Buttfeed

It's Frieze Week in London, and BUTT's placing all bets on Prem Sahib, not that it's a competition or anything. It's just that his show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, full of alluring surfaces and innuendos, is such a fascinating deconstruction of gay space, while his more petit, adjunct show at Southard Reid confirms Prem's status as this season's go-to guy for conceptual art.

‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit’ by Calvin Corvidian is quite possibly the first ever English as a Second Language book that you don't have to pretend to be straight to read. Calvin, who is both a teacher of other ESL teachers and lifelong student of languages, set out to write a novelette with learner levels in mind, and one directed specifically at gay guys. And what an entertaining textbook it is! His cheeky gay soap opera, which revolves around a clique of bitchy, predatory gays in the Czech Republic, is as witty as it is instructive, basking in the pleasures of a colloquial Euro-English, and maybe even giving you a hard on.

Pawel Tkaczyk from Warsaw, Poland submitted this photo of 20-year-old Gracjan sitting very comfortably in Wojtek's sleek backwash unit. Wojtek, a hairdresser by trade, is 31-years-old. To Gracjan, Wojtek is different than the others, something about Wojtek made him keep chatting. It wasn't long before they were dating, then moving in, and washing each other's hairs, and man buns and stuff. Does one need a different kind of basin for a beard wash?

Synthpop act Boytronic was ‘founded by accident’ in 1983 by an underage Holger Wobker and Peter Sawatzki in Hamburg, Germany. As Kapitän Sehnsucht, they were busy making soundtracks for sex shows in the city’s red light Reeperbahn district not long before being discovered by a Mercury Records rep. Their best-known hit ‘You’, which peaked at number ten in German charts, just got a grand re-issue treatment from Josh Cheon’s Dark Entries Records. Sporting supergay sailor looks, leatherman’s caps, and copious amounts of hair gel, they headed gayly-forward to Hafenklang Studio to record their first LP, ‘The Working Model’ — the record was “dedicated to all the bears of the world”. They even had their moment on the tube, filling in for Kim Wilde on Formula One, the German equivalent of Top of the Pops. But by 1986, their label had claimed legal ownership of their band name, and reassembled the group with new members. A distraught Holger took refuge in a Thai monastery. These days, he says he's “at the age where I have to economize my strength”.

What a promising moment, just between summer and fall, when the second-to-last-semester NYU photography student Elliott Brown Jr. shot these six fellas in that soft and lovely daylight before the autumnal equinox. His friends and lovers took to writing their own sentiments and confessions for the portraits.

Abdellah Taïa was destined to be a writer. Born in the public library where his father was a janitor, he grew up in Salé, a city near the Moroccan capital Rabat. Determined to learn French and study abroad, he won a scholarship and lifted himself out of his impoverished and hostile surroundings, and eventually became known as the North African country's only out homosexual. These days, he considers himself Parisian, continuing his writing practice from his Belleville studio in the 20th arrondissement. Away from his desk, nothing gives Abdellah more pleasure than his frequent trips to the cinema. New York-based, Egyptian filmmaker Ahmed Ibrahim and Abdellah spoke about gay life in their respective home countries, and Abdellah's recent stint as film director, when he adapted his most beloved book 'Salvation Army' for the big screen.

Gay liberation icon Peter Berlin (AKA the Greta Garbo of Porn) has brought his mail order photography to the ClampArt fine art gallery this month for ‘Wanted: Peter Berlin’, an exhibition of self-portraits from the ’70s and ’80s. Born in Poland and raised in Germany, Peter eventually moved to San Francisco in 1969 and became a kind of fixture, perpetually posing and cruising around in his own skin-tight sex looks.

I caught up with Bottoms — drummer Michael Prommasit, screamer Jake Dibeler, and knob twiddler Simon Leahy — in Amsterdam during their last Euro tour. For the next episode of Pillowtalk, we’re chilling with some of their fav dark wave and industrial slow jams, and previewing an exclusive Soft Pink Truth remix of their track ‘Boring’. This fall may be your last chance to see the wigged trio as the group was always ‘project based’, which is to say, she’s got a sell-by date and it’s fast-approaching. First up is Jake’s pick: ‘Dissolve’ by girl goths Switchblade Symphony.

Nick Ibanez (circa 1981, as seen above) and John Davidson (circa 1965, gracing BUTT's splash page this month) were just two of the many, many hot tamales photographed by the late, great Bob Mizer in his now-infamous Athletic Model Guild studio in Los Angeles, California.

Fans of the late great Rainer Werner Fassbinder will want to make a beeline for ‘Fassbinder — NOW’, an exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, before it closes this Sunday. Highlights include Barbara Baum’s sailor costumes from his lurid film Querelle, based on the Genet novel. There’s also a fascinating display of the director's televised interviews, ephemera and personal effects from his estate. Works by other artists, including BUTT buddy Willem de Rooij, are well-placed to complement Fassbinder’s oeuvre and underline his profound influence outside the the world of filmmaking.

Yo guys! Stuart of London likes to draw the fellas he meets online. Here, 31-year-old, rugby-playing builder Zach has put up a new offer on an adult mail order site. Know that all orders include extra loads of semen to ‘keep yourself young’. He also sells used condoms, by the way, delivered directly to you, to be enjoyed in the privacy of your own home.

The ambitious team of film enthusiasts at Dirty Looks have put together a thirty-one day program of queer interventions (mostly film screenings) in various locations across New York City during the month of July. Tonight, they show the beautifully restored version of Wakefield Poole’s experimental porn masterpiece, ‘Bijou’, at The Eagle. If you’ve never seen it, please do. I cannot imagine a better spot for it, to be honest. The program includes many other gems, including the everyday pleasures of an XTube video as well as some classics, like ‘Tongues Untied’ by Marlon Riggs.

May the leather gods smile down on Ben and Guy at Chapter Records in Melbourne, Australia for re-issuing a very trashy collection of BDSM rockers by Smokey. By the time they committed 'Piss Slave', the slap happy disco track about watersports, to tape, Smokey had already had it with being the most influential gay rockers you had never heard. Stream, listen, and...

Baker Beach
Black's Beach
Capocotta
Cherry Grove
Clifton 3rd
Coco Beach
Es Cavallet
Fire Island Pines
Ginger Rogers State Beach
Gunnison Beach
Haulover Beach
Herring Cove
Hi Beach
Hilton Beach
Hollywood Beach

54-year-old Scot Jimmy Somerville arrives at his manager’s office on bicycle, whizzing past the photographer and I, who have stopped to gawk at a parked Maserati among the council estates. He’s compact and fit, perfectly suited for the hazards of cycling in London. With his former bandmates in Bronski Beat, Jimmy wrote two of the most iconic gay anthems, ‘Smalltown Boy’ (pink triangle emblazoned across its seven inches) and ‘Why?’ in 1984, when queers had few allies under Reagan and Thatcher. With his alarm call of a voice, which extends over three full octaves and has been known to shatter glass on occasion, he had continued success with The Communards, plus a steady stream of solo records. This year, he released ‘Homage’, a collection of instant disco classics, and now his sound is taking a surprising detour.

Fabulous illustrator Robert W. Richards is in Berlin to present a book from his exhibition by the same name, ‘Stroke: From Under the Mattress to the Museum Wall’, in which he collected some overlooked, but definitely worth-looking-at pornographic illustrators who drew during his heyday in mags like Freshmen, Torso, and Honcho. One of twenty-five artists from the catalog, Michael Kirwan, never liked his men pretty: “old, fat, ethnic, plain, disabled and unusual queers exist and are equally deserving of being depicted”.

This time, I’m curling up with 24-year-old New Jersey rapper and big spoon Rashard Bradshaw AKA Cakes da Killa, now sitting pretty in his room at the Hampshire Hotel Eden in Amsterdam. He gives me the lowdown on his nastiest lyric ever, his cocoa butter obsession, and what it’s like being an emotional juicer. We also listen to some tracks from his last EP, #IMF, which is totally gorgeous and lush, by the way, and has Cakes showing off his more vulnerable side.

'Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play', opening this week at Artists Space in New York, is perhaps the most complete look at the iconic artist's work ever, including more than six decades worth of drawings. The exhibit's a boon for those looking for insight into the illustrator's process...

27-year-old singer — and possible lovechild of Klaus Nomi and Laurie Anderson — Colin Self delves into full-on fantasy mode with this track from his luscious debut USB album, Elation. 'Aflame' sees Colin projecting beams of woozy Mamas & Papas-esque vocal harmonies, which are then subjected to a rigid chopping and muting. Stream, listen and...

Versatile Roddy Bottum is currently in the middle of a fifty-nine date tour, tinkling the ivories with MTV Generation rockers Faith No More. Of course West Coast indie pop kids know him on guitar/vox in bubblegum group, Imperial Teen. Recently, he previewed his first opera (about Bigfoot) in New York where he's been hanging out for the last couple years, threatening to take his music to a more theatrical place. But Roddy grew up in Los Angeles, near the Wilshire Country Club, in a stimulating environs where no one ever went to a dinner party without at least three topics for conversation.