Hope I will not get caught up in the security curtain around Den Haag, in place for the Afghanistan conference, when I return. Just saw the security measures on the online NOS journaal. Pff; looks like LA! All day overHead choppers, and LAPD motorbike cops (HOT) stopping the slightest misdemeanour, with guns pulled. I was driving back to West Hollywood on fridaynight after the ToF reception and a warehouseparty (in skid row) dressed in chaps and yellow jockstrap. That would be perfectly OK back in NL, but I'm not too sure round here. When I lost my way returning and reversed illegally, because of a blocked street, I thought: 'I should not be doing this', but luckily, I got away with it . . .

This second day of the fair was even more amazing! Huge crowds proving that a recession cannot keep a cock from erecting . . . Nude models, gorgeous art, Durk at his finest. (although next time the could do with a good gay sound engeneer; that was BULLOCKS!)

Talked a lot with Roscoe. Love his work, and agreed to attend next time again! There is so much to be done: like Fucking the pope: the world should be pleased that us queers don't contribute to over populating the planet. At least we do not put any nerdy twinks on this world, I wish there was a way that all those nerds could really choose to be heterosexual. That would make our lives so much simpler . . More Roscoe







comment?

Wednesday 18 March Place: Zaal Heren 17, Bushuis, Kloveniersburgwal 48 Time: 17-19 Hour Pieter Claeys: Going Dutch The (hi)story of Leather Amsterdam

Multimedia "storytelling presentation" about the Amsterdam gay men's leather tribe. From the opening of the Argos pension in 1956 to the present day battle to keep the city's leather spirit alive. Special attention will be paid to inspirational leather icons Rob Meijer and leather poet Jim Holmes, the impact of HIV and the changing character of the leather community throughout the years.
With this presentation he wants to 1) inform the audience on the history of Leather Amsterdam 2) inspire the audience by focusing on the life and groundbreaking work of Rob Meijer and Jim Holmes and 3) give the audience tips on how to use internet media, open source software and creative commons concepts in order to record or create something about their own community's history without having to spend too much money on it.

Pieter is a 27yo leatherman from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2006 and 2007 he had a popular leather videolog on YouTube and he is involved in the organisation of Amsterdam's XXXLeather parties through Gents Foundation. In 2008 he started a non-profit multimedia research project about Amsterdam's leather community.

But hey, about not spending too much money: While most fags don't think twice about paying € 45,- to get into a rapido or XXX party, where's the commitment then? It didn't come easy 1st time around, the leathers then were bought at Waterlooplein, they served a purpose too, as protection for us bikers. Do we now have to carry buckets of dough to Mr B and Rob? Just to look good at the parties, where the eroticism is covered up with èver more expensive fabrics and nudity discouraged èver further? It will not work for some time, at least as long as the recession rages on. I also wonder why all leather these days look like brandnew and never worn. Although I do polish and take care of my gear, sometimes rivets pop out of the chest harness in a wild session, and my chaps do show I've been on my knees in the Argos cellar once or twice. Now please don't come around accusing me of being an old grumpy nag; I mean well and will be present as one of the few remaining relics of those days. As one who got his first piercing by Rob. As a friend of Willem Kok / Dorus, who made posters for many legendary leather events. Wheather permitting, (it's a 60 km motorbike ride for me) I will wear some of my old leathers, if they could talk . . . .
while I'm at it, here's a sound sample, a cruising scene from a 30 year old softies show called "weteringcircuit"

and while I'm at it . . .
sure, not everybody went to Paradiso yesterday: it was packed at Cuckoos Nest too; I could not even get my coat checked in, so I had to resort to the Web. It may be risky there on nights like this: you may get robbed, but at Paradiso you were sure of that in advance: crisis ? what crisis ?
and while I'm still at it . . .
copyright issues: I've been treading this slippery path ever since internet started and most everything that had been set up until then was thrown in the air (in despair, by some). I've always seen it as a one time opportunity window, like the one in the SF series stargate, but accessing areas "where no man has gone before" does require a careful step.
I've always taken as guidelines, respect, admiration and a sense for historic perspective and value. The law sides with the people that use copyright not to support artists, but to make money and steer creative people away from anything they see as obstructing that goal. They are not based on deepening insight in human opportunities or shortfalls, and with christian authorities shortsightedly inspired to destroying our world by sticking to unlimited mindless procreation while it obviously steers us straight to armageddon through flooding and hellish temperatures. Why don't they see that salvation comes from us queers, only fucking for pleasure.
It's sad that record and movie companies, some book publishers, most art dealers (the wrong type of gay) and the churches, and the banks, HIV fund lurkers included, have always sided with maintaining a status quo, based on holding on to whealth and power, opportunistically siding with or just as easlily mis-guiding the un-educated masses, opposing overwhelming scientific evidence, and true moral values, until it's (almost) too late. comment?

Just watched the VPRO documentary (see entry of 26-2) again,
as a)I wanted to capture some footage of Frans talking for this log,
and b)there was way too much that had to sink in, and now I'm even more impressed and humbled:
I find it miraculous how he wrote down stuff about 20 years before it got to be somewhat accepted, or at least broadly discussed, like right now: his position on religion, loss of morality, was it reactionary? At least he never held back and wrote what he thought. Did he, like Pim and Rita, "write what he thought and do as he said"? I'm not too sure if the comparison can be taken anywhere there. I have always been reluctant in expressing my deepest thoughts. A Roman Catholic upbringing in huge classes (over 50 kids was the norm then: babyboom) followed by a technical study did not help either and hardly gave me a chance to think these things through. With me it was simple: if the church rejected me, then, too bad . . .
I left it behind.
Frans was very reluctant to come to such a conclusion: " It's your horniness, even though you're bleeding, right under the skin. And then, all of a sudden, you find you're rotting down there; dead inside. Sex without procreation, maybe even the fear of it, becomes an obsession.
Men and women have this bond with god, of which I cannot be a part. I felt dying was for women. I had nothing to with them anyway.
We much rather play the theater of life-fulfilling erotica, and heteros believe us, they are even jealous of our sex addiction. They too would like to be perverts. Just when you start to doubt the purpose of your sexual inclinations, you find they've become a broadly accepted ideal: everyone wants sex without history, sexe pour sexe, that shirks marriage; backs out of heaven and hell. That perfect-love never had a future: nothing could come from it. It was inevitably turned into itself. Only in an environment of elated madness they could keep it up. That is why it had to become an obsession. In bed, or the darkroom, we're best able to exorcise our lack of prospect. Don't think of anything; undergo the intoxication of man meat, adaptable, both soft and hard. If he pressed a boybody against himself, smelled his hair, skin rubbing skin, softly, friendly, sweaty, then the world of time and decay, of the female, was only make belief.

Fear for the emptiness, eventually falsifies the only authenticity and sincerity in the queens, their love . . . Nowhere you'll meet more Don Juans and nymphomanic hotemetoten as in their midst; courting, marriages, complete with 'till death do us part', jealousy, slapstick, mayhem. All forms and conventions that have resulted from the responsibility of raising offspring, are copied without any necessity, and therefore ridiculous. Homosexuality that has no role in history, and no forms of its own, is doomed to imitate and exaggerate. . . What happens in the hetero world as a tragede, repeats itself in the homo world as a farce."

Art as en escape and as a substitute for purpose in life also proved to be a misconception in Frans' last writing, as he by then realised his life was coming to its conclusion.
This surely is not where I am: Art has been my life, my accomplishment sofar, and hopefully will remain if health and the economy will let me. Just as sex still is, with all its pitfalls, the ecstacy and agony. As long as I'm able to maintain a 'healthy' diet of it, even if atripla is part of that.
If Frans was reactionary in his time, so it appears I must be in this century, not to defend the value of religion, but as advocate of the purpose and accomplishments of good-old sexual liberation: comment?