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Growing up, Rodney Morgan was the only gay black kid in the far away land of Whitehorse, a small city in the Canadian Territory of Yukon which lists visiting a riverboat from the 1930's as one of its main attractions. When Rodney left for Toronto, he let himself become obsessed with performing, wearing wigs and posing for photos. He took on the performing name Fritz Helder, and became the front man for the band Fritz Helder and the Phantoms. Their song ‘Lagerfeld Lady’, was a big hit on the Toronto club scene and they got signed to Canadian singer Nelly Furtado's record label, Nelstar. Fritz is currently working on a solo album and preparing for a European tour in September. I chatted with him on his front porch in Toronto's Queen West area, where we watched his gorgeous shirtless neighbors working in their yard.
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Taner Ceylan is the star of the new Turkish art scene. Since one of his paintings broke a record at auction two years ago, his works have been included in the permanent collection of the Istanbul Modern Art Museum and shown at Art Basel and biennales around the globe. Meeting him, I was worried to find an egotist and capricious star of the art world. Not so. At 43, Taner is humble, gentle mannered, a bit shy, and was most importantly open minded and eager to share his life story with me. The first painter to introduce homoerotic subjects in Turkish art in the late 1980's (and possibly in the Middle East) he has worked against criticism and hostility his whole life. Today Taner hardly ever walks out of his studio on the outskirts of Istanbul, where he spends ten hours a day, seven days a week, working intricate details on his large scale oil canvases. We spoke about his craft and the secret lives of Turkish homosexuals at cafes in and around Taksim Square.
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BUTT's favorite gay tumblr blog CTRL + W33D is leaping off the world wide web and into the physical world with TROLL, a show of original artwork curated by the bloggers that opens Thursday night at the Envoy gallery in New York City. The boys behind W33D have long been collecting the strangest gay graphic ephemera from all corners of the net, with a focus on cut-and-paste Photoshop artwork about cocks or pot. For tomorrow night's show, however, the focus seems to be on 'trolling', as in trolling the internet for content, articles, pictures, or sex, or being a 'troll' - either one who leaves anonymous hateful comments on sites to provoke 'breakdown or chaos', or a seemingly unattractive person who others find gross.
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It was a hot June morning in New York when after a long hike up an endless flight of stairs, I met the photographer and filmmaker James Bidgood. Famous for his ethereal photography of beautiful young men in the 1960s, James Bidgood directed, produced and wrote the iconic 1971 film Pink Narcissus, starring Bobby Kendall. Nearly all of the film was shot in Mr. Bidgood's Hell's Kitchen apartment between 1963 and 1971 where he lived within the sets he built. Before the film reached completion, it was taken from him by investors and edited without his involvement, creating something Bidgood says he couldn't even follow himself or stay awake through. Devastated after having spent the past seven years of his life making the film, he refused to sign his name to the project and for years it was credited to 'Anonymous', which led many to think that perhaps Andy Warhol was behind it. When I arrived at his apartment, Mr. Bidgood asked the first question.
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What’s going on down the road in Joey from Chicago’s ass?
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I am guilty of sentimentality when I think about my friend Scott Matthew. When I met him a few years ago, despite a modest fan base emerging from his work on the 2006 John Cameron Mitchell film Shortbus, he was financially destitute and uncertain he'd ever see any money from the film, let alone get a label to sign him. Scott writes ballads; his music is largely concerned with love and heartbreak. Upon meeting him, the vulnerability in those dark, unflinching eyes is striking and tells you you're in the presence of a devout romantic. This year with the release of his second album, There is an Ocean That Divides and With My Longing I Can Charge It With a Voltage That's So Violent To Cross It Could Mean Death, Scott is, after nearly two decades of endeavor, living the life of a full-time musician. Last year Berlin's top daily newspaper, Berliner Zeitung, named Scott Matthew alongside artists such as Grace Jones in their ranking of the best shows of 2009 and he just returned from his sixth tour of Europe (in addition to tours of Japan and his native Australia). We met over a couple pints of Molson Gold at a Canadian bar in Brooklyn, where he currently lives.
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Photographer Paul Knight has taken to photographing himself and his boyfriend while they’re having sex. He then names his pictures after the amount of time they have been together. This photo was taken somewhere in the woods off the A889 between Dalwhinnie and Catlodge in the bucolic countryside of Scotland. The title is 155 days.
Read morePITTSBURGH, U.S.A. — When I was a sophomore in college I got a job bussing tables at a Syrian restaurant. One of the cooks was named Hannad and he was from Iraq. He scared the shit out of me. He was built like a brick shithouse, with crude tattoos lining his hands and powerful arms. He had a handsome but rough face and he was missing some of his teeth.
Read moreSAN FRANCISCO, U.S.A. — During my freshman year of college, I lived in the dorms with an 18-year-old drug addict whose saving grace was his striking resemblance to James Franco. In observing his life for nine months, I deduced that he spent half of his time drinking and the other half, unconscious. When he actually was awake, he liked to play SEGA on ecstasy at three in the afternoon, eat my food, and steal my 'for recreational use only' coke while I slept.
Read moreI am 23 years old, of medium-build, just under six feet tall, with broad shoulders, curly black hair, and a bit of stubble. My sexual forays — both in terms of my long-term relationships and with fleeting lovers — have found me constantly gravitating to younger, skinny, and smaller men, whom I would consider ‘natural bottoms’. However, with time, these men no longer inspired me, sexually speaking. What I really wanted was someone tall, big, hairy and unkempt, with musky armpits and speckled white hair — and, most importantly, to feel the full throttle of their bulky dick up my arse. I started lunging at every opportunity that presented itself to meet one of these guys.
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We were very saddened to hear today of the passing of Will Munro, who was interviewed by Billy Miller in BUTT #24 in 2008. Will, who suffered from cancer, was only 35 years old.
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20-year-old Morgan Tepsic from Oklahoma City has made a habit of taking pictures of himself jumping around naked wherever he goes (how he always manages to artfully obscure his manhood is beyond us). Most of his pictures are taken near his hometown, or somewhere in the Mid-West like Colorado and Texas. But as of next Monday, May 24, 2010, Morgan is setting out to streak around all over Asia and Europe, including Japan, Korea, Laos, Taiwan, Thailand, China, and Romania. I caught up with him before he sets off for his yearlong adventure.
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Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade are a happily married couple and two-thirds of the popular performance-art theater collective My Barbarian, which they co-founded with Jade Gordon in 2001. Since then, the trio have performed and exhibited videos at art institutions around the world. Their work usually features humorous commentary on both history and current events. Last year at the Participant Gallery in New York, they premiered 'The Night Episode', a set of videos and performances based on the old Rod Serling 1970s horror series Night Gallery, featuring characters in modern-day L.A. dealing with the difficulties of the economic crash in often hilarious fashion. My favorite video featured a tale about a guy who was debating spending his last eight dollars to sign up for Manhunt again, which ended up leading him to his doom. Malik and Alex live in L.A.'s Echo Park in a typically Californian house, where they enjoy smoking pot, watching BBC, and playing with their cat Joaquin. I stopped by their house one afternoon in March, a few days before they were about leave for Madrid to participate in a theater festival.
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Brett is a short, handsome Mexican who wears a cowboy hat. He and I met at Smoke Tree Stables in Palm Springs, California, when we were both signing up for a two-hour horseback ride through the beautiful Indian Canyon at sunset. Brett was very friendly, offering me advice on whether I should wear a helmet or not. He also explained that he had his own horse — a feisty Arabian — but that he wanted to try to ride a different horse to see the difference. Soon enough we were both saddled up, introduced to our cowgirl guide Toni, and set off on our tour. After the ride, returning to the stables, Brett overheard me asking for a cab and offered me a ride back to my hotel. I had no inkling he was gay until I got in his car and he asked me if I was in town for gay pride. Brett said he had been in Palm Springs DJ-ing for gay pride, and that he also dee-jays country western and hip hop music at bars like Oilcan Harry’s in Los Angeles. When we arrived at my hotel Brett pulled the timeless ‘Can I just come in to use your bathroom?’-line. I let him up and while he was pissing I pulled out my laptop and prepared for an impromptu interview.
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Photographer Martin Korben, who shot the cover of the BUTT 2010 calendar, has been busy chronicling his sexy circle of artist friends in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a focus on the ones he has yet to woo into bed.
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This snapshot of a couple getting it on on a couch in Glasgow is a self-portrait by the Australian-born photographer Paul Knight. Paul has taken to photographing himself and his Scottish boyfriend Peter while they're having sex in the privacy of their own home. He then names his works after how long they have been together. In this case, it was their 61st day together.
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Forgive yourself if you've never heard of Hawkwind, the British rock band formed in 1969 by singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Brock. It's incredibly difficult to describe just what their sound is — space rock-psych rock-prog rock-glam-proto metal-proto electronic-British krautrock. It's the kind of act that has inspired a fervent cult following, and Sean Carnage and Brett Berg are two such cultists. A few years ago Sean and Brett decided to form Cockwind, a 'gay Hawkwind tribute band' whose shows feature, in homage to Hawkind's live shows, a nearly nude male dancer and live projections of cock-themed imagery. I sat down with Sean and Brett to discuss how their unique tribute band came to be.
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Yummy gingerbear artist Patrick Lee makes meticulous drawings of straight men he meets on the streets of Hollywood — homeless men, construction workers, ex-cons, junkies, and other tough-looking guys covered in tattoos and butch attire who will never ever be mistaken for being gay (especially Pussy Eater, above). 'Deadly Friends', a solo exhibition of Lee's work will open at the Ameringer, McEnery & Yohe gallery this Thursday from 6—8:30 PM in New York City.
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Tim, or 'Speedo Student' – as he calls himself on the internet – is a Speedo maniac who owns over 20 pairs of the popular swimsuits, regularly blogs about how he likes to jerk off wearing them (preferably, while somebody's watching) and received national media attention when he posted an Xtube video of himself masturbating in an empty classroom at his Hawaiian college (above). His intense fetish has excited viewers all around the world but it almost got him expelled from the University of Hawaii. We emailed Tim to find out more about his fetish and what happened to him to cause such a stir.
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Christopher Trout sent us this charming clip of Englishman Dudley Sutton reading his poem, 'A Hymn To the Disappearing Gentlemen's Lavatories of Old London,' which is dedicated to the late playwright and lavatory sex enthusiast Joe Orton. As more and more single unit tourist-friendly restrooms pop up over the city, where's a Londoner to go to for a little tearoom sex?
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