Sex Geek

Welcome to CinéKink, Montreal’s kinky film and discussion series! Every first Sunday of the month, we screen an SM-related film. Each screening is followed by a one-hour discussion facilitated by local kinky sex geeks Andrea Zanin and Mylène St Pierre.

The CinéKink film and discussion series aims to be challenging and stimulating to all - from staunchly vanilla to total SM newbie to seasoned kinkster! People of all backgrounds, genders and persuasions are welcome. Come for the cheap flicks, stay for the
quality conversation! Bring a friend, bring your mom, bring your lover. Don’t forget your curiosity, your opinions and your open mind.

Where? The Secret Playground at 1410 Wolfe St, Suite 301, corner of Ste-Catherine E., near metro Beaudry (http://attitudes.cc/Eng/events.htm#spintro). No food is provided, but feel free to bring your own; there are numerous restaurants and dépanneurs nearby and the kitchen is available for use.

When? Sunday, December 3. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., screening starts at 7:00. There will be a short break followed by a discussion for up to 90 minutes.

How much? We ask for a $5 contribution to cover the costs of space rental, equipment and movie acquisition. This is a not-for-profit event.

What? “Quills”
Philip Kaufman, 2001
With Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix and Michael Caine

Short film synopsis (full synopsis at
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/quills/about.php)

“Quills” is the imagined story of the final days of the Marquis De Sade, the writer, rebel and sensualist who explored the darkest, even criminal, impulses of human passions and was proclaimed at once among the most devilish monsters and the freest spirits the
world has known.

Historical biographies tell us that in the Marquis’ last decade, the man whose name was synonymous with sadistic lust fell in love, and that the maverick libertine who celebrated expression at all costs was almost silenced. Banished to the Charenton Asylum for the insane, the Marquis De Sade continued to write his blasphemous novels… until a new doctor was brought in to "cure" him of his wicked desires.

But where history leaves off, Quills sets out on a daring journey into the corridors of Charenton Asylum and deep inside the Marquis De Sade’s forbidden cell, in which everything but the very act of creation could be caged. For it seems the more the Marquis De Sade is prevented from expression, the more he is provoked…

Hmm. I think the combination of the five-day break I took before my last post and the three-day break I’ve taken since pretty much add up to a week off, so I’m back. Did you miss me? (It’s OK, you don’t have to answer that.)

There’s nothing quite like a three-hour discussion about blogging with a couple of other queer bloggers/blog readers to inspire a new post. To be specific, my book club just had a fantastic discussion about this very topic, and it kinda revved me back up again. I was also informed by one very graphic-design-savvy member that the photo on my blog needed to change every once in a while, so I’ve taken her advice to heart. Apparently I vacillate enough between butch and girlie that a single static shot is unrepresentative. I don’t imagine most people who read this blog are really in it for the pleasure of looking at my face, but hey, there’s no harm in a bit of variety.

Onwards and upwards.

The other night I went out for dinner with a dude who really wants kids. And I don’t mean in that general "I’d like to have kids someday" kind of way. I mean, this guy really wants kids. Six of them. Better yet, he wants to give birth to them. You should have seen his face when he said to me, "I want to have a vagina!" It was like… I don’t know… this sort of visceral longing that lit up his face from the inside.

He told me about experiments that have been done on male mice, where a fertilized foetus is implanted somewhere in or near their intestines - apparently the baby mouse does actually develop, grows itself a placenta and everything. Wild. Of course it needs to be delivered by Caesarean at the appropriate time, thanks to the lack of the usual orifice, but it would seem the resulting spawn are actually viable little creatures. My dinner date stated, rather vehemently, that if ever they wanted to test such a process on human men he’d be the first to volunteer.

Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I kinda grilled him. Does he want to be a woman? How does he feel about his body, his facial hair, and so forth? Well, the answer is that no, he’s really not trans. He’s quite happy being a guy, though he’s not really into the whole Being A Man thing (there is a reason I went on a dinner date with him, after all). He would just love to be able to grow himself a woman’s reproductive system so he could pop out his own kids, and then be a stay-at-home dad.

I couldn’t venture a guess as to why the topic of parenting keeps coming up in my world lately - I certainly don’t want to be a parent myself. Don’t go getting all offended, now. I think kids are great. But I’m much more interested in playing the Cool Alternative Auntie role than the Mommy one (or the Daddy one for that matter). Unless and until I feel a deep, gut-rooted desire to have babies, I’m not going to just randomly get pregnant just because my ovaries are aging. Fuck that. That’s practically an insult to the eventual kid - "Well, I had you because I kinda figured I should." Yeccch. If I decide I want to parent when I’m fifty or otherwise menopausal, I’ll adopt.

I think a lot of people have kids for the wrong reasons - things like "I’m 30 years old" or "I’m lonely" or "it’ll save my relationship" or "my parents want grandkids" or the generally unconscious or unacknowledged "everyone else is doing it, so I better do it too or I’ll be the odd one out." I strongly feel that kids should be deeply wanted and deliberately created or adopted, with less emphasis on blood ties and more emphasis on choice and love.

Needless to say, I also firmly believe in the right to choose abortion. I remember having the "what if I get pregnant" conversation with a guy I dated for a few months when I was 21, and it basically went like this… Guy: "If you get pregnant, well, I’ll help you figure out what to do, and we could get married, and…" Me: (laughing out loud at the thought) "If I get pregnant, I’m killing it." Guy: (chokes on his salad). End of conversation, and continuing careful and consistent use of condoms.

Okay, so I know that was a rather shocking way of saying it; I don’t equate abortion with murder, not by a long shot. But the point was, don’t fucking patronize me. You don’t have a say. I do not need your "help" making this decision. My body, not yours. Get it?

Part of the reason this stuff is percolating for me right now, other than my dad-hopeful dinner date’s very interesting gender, is the minor presence of a "parenting" theme at image+nation this year. The festival in fact screened three different documentary films that dealt with the topic of queer and trans parenting, and all three made my list of the festival’s top five docs. Two of them were paired up - the short Queer Spawn, which focused on the annual COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) gathering in Provincetown, and the feature-length doc TransParent, which profiled no less than 19 trans guys who are parents.

The former was beyond fantastic - all the more impressive now that I’ve learned it was actually the director’s first film, in fact a university film graduate studies project, and that she directed, shot and edited the entire thing herself. One great scene was of a perky teenager saying how cool it was to approach other kids at the gathering and start the conversation with, "Hi, my name’s Carol, from COLAGE. What’s your family structure?" It was fascinating to hear the butch half of a butch/femme couple explain how nobody ever thought she was her child’s biological mother, and to learn that there are a good 10 million queer spawn in the US - more than the entire population of New York City (gah!).

I feel like leveraging some mild criticism of the film’s oddly dual message, though - it seems to be somewhat confused as to whether it’s trying to say "we’re different and it’s great" versus "we’re just like everyone else." Neither of which is entirely true, in my humble opinion. It would have been interesting had the doc better articulated the tensions between those two positions - but maybe that’s just my analytical brain talking. Plus, I suppose the film is simply a reflection of the classic question that often gets debated among queers ourselves, so no big surprise. Anyway, truly, criticism wasn’t uppermost in my mind when I was watching it. It was a treat.

But really, TransParent takes absolute top honours in my books. This film blew my fucking mind. The fact that the filmmakers were able to find nineteen different trans guys who are parents, and willing to talk about that part of their lives on film, was impressive from the get-go, but the way the doc showed the amazing diversity in their experiences with sensitivity and nuance was just… awe-inspiring. I’m still humbled when I think of the lives some of these men have led and the choices they’ve been faced with.

Some gave birth to their children, some adopted. Some left their families by choice when they transitioned; some were forced to leave by other family members; some split with their partners and share custody; some are still together; some gave birth as single parents. Of the ones who have partners, some have same-sex partners (genetic or trans themselves) and some are other-sex partners (also genetic or trans). Some have several kids, some just one. Some have kids who are themselves trans.

Some experienced pregnancy as the only time their female bodies felt right, and some experienced it as the time when it became most crushingly clear that they felt uncomfortable within them. One guy said, "Hey, check it out! I guess guys can have babies! I was glad I could do that - had I been physically male I could never have had a child." Another said, "Pregnancy was the time when I got the most attention ever for being a woman. I didn’t think of myself as a woman. It was a constant slap in the face that I was stuck in this female body and it was doing female things to me."

Some of the FTM parents considered themselves mothers despite their transition. Some considered themselves fathers. Some of them disagreed with their children about what they should be called; some embraced apparent contradictions, such as being referred to as both "Mom" and "he."

One thing I found very interesting is how most of the guys in the movie seemed to feel, despite their transitions, that gender is a reasonably fluid thing, or in some cases an irrelevant one. Most of them seemed to think of the adult in the adult-child relationship as "a parent" rather than in terms of "mom" and "dad" roles per se. One said, "The love between an adult in a child in this kind of relationship… I don’t think it’s gendered." Another: "I think my child has a poppa and a momma, but is conceiving of these things differently from what others might as they grow up." Another: "I don’t know what motherly and fatherly look like. I don’t understand the difference. I want to be nurturing and supportive - but that’s how a parent should be, any parent!"

Now, the film did specifically deal with FTM parents, and with the exception of one FTM’s MTF partner, didn’t deal with MTF parents at all. I’m sure they’re out there. I’d be curious about the proportions - how many MTFs have had kids, and of those, how many are still involved in their kids’ lives? I couldn’t begin to guess.

Anyway, TransParents was definitely an eye-opening look into the realities faced by gender-different people as experienced through parenthood. Talk about an unusual and complex stack of circumstances to deal with.

The third film that dealt with parenting, at least in part, was La politique du coeur (English version Politics of the Heart), which documents the history of queer rights activism in Montreal, specifically focusing on parenting rights and same-sex marriage. (I will admit it was particularly cool to notice my ex-girlfriend and other friends in the opening shots of Montreal’s Stonewall, the Sex Garage protests at police station 25 in 1990 - footage that set the stage for the rest of the film and indeed for much of Montreal’s activist history.)

The film spent lots of time with Mona Greenbaum, one of the Lesbian Mothers’ Association founders. Truly a fascinating story about how local activists changed the face of the laws in this country. Especially touching was the footage of three queer spawn who gave testimonials at the National Assembly in Quebec City about their experience being the children of queer parents - one of whom hadn’t even told her mother she’d be outing her on national television in a bid for her rights! - to convince the government to accord parental rights to same-sex couples.

In the discussion afterwards, someone asked if the LMA or PapaDaddy, the local group for gay fathers, was open to bi and trans people. Mona’s answer was quite fascinating. She explained that in fact, both the LMA and PapaDaddy are explicitly welcoming of bi and trans parents - which is telling in that I think a lot of "radical" queers tend to assume that the queers who are associated with parenting and marriage are automatically unfriendly to the more alternative elements of the lgBT community. The associations’ respective websites confirm this, and it was nice to learn there’s more openness than the "conservative queer = family" / "radical queer = free agent" binary would imply.

But I found it also to be telling that the entire film preceding the discussion made no mention of bi and trans parents, nor did the panelists, until the question was asked at the very end of the discussion. It kind of showed me that the traditional lineup of letters - GLBT, or in some cases LGBT - is truly in that order for reasons of hierarchy or importance. Or maybe numbers and representation. Or the intersection of both. Hmm.

It’s not that I want to aim any hostility at Mona, the LMA, the film or anyone/anything else. I have an enormous amount of respect for their work. I guess I just saw a noticeable contrast between TransParents and La Politique du coeur in that while the subjects of these films are ostensibly all in the same boat - if perhaps on different ends of it - the discourse around trans parenting, if we go by these two examples at least, seems to be quite trans-specific while discussing orientation issues as a sort of sidebar (i.e. trans partners in same-sex partnerships, etc.) while the discourse around same-sex parenting rights seems to be almost exclusively focused on the orientation of said parents, with gender identity (trans and otherwise) added on as an afterthought, like that comment from the butch mom in QueerSpawn. Even if it is a sincere afterthought.

I don’t know that I have any brilliant insights about this issue. It just strikes me that the stories in these films that spoke to me most meaningfully, whether by their presence or their absence, were the ones about people who ride the gender/orientation split with concerns in both realms, or for whom those realms are one and the same. How many potential dads out there wish they had ovaries and vaginas to give birth with? How many existing dads do in fact have those parts? How many current dads want to be moms, and vice versa? How many parents identify as somewhere outside male or female, and how does that impact their parenting in a world where the gender binary is enforced so strongly from the birth of their very own kids? What are the issues faced by trans people in partnerships with people of the same sex, and in places like the USA where same-sex marriage is not permitted, how does their gender status affect their parental rights as well as their marital ones?

My dinner date told me he thought I’d make a good dad, and by that I doubt he was invoking trans status on my behalf. Either way, I don’t plan to be a parent anytime soon if at all, but I do in some ways wish there was a word other than "uncle" or "aunt" (or even the kick-ass "spuncle" or "spaunt") to describe the role I do want to occupy in the lives of the fantastic little queerspawn in my world - currently, both the two-year-old Spawn, to whom I’m a spaunt, and my platonic life partner’s perky four-year-old, to whom I’m just "Andweea."

Does gender have to be a factor when you’re an adult resource in a kid’s life? Or can we find ways to break down even the holiest bastions of gender difference, even when - especially when - the kids are involved?

Hello, my lovelies. I’m being rather lax in my posting frequency these days, and my friend n*q called me on it this evening as we were moseying into (or out of, I forget) a movie theatre together for the seventeenth time this week. She’s right; I’ve been slacking. And trust me, it’s not for lack of anything interesting to post about. This town is hopping with queer happenings, I’m encountering fascinating people and experiencing fabulous situations, and there’s certainly been no shortage of fucking amazing documentaries (and other films) to inspire many fine intellectual musings in my sex-geeky little brain. I’ve gotten many a weird look in the last few days for frantically scrawling notes in the pitch dark while this or that film plays on the big screen. (Yes, they’re messy, but still legible. Mostly.) I’ve got at least a dozen posts percolating, so you’ll doubtless have the privilege (?) of following my mind through its usual twists and turns soon enough.

But honestly, I’m not so much in the mood for intellectual pursuits these last few days. I think I may need a week off or so. It’s very rare that I post about the immediate details of my personal life on this blog, but the short story is that T and I split up a few days ago, and it’s got me feeling pretty down. Not so much the jump-off-a-bridge kind of down, but rather the "I’m very sad and I just want to be quiet and reclusive" kind of down. So if you’ll indulge me in a bit of a blogging vacation, I promise I’ll make the wait worth your while when I’m in somewhat better shape.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a heartwarming story, something I experienced just the other day. I was on the metro, minding my own business and doing a Sudoku puzzle. All of a sudden I noticed a pair of large sneaker-clad feet standing way too close to me, and felt the looming presence of Some Big Guy towering over me. I raised my head to give SBG a withering look and say something like, "Back off, buddy, you’re breathing my air." Baggy pants, huge jacket, eyes shadowed by a baseball cap… SBG was a teenage hooligan extraordinaire. As I was opening my mouth to tell him off, he bent his head down to me and said, ever so mildly and politely, "Um, excuse me. May I borrow your pen?"

Now, I like it when people surprise me. Besides, it was a Bic; no big deal if I never saw it again. So I smiled, said, "Sure," and handed it over. SBG in turn handed it to a very cute fresh-faced girl standing near him, who was busily tearing a corner off a newspaper. She jotted down her phone number while SBG shyly shuffled his (big) feet. I glanced around, and the other passengers nearby were all suppressing grins and exchanging looks with each other while trying not to make it too obvious that they all wanted to collectively scream "Aawwwww! You’re so cuuuuute!" in the general direction of the romantic twosome - you could practically see the cartoon heart beating in the air between them.

SBG then handed me back my pen, none the worse for wear, said "Thanks very much," and got off at the next stop. The girl waved through the window at him - "See you soon!" I went back to playing my Sudoku, and the other passengers went back to ignoring each other. But I think we all walked away with a little extra joy that day. I felt privileged to have played a bit part in facilitating someone’s new romance.

It was kind of nice to know that even in sad times, there are beautiful things happening all around me.

The movie marathon continues. For those of you who find it boring to read reviews of movies you haven’t seen, by all means skip this post, though I promise to try and make them thoughtful in ways that transcend the films themselves. It’s just that my waking hours are pretty much full of queer films and work right now, and my work isn’t particularly sexy, so voilà. Blog as brain dump.

Yesterday, I caught the most bizarre musical I’ve ever seen in my life: Colma, The Musical. The whole gay thing is actually pretty peripheral to the movie, except in that one of the main characters (all of them recent high school graduates) happens to be gay, and an eventual (and non-essential) plot point is that his dad kicks him out of the house because of it. But gay or no - gawd, what a brilliant film. The concept is completely absurd, the cinematography sucks, the acting is wooden, and the story is meandering and rather un-exciting - three friends coexist in the suburban wasteland of Colma, a town just outside San Francisco, and… well, that’s about it.

And somehow that’s the beauty of the thing. This has got to be one of the least pretentious films I’ve ever seen, and the director Richard Wong, who spoke after the film, has got to be one of the least pretentious filmmakers I’ve ever encountered. When one of the audience members asked one of those irritatingly wordy questions afterwards - "Was your film intended as a form of social commentary about the race- and class-related labour conditions of the Filipino community in keeping with blah blah blah?" - Wong shrugged and said, "Nah, not really. I wasn’t really making any social commentary." I mean, the guy’s a genius in his simplicity. If you can get past all the things that make the film annoying, and just enjoy the complete ridiculousness of a boring white-bread musical (?!) with virtually no dancing in it and bad singing to boot, the thing is fucking hilarious. My friend n*q kept a running count of how many people walked out during the film - at the two-thirds mark I think we hit 18. And yet when the lights came up, I left the theatre wiping tears of hilarity from my eyes and sporting a silly grin. Clearly I’m not the only one who loved it - it’s won awards at film festivals in Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Austin. What fun!

That was followed by the equally brilliant and hilarious, though comparatively much better made and much less weird, film Park. Highlights (spoiler alert!): girl chugging gasoline. Blonde tart reading aloud in a heavy Polish accent from an SUV manual while William Baldwin bones her vigourously from behind. Gloriously cutting dialogue between two almost-secondary characters who are office workers/nudists. Ricki Lake in the final scene in which she walks into a lesbian bar for the first time. Two women in red coveralls taking sledgehammers to a cheating husband’s truck. Really, the whole thing was a trip - quirky and funny without ever being stupid. See it if you get the chance!

Tonight, I saw Enough Man, the FTM sex documentary, for the second time. I’m still not entirely sure how to express my thoughts on this film, and on top of that, someone whose take on such things I respect came out of the film and said she totally hated it, so I may want to hold off on putting my own opinion (largely very positive) out there until I hear some articulate criticism. Just to spice things up, y’know.

I also took in Shock to the System, a gay detective story. I fucking loved it. Really, it was a solidly entertaining film with good acting, hot guys, and an old-school mystery plot that happens to centre on present-day gay characters figuring out a murder that’s connected with one of those weirdo "ex-gay" therapy centres. All-round good stuff. Perhaps not a mind-blowing Oscar-worthy film, but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.

And last but not least, Boy I Am, a documentary that follows a number of trans guys through their transition process and features interviews with a few gender academics and such. Two big selling points: 1) the doc portrays a really wide range of very thoughtful viewpoints on transitioning, gender, identity, surgery and so forth, and never seems to take a particular side. Not often you get that, especially around issues of trans politics; everyone, but everyone, has an opinion, filmmakers being no exception. Well done. 2) These tranny boys are super-articulate and damned hot. Did I mention they’re hot? I mean… hot! I think the articulate thing definitely plays into hotness for me, but nonetheless… hot. Anyway, I’m sure the notes I took during the film (yes, I can write in the dark) will surface here and there when I write about gender, so I’d rather give them more space in proper context rather than squeeze it into a post about film reviews.

That’s all for tonight, folks. You’ll probably have to indulge me in this two or three more times, but the festival ends on Sunday and after that we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming. Whatever that is.

Okay, as a big thank-you for bearing with me this far, I will review one more thing, and it isn’t a film - it’s a calendar. A pornographic toolbox-themed calendar, to be precise. Take my advice here: go see this thing. Then go buy it. The Toolbox Calendar is billed as being "a titillating twenty-four month calendar for 2007/2008 exposing the eroticism of tools and celebrating the people who use them. With twenty-one sexy models sharing their tool fantasies, you will look at tools in a whole new way!"

Dang! Do I ever! And I don’t even have my hands on the hot little item. Yet. My personal favourites: muscular butch with sharp and nasty-looking crowbar; hot geeky dyke femme sucking on a power drill tip; girl straddling a table saw which has caught one of its teeth on the crotch of her fishnets; thoughtful bespectacled tranny(?) boy handcuffed to a wrench; dyke in leather pants and wife-beater bound to a ladder; wheelbarrow shot with anonymous legs, crazy high heels and modesty shovel; and last but not least, wrench casually protruding from someone’s orifice (could be an asshole, could be a vagina… hard to say). Gawd, it’s enough to make a tool fetishist out of someone who isn’t.

So many thoughts, so little time. And it doesn’t help that I’m working like crazy these days, while simultaneously drinking in thoughtful inspiration from the Image+Nation films I’ve been seeing - and the festival’s only at day three! So I figured I should swallow my exhaustion and post a little bit about what I’ve watched so far, otherwise it’ll pile up and get overwhelming. Of course when I’ve finished writing this I have to get on one of the three contracts (!) I have to hand in Monday morning, so it’s only a brief respite, but c’est la vie when you freelance for a living.

So the festival started on Thursday. It was a warm, rainy night - yes, in mid-November in Montreal, which is ample proof that global warming really does exist, in case the polar melting hadn’t convinced ya - and the air was misty. The newly renovated Théâtre Impérial is gorrrrgeous. Wow! What a great job on the restoration. Plush seats, beautiful over-the-top ornate décor, even slick bathrooms. The best part is the four plaster statues adorning the two front corners of the theatre - dramatically posed women in gold-leaf dresses, each with one breast exposed. Very art deco. It’s cool to be in a theatre that feels like a fancy retro cinema rather than like Disneyland filtered through Hell with the volume cranked up to 11. And of course, the toujours hot Charlie and Katharine, the festival organizers, each with compelling deep and sultry voices, introduce every film wearing their usual sexy uniform - ratty jeans, carefully fucked-up hair and a crisp black blazer. Somehow it manages to convey queer grunge and artsy professionalism all at once. It totally works.

The festival kick-off film was Reinas (Spanish for "queens"), a fictionalized dramedy (why does that hybrid term always make me think of the synonym for "camel"?) about a few of the couples involved in the first (mass) gay wedding in Spain and their families. Adjective review: predictable, fun, gay not queer, fluffy but engaging. If you’re into Spanish, it’s a good one to watch for the sheer pleasure of the language. Cada palabra es pronunciada muy precisamente. Delish.

The feature was preceded by the short The Saddest Boy In the World, which was pleasantly plastic, with a flavour sort of like throwback 1980s candy - mildly reminiscent of But I’m a Cheerleader in its aesthetics - but quite horrifyingly depressing if you actually get past the camp of it. I mean, I’m quite sure there are gay nine-year-olds who want to kill themselves - hardly the stuff of comedy. Disturbing. It makes my list of festival faves thus far.

Last night, I saw the film Little Fish, with Cate Blanchett. I’m not sure why they chose to screen this one twice - it’s kinda sucky. Sure, great acting and all, but a) it’s only very tangentially gay, and b) it’s hard to really find much sympathy for any of the characters because they’re all stupid and drug-addicted, and by extension c) the story’s pretty boring. No, I don’t think stupid and drug-addicted necessarily go together. But honestly, the filmmakers based the plot around a bunch of characters who, in the past, spent years lying to and mistreating each other while getting high on heroin, and then they reunite the characters so they can do more of the same… and what, are we supposed to be surprised? Really, I fail to see the glamour in addiction; it kind of strikes me as the epitome of human idiocy. Judgmental? Sure. Guilty as charged. I don’t get judgmental much, but here’s one place where I have yet to find a reason not to be. So I didn’t particularly like the film because I didn’t particularly like any of the characters. Much the way I completely hated Michelle Tea’s book Valencia. Deeply pointless. Ah well.

Tonight, I saw the film Combat, about two dudes who fall in love and really like going off in the woods and beating each other up. It’s an interesting take on a primal form of SM play, and it doesn’t even once reference BDSM in the subcultural sense - no leather, no lingo, no hankies. It’s very artsy and slow-paced, but intriguing and intense nonetheless. Refreshing and fascinating. I also saw Loving Annabelle, which was… unfortunately kind of stale, actually. It’s billed as "the next lesbian classic," but apart from the basic fun of watching a hot teacher get it on with a hot student in a private Catholic boarding school, it’s not very engaging; not much character development, a linear and basically boring plot. Nothing to grab you by the emotional guts. Too bad.

On the up side, this afternoon Tom Waugh gave his brilliant lecture/film clip screening on toilet sex in Canadian film, followed by the launch of his new book, The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas. I appreciated how he stressed the distinction between "bathroom sex" and "toilet sex" - bathroom sex is usually associated with privacy, intimacy, eroticism and water, i.e. shower and bathtub scenes. Toilet sex, on the other hand, is "abject and gritty," in his words - illicit and semi-public.

Among many interesting things to do with Canadian film history, aesthetics and so forth, I learned that there’s a site called squirt.org that lists many, many places for men to meet up and have anonymous sex… and that the site lists the 12th-floor bathrooms in Concordia’s Hall Building as one of those places. Leave it to Tom to teach me that sort of pertinent fact. (The site’s current #1 cruising spot is Range Park, Nova Scotia. Who knew?!) Apparently the location was shut down (?!) by Concordia security, although Tom said "But I hear that’s been… recently rectified." I would love to know what that means! Did some security guard get a few blow jobs? Hmmm.

Anyway, Squirt lists a total of 55 public bathroom locations in Montreal that are cruising hotspots, and aside from the Sears Place Vertu, the ones that have by far the most comments are all universities. McGill, Concordia, UQÀM and Université de Montréal all merit between 47 and 100 user comments apiece, unlike, say, the Zellers in Hull which has a measly 8. I guess Montreal’s student population is pretty good for anonymous sex. Hot!

I myself have a long and happy history with sex in public bathrooms - from a church bathroom with an ex-boyfriend during a wedding, to a gay strip club bathroom with a hot SM dyke after a workshop I taught - but I’ve never had the experience of being cruised in one. For me, the experience has normally started with "hmm, we’d like to have sex and we’re nowhere near home, so the next best place would be…" rather than, "hmm, I’m alone at home and I’d like to have sex, so the place to go would be…". I think it’s a different sort of thrill than the whole anonymous thing - to me, public bathrooms are more a convenient place in which to find momentary privacy rather than being a choice location for picking up hotties. But hey, all the better if there’s an institution of underground sexual practice associated with such spaces, even if it is the boys having all the fun. Anonymous isn’t really my thing, so I’m not jealous; I just think it’s great to see how human behaviour adapts to the spaces available to it, even if those spaces do feature a shitter and a roll of TP. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with some abject and gritty sex every once in a while.

I was listening to one of my Pandora stations today, and Cyndi Lauper’s song She-Bop came on. If I recall correctly, I actually referenced this same song in a post a few months back - which is odd in that I’m really not an obssessive Cyndi fan, nor do I have a thing for this particular tune, despite how deeply I appreciate its pro-masturbation theme.

No, it’s actually one specific line in the song that caught my ear. The first one, to be precise: "Well I see them every night in tight blue jeans / In the pages of a Blueboy magazine." I don’t know why it never struck me before; certainly I’ve heard this particular line dozens of times by now. But she’s talking about a gay porn mag! A total classic, too, starting in 1975 (She-Bop was released in 1984). Blue Magazine Publishing Inc. is still publishing glossy gay imagery, though I wasn’t (in a cursory Google search) able to find out if they’re still publishing Blueboy specifically. Most links to the term seem to reference back issue sales and such, so I wonder if it might not be defunct.

Anyway, historical details aside, this only serves to confirm that girls have always gotten off on gay porn.

Really, I’m not obsessed with porn, though I’d understand if it seemed that way these days since I keep bringing up the topic. I watch it only once in a blue (?)moon, and generally it doesn’t really turn my crank when I do. But I find it quite fascinating, this enduring love affair between girls - het, bi and lesbo, if anecdotal evidence counts for anything - and gay boy imagery. I’ve known lots of girls who wouldn’t want a flesh-and-blood penis anywhere near them, but who go for gay every time when it comes to visual stimulation. And that’s not counting the fact that most people who write slash fan fiction - in which existing straight male characters from TV shows, films, etc. are often given a new gay orientation in offshoot scenarios - are straight women creating fantasy material based on their favourite studs.

I dunno. It makes perfect sense to me. Women are hot, but apart from the ones who ejaculate, the process of arousal and orgasm is not a highly visual one, so I can totally see why the unmistakeable signs of male arousal and orgasm might symbolically work regardless of orientation. Not to mention that when one guy is buggering another, you don’t have to deal with all the pesky gender stereotypes and plastic bodies that usually represent women in standard porn - toss body image issues out the window, fuhgeddabout political correctness and anti-sex forms of feminism, and woo-hoo! Enjoy. As one straight woman commented during an online discussion on the topic, "Two guys for the price of one! Who wouldn’t want that?"

I find it amusing how people sometimes think this is weird. This summer I found a series of Colt greeting cards in a Toronto sex shop featuring so-so photographs of oiled-up leathermen on the front… and on the back (why the back?!), gorgeous drawings of men in various D/s-informed states of sexual interaction. I purchased my five favourites, ditched the mediocre photography, sliced the drawings out, and framed them; the resulting line-up of hot gay sex imagery is proudly displayed at eye level on one of my living room bookshelves.

You shoulda seen the double-take the Hydro guy took last week when he walked past on his way to read the meter. I just about laughed out loud. I don’t think he realized I was watching. I wonder if he was confused by the preponderance of les/bi titles on the surrounding shelves, or if he even got that far in his thought process.

Apart from him, the only other negative reaction I got was from a dyke friend of mine who mm-hmmed appreciatively for all but one of them, which grossed her out because there was a little too much visible scrotum in the picture for her taste. "Cocks can be attractive, but sacs? Ew! Always gross!"

Anyway, I thought I was all fresh and original when I started writing this post earlier today, when for a completely different reason I looked up Sasha’s Mirror sex column online, and discovered that clearly her fine mind has been treading similar paths to mine of late. Check it out - bonus, she actually recommends a bunch of videos for those who are interested in gay porn but don’t know where to start. Me, well, I’m more interested in analysis than fieldwork… but at least I’ll have a couple of titles in mind next time my five-year cycle comes around and I want to watch some.

Well, my Martina article is up. She’ll be at Drugstore for a promotional 5 à 7 this Friday for anyone who wants to meet her. The only thing that’s a little bit sad about the article is the photo. It’s a gorgeous shot of her, but I got to see it before it was published, and in comparing the two, I noticed they cropped off the best part - her hands.

Ever noticed how much people’s hands say about them? I think in some ways they’re even more expressive than a face. In this case, if you were to see her hands, you’d see… well, I think enormous strength of character is what really stands out for me. Strength in general, too, though that might be more about the eye-popping forearms and biceps you can’t help but notice along with said hands.

Martina aside, I think one of the best things about dykes is the way our goods are on display. It’s funny how the perception of gay guys is that they really put themselves out there when it comes to sex - body culture, nudity, etc. But with men, everyone automatically thinks about the package. This isn’t to say men don’t use other body parts in sexual ways, but the perceived prize is the bulge, the jewels, whatever you want to call it. Gay imagery and cruising (in theory at least, since I can’t say I’ve done a lot of gay cruising) tends to be really crotch-focused. Certainly the personal ads are - "8 inches, uncut," and so forth. But the funny thing is, when you look at it from the package perspective, those goods are in the pants, which require unzipping and other such inconvenient measures if you want to do anything with ‘em.

With women, on the other hand, you can end up grabbing a handful of their primary means for sexual stimulation before you even know their name, just by reaching out for a handshake. And if you walk into a dyke bar (or potluck, or whatever), you can look around the room and see everyone’s built-in sex toys right out in the open. Think about it: the hands that hold the drink or slap five with a buddy or gesture when she talks, the fingers that tap on the tabletop or push through her hair, the fist that grabs the coat - these are the very digits that, under only slightly differing circumstances (or not!) could be burying themselves in delicious warm wet places or pinching hard places or… well, doing all kinds of lovely things. Really, I’m surprised there aren’t more dykes out there with major hand or glove fetishes. You’d think we’d have eroticized them to an extreme degree by now.

Ah, whatever, I’m sure I can make up for the girls who haven’t made that little realization yet. I remember the time a few years back when I met a tall, attractive girl at an event. She was cute from across the room, but it was only when we introduced ourselves that my knees went weak - when she shook my hand I realized just how huge hers were. Long, elegant fingers, square palms, perfectly trimmed nails, and she could have palmed a basketball without even stretching. That was the first time it really clicked for me. (Yeah, OK, so I’m a size queen. Sometimes at least.) And the rest is history. No, I never had the pleasure of encountering this particular girl’s hands in any more private a context, but our encounter certainly did alter my thinking from that point onwards.

There’s something wonderfully complex about the idea that a person eats, washes, writes, and does pretty much every other significant thing with the help of the exact same appendages that she fucks with. That degree of versatility is amazing. It’s not that tongues and strap-ons don’t have their appeal; to say such a thing would be to deny my dyke heritage and personal experience. I think it’s just high time we recognized the hand as an erotic object in its own right. I should start an awareness movement. Anyone wanna give me a hand?

(Sorry, I just couldn’t help it!)

This morning, a dyke in a very sexy plumber’s union cap spent some time in my shower giving me Incredible Head.

Doesn’t that sound gloriously pervy?

Really, it’s the furthest thing from. But it’s delightful to write it that way. My dear friend D decided that my shower didn’t have good enough water pressure, and since she stays here every once in a while when she’s in town, she generously took it upon herself to remedy the situation. She purchased me a seven-dollar gizmo that quite literally is called Incredible Head, and installed it this morning. She left the packaging on my kitchen table, doubtless because she knew how much I’d laugh when I read the little sales blurb ("Builds pressure in low pressure situations!") and the tag line "FEELS GREAT!! SENSATION INCROYABLE!!" Which somehow sounds even better in French.

I don’t know about you, but I thoroughly enjoy it when the manufacturers of life’s most mundane and innocuous gadgets make it this damned easy to pervify their ad copy. It’s almost like they’re doing it on purpose.

D had a few other such examples to share - apparently her mother was a big fan of purchasing items for their sheer amusement value, such as the Shagger (a vacuum cleaner) or a tube of Plumber’s Caulk (mmfff!). It would seem she comes by it honestly, I suppose. I personally am the proud owner of a little mini-vac called the 2-Way Plus (does that make it a 3-way?), which I didn’t even realize was pervy until my roommate pointed it out to me.

Now, I’m sure you’ve got your own stories like this. I must hear them. Please, wrack your brains for the pervily named items in your own everyday surroundings and post a comment. I know, I know, the irritating Friendster feature of requiring a sign-in is still there - I promise, the new site is on the way. If you can get past that, please share. Make me laugh!

So here I am, at home on a Saturday night. The reason why I’m here and not out at my friend’s super-cool surprise birthday party (argh!) is because I’ve got a ton of work due on Monday and there’s no bloody way I’ll finish it if I go out. I guess this is what it’s like to be a grownup. (But I don’t waaaaannnnaa!)

But because I’m being so virtuous and grown up, I figured I could allow myself the luxury of writing a blog post as a reward.

Really, it’s just that I’m so wiggly with excitement about spending ten days with my butt glued to a movie theatre seat in the very near future that I can barely sit still. (Logically, though, I guess that’ll have to change soon enough.) Today, I got together with a small group of geeky friends to go through the Image+Nation program. If you didn’t know we were geeks beforehand, I imagine the pile of highlighters, white-out pens, pencils and ballpoints in the middle of the table, and the fact that each of us had a program copy open for reference and schedule comparison purposes, would have been a dead giveaway.

Conclusion: I’m going to be seeing 25 films in 10 days. At least. That’s not counting the "maybes." I can’t fucking wait.

As usual, the documentary films are my top picks. This year, the program includes a special roundtable/film screening/book launch event on Canadian and Quebec queer cinema, entitled The Romance of Transgression, headlined by local film studies luminary Tom Waugh (who, incidentally, founded Concordia’s Interdisciplinary Minor in Sexuality Studies program), with a focus on the way toilet sex is portrayed in Canadian film. I mean, come on… how totally sex-geeky is it gonna be to watch a panel of academics dissect the politics and portrayals of bathroom fucking?! Next Saturday can’t come quickly enough!

What else. For those who missed it, now’s your second chance in as many months to see the film Enough Man, which focuses on the sex lives of nine FTM guys, all of whom happen to be kinky and poly. Truly excellent. I did mention, when it last screened, that I’d write a review of it… and I honestly do intend to. It’s just that the film resonated with me in ways I kinda wasn’t expecting, and I sort of have to figure that out before I can write about it. Maybe seeing it a second time will help.

There are two other FTM docs, one called Boy I Am, about the array of identities along the female masculinity and trans continuum, and one called TransParent, which focuses on nineteen FTM parents and their kids. I must say I’m already impressed - nineteen is one helluva number!

And of course there’s a relatively random but thoroughly intriguing collection of other docs: Do I Look Fat?, about eating disorders and body image among gay men; Books of James, about AIDS activist James Wentzy, which is paired with a short doc about Randy Shilts, the late journalist who wrote the massively detailed and wonderfully absorbing books And the Band Played On (the history of AIDS/HIV spread in North America) and Conduct Unbecoming (the history of gays in the US and Canadian military); La politique du coeur, about the history of gay rights in Quebec; and Small Town Gay Bar, which is about exactly what it sounds like.

Yeah, yeah, there are a bunch of feature films and cool shorts programs which I’m sure I’ll also love. But my favourite aspect of the festival is that this is the one time of year when I always get to see a whole load of completely geeky films that engage my brain. I swear, I bring a notebook and take notes. They look messy afterwards, given that I take them in the dark, but aaah, the pleasure!

Another cool thing about seeing queer documentary films is that if there’s anyone cute in the audience, I already know there’s at least some chance they’re both queer and brainy. And y’know, you can never have too many cute brainy queers around.

(Hmm. I’m wiggling again.)

I just got off the phone with Martina Navratilova. How many times do ya get to say that in a lifetime? Though I’m certainly not saying anything new, I can officially confirm that she’s one mighty impressive lady.

It’s interesting… I’ve never been the sporty sort. I love working out, but the competitive/team sports bug never bit me, I guess. So except for the handy queer thing, I’m a bit of an odd choice to be interviewing a tennis superstar such as her. Luckily I seem to have managed to surround myself with the sort of women who can say things like, "Martina?! She dominated women’s tennis for two decades, and her career wins include blah blah…" which kind of makes up for my complete lack of knowledge of the mechanics behind her rise to fame in the first place. (That and her website and duly performed writing research, of course.) Anyway, in this particular case the interview was more about queer stuff than about tennis, so it all worked out. I don’t want to scoop my own Mirror story, so I’m not going to get into details here, but I’ll post a link to the article, which comes out next Thursday.

One thing we didn’t discuss in the interview was the specifics of her sexual orientation. I mean, who needs to ask? Martina’s a big ol’ lesbian, everyone knows that.

Or not. In fact, it was only after I finished speaking with her that I found a bunch of information online to suggest it’s not that simple. Apparently, when she came out in 1980, she named herself bisexual.

Her profile on answers.com says, "In her autobiography, Being Myself, Navratilova says that she had romantic crushes on teachers of both sexes and, later, felt strongly attracted to other female tennis players. But she did not realize that these attractions had a sexual dimension until she was 18 years old, when she was seduced by an older woman and had her first overtly homosexual relationship."

I found a quote from her on a quote site (repeated elsewhere too) saying "I came to live in a country I love; some people label me a defector. I have loved men and women in my life; I’ve been labeled ‘the bisexual defector’ in print. Want to know another secret? I’m even ambidextrous. I don’t like labels. Just call me Martina."

Okay, so we see a bit of progression from the "bisexual" to the "I don’t like labels." Fair enough. Somewhat confusingly, I also found an interview with Curve magazine in which the following exchange takes place:

***
Curve: You once said, “Labels are for filing.” I’m wondering how you apply that to bisexual women? It seems like a great deal of the lesbian community still holds bisexual women at arm’s length, even when they’re in lesbian relationships and even when they’re very high-profile women like Julie Cypher. There’s been a lot of bi-bashing toward Julie.

(Martina) Yeah. I think we’re too touchy about that. Yes, there are some true bisexuals out there. I think maybe lesbians get a little ticked off about it in general because a lot of women use that as an excuse to not admit they’re lesbians, so [identifying as] bisexual is sort of [out of] a fear. But some people are true bisexuals and, you know, can go back and forth. As far as Julie Cypher is concerned, she’s always been a friend of mine. She always will stay a friend of mine. I don’t care who she sleeps with, as long as she’s happy. I don’t really get this [belief] that you have to be a lesbian in order for us to respect you or for you to be a friend.

My feeling is, if you’ve given that much to the lesbian community, you’ve been involved in the lesbian community that much, you’re a lesbian regardless of — who you’re with at the moment.

***

So I guess that means she considers herself a lesbian? Hmmm. At the very least, the media calls her that all over the place, even in the same articles where she herself is quoted as saying she’s bi. Hard to figure out.

Now I think it’s important to say I don’t particularly care what she calls herself or what the progression, if any, has been in terms of her understanding of herself and her orientation. Really, I could care less - anyone who’s helped raise over $2M for queer charities is fine in my books, regardless of who they schtup or want to schtup (or don’t want to schtup). And if "lesbian" is a more accurate descriptor than "bisexual," more power to her. Of course if she prefers no labels that’s cool too, although in my experience that particular stance is one helluva challenge to stick with since most people, media and otherwise, like applying them.

I guess I just find it fascinating and mildly irritating to know that the media is really good at completely obliterating or outright ignoring the complexities of orientation and sexuality, even if the person they’re interviewing is completely forthright about themselves - and Martina is nothing if not forthright, even if her message has changed over time. I had my own experience with that kind of obliteration a couple of years ago - the Gazette interviewed me about Pride stuff once, and quoted me as "Andrea Zanin, 25-year-old lesbian, …" without ever actually asking me what my orientation was. Friends who know my politics got quite a kick out of that one - "Oh my god, I hear you’re a lesbian!" I ended up writing to the reporter to let him know about the error, and he admitted it had never occurred to him I might be anything other than a full-blown gold-star dyke (well, not in those words).

Anyway, I don’t think that "claiming" Martina or anyone else as bi is necessarily the right answer; that’s up to her, not me. I just think it’s important for there to be a bit more nuance in print. In the meantime, the American branch of the Rainbow Endowment that Martina supports has given money to the Bisexual Resource Center, the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition and the National Center for Transgender Equality - so labels notwithstanding, the funding is going to places that aren’t strictly "G" and "L." And that kind of activism deserves respect, whatever the label.