Today’s guest blog is by “Marco”, who tells me he is “just a citizen of the world” and that he is “permanently stuck at that stage of life where he can’t help asking ‘why?’ all the time”. This is far too modest. He is not “just” anything. He has a powerful intellect and an impressive career record. This will not be clear from the first part of this two-part blog, which focuses on his early life, but you may in due course feel that evidence of his thoughtfulness emerges strongly in the second part.

I AM A SURVIVOR

One of the first memories about my own sexuality was in a summer camp. I was 10. Apparently, I was making it so obvious that an older guy yelled, “What are you doing, staring at other boys’ asses!?” Ooops! So, yeah, that was my very first sex education lesson: “You’re not supposed to do that. It’s wrong.” In the camp, there were showers with bamboo screens, which gave less than total privacy because in between the cracks you could get a glimpse of who was inside. One day, word was going around that there were naked women in the showers. Several boys told me about it in great excitement! Since I had a camera, which not many people had at the time, they wanted me to take photos. And I did so despite having no interest in women’s bodies. So at 10 I was already closeted to avoid disappointing my friends’ expectations.

At school, I was the shy nerd. Always trying to avoid conflict. For years, I thought I was the only boy in the world who felt attraction to other boys. At the beginning, having such a secret —”I like boys”… and to be more specific, “I like boys’ asses and dicks”— was arousing. However, years went by, and over the course of my adolescence that fantasy gradually turned into a burden. I repressed myself so much, for so long, that the closet became asphyxiating. I eventually felt the urge to have a real experience. I managed to swallow my shyness and made a few attempts with some acquaintances, but it didn’t work out. Finding peers in a small town is definitely not an easy job for sexual minorities. One day, I observed one of those hand-written notes on a public toilet door: “If you want to suck my dick come here next Tuesday at 6pm.” And that’s exactly what I did. The plan was set: If the guy is hot then enjoy, if the guy is average then just do the job, and if the guy is ugly then run away. The guy turned out to be average for my physical preferences. When he saw me, he made a visible gesture that he was not expecting anyone so young. He hesitated. He asked about my age. I was 17, he was in his 30s. I have never been especially attracted to people much older than me, but I was desperate and he was not ugly enough for me to reject. I suggested doing unsafe sex, but he was kind enough to tell me to play it safe. So, yeah, my first sexual contact was in a blind date with a grown-up.

That experience, though, was not the ultimate relief, since I had been carrying a heavy emotional backpack of repression. The realisation that I spent so many years losing opportunities for real sex while I was isolated in my fantasies was horrible. It is the kind of thought where you realise you have spoiled your time for many years, leading a life that does not represent at all what you wanted to be. This realisation was so disturbing that I entered a depression phase in which I made several suicide attempts. The first time I put my fingers to the wall socket; nothing happened except having a fright. The second time I randomly swallowed pills from the medicine cabinet, which ended with my mum dragging me to the hospital while struggling to keep me conscious. So, yeah, I am a survivor. I mean, literally. It was actually at the hospital bed when I came out to my parents. I later got psychiatric help for depression. The only options I was seeing were either to keep hiding myself like a rat and lose opportunities for real sex, or to come out as a faggot and see how everyone rejects me. What a dilemma! You have to understand that, at the time, homosexuality was a taboo and we still were considered deviants. The American Psychiatric Association considered it a mental disorder. Happily, my therapist helped me reconcile with myself and look forward to a new future. After that, at the age of 19, I felt free to open the Pandora’s box of my sexuality. I suddenly quit my summer job and my parents’ place to move to the big city! This is where I had my first kiss. Yay! I also became a sex worker for over a year, which in my case was an act of rebellion against society (and, of course, also a means to pay for my bills after such an abrupt emancipation). The city can be a liberating experience, but it also has its dark side. One night, I was beaten up by a group of young men after they saw me holding hands with a guy, leaving my face badly bruised.

As a young adult, I got actively involved in the gay movement, being among the first to come out in my region, enrolling as an ILGA member, getting involved in politics, engaging with local associations, and so on. It was in one of these groups that I started a row that ended up with its dissolution, because I wanted it to condemn paedophilia after pressures from the local council to do so. I behaved like a demon, a fanatic, led by hysteria and fear. I know, I know… What a hypocrite I was! But there’s more. This story has only just started.

I’ve always had, and still have, many fulfilling sexual relationships with adults. One day, someone texted me on Grindr. Blank profile. He disappeared and reappeared with a new profile over the course of several weeks, maybe months. We eventually had a proper online conversation. I let him take the initiative without pressure. He was looking for a sex encounter and he had a very clear idea about what he wanted to do in bed. It was a very specific fantasy. To be honest, he was so lovely and sexy in his Instagram that I had a crush. He told me he was 13, about to turn 14. OMG. What should I do? Oh no! The Ghost of the Dilemmas reappeared again. I could either repress myself and lose the opportunity to enjoy a very desired experience, or take the risk of going to jail and being labelled as a “paedo” for the rest of my life. I then decided to take legal advice. Rest assured, I will never forget that consultation. After entering her office, I set the scene, saying that teenagers use dating apps looking for sexual encounters, and I happened to have an interest in someone, and the interest was mutual. She asked about “her” age —she assumed I was talking about a girl— and I answered. After some hesitation, she said, I quote, “…up to 16 years old… Hmmm… No.” Which obviously begged the question, “What about 16 to 18 years old, then?” She replied, “Hmmm… Still no.” WTF!!?? Sounded like a bad joke. She then asked my age. When I told her she reacted like, “Oh my goodness!”. There are times when facial expression tells you way more than words. She slowly shook her head in disapproval. She stared at me in reproof as if I were a criminal. A disgusting monster. A predator. I was sex shamed. Her attitude was so obvious that I reacted, “Look, I have no interest at all in your moral beliefs, I just came here looking for legal advice.” There was a lot of tension in the room. She replied, “OK, OK” and I left angrily.

I eventually decided not to meet the boy, which has been one of the toughest decisions I have ever faced. It felt like cutting off my own limb. Emotionally excruciating. I mentally collapsed. It left me with a series of anxiety crises for over a year, for which I required treatment. Yes, again. Fortunately, my anxiety is completely over these days. But, why did I decide not to meet the youngster? To be continued…

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Your regular heretic resumes below the photo…

HOW HOT IS ‘BLUE FILM’?

Debuted at Edinburgh International Film Festival, Blue Film has been touted as the most controversial movie of the year, but you wouldn’t mistake it for any of Bonnie Blue’s work.

Reviewers tell us it is mainly just talk rather than sex. But, as one of the main characters has been to prison for involvement with a 12-year-old boy, and the portrayal could be seen as sympathetic, we can see why it might be a hot potato.

So, is it any good? I didn’t go to Edinburgh to see it, but we can glean a lot from the reviews. Damon Wise sets the scene well at a movie site called Deadline:

The opening sequence is a lot; [Kieron] Moore plays Aaron Eagle, who is what they apparently call a “camboy”, basically an online male escort who taunts his submissive gay audience with his jacked, tattooed body and sexually loaded insults. All he’s wearing is a pair of white briefs, but the hidden booty of what’s inside gets the cash registers ringing. Aaron is pretty good as this, and the money is flowing in. But even by his own flush standards he’s about to strike gold: an anonymous fan has offered to pay him $50,000 for an overnight stay, and, much to the fan’s surprise, he’s taking him up on the offer.

We see this when the man, wearing a balaclava, opens the door to his single-use Airbnb and finds Aaron on the doorstep with his overnight bag. Aaron is good to go, but the man has other plans, insisting that his guest sit down first for an extensive  video interview. It becomes pretty clear that this mysterious stranger knows a lot more about Aaron than he has bargained for, chipping away at his cultivated but clearly fake identity in ways that leave him vulnerable — and angry. From this point on, it’s impossible to discuss the film without revealing what could be construed as a major plot point, though instead of a spoiler alert, it may be fairer to call it a trigger warning.

Well, we’re not going to be “triggered” here, I trust! The big reveal comes when the stranger takes off his balaclava (a disguise described in other reviews as a ski mask, but no matter). That’s when Aaron discovers this is no stranger at all. It’s Hank Grant (Reed Birney), one of his old middle school teachers. This is in the US, where middle-school pupils are typically 11 to 14. Hank was fired for the “attempted sexual assault”, whatever that might mean, of a 12-year-old student.

I’m guessing there was nothing rapacious. Probably more like a rejected pass, judging by where writer-director Elliot Tuttle tells us he is coming from. Tuttle wrote the script while thinking about a fantasy from his own time at middle school: “I really wanted my history teacher to have sex with me,” he says. Cool!

Hank admits he was attracted to the schoolboy version of Aaron. As for why he has brought his old student back into his life, more than a decade later, he says, “I want to know if I still love you.” Eventually, they are seen being physically intimate together.

As a review in Vanity Fair puts it, the topic is especially radioactive “amid the swirling Epstein files saga”, adding, “Its insistence on pushing boundaries is completely at odds with an industry terrified of controversy and scrambling to simply stay afloat.”

Tuttle agrees but also pushes back: “Trump is ushering in this cultural conservatism that I think forces the queer community and gay tastemakers to really present one view of queerness that is kind of immune to critique…and, to me, pretty boring and not in the tradition of being a queer artist…. People are hungry for something that is not so limited by what’s tasteful.”

So far, so good. It sounds as though this director, in his first feature-length film, has made a brave effort to challenge the timidity of both the movie industry and the “respectable” so-called gay community, which often seems even less communally minded and tolerant of difference these days than society at large.

Sadly, though, we are given grounds to suspect that timidity has triumphed in the end. At some point the respectability police have managed to scuttle Tuttle. My guess is that Hank’s firing for “attempted assault” was a late change in the script, because neither the industry nor the two main actors want to risk being associated with a different Hank – a Hank whose relationship with the 12-year-old was one of mutual love rather than assault, “attempted” or otherwise.

The actors, producers and all involved would have surmised that such a scenario would have seen the film tarred as a bid to “legitimise paedophilia”, to a degree that could not plausibly be denied. So, they had to make Hank pretty much a “virtuous” paedophile who strayed only marginally from the straight and narrow, backing off after a rejected pass.

Nevertheless, Blue Film may be worth seeing. Like most indie films, especially controversial ones, it is unlikely ever to reach many (or even any) cinema screens, but we must hope at some point it becomes available for online viewing.

EPSTEIN: AM I MISSING SOMETHING?

Headline in The Times: “Paedophile’s assistant ‘sat on Queen’s throne’ during private tour”.

LOL! Bonkers, isn’t it? It conjures up an alternative reality in which “assistant paedophile” is a routine job you’ll see advertised at your local Jobcentre. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Of course, it has to be a Jeffrey Epstein story, the “assistant” being a 22-year-old woman who lavished praise on the guy in a birthday book made for him before his fall from grace, saying how he had given her a great time, bringing opportunities she would never otherwise have had, meeting famous people such as Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump – to say nothing of getting to sit  in the monarch’s seat  at Buckingham Palace.

What struck me about this story, apart from the bizarre headline’s display of the paedophobic, paedomanic lunacy into which the anglophone world has sunk, is that the media must surely be finding it harder and harder to keep insisting Epstein is a monster. Why?  Because we are hearing from more and more people who have said behind the scenes what a nice guy he was!

The testimony of this understandably starstruck young woman from an ordinary background is particularly interesting and important because it tells an entirely different story to those of his alleged victims, at least one of whom, Virginia Giuffre, was a proven fantasist at best, while others have stood to gain financially from their narratives of alleged trauma – millions have been paid in compensation to say nothing of media fees for their stories.

What we are also hearing now, though, is similar praise for Epstein from his elite friends, notably Peter Mandelson, recently sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US, and Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s former wife. Both of them speak of him with extraordinary warmth, giving us good reason to believe they were speaking from the heart. Unlike the “assistant”, their testimony is also important because they were high status people with no reason to be sycophantic towards him. Yes, they might have been helped by loans from him, but they did not need to grovel or be so effusive.

So far, I have to say, I have seen nothing to suggest that Epstein was anything other than a nice guy. As a socialist, I have no fondness for billionaires, especially those (most of them) who are greedy, mean and go out of their way to dodge taxes. But why is Epstein singled out as a monster? I mean, that young lady we started with, he literally treated her like a queen! I have no idea where this “monster” thing is coming from. Am I missing something?