This will be a rather unique addition to all of the blogs that I have written in the fact that Jules my editor, is sitting right next to me here in my home!

From the very beginning of taking on the blog, Jules has made me feel completely welcomed and comfortable joining the Bijou stable of creativity! So, in all honesty this will be a blog of dual input! Jules tone of voice and lack of immediacy eased me into wanting to become a writer and part of this project which I have embraced!

It all started with a simple question posed by blog writer "Madam Bubby," who at the time was writing for Bijou. And that question was, "Whatever happened to Will Seagers?"

Being a classic porn lover myself, I happened upon the Bijou site one night back in 2018. I brazenly responded back to that question with, "I am alive and well and living in the Southwest with my partner of 20+ years!" And to that the lovely Julia (at that time) emailed me to ask for an interview that we later did by phone.

Our 2019 attempts for communicating were soon hampered by COVID. It was a difficult time to launch a new project. But, we managed to do the phone interview. This was to be followed by the series of blogs that were delayed for two years. Unfortunately, there was a period of silence. The whole world was at the behest of this pandemic.

Rekindled! Fast forward to March of 2022 and we picked back up where we left off without missing a beat. Our communications took on the feel of two friends talking - not a distant business relationship! For me, my writing took on a new dimension of one-to-one conversation. This was mostly due to the encouragement of my (new friend) Jules... a change was in progress for the two of us!

The friendship part of this was also greatly enhanced by the fact that we were both devotees of Astrology. We had both studied this ancient Art/Science for many years. What we had to share took on a life of its own. We compliment each other in the enormous knowledge needed to converse in this specialty. Jules is great at assembling the charts and data so needed in the process. Whereas my gift is an innate ability to be able to synthesize and apply this info. This partnership is outstanding. This is a science/language with which we are both FLUENT!

How does all of this relate to a porn blog? Quite simply, we are better communicators. When you get to the point with a friend where you finish each other's sentences... that's a good pairing!

Back to work! I am primarily the writer. Jules is the assembler/editor. In my fury to get all of these story lines out of me and into a usable writing format, some shpilkes occasionally takes place! Jules puts me at ease with suggestions and compliments. So, as a duo we work quite well together. Over the past year or so we have grown close. I mandated that we needed to have an in person visit. Also, we have grown close enough to share some very personal life goals and accomplishments.

I met Julia at the beginning of this journey. It was also at this point that Jules was starting to emerge. After the "silence" of the pandemic and we got back in touch - and rolling - there were some changes. It was Jules that brought my attention to the deepening of his voice... it was deeper, quite deeper. And, then I was (finally) graced with more recent photos of him. I got to see the "Then" and "Now" pics. Keep in mind these photos were from over a year ago. Jules is still moving forward quite nicely! When I picked him up at the airport just a few days ago, I was pleasantly surprised at all of the accomplishment towards his goal.

As I already knew, my Alan and Jules would really hit it off. It has been a great visit. Also, well worth mention was the New Year's eve get together at my bestie Mac's house where everyone welcomed Jules into the fold. A great time was had by all!

I am truly blessed with meeting and working with Jules! I can feel the universe is conspiring in my favor. For, this comes at a time when I am also in a special period - one of deep retrospection. Soon to be 72, I am looking back at a life that has been blessed with some very rich experiences. I am grateful for my friend and "Co-worker" Jules!

Bio of Will Seagers:

Will Seagers (also credited as Matt Harper), within his multifaceted career and participation in numerous gay communities across the country in the '70s and '80s and beyond, worked as a print model and film performer. 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.

 

The current national anthem of the United States is extremely difficult to sing. As someone who has done some professional singing and is now currently trying to rejuvenate his voice, trust me on this one.

It keeps plunging down into low notes or what some vocal pedagogues call chest register, which can drag the rest of the voice down, and at the end, one is supposed to sing a high note on an “ee” vowel, “land of the free.” Because of this difficulty, it even gets transposed down even lower, which means it ends up sounding like a growling monotone.

The composer, Francis Scott Key, was aiming for a heroic line that matched the bombastic lyrics, and he perhaps was thinking of situation like those that occur at baseball games where one listens to trained singer sing it.

Times have changed in that manner, and unfortunately we have been subjected to travesties like the dreadful yowling of Roseanne, or in the manner of many pop singers, adding to what is already difficult by adding vocal turns and coloratura and the like (perhaps to keep the voice flowing as it tries to surmount the line’s irregular see-sawing movement).

Vocally it’s problematic, but regarding the text, many have complained about the militaristic imagery, especially “rockets’ red glare/bombs bursting in air.”

More significantly, given the social changes now occurring because of the Black Lives Matter movement, some activists say the United States should replace “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Its lyrics were written by Francis Scott Key, a slaveholding lawyer who expressed white supremacist views.

Songs that some have suggested as replacing it have included “America the Beautiful,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “My Country ‘tis of Thee” “God Bless America,” and “Lift Up Every Voice and Sing.” John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Dolly Parton’s “Color Me America” are also on the list.

See this link for some performances of the some of the above songs.

I have in the past tended to move with the “America the Beautiful” replacement crowd. Why? It’s easy to sing, with a range, and more significantly, meter that matches many of the hymns people were used to singing in church. In fact, it’s got the same meter as “Auld Lange Syne,” the common meter, which means one can sing the lyrics and melody for each song interchangeably.

Common hymn meter - Source: https://poemshape.wordpress.com/category/guides/about-common-ballad-meter/

 

Now, some have noted the text by Katherine Lee Bates tends to read like a travelogue or landscape; it doesn’t really proclaim and develop an idea as much as describe a landscape, vast mountains and plains and “spacious skies” surrounded by “shining sea.” But that’s the part of the lyrics we usually sing. There’s much more!

In 1893, there’s the verse:

God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free

Which was then changed in 1904 to:

May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine

The 1893 verse actually sounds more radical, given the context of the previous lines, which refer to “liberating strife,” which could refer to the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, “once or twice” events that liberated Americans from “selfish gain.” Ultimately, war is vain and degrades the human person to a number, an impersonal body, rather than as earlier in the verse, “a precious life.”

Katherine Lee Bates - Source: https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/cambridge-harvard/katharine-lee-bates/

 

In 1904, and in a later revision in 1911, one encounters stereotypical imagery of heroes sacrificing themselves for America and tying in more the Manifest Destiny idea. The result of the liberating strife veers between martyrdom and material prosperity; I am getting more than a hint of the Prosperity Gospel. Success, in whatever shape or form, means one is blessed by God.

Overall, this conversation ultimately ends up being a “tough call,” and as the LGBTQ Pride Flag has now undergone a transformation to include people of color, one wonders if the traditional staples need to be cast aside as we confront the injuries in the name of those American, using Bates’ word, “glory tales” that oppress rather than liberate, enclose rather than include.

Update of the Pride flag with black & brown stripes introduced at 2017 Philadelphia Pride as an inclusionary revision highlighting people of color

2018 update of the Pride flag by artist Daniel Quasar that also includes the Trans Pride flag colors

 

Music moves flexibly in time; it’s not an immobile statue in physical space. As long as there is someone to sing a song, it will exist.

Ultimately, the act of singing itself is an act of vulnerability but also empowerment. Every time one sings, one re-creates, just as all are “crowned with good,” because they were created in the image of the Divine.

Now that I am in the autumnal phase of my life (early autumn, mind you), and International Mr. Leather is fast upon us (its fortieth year!), I share again a paragraph I wrote a few years ago about this event:

“The leather community has entered a new age. It's no longer so much on the margins, even of the gay community. I even argue it's lost something of its edginess, its element of taboo and danger. Where do I, who was trained by a master who was influenced by hardcore Old Guard, fit into this picture? I'm still exploring that question, but I hold fast to the core values of mutual respect/courtesy and a desire to learn and grow in the scene I experienced through the years with the many leathermen I've known since that first day in 1991 when I entered the leather mart.”

I still agree with many of the ideas in the paragraph, but I am revisiting with another concern, one that is more focused on demographic. To what extent is the leather/BDSM community, still primarily gay and male, aging out? Or, perhaps, the real question could be, how is transforming itself as its social and cultural context changes?
 

Some of the changes that have developed I see paralleling with mainstream social progressive movements. 2010 was particularly significant when Tyler McCormick competed as Mr. Rio Grande Leather. When he won the contest, he made history three ways: first transgender IML, first IML to use a wheelchair, and first IML from New Mexico.
 

Yet, I've also noticed that the traditional leather/BDSM club social structure, based upon I claim a kind of lodge/fraternity model, seems to be less popular than before. Perhaps I am landing on a cliché or stereotype here rather than a more nuanced interpretation, but these groups are aging, and younger guys (not just millenials) aren't necessarily seeing them as a prime, exclusive space to discover, learn about, and grow in, their complex sexuality.

The line of mentoring I experienced in this community seems to be less certain. Just because a young guy says Daddy, teach me, doesn't necessarily mean anymore a serious ritual of initiation. It could mean a quick fuck. It may have always been that way to some extent, and gay sexual spaces have always been commodified in various respects (thinking of bathhouses, another space that seems to be much less ubiquitous than before), but this is the age of nanosecond ratings, the Yelp/Amazon world. Of course technology has played a part in a fluidity that risks diffusiveness, and of course social media apps have changed drastically how one lives physically and mentally as a sexual person.

Perhaps the gay male leather/BDSM club, used to be the center of this world, forced in the past to into a fortress-like mentality because of its taboo activities in a world just starting to tolerate LGBTQ persons, is now shifting to one point on a spectrum.

Overall, I am concerned that future generations will forget about or even claim is outmoded this point of origin in spaces like the Gold Coast Leather Bar and the Chicago Hellfire Club. But without this history of external and internal courage and danger and respect and conflict, there wouldn't be persons today engaged in transforming it.
 

Sex scenes are, as one would expect, almost always the focus of porn films, but – especially in the the heyday of story porn and artistic/experimental porn, the 1970s, when many porn films truly were films – there were a large number of notably interesting non-sex scenes present in what was being produced. Sometimes these sequences were lead-ins to sex scenes. Sometimes they served to advance the film's narrative, or flesh out a character or an interpersonal dynamic, or talk about gay life and relationships and communities of the era. Sometimes they are notable because they capture something that is historically interesting. Following are several examples from the Bijou collection.
 

Main character Hank (Coke Hennessy) goes for a stroll with a package he picked up on his way to deliver it to its recipient, the man with whom he recently got involved. In the park, he sees a woman wearing all red dancing and The Lady in Red suddenly comes on. He joins her in dancing for a brief, goofy moment. He then sits on a park bench and unwraps the package. Inside is a large print-out of a cover of The Advocate featuring a photo of two men taken by his lover. As Hank studies this photo, it comes to life and we see the men (Tim Clarke and Jeffrey Etting) perform a gorgeously choreographed nude dance number set to an operatic David Earnest score.
 

In several sequences from Casey Donovan's first film (shot before but released after The Boys in the Sand), Casey speaks to his fairy godmother, Wanda Uptight (also played by Donovan, in drag), who has appeared in the mirror to give him some harsh, but insightful advice on his habits and love life (or lack thereof). Wanda first appears after Casey wakes up by jerking off in bed unsatisfactorily, then sings to himself in the bathroom as he washes down a series of vitamins with a swig of Southern Comfort, lights a joint, stares hard at his reflection, and shouts “Faggot!” at himself. Wanda appears over his reflection, startling him, and she dishes out some tough love, chewing him out for not taking care of himself, chasing cock constantly, and not knowing what he really wants. Their very clever dialogue, expertly delivered by Donovan, is both funny and incisive, representing Casey's internal conflict around love, sex, and self-acceptance. (“Anybody who can wash down raw liver substance and vitamin B complex with Southern Comfort is depraved!” “Three nights a week in a Turkish Bath! You'll dehydrate yourself!” “No one digs anyone. It doesn't matter if it's number one or two thousand and two – where does it lead?”)
 

 

An American man, Adam (Michael Hardwick), and a French man, Yves (Marcus Giovanni), play mysterious sexual mind games throughout their brief, but intense, Parisian love affair, including the rule, enforced by Yves, that they may never know each other's names. The sights of Paris are a fascinating backdrop, but the most surprising and historically notable moment in the film comes when Adam recounts an incredible time when he saw Greta Garbo from the window of his apartment. Director Peter de Rome accompanies this story with the actual last-known footage of Garbo, herself, shot from his own window on super 8 film.
 

Garbo in Adam and Yves

 

Closeted truck driver, Joe (Garry Hunt), falls hard for ballet star Ivan (Henk Van Dijk) early in their ill-fated affair, but is intimidated by Ivan's talent, fame, wealth, and gorgeous physique. Ivan belongs to a world where he can comfortably be out and Joe does not. Ivan lives in an expensive apartment and gets fancy Dutch music boxes delivered to his vacation home; Joe gets drunk in a blue collar bar in the rumpled suit he wore to go see Ivan perform in the ballet (which he was too proud to let Ivan get him into for free) and is heckled for being gay by his buddies. Totally wasted after a night at the bar, Joe calls Ivan, who is irritated with him, then shows up to Ivan's apartment anyway. He changes Ivan's radio from a classical station to something faster with saxophone, saying he wants to dance, groping Ivan, and complimenting his beautiful body. Ivan pushes him away and Joe, hurt, mocks Ivan as insists he is a good dancer, too, and proceeds to do a drunken, sloppy strip tease in Ivan's living room, dropping pieces of his suit on the floor, smirking, sniffing his own sock, and finally pretending to drink out of his shoe while sprawled across Ivan's floor. All the while, Ivan ignores Joe and plays solitaire.
 

 

L.A. Tool & Die (Joe Gage, 1979): Fight scene, Vietnam flashback, work/getting to know you montages

Joe Gage's L.A. Tool & Die is full of strong character-building sequences. Early on, we see the hero, Hank (played by Richard Locke), hanging out in a gay bar and trying to cruise a handsome stranger (Wylie, played by Will Seagers). In the bathroom, Hank runs into a homophobic man who works for the bar owner. The man calls Hank a cocksucker, to which Hank grins and calmly responds, “You'd better believe it. The only thing I like better than sucking cock is kicking ass.” He tosses the man out of the bathroom and roughs him up a bit. The man, no match for Locke, runs away as Locke smirks, having not even gotten worked up or broken a sweat.

In a later scene, Wylie is taking a break from his cross-country drive to walk along the beach at sunset. In a close up, we see that he's crying. Gage cuts to a flashback of a younger Wylie in Vietnam, holding his dying lover in the battle field. His lover tells Wylie that he doesn't think he's going to make it and that he must promise not to forget him, but also to love somebody else some day.

Near the end of the film, Hank and Wylie reunite when they both get jobs at L.A. Tool & Die. Hank learned that Wylie was traveling there for work and decided to do the same. Two beautifully-cut montages and a dialogue sequence show the two men getting to know each other while working and taking breaks together. Wylie appreciates Hank being patient with him; he has been reluctant to get involved with anyone, but is clearly warming up to Hank. Throughout the film, Locke imbues Hank with an easy, warm sort of charm and a sexy, confident swagger and Seagers gives Wylie both a sweet, shy vulnerability and a quiet strength. The two men have enormous chemistry and the actors and characters compliment each other well, their connection and relationship feeling believable.
 

 

Wanted: Billy the Kid (Jack Deveau, 1976): I'll Be Your Mirror

New Yorker Billy (Dennis Walsh) is an unsuccessful actor and quite successful hustler. Between memorizing lines and gossiping with his friend (Megan Ross), seeing tricks, and exercising, Billy takes a quiet break to smoke a joint and listen to a song. It's a slow, folky original composition (“I'll Be Your Mirror” - lyrics by the film's writer, Moose 100, and music by Hand in Hand Films composer David Earnest) and the camera is fixed on Billy throughout its duration, as he sits, contemplative, smoking, listening, and occasionally mouthing along to the lyrics. He is broken out of his reverie by a phone call from a regular, and they swap some elegant dirty talk.
 

 

Confessions of a Male Groupie (Tom DeSimone, 1971): Party scene

This early Tom DeSimone film is possibly the ultimate hippie porn, focusing on a community of friends in Hollywood and their love of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Barely a sex film and more of a portrait of the era, the movie soaks up the atmosphere of the time and place as The Groupie (Larry Danser) moves to the area from a small town, becomes best friends with party girl Sweet Lady Mary (Myona Phetish), and cruises the members of a rock band (The Electric Banana). The climax of the film is a wild party sequence starring a large number of friends and acquaintances of DeSimone's. The attendees – all genders covered in glitter and sequins – laugh, smoke joints, swing on an indoor swing set, playfully horse around and wrestle, cuddle, embrace each other, and dance. The crowd includes a trans couple who were the subjects of two Penelope Spheeris short documentary films (I Don't Know and Hats Off to Hollywood).
 

Jennifer and Dana in Spheeris' Hats Off to Hollywood

Even with its surprising turn into a cautionary anti-drug film (after the wild hedonism of the rest of its run time), Confessions of a Male Groupie – and this sequence in particular – is a fascinating document of a real community of queer friends and lovers in the early '70s.
 

 

You can find all of these movies (except for L.A. Tool & Die, though some scenes from it are available in our compilation, The Best of Richard Locke) on DVD at BijouWorld.com and streaming at BijouGayPorn.com.