You Give Love, A Bad Name?

Some images from my Art Pavilion, Allove Festival May 2010

On the Allove Festival Facebook page, a fag slammed the freaks for giving homosexuals 'a bad image'.
An African statesman who shares a political platform with Kofi Annan, Tony Blair and Bob Geldof has condemned homosexuality as an "abomination", dismissing individuals' right to privacy with the riposte: "You want to make love to a horse?"
In Malawi, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga were sentenced to 14 years in separate jails for conducting an openly gay relationship.

"We are showroom dummies, Christopher"

Seville, Spain,
May 8 2010









- Did you see that? He totally checked me out, a five full minutes. He mentally undressed me, before he went away back to his girlfriend. Hot.
- Shut up Christopher. You're getting on my nerves.
- I was the best thing that ever happened to you.
- Oh yeah? You don't even touch me no more.
- I can't, dummy.
- You crack me up. You used to, when no one was looking.
- Things change.
- Now you only feel alive, if some stranger looks at you.
- Their eyes on me make me burn inside.
- I remember the time you crossed the window to kiss me. And almost got caught.
- I feel trapped in this relationship. I think we should spend some time apart.


- I saw this coming. Don't you know, we're not real? If we burn, we melt.
- I'm willing to take that risk. I spoke to someone in Window Dressing. I'm sorry. You're being moved to the Children's Department. You're going to be Elizabeth's husband. Remember her? At 9 o'clock, they switch off the lights in there. You know what happens after dark...
- No Christopher, you can't do that to me!
- I just did.
- N o o o o o o o o o ooooooo...!

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

dispatches from 2009, Norfolk VA, USA: navy town

Bill, a handsome black Texan navy officer standing well over six feet tall, taps his lapel which is striated with two rows of colorful stripes. It reminds me of a barcode, his price point to the nation, but of course I don’t say that. He wants me to understand and carefully explains all they signify. “This one here is for my third term of service in Iraq.” It was to be his last and he was grateful. There was a time when soldiers would only get two tours of duty, but that was then. He was just 27. “And this…” he points to the last strip, a little red rectangle with a metal pin beneath shaped in an ‘S’, “stands for ‘sharpshooter’. Hitting a target at least 130 times out of 140. Not here,” he motions to my outer body, “but right here.” The heart. “I could hit you at least 130 times, no, 140 times, in the heart. Every time. Pow, pow, pow. I wouldn’t miss the once.”

Bill is a sweet-natured, frivolous guy with a gap between his two front teeth that is endearingly goofy. I imagine he has Stories too, but I am awkward and don’t pry; they would be too fresh, still weeping blood. They are Scars. I am an enabler, because I don’t have to think about the war; I avoid it mostly in the news, at the movies, and don’t particularly want my military friends to tell me about it. It’s far away in a foreign land. I’m not dodging sniper fire or watching enemy planes glide over my head. Obviously I prefer it that way.

Bill also is a gay man. I once saw pictures of his family back in Texas. To my jaundiced eye, the faded Polaroids are a bit strange; the Texan suburban landscape is a sun-bleached husk, and they all look at the camera as if it’s about to steal their souls. Yet the moment is touching, discernible in their awkwardness. He isn’t out to them, and believes it would break his father’s heart, I think. His ‘day job’, forget it, though they find a way for them to express themselves, even in that rotten egg of a war, frying on booby-trapped asphalt. He relishes telling me about fucking a firefighter on base. Bill was in Iraq eight full months this time, so maybe it’s not such a big deal getting laid the once, but the sheer resourcefulness of male sexuality never ceases to amaze me at least, I have to say. Maybe I’ll tell you my stories, some time.