I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that “twincest” is a neologism you don’t need to impart into your regular vocabulary, but it is raised in a recent Salon article on Milo and Elijah Peters, 19-year-old Czech twins who have caused a stir in the gay porn community. The twins reportedly first showed up on the website of Bratislava-based porn distributor Bel Ami in the summer of 2009 in group videos, not touching. Over a period of months, they progressed to mutual handjobs within a group scenario, then blowjobs, then oral sex, and finally (and hugely publicized), anal intercourse.
While the concept of twin performers is not new to the gay porn world, the Peters twins are notable both because of the extent of their popularity and the things they are willing to do with each other on camera. They French kiss; they perform oral sex on each other; they have anal sex; and most shockingly of all, they do it in a tender and romantic way.
“My brother is my boyfriend, and I am his boyfriend,” says one of the twins during a phone call from Prague (Elijah and Milo sound so much alike on the phone it is impossible to tell which one is speaking). “He is my lifeblood, and he is my only love.”
The twins’ astonishing lack of shame — and their willingness to do anything with each other on camera — has helped turn them into a gay porn phenomenon. Since they first began appearing on Czech porn studio Bel Ami’s website (NSFW, like all links in this story) in 2009, the company’s traffic has doubled to 1.5 million users per month, and Milo and Elijah have become the subject of breathless coverage on adult blogging sites like Fleshbot and The Sword. They’ve even been flown from Prague to the United States for a whirlwind tour of Florida gay nightspots. But their surprising popularity raises some disturbing questions: Who are these twins? What keeps so many people watching them? And what, exactly, are viewers getting off on?
Rogers doesn’t quite answer all these worthy questions in the article, but they are certainly worth a ponder. First, the boys themselves: they’re cute and twinky, no doubt about it, and either one of them on their own could likely make a small splash, but in combination? Titillation dynamite. They even have a YouTube channel to give their fans access to their lives (the video below, in which they talk about their upcoming trip to Florida, is SFW): (more…)
Last night I was out at a shindig with my paramour, and there was a big huge orange moon hanging above the Capitol Building. It was beautiful. I started snapping away on my phone, and Felix Unger once more emerged.
“Go to the other side of the balcony, and take it from there. No, over here. Wait, no more to your left. No, wait, back to the right. Yes! Wait, no! Yes! No. You need to get more of the heft of the building into the bottom left of the shot. Yes! Noo. Yes … wait … no.”
Fellow guests began to look quizzically at him. I put my phone down and looked at him.
“You are out of your mind,” I said. He giggled, as he often does.
A few hours later, and we are drifting off to sleep, and suddenly he is picking at my upper arm like an orangutan searching for nits. Next thing I know, he’s attempting to squeeze some imaginary thing.
“Holy shit!” I cry. “Those are freckles!”
He turns the light on and looks sheepish.
“And so they are,” he says, tenderly kissing the red mark he’s left on my arm. “So terribly sorry.”
My reply: “You are not right in the head. There is something wrong with you.” He stifles a giggle.
This morning, I wake up, and he’s naked on his hands and knees on the floor beside me, fiddling with something.
“What now, you crazy British motherfucker?” I ask in sleepy bewilderment.
“Well, the power cord from the lamp interferes with the placement of my water glass on the bedside table. So I thought if I unplugged it, then repositioned it, it wouldn’t be quite so bothersome,” he replies, a look of stern concentration on his face.
I burst out laughing.
“How did you get this way?” I ask. “You are out of your mind with the OCD.”
And he is. Since we started dating, I no longer have to clean out my hairbrushes. Twice a week, the hair is removed, no matter how minimal an amount of hair there is. Twigs and sticks are picked up from my expansive backyard and put in tidy little piles in the garage next to my wood pile. My bra drawer is reorganized so they’re all lined up perfectly. My fruit bowl is rearranged so that the oranges are on the bottom and the bananas are on top. The shoes in my closet are tidied up and straightened even if I did the same thing two days earlier. He is particularly insistent that all things hanging in the closet are hanging in the same direction. Do you know what I mean by this? If so, you may have his disease.
He simply cannot stop himself from tidying, straightening, smoothing, picking, or rearranging.
We have a daily thing going on where I send him a photo of one of my cats as he lounges around. Patrick is my paramour’s favorite cat, and so it’s become almost an art project — I even sent him shots of Patrick while he was testifying in a recent high-profile thingamajig. For the first little while, he would reply this way: “Aww, what a big fat cutie. But I think you should have tried taking it from the right, so you got more of his face.”
I would reply: “Piss off and be grateful you have woman who obliges your desire for a daily cat photo.”
Lately, he’s been very proud of The Daily Patrick.
“You’ve really mastered the fatty-cam,” he said the other day. “The lighting, the angle, the composition — these are truly works of art.”
Today my boyfriend sent me possibly the sweetest e-mail I’d ever received. “If it makes you feel any better,” he wrote, “you’re absolutely nothing like her.”
He was talking about my mother.
Yes, my mother, also known as Hagatha, visited again. Some of you may remember those happy Christmas tales of a couple of years ago that filled my heart and home with such joy. If, by joy, one means angry misery. But time had passed, my sister was coming with her, I love my sister, and she had been telling me recently that Hagatha had mellowed out a bit and wasn’t quite as bad as she’s been our whole lives.
And so they arrived, my poor sister and her girlfriend after a rainy 12-hour drive. My poor sister will be referred to in this post as “my poor sister,” because my poor, poor sister. She’s left alone in Toronto to deal with Hagatha on her own, and then had to drive her down here and back. And she has a lovely girlfriend, Annie, who has always been a good buffer. My mother can be funny and charming, and Annie is entertained by her. And when Annie senses my mother is driving my poor sister crazy with her incessant braying and criticisms, she steps in to defuse things. “She’s an old woman,” has always been Annie’s peaceful refrain. “She means well.”
Fast forward four days, and the kind-hearted, mellow, mild-mannered Annie was muttering under her breath: “Fuck you, old lady” in the kitchen after my mother lobbed yet another passive-aggressive shot and/or snide nagging her way. (more…)
I take great pleasure in helping out people looking for directions or guidance, in so far as I am able. Here in London, exasperated tourists will approach me with varying degrees of English competency on the regular, looking for assistance in locating their destination; I am always delighted to point them in the right direction, when I can, drawing maps on a notepad or even walking them partway if I have nowhere important to be. Even though this is not my home country, this is just good hospitality, and I like to do my best to send folk on their way with a positive impression, just as I rely on fellow Londoners to help me out when I’m in an unfamiliar part of town. I am a big believer in asking for, and offering, directions.
So this is, as I said, just good hospitality, and ultimately good karma. It’s not a big city, but it is a busy and twisting one, and we all need a little help from time to time. I was recently thinking, however, about the people I call Travel Angels. These are the people you meet in the course of your journey who go far out of their way to assist you, and leave you with a warm feeling in the pit of your belly, the people who replenish your basic faith in humanity, however grand or small the gesture. These gestures are always poignant, but especially so in a foreign setting when you are wary of your vulnerability.
This is more than essential kindness, and more than giving directions. These acts require the Angel to take time away from themselves to see you safely to your destination, or extend their welcome to the point of invitation into their own lives. It’s the person who sees you on your own in an unfamiliar place and invites you to a Lebanese family supper, or offers to drive you 30 miles out of their way (both experiences from my own life). With that thought, I wanted to detail four instances of Travel Angels and invite you to share your own.
This video is of the first 35mm film ever shot, taken from the front of a San Francisco cable car in 1906. It is remarkable in many ways, not least of which is the surprising amount of automobiles present. If you watch, you’ll see a cyclist in front of the car who functions as sort of a casual tour guide throughout the film. It’s an amazing bit of history, accompanied by, yes, Air’s “La Femme D’Argent” in this instance. Feel free to watch it on silent.
The film was “originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!) .. It was filmed only four days before the quake and shipped by train to NY for processing.”
(Quoted explanation unattributed for now. Feel free to post the original source in the comments).
So Adam and I have been FB-messaging back and forth, and I don’t deny his love of LOLs and bizarre abbreviations and lack of punctuation and multiple misspellings were a bit of a turn-off, but I had to remind myself that sometimes people who don’t write for a living aren’t as persnickety about such things.
And then, tonight, I got this:
Hi hun just wanted to ask u is anybody doing anything about this big oil spill disaster in the Gulf Of Mexico. It apparently is going to hit Florida and who knows the cost to the enviornment and tourism. Can u research this a bit for me or if you have any power to get this out to the world or maybe some BIG WIGS in Washington. Please get back to me…
Ummmmm.
That hissing sound you just heard? That was my vague girly-boner for a guy who still looks as hot now as he did at 18 deflating RAPIDLY.
Oh. Dear.
I think I’ll stick with my Spy, who is so smart that he makes me feel like Adam some days.
My mom has never made a big deal out of Mother’s Day, which is certainly pleasant for me and Dad. A card is nice, flowers are always appreciated but not necessary, and you can pretty much stop right there. No breakfast in bed (she would hate it). No fuss. No brunch or shopping or spa treatment (not our style, anyway). For her, it is a made-up holiday to be tolerated. Her refreshing approach cuts down on guilt and expenditures – I think it means more to me now that I’m older than it does to her, so I usually send an e-card and some flowers and, when long-distance, give her a call. She’s always pleased and reminds me, sincerely: “You didn’t have to do anything!”
Baby Me climbing Mother Mountain, roaring with delight
This year she got, in lieu of flowers, a $30 Amazon gift card, which she will hopefully spend on herself. So given her low-key approach, I don’t have a soppy Mother’s Day message, but I do have some beautiful pictures my father sent us of Mom playing with me on the bed as a baby, and I wanted to post a few. (more…)
I guess I’m going to get used to looking at this man’s forehead because David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party here in the UK, has just left Buckingham Palace as new Prime Minister following Gordon Brown’s resignation. The Liberal Democrats have formed a coalition with the Tories to take the Labour Party out of power for the first time since Tony Blair’s historic election in 1994.
I’d love to offer some devastating and insightful analysis of this development, but even after attempting to follow the debates and news programs for the last two weeks, I’m still scratching my head. Since I can’t vote here, I spend much more time and energy keeping up with US politics, but here’s the wee bit that I’ve gleaned: (more…)
This weekend I went to see Iron Man 2. I should have walked out ten minutes in, but as I am wont to do when it comes to a movie I just spent $15 on and waited on line outside to see…I stayed. Bad decision. Iron Man 2 a terrible movie overall. Tony Stark is a douche of massive proportions with a hateful personality. In Iron Man, Stark was a narcissistic jerk who learned a lesson: caring for people and doing good is better than being a war profiteer. That was the first movie. Inexplicably, in this second installment, he’s a bigger dick than he was before his big redemption in the original. Stark’s character is so insufferable that it’s really quite a feat he is the alleged “hero” of this story. And the sexism. Good god, the sexism. It comes with a dose of Fox News-style wingnuttery!
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that “twincest” is a neologism you don’t need to impart into your regular vocabulary, but it is raised in a recent Salon article on Milo and Elijah Peters, 19-year-old Czech twins who have caused a stir in the gay porn community. The twins reportedly first showed up on the website of Bratislava-based porn distributor Bel Ami in the summer of 2009 in group videos, not touching. Over a period of months, they progressed to mutual handjobs within a group scenario, then blowjobs, then oral sex, and finally (and hugely publicized), anal intercourse.
