BijouBlog

According to the holy haters, the coronavirus lockdown is turning an already sinful nation (its sins are reproductive rights and the fact that LGBTQ persons are allowed to exist, not robbing and cheating the widow and the orphan) in Masturbation Nation (and in their “minds,” that means Pornography Nation).

According to a report in LGBTQ Nation, some denizens at Liberty Counsel and the likes of gay sex-obsessed Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, (the ones who are defending those death cult astors who insist on holding in-person services, are claiming that many are now succumbing to such lustful cravings and are now so, so unhappy.

(Of course the above assume men, and especially gay men, are the “perpetrators,” because I doubt it would even cross their minds that a woman might masturbate or watch pornography, but that’s another blog.)

So, lockdown is making more guys pull their puds and watch porn (probably on their phones). Yeah, right, If you’re a hetero guy locked down in a house with a spouse and kids with Grandma quarantined in the basement, I’m sure you could easily find and a time and place to watch some porn and jerk off. You could escape as many have to the forest preserves, but I’m not certain shelter in place deems this pastoral journey to essential travel.

(Yet these “family men” are many times the politicians who get caught in hotel rooms with underage persons or in public bathrooms, of course.)

So, once again, it’s the gays. Yes, we are now using the pandemic lockdown to indulge even more in nonprocreative sexuality that their God so hates.

What’s so disturbing about this both irrational and psychologically harmful world view is that during the AIDS crisis, gay men actually embraced masturbation, including the director Michael Goodwin in The Goodjac Chronicles and the other movies in his Goodjac series, as a responsible, safe sex practice in order to stay alive and keep from potentially infecting others. Yes, in order to stay alive.

The current lockdown situation is caused by an impersonal virus which does not discriminate (and it isn’t transmitted, according to the haters, by only those who indulge in “dirty” sex or “dirty” drugs, and thus are easy targets for discrimination and scapegoating), because anyone can get it from something as mundane as a sneeze (itself something of a taboo act, which is why we say God bless you, because some believed it could cause the soul to be ejected from the body!).

But yes, even the Bible-toting Southern Baptist Meemaw known for her famous church basement hot dishes lauded by Perkins and his ilk for her virtues can become sick; she can get it, and she can also transmit it to others as well. So, to stay alive, everyone, yes, everyone, has to stay away from everyone else. Alone and yet alive.

But even in this scenario, the haters still need to somehow accuse, scapegoat LGBTQ persons, and in this case, especially gay men, of somehow “desecrating” the lockdown, but at the same time, these are the ones who are complaining about the fact they even have to lockdown, claiming they are forced to do so especially by tyrannical, godless Democrats.

All in all, as usual, these holy haters confuse what being holy really is, and it doesn’t mean hating the world or escaping from it. Some can lockdown voluntarily, in order to find that ineffable “more” than the “I” by becoming monks or nuns. Many are called, few are chosen.

But the majority of humans, everyone, not just specific Christian sects, are now being locked down involuntarily, in order to preserve life, and all that lives is holy, proclaimed the great poet and heretic William Blake. We have to separate now to stay whole in order to preserve life for ourselves as individuals and as parts of communities, now and for the future.

Masturbation may not be an ideal sexual activity on a psychosocial level for everyone, but the act keeps the sex drive alive. Your orgasm literally screams out that you are still alive. Your imagination is thus still creating and by doing so is able to transcend boundaries this non-living virus is both breaking and imposing on its victims.

And who knows, some imaginative person now might be doing some kind of Zoom virtual masturbation session. Just make sure you protect it from the holy haters who would love to bomb this sort of thing, not because they hate it, because they really want to participate in Masturbation Nation.

I did the steam test this week in Chicago, which has been colder than Siberia, Antarctica, and Mars. I filled up a measuring cup with hot water and tossed it out of the window of my storage room. I was temporarily blinded by that amazing, but sadly fleeting, release of energy I had created.

And all that steam, an explosive combination of extreme heat and extreme cold in this case, got me thinking of not just what steam is, but how authors and artists and filmmakers use steam to convey multiple ambiguities in their works of art.

But steam is not the fog that hides haunted houses, though it resembles it superficially. Steam is released physically under conditions of great thermodynamic pressure. Once released into the air, it dissipates, but it can also be harnessed to provide more power. (No steam engine, no Industrial Revolution!)
 

For example, the song “Steam Heat” compares the steam heat of a radiator to what will become the heat of passion, however unfavorably. Kissing is what gets that energy, sexual energy released:
 

I got (clang) (clang) s-s-s-steam heat, 
I got (clang) (clang) s-s-s-steam heat, 
I got (clang) (clang) s-s-s-steam heat, 
But I need your love to keep away the cold,

I got (clang) (clang) s-s-s-steam heat, 
I got (clang) (clang) s-s-s-steam heat, 
I got (clang) (clang) s-s-s-steam heat, 
But I can't get warm without your hand to hold,

The radiator's hissin', still I need your kissin'... 
To keep me from freezin' each night, 
I got a hot water bottle, but nothin' I got'll... 
Take the place of you holding me tight

The sound of the hissing and the clanging is dissonant and mechanical, the heat; the thermodynamics reveal great struggle to be harnessed, to work, to produce, in contrast to the organic steam produced by the physical and emotional interaction between the lovers.

And in the vintage gay porn movie Turned On!, Al Parker wanders in a fantasy sexual world that resembles a literally steamy gay bathhouse. The steam blurs conventional physical and emotional boundaries. It dissipates, but in its dissipation somehow creates more energy rather than declining into entropy or freezing into rigid crystals. Thus the men multiply, the cocks multiply. Energy is eternal delight, according to William Blake, and in this film it transcends thermodynamic laws.
 

 

For almost fifty years, Bijou Video has been committed to helping you create your own sexual steam. Check out some of our particularly steamy titles and use the following coupon code for 30% off all vintage gay porn DVDs now through February 28: dvds30

Summer in Chicago, the season of construction, is also the time where the masses finally divest themselves of jackets and coats and sweaters (pretty much de rigeur from October through April), fret about their beach bodies (or the lack thereof), and try and live outside (but ultimately end up fleeing into air conditioned quarters because of the humidity). 

June 9-11, is the Andersonville Midsommarfest, now in its 52nd year. The Andersonville neighborhood, was originally Swedish (very few Swedish places remain now, especially now that the famous Swedish bakery has closed), then Middle Eastern, then the lesbians entered and it became “Girlstown,” the gay boys followed in their wake, and now the married couples roll their strollers (same-sex couples now included) on the gentrified thoroughfares around Clark and Foster. 
 

Midsummer celebrations held throughout the United States are largely derived from the cultures of immigrants who arrived from various European nations since the 19th century. Midsummer, also known as St. John's Day, is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the Northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. 

For example, Geneva, Illinois, hosts a Swedish Day (Swedish: Svenskarnas Dag) festival on the third Sunday of June. The event, featuring maypole-raising, dancing, and presentation of an authentic Viking ship, dates back to 1911. 

In fact, many midsummer celebrations around the United States hark back to Scandinavian origins, especially in the Midwest, home to many descendants of immigrants from that part of Europe who came to farm the plains and prairies in the nineteenth century. 

In Sweden, Midsummer is such a big deal that it ends up being a de facto public holiday, with many shops and offices closed. It's usually a Saturday between June 20 and June 26, but the actual celebration is on the Friday evening before. 

In Sweden, yes, the phallic maypole is a very important component of the celebrations; in earlier times, small spires bedecked with greenery were erected, in honor of the Norse fertility goddess Freya. 
 

Given the usually lethal relationship of LGBTQ persons with Christian religious establishments (which, especially after the Reformation, banned many of the midsummer rituals obviously taken from paganism), many now embrace the festival as more than just a boozy time at a street festival. Midsummer is also the same month as Pride Month, but the neopagan and Wiccan movements which attract many LGBTQ persons laud this as a time called Litha, when, as William Blake says, when the “doors of perception” expand to reveal a wondrous, life-affirming energy in every blade of grass, every erect cock: 

“There’s a powerful juxtaposing of realities going on right now: one is the world as we know it, with an ethos of fear and scarcity, and an ugly underbelly that’s so evident in the horrific news of recent weeks; and the other is a life-centered ethos revealed in Nature’s emerging summertime landscape of stunning beauty and overflowing abundance.” – Karen Clark, “Three Lessons from the Summer Solstice”