BijouBlog

By Will Seagers

Hi Folks... Will here! After a fun set of blogs touring some of my old San Francisco haunts and fun spots, I am going to follow the lead of my co-author Josh Eliot and return to basics - SEX! This is Bijouworld.com isn't it? Lol. This blog will come from a personal angle - my kind of sex and some variations that I have been "talked into" over the years.

First of all, besides being in porn, I love looking at porn myself. Born with a super imagination, it is easy for me to climb right into a photo set or video propelled by my own fantasies. This started for me at a very early age with print media. I remember discovering a treasure trove of straight porn under my aunt and uncle's bed at about the age of six or seven. (Believe me, it was all my uncle's collection.) In the mix was that all-so-famous nude Playboy spread of Marilyn Monroe. What struck me as odd was that I knew that it was supposed to be taboo and erotic. But, I knew something was up when I wasn't getting off on it! (Yep... gay at a very early age!)

It wasn't until puberty hit and I saw my first full blown porn with all sorts of sex acts that I really became interested. I knew right away that I was looking at the guys more than the gals. Of course I shared this with other guys my age in the neighborhood in jerk off get-togethers. Oh what fun. To this day I still find the topic of guys beating off together very arousing.

So, we'll fast forward to my later teens and early twenties. I was out, active and nearing the beginning of my porn career. I admired good looking men and found myself hot and bothered at the prospect of physical contact. Jerking off and cock sucking took center stage as my favorites. I loved a pretty (and large) dick when available! I never even knew about fucking until I was out in the woods with a very hot guy that picked me up on the "boards" of Asbury Park, N.J. This was The Boardwalk - a notorious area for gay cruising in the 60s. Much to my dismay, this fella kept turning me around to play with my ass. I still remember urging him to stop - as this first ever fuck was rather painful. Ha! The pain soon went away! LOL.OK. So, there were now three things in my repertoire. Fucking took a little while to get used to and like... but it did come to pass.

It was in my mid twenties when I moved to San Francisco and my porn career took off where my "Vanilla" ways were challenged. I remember going to the legendary Tuesday nights at the Club Baths at 8th and Howard in SoMa when any number of times I discovered people weren't satisfied with just fingering my ass... they wanted whole hand entry. I don't know. Call me prim. But, I just never got off on the concept of fisting or being fisted. I liked cocks too much! On several occasions, I was urged to get a "super manicure" so I could join in the fun of fisting someone. I tried a couple of times... but had much the same reaction of looking at straight porn. I was intrigued by how it all worked... I mean, watching half my arm disappear into someone. I guess there was some pleasure in bringing pleasure.

A slight variation on the above theme was foot fucking. I never heard of it until I was ankle deep in it! It started off with with some foot play and shrimping. Then, the next thing I knew I was in a whole new episode of sex. Although I experienced it twice and was turned on by it... I never actively sought it out again.

Also, in that same time frame and in S.F., I was really attracted to a super handsome young man. I mean, this was the kind of attraction that doesn't happen often. (I still get hot and bothered just remembering him!) And, when I found out that it was mutual, I thought it was too good to be true... and, it was. He was into water sports. The whole idea turned me off. I did not want either of us to play the part of a urinal! But, I was so turned onto this guy that I relented. It wasn't as bad as I had imagined and I got to be with this really hot guy! No, I did not add this to my permanent repertoire... but, I didn't rule it out, either.

Like I said, I was propelled into this stream of thought by my co-blogger Josh's "Ball Broth." I got a clear sense of what he thought was sexy and what wasn't. I hope the above retracing of my "sexual trail" provides some similar highlights. I don't throw shade on anyone's sexual proclivities. But it might be interesting for some to know just how "Vanilla" I actually am.

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted careers and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model, film performer, and DJ, just to name a few. He made iconic appearances in releases from Falcon, Hand in Hand, Joe Gage, Target (Bullet), J. Brian, Steve Scott, and more, including in lead roles in major classics like Gage's L.A. Tool & Die (1979) and Scott's Wanted (1980). He brought strong screen presence and exceptional acting to his roles and was scene partners with many fellow legends of classic porn.

George Ferren, a close friend of Will's frequently mentioned in his blogs, was a major figure in the San Francisco music scene in the '70s/'80s. His current music is available for your pleasure on Soundcloud: BY GEORGE

 

I was staring the other day while on the internet at images of 1920s living rooms and kitchens, because I realized how many places I’ve lived in (including my current dwelling) were built in that time period. For example, builders were churning out rows and rows of the traditional Chicago brick bungalow, and, as my grandmother (born in 1900, and she would know) had told me, this was really one of the first homes with consistently “modern” conveniences such as an indoor, private bathroom with a tub and shower, a kitchen with a sink and room for an icebox/refrigerator, and up-to-date electrical wiring and outlets for the period.
 

Thus, I posed this question on my personal Twitter: what if you woke up and it was 1920 or thereabouts (which, next year, will be 100 years ago!); where would you be, who would you be, what would you do?

Most of the responses were frankly, more glamorous and noble, than mine, such as, according to one classical music specialist being in Vienna and/or Paris and hanging around with such luminaries as “Webern, the Mahlers, Picasso, Woolf, Freud, and Jung.” Another person chose Paris, identifying himself with The Lost Generation, “buying tickets for Koussevitzky’s concerts, Prokofiev’s recitals, and Diaghelev’s ballets.” Another person claimed she would be involved in the women’s suffrage movement.

I concocted a 1920s LGBTQ fantasy. I wonder if I should just write it as a kind of 1920s “Tales of the City,” set in Chicago.
 

I imagined myself as a “dapper young” homosexual, working as a clerk in a library, maybe the Chicago Public Library or even the more esteemed Newberry Library. I would also be trying at the same time to go to school in some humanities-related field. I would be riding the streetcar downtown to work and school from the single room occupancy hotel for men where I would be living.
 

At the hotel, I meet another dapper guy who is studying philosophy, and we both plan to go to the infinitely more exciting New York and experience the much more sophisticated bohemian scene there (we are both too poor to go to Paris, alas). But a muscular stevedore with a big moustache moves down the hall and distracts me, especially after I accidentally on purpose get a glimpse of his massive uncut cock as he is leaving the shared toilet area in the hotel.
 

By this point, one of my Twitter buddies (who is married, of course, grr) said he was getting turned on by this whole narrative, that he would be thinking about it all day, and that he wants to hang out with me, and that, when I mentioned the stevedore, he was thinking, “I want to binge this on Netflix.” (I now know I may have missed my calling.)

Continuing the literally steamy narrative, the dapper philosophy student goes to the Turkish bath. He lies to me that he “did something naughty there.” But I pretty much realize the story is a fabrication, because during that time period, one would be arrested and jailed for sodomy.

As a result, I break up with him (he goes back to live with his Irish parents on the South Side), and visit my eccentric grandma who lives in a two-story frame house in the Division/Milwaukee area, at that time a Polish area. She works full time at the famous Wieboldt’s department store in the area. She is my only family left, because both my parents had died in the 1918 influenza pandemic.
 

Next door to Grandma, two German ladies live together in a “Boston marriage” (two single women, usually wealthy, living together, not necessarily lesbian, but … ). Scandalously, one of them was seen outside smoking.

While I am staying next door at my grandma’s house, enjoying her front porch on steamy summer nights, the spinster aunt of one of the lesbians next door (Aunt Heddy owns the house) is found stabbed to death with an ice pick. One of the ladies blames the African American ice man, who is convicted on circumstantial evidence (revealing the extreme bigotry of the period, right after the infamous 1919 Chicago Race Riots), but I suspect something else may be afoot.
 

All the while, the stevedore and I are enjoying casual kinky sex (Mr. Muscles of course is the dominant one, of course, but he does like me to give him a spanking once in a while with my belt), but his parents are setting him up to get married to an extremely boring childhood neighbor girl who works at Western Electric in Cicero.

The stevedore and I now decide to do some of our own investigating to find out who really killed Aunt Heddy. Was it her cigarette-smoking niece who was going to inherit the house she was living in with her friend?

That’s as far as I got. I think it’s got potential, both as a novel and/or as a screenplay, and also because of its rich allusions to the specific urban culture of the period.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll just write one of the steamy gay sex scenes and share it on the blog.

Bijou Video’s social media is literally out of this world, and a major social media blitz by our esteemed videographer Miriam Webster actually increased sales and customers. I credit the brilliant Miriam with this development, and we are actually going to feature a different movie on Twitter and Facebook every Monday. Call it Movie Monday, and Monday rather than Blue Monday might actually end up being for our customers and social media followers Sex Monday. 

I do wonder though, as I’ve also noticed on Twitter even more retweets of our posts than usual, if what is really going on is an escape into sex. Yes, escaping into it, but what is it an escape from? The obvious answer: the profoundly shocking upset to America that occurred on November 8.
 

Yes, so shocking, to the point where I actually called my mother (we don’t communicate frequently). There’s that line from the movie Mildred Pierce, “everyone has a mother,” and in my case, I felt like my mother was all I had. We wept together for about half an hour. 
 

Now, I wasn’t necessarily escaping into my mother, but the election, especially for those in what are now liberal enclaves (I hate having to use that word, but it is true), triggered a descent into the most fundamental core, so deep, like the tohu-va-vohu of Genesis 1 (the primordial, undifferentiated waters, like the amniotic waters of the womb) of our personal and social psyches. And in that dark place everything gets mixed up together, what is taboo and what is pure, what is violent and what is peaceful, what is evil and what is good. It’s the place where we decide whether to cross or maintain boundaries, build walls or make bridges in the world. 
 

Sex is crossing a boundary, physically, mentally, spiritually. I wonder if this crisis just made people unconsciously desire to do so, to cross that boundary, to voluntarily experience the petit mort of orgasm, especially in a situation where they felt utterly helpless and powerless. And the orgasms perhaps were even more intense, more powerful, given the raw emotions surging through the person. There’s an intimate connection between sex and violence, and perhaps the external climate violence we are all experiencing viscerally connected with our sex drives, like an electrical charge so strong it could blow a fuse. 
 

I know in my case my horniness has literally skyrocketed, and I experienced some of the best kinky sex play the weekend after the election to the point where my playmate and I even decided to commemorate the day in the future. Yes, we were escaping from the election and into sex, but I think we were also in our own way taking back the night because in, around, and above those dark, primal waters is a living, breathing spirit. 

Housed in what used to a synagogue in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, and for a nonprofit, in an enviable position (they own their own building and their board is incredibly generous), the museum showcases the history and imagery of two previously taboo subcultures that are now in the vanguard of discovering and also interpreting what used to be their secret, hidden history: LGBT leather and BDSM (both gay and straight). 

The museum regularly exhibits recent work featuring BDSM/fetish-related themes by current artists, but its claim to fame, at least I think, is its stunning collection of original homoerotic art by the legendary artist Etienne, including the murals which once graced the walls of the Gold Coast leather bar. My friend, with her art history background, immediately saw these works as art, and worthy of deep analysis. 
 

 

One can also learn about the history of and view artifacts from leather motorcycle, commonly known as “patch” clubs, some of which involved into the gay sex/BDSM clubs of today, and also study the diverse contributions of women and transgender persons to this subculture. There's even a room with dungeon equipment (I must admit, my friend was somewhat shocked at the violet wands on display and some of the more fierce-looking whips). 

What both of us found really enjoyable was the comfortable room where one can watch documentaries on gay and sexual history. I didn't get the title of what we were watching, as we got there in the middle of it, but the documentary seems to be about the sexual revolution of the 1960s and its influence on the stellar growth of the straight and gay porn industries in the 1970s. The documentary showed scenes from and analyzed that controversial film Censorship in Denmark, by Alex de Renzy. It was an explicit documentary that mixed footage of Copenhagen tourist attractions with on-the-street interviews and hardcore scenes from the city's live sex clubs and movies, one of the first of its type to be shown at an art house and reviewed in the mainstream press. 

So much of the way we live, especially our personal relationship dynamics (both healthy and unhealthy, I might add), depends on what happened in the 1960s and the 1970s. But this time of liberation sprung from a rich, hidden history of courageous people living in the shadows but also fighting for basic personal freedoms; the Leather Archives & Museum is now bringing this history to light. 

We didn't get a chance to visit the library, a formidable archive that includes vintage leather/BDSM magazines like Drummer and interviews with notable figures in the various kink cultures, but there's time for that. 

As Lisa White in the Chicagoist article says, “This isn’t the place to take Grandma when she comes up to visit (unless you have the most badass liberal Grandma around). But it is a wonderful look into two vibrant communities and a great resource. “ 

After we concluded our visit, my liberal badass friend and I topped off our visit with lunch in the Mariano's cafe, where I said the word “sex” quite loudly there (gasp!), shocking a tweenish boy who was emptying his tray into the garbage. Hey, after that visit, of course, the topic was on our minds. 

Check out the Leather Archives & Museum website for more information, and of course check out bijouworld's extensive fetish/BDSM product line of DVDs, books, magazines, and sexcessories. 

Many, many years ago, in a building not so far away in Chicago, I hooked up with a guy, who, in addition to many other fetishes, was aroused by enemas. My first reaction, as I was young and naïve, was Ew! (I was also thinking of that horrifying movie Sybil with Sally Field, but that's another story).

He particularly enjoyed enemas using wine.

As I progressed in my sexual journey, I realized that such kinky fetishes related to medical procedures, though bizarre on the surface, actually originate in practices which were popular as far back in time as the Middle Ages (and before). 
 

After doing some research, I discovered that physicians gave enemas using a tool called the clyster far back as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (wine enemas were popular). The tool was also used in Western and Central Africa (see the picture below). 
 

By the Middle ages, the clyster became essentially a long metallic tube with a cupped end, into which the medicinal fluid was poured into the anus. The other end, a dull point, drilled with several small holes, was inserted into the anus. Fluids were poured in and a plunger was used to inject the fluids into the colon area, using a pumping action. 

The most common fluid used was lukewarm water, though occasionally medical concoctions, such as thinned boar’s bile or vinegar, were used.  Seems rather intense and painful, but the relief for whatever complaint, which could range from constipation to poor complexion to melancholy (associated with the bowels), must have been palpable. 

 

Of course, there's a fine line between pain and pleasure, but I doubt anyone in the Middle Ages would admit to any type of erotic pleasure involving the anus, as “sodomites” were often punished by having hot irons inserted in it. Remember, that's what happened to King Edward II of England. 

Later, in the 16th and 17th centuries, as medical practices advanced, the medieval clyster was replaced by the more common bulb syringe. In France, the treatment became trendy.

King Louis XIV had over 2,000 enemas during his reign, sometimes holding court while the ceremony progressed.  Louis XIV was unquestionably heterosexual, and what we might perceive as exhibitionism was actually normal in a period where modern standards of privacy did not exist. Whatever the case, on the most basic level, the enemas must have made him feel great! He maintained his health quite well for that time period, and he outlived his son and grandson. 

It's fascinating that a practice usually viewed as a painful cure for pain and discomfort can really be a source of deep physical and sexual pleasure (pun intended).