the sisterhood of straight women as I did of the brotherhood of gay men. I realized I was on a mission and my desire to reach out to the gay community with my book had little to do with sales. I viewed “Under My Master’s Wings” as my Trojan horse, addressing my own gender queerness through an erotica cover. As a gay man in a woman’s body I’d long been invisible, confined to my transgender closet by both straights and gays alike. What’s a biological female who feels like a boy – and is attracted solely to boys – to do? Get a sex change and either A) bed a lesbian or B) never have sex again? I chose practicality – to accept and live in my female form, to “pass,” while seeking out relationships with bisexual men so I wouldn’t have to censor my male self. I felt it important that I “come out” so others like me (they’re out there, aren’t they?) could one day do the same.

Making Art From Porn

Making guys uncomfortable with my direct sexuality has always been a turn on for me. The art of sexual frustration is the ultimate aphrodisiac, exquisite torture what’s lacking in most porn. It’s not enough to see actors that want to fuck. I want to see actors that have to fuck. The driving force behind the orgasm, the journey leading to release, is the very essence of sex. I was always fascinated by David’s desire to do a porn flick in which the viewer could even taste, touch and smell him – visceral pornography. Of course literally this is impossible, but an approximation, a transporting of the audience to another world, is the very foundation of film. The problem with porn is that it doesn’t strive for this higher level.

Never underestimate the power of the actor. If the acting is good, the audience will empathize with the character, feel his pain and live his hope. It’s no different for porn – no difference between crying with a character and coming with him. Good “acting” equals feeling empathy equals experiencing his orgasm. And the bar is set so low for porn that it’s easier to do something groundbreaking in the blue, to sneak art into porn like the Hayes Code era directors sneaked “porn” into art. After all, you can learn just as much about characters by the way they have sex than by any other behavior they might exhibit in a movie. Director John Cameron Mitchell once described his indie film “Shortbus” as “one of many recent cinematic exercises to see whether ultra-explicit sex can be used in a non-pornographic way (i.e., not focused on getting you off) to tell us about the film’s characters and, we hope, ourselves.” I wasn’t interested in doing this. A porn flick with a great script will go farther than an independent film with hardcore sex (though a hardcore version of “Secretary” would have been brilliant. In films like this where sex is integral to story, it’s a disservice to the movie to “edit out” the sex – as bad as adding gratuitous sex to boost box office). I want to see if meaningful characters and a well-developed script (i.e., the hallmarks of indie filmmaking) can get one off at a deeper, more connected level – and in the process tell us more about ourselves. Perhaps Mitchell and I are heading in the same direction from opposite starting points.

Gratuitous sex in cinema is a given – but no one ever talks about its absence. Certain films would make more sense, be more natural and organic with the inclusion of hardcore imagery. A master like Antonioni would have made a brilliant pornographer – Bertolucci, too. “Blow-Up” and “L’Aventura” and “Last Tango In Paris” are all the more alien for their exclusion of real onscreen sex within their sexually charged worlds. Even Kubrick’s “Spartacus” along with his “Eyes Wide Shut” could have benefited from some actual fucking. Since I lived the S&M version of “Last Tango In Paris” publishing my memoir as erotica allowed me the freedom to stay true to every detail, to not censor that which was essential to the story. I would hope that as porn enters the mainstream, “legit” casts and crews would become interchangeable with the blue, that a director would be no more stigmatized for going from an R film to an X than he or she would be for moving from a PG project to an R. Where are the film world’s Henry Millers, the Anais Nins?