Off Christopher Street

In this episode, we kick off our occasional series on Gay Therapy Slop, in which we’ll talk about how therapy discourse has shaped modern gay self-understandings. What better place to start than with some gay self-help that's not slop, a book that’s simultaneously a sex manual, a political treatise, and a literary experiment: Charles Silverstein and Edmund White’s 1977 classic, The Joy of Gay Sex.

Organized A-Z as an encyclopedia of how to be gay, The Joy of Gay Sex is full of surprises, from its powerful introduction about the historical novelty of modern homosexuality to its entries on everything from cocksucking to how to make friends to why life is so hard for hot guys to Cosmo-style acrobatic sex positions no one has ever actually tried. It’s also a turning point in the career of Edmund White as he moves away from the fussy, coded style of his first two novels toward writing clearly, directly, and erotically about gay sex. Despite plenty of dated terms and hot takes to laugh at, we argue that The Joy of Gay Sex is anything but slop: it’s as relevant as ever and absolutely belongs in the modern gay canon.

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SOURCES

Creators and Guests

Host
Blake Smith
Blake Smith is a historian, writer, and translator. His writing has appeared in The Hedgehog Review, American Affairs, Tablet, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere.
Host
David Sessions
David Sessions is a historian and journalist. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Point, Dissent, The Daily Beast, Slate, and others.

What is Off Christopher Street?

Historians David Sessions and Blake Smith gossip about the gay life of the past and the gay discourses of the present.

Blake Smith:

It's easy to make fun of the corny, self affirming, you know, not particularly intellectual dimension, both of, like, much of The Joy of Gay Sex, but also of, like, contemporary gay therapy slop where, you know, communicate, love yourself, take time for yourself. But especially in the seventies, like, thinking about, like... You know, it's not just that, like, society is homophobic, but psychology, particularly, like, the the way that people have been understanding the self, sexuality, human relations, like, the vocabulary that they have available to think about all of this stuff is homophobic. So that, like, this this book is really important in making available to them in clear, fun language, with, like, cute drawings, like, a a different conceptual repertory for doing therapy speaking.

David Sessions:

This is Off Christopher Street, the podcast about the gay life of the past and the gay discourse of the present. I'm David Sessions, and I am joined by my cohost and fellow historian, Smith. In this episode, we are kicking off what will be an occasional series on gay therapy slop, in which we will talk about how therapy discourse has shaped modern gay self understandings. And

David Sessions:

no, we

David Sessions:

don't mean the old fashioned homophobic psychoanalysis that began to be challenged in the nineteen sixties, but rather what came after Stonewall. The affirming pro gay stuff, the cringe, the corny, and as we will see in this episode, sometimes quite good and powerful powerful advice on how to be gay and how to be part of a gay community. And so to kick it off, we are talking about a book that is certainly in the self help mode, that certainly prefigures gay therapy slop, but is not really slop itself. That's right. The classic, canonical, best selling 1977 sex and lifestyle manual for gay men, the joy of gay sex, which was co written by the therapist Charles Silverstein and by one of his patients who had much more experience in the cruisy promiscuous Vaseline of nineteen seventies New York, the not yet then, but future celebrity gay novelist, Edmund White.

David Sessions:

Ed White was, of course, the author of the novels, a boy's own story, the beautiful room is empty, and the memoir, My Lives, which is worth mentioning here because it opens with a chapter called My Shrinks, which is about Ed White's time in psychoanalysis as a teenager trying to cure his homosexuality, which is kind of a window into the homophobic medical establishment of the 1950s and how that expressed itself in the therapy that a lot of gay men got. But The Joy of Gay Sex is a fascinating, erotic, and powerful self help guide for gay men that was a paradigm shift in how they conceived of themselves and the sorts of psychological tools that they used to explain their feelings, identities, and relationships to themselves. Most of the fun of talking about it is, of course, the sex. It's an encyclopedia of gay sex acts that ranges in tone from coolly technical to steaming erotica, and we enjoy laughing about some of its hot takes and dated terminology. But we also talk about how it takes on gay social problems like loneliness and alcoholism in a way that seems, you know, maybe more productive than a lot of contemporary therapy speak that you might see on social media.

David Sessions:

Before we delve into our conversation, we wanna say thank you to our new paid subscribers since the last episode. It's great to see so many of you heeding my calls to save gay culture by becoming a subscriber, supporting us. We're getting almost to a critical mass where it feels like we should do a special episode for subscribers, know, so maybe that will be coming soon. We'll see. But if you would like to support the show, you can do that by going to christopherstreetmag.com, clicking on the button right on the front of the homepage.

David Sessions:

And other ways that you can support us for free is by following us in your podcast app in Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and by giving us a rating or even better, a review with a couple sentences about why you like the show. That makes us look good and helps other people find us. So with all of that out of the way, we hope you enjoy coming along with us into the fall weather and talking about the joy of gay sex because not to be cringe, but being gay is a joy. Alright. Here we go.

David Sessions:

Alright. We are back again. Blake is here.

Blake Smith:

Hello, listeners.

David Sessions:

People who are only hearing this on audio, they will not see that we both have our fall orange shirts on, which we did not even plan.

Blake Smith:

It is real pumpkin spice basic bitch hour.

David Sessions:

It's really visual pumpkin spice. Has the has the air turned crisp yet in Chicago?

Blake Smith:

Well, I am I am currently in...

David Sessions:

I should...

Blake Smith:

I'm in Delta, Rising, Indiana.

David Sessions:

You are out of town. Right?

Blake Smith:

College town. It is real, like, Lana del Rey Americana, autumnal realness. The backyard of the house I am in faces onto the college football field.

David Sessions:

Did you say which football stadium it is, or is this like a high school football field?

Blake Smith:

No. It's for college football. It's a... They're all of legal age, David. They're they're all of legal age.

Blake Smith:

I would never would never ogle high school boys.

David Sessions:

Well, well, they're not your students. So

Blake Smith:

They're not my students. No. I'm... Will learn nothing from me.

David Sessions:

Well, we had our... We went apple picking last weekend, which is a big

Blake Smith:

This is basic bitch hours. Yes.

David Sessions:

This is... Yeah. This... That's a big, like, content... Gay content opportunity.

David Sessions:

All the Boston gays, like, go to the orchard, and they take their photos in their fall clothes with pumpkins and apple trees. So we did that as well.

Blake Smith:

It's such a... How much do you end up paying for these apples? It's surely not a good deal.

David Sessions:

It is like it's like $25 for a bag of them that you fill up. So, yeah, it's a... It's actually... I mean, it's it's better... It's a better price than the ones they sell in the gift shop for sure.

Blake Smith:

Okay. Right. You didn't earn those. You gotta pick

David Sessions:

them ones that I order from Amazon are, like, a dollar each, which is

Blake Smith:

You're ordering apples from Amazon? You can't go to the store? What is your life?

David Sessions:

I I don't have time to go to this grocery store. I Oh my god.

Blake Smith:

I mean, I I I continue... I mean, I technically have a job now, but it is it is a very fake job, so I do not understand the struggles of employed people. Also, I mean, what in, like, clamshell packaging? I mean, you know, I... Not that I care about the earth.

David Sessions:

No. No. It's... No. It is delivered.

David Sessions:

It's like, you know, it's delivered, like, on... In two hour windows, like, from a local

Blake Smith:

Wow.

David Sessions:

Warehouse or whatever.

Blake Smith:

What a time to be alive.

David Sessions:

Well, we heard... We are back again. We have convened to... Because I have some very important questions to ask you, Blake, and and to all the listeners, which are, why are gay men always acting like there's someone better? Why is it so hard for gay men to make friends?

David Sessions:

Why are gay men racing to ghost each other? Why are gay men competing to care less? And if you've ever found yourself wondering any of these things, you may have, I regret to inform you, been infected by gay therapy slop.

Blake Smith:

This this has been... I haven't been tracking, but months, years, David has been interested in this category of pain. And and I guess, like, through David, because I don't follow these people, my Instagram, which is, like, supposed to be mostly art content and then, like, a few gay friends, is, I would say, 90%, like, Bowenyang comedy videos and gay therapy slop where someone has become a life coach and is asking the hard questions

David Sessions:

about Well, I have to say, like, I never saw this stuff until we started the podcast. And now... And then we have, like, the podcast account, which follows other, you know, gay content creators and stuff, and this stuff starts popping up. And then, of course, the more you look at it, the more of it you see. So I started getting, you know, interested in it.

David Sessions:

These are all... By the way, these are all real carousels posted by the Slop account, gay, tired, hopeful, which kind of tells you everything that you need to know about it, I think, right there in the name. It may or may not be AI generated, but it sounds like it whether it is or not. You know, it might as well be.

Blake Smith:

Well, but AI learned to talk this way from us, so it's hard to know.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Exactly. I, you know, I think people overdo the, like, oh, that's a... That's AI writing. But, yeah, like, there was already shitty writing...

David Sessions:

You know, there was... There are plenty of shitty writing styles on the Internet before AI. Like, so some of the stuff is, you know, AI and human and shitification have just joined forces.

Blake Smith:

And, of course, there's, like, a deep history to the fake question. I mean, we've talked with with Phoebe Maltz Bovy about the ones that frame Carrie's essays in Sex & the City, like, can women in their twenties be friends with women in their thirties? But David has been interested in, like, the particular history of the gay therapy question or the gay therapy concern.

David Sessions:

Yeah. So we were, so the reason we're talking about this is we're... This will be the first of our occasional series that we're gonna do on gay therapy slop. So I thought it would be... Maybe before we get into this week's, selection, we could talk a little bit about, you know, what we mean by therapy slop or why, you know, why we're interested in therapy.

David Sessions:

Because I I wanna be clear that we are not... We're not making fun of therapy. I... You know, both of us have been to therapy.

Blake Smith:

Probably we'll be making fun of therapy.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Yeah. Somewhat. We will certainly be making fun of therapy culture, which, you know, is is somewhat distinct from therapy itself, although they're closely related. But both of us have been to therapy.

David Sessions:

You know, I think we have a... Felt like we benefited

Blake Smith:

from it. Therapist, so you know that, like, one, I'm super together, and two, I have no issues with therapy.

David Sessions:

Your mother is a... I didn't know your mom was a therapist. Yeah. I did not know that.

Blake Smith:

She did a great job.

David Sessions:

Did she use it on you as a as a

Blake Smith:

child? Of course.

David Sessions:

Did she weaponize it?

Blake Smith:

One of one of my strongest childhood memories must have been, like, nine or 10. And, like, I thought I was real clever because I had learned a trick, I'm sure, from watching her where I was like, mom, you're trying to make me feel guilty. And her response was, no one can make you feel anything. That's on you.

David Sessions:

Well, we... Okay. Well, I'll hold that because we haven't even we haven't even announced, what our text is, so I will hold that that thought. But, yeah, like, not just... You know, I think I have been to therapy.

David Sessions:

I have... You know, I've had better and worse therapists. I have, at the very least, always found it was useful to listen to myself talk about... You know, even if the therapist themselves wasn't wasn't that helpful.

Blake Smith:

You can do that for free.

David Sessions:

True. True. That... You know, that's what the journal is for.

Blake Smith:

It's podcast is for. It's what the journal is for. Had Now any

David Sessions:

podcast. Yeah. So, like, we have a, like, a... At least, you know, asterisk positive, you know, tentatively positive view of therapy. We...

David Sessions:

And and think... You know, I think therapy is an important... Or it plays an important cultural role. I know you're a fan of the sociologist, Eva Illouz,

Blake Smith:

who has Who is who is both a a fan and a critic, right, who has a lot of thoughts about how, like, Eva Illouz is, like, really, I think our our most brilliant exponent of, like, therapy's role in modern and postmodern culture

David Sessions:

and the way that, like,

Blake Smith:

both both the practice of therapy and then, like, a sort of culturally distributed therapy speak give people tools for self management, for managing their relationships. It's a... You know, for her, like a Foucauldian technology.

David Sessions:

Right. So... Yeah. Yeah. She sees it as a kind of, like, a technology of the self, a kind of set of tools that that we need in modern society to, you know, make sense of our feelings, of our relationships, to to sort of narrate our emotional experience to ourselves.

David Sessions:

But at the same time as that therapy is... Plays that necessary role, it is also, like, always had a symbiotic relationship with the culture industry. It's always been a commercial product, maybe even a grift in some cases. It's something that is, you know, marketed and sold to people. And so even if you...

David Sessions:

Even if therapy is important as a kind of structural thing, you know, sometimes it may... The the actual contents of it may be garbage.

Blake Smith:

Well... And one thing we'll talk about, that I think Illouz is really smartly clued into is, like, if at one point, a critique that one might make of therapy, like, in the mid twentieth century in America is that it's somehow repressive, phobic. You know, it's, like, on the side of hero patriarchy, whatever.

David Sessions:

Or or from a Marxist standpoint, like, making... It's just making people feel better within capitalism or something. You know? It it

Blake Smith:

Which, like, I love making people feel better within capitalism. I mean, you know, I I love opiates.

David Sessions:

I have... Right. I have learned... I have made my peace with that feeling better within cap... Feeling better under capitalism.

Blake Smith:

But where was this going? Now... And, you know, it loses point, I think, more generally, the problem with therapy in, like, a postmodern or contemporary regime is that the ethical ideal that holdouts is, like, you always need more therapy. Like, any any quality that you have can be coded as a problem or a deficiency. So, like, oh, if you're, like, attached to monogamy or you're, like, really into working hard or you're not that ambitious or whatever.

Blake Smith:

Like, any any personality trait could be imagined as a problem, could be imagined as, like, a step in your journey you need to overcome. And I imagine, like, we all know gay guys who are addicted to therapy programs, so, like, maybe had some original breakthrough or insight at one point in therapy and then have just, like, continued forever in various groups and are having, like, constant pseudo insights. And, you know, only the most ethical therapist will tell you, like, okay. Our work is done. You're free now.

David Sessions:

Right. Right. Right. Right. I actually thought it was surprisingly few of those.

David Sessions:

I do I have... I do know a couple are who who either are life coaches themselves. I know one who's, like, from Instagram. He's, like, super hot and beautiful. Like, I've saw him, like, in a Barry's class before.

David Sessions:

And then he, like, absconded to, like, Southeast Asia and did this, like, yoga. Some kind of, you know, eastern spiritual woo woo, like, lifestyle thing for, like, a couple of years and was always posting this, you know, new age slop

Blake Smith:

on Instagram. He was a cult member, and now he sells. Well

David Sessions:

I don't know. It's... It has seemed... I think he's back in America. It seemed to, like, fade a little bit.

David Sessions:

Oh. But, you know, he was he was hot, so I tolerated it. You know? Hotness covers a multitude of things.

Blake Smith:

I'm sure being hot makes you more credible as a life coach. I do wonder if some of the, like, life... Especially, like, Internet based life coach or, like, you're not really a therapist therapy seems already a bit like findom adjacent, seems a bit... Like, it's it's it's very close to OnlyFans already. You're, like, paying too much money to a hot guy to talk to you.

David Sessions:

Right. There is a way that there is a way that kind of hotness conditions everything that, like, it is, like, the delivery mechanism for almost everything even if it's not literal pornography.

Blake Smith:

Whereas I feel like I wanna hear how an ugly person has made it through life. I want I want the, like, most chopped, wretched therapist. Not that my therapist is very handsome. If you're listening, love you. But, you know, it...

Blake Smith:

It's more... The advice is more credible from someone who's struggled.

David Sessions:

Speaking of which, the The Joy of Gay Sex, which we'll we'll introduce in a moment, you know, it has an entry on beauties, but I I noticed, but it does not have one on ugliness. Or Okay. So not

Blake Smith:

I also flagged the the entry in this book on beauty, and, I mean, we should we should

David Sessions:

It is it is a banger.

Blake Smith:

So... But... Okay. One messy and is it really so ethical thing you could do with your therapist is write a book with them, which is what Edmund White did in the mid seventies.

David Sessions:

You know, we're we're obviously... We're using, like, the term, you know, therapy slop in a somewhat... In a very broad, somewhat jokey way. And some of these... Some of the books we'll be examining probably really are slop.

David Sessions:

This one is this one is probably, I'd say, maybe by a long shot, the best one we're gonna talk about. It's the best. It's it's sort of

Blake Smith:

held up.

David Sessions:

1972, the joy of gay sex by Edmund White. '77. Oh, '77. I'm sorry. Doctor Charles Silverstein.

David Sessions:

It has this... I love this, like, seventies typeface on the cover. It is a little bit hard to find now. It's kind of expensive, like, 75 to a $100 if you buy an original first edition on online.

Blake Smith:

If you want if you want the pre AIDS edition, and if you want the real joy, take... Yes.

David Sessions:

Yeah. I think there's, like, a... There's a post AIDS edition and then probably a more woke edition that are... You know, I... I'm sure both suck.

David Sessions:

However, you can read it online, you know, if you're interested in it. I think everyone should, like, scroll through it.

Blake Smith:

It is on Internet archive if you're feeling poor.

David Sessions:

But... Yeah. So this was this was... The joy of gay sex was this... Oh, that's why I said 1972.

David Sessions:

The original joy or the original joy of sex was

Blake Smith:

The original Joy of Straight Sex.

David Sessions:

The Joy of Sex. The Joy of Straight Sex was this, like, runaway bestseller written by this British scientist named Alex Comfort who, as best I can tell, you know, maybe nothing has changed, like, had no expertise in the topic. He was not like a sex, you know, expert of any kind. I don't know how he came to write this book. But

Blake Smith:

Just a fan.

David Sessions:

It made him a multimillionaire. He was... Apparently, he was salty about the fact that it sold all these copies and, you know, his scientific work got no attention.

Blake Smith:

Sure.

David Sessions:

So when whatever publisher... Is this Simon and Schuster, I think? Anyway, they were they were obviously trying to capitalize on the popularity of this. This book was so popular that most people would probably have heard of it. It was like a, you know, almost a household name.

David Sessions:

So like the joy of gay sex. It would kind of be in the glow of that previous bestseller. And, so this gay therapist, Charles Silverstein, he had Edmund White and several other people kind of audition to to write the gay version. And apparently, Edmund White wrote four different entries on, you know, different topics, and so did several other people. And he he was the one who was selected, and it turned out, you know, he was his coauthor, doctor Charles Silverstein, his therapist.

David Sessions:

So they had

Blake Smith:

to This is this is a real turning point. I don't know Silverstein's life so well, but this is a real turning point at White's life, kind of, doubly, like, his relationship with Silverstein and then his writing of the book. So White had, like, maybe even in high school, certainly in college, like, been in therapy to fix his homosexuality. And he talks about this in the memoirs. He talks about this in the kind of stimmy autofictional books.

Blake Smith:

He had had, like, a

David Sessions:

Right. His first... The first novel that, like, sold well and was... Which one... A boy's own story is a lot...

David Sessions:

You know, it has a lot of scenes of him with a psychoanalyst, you know, talking... Trying to cure his ear... His gayness.

Blake Smith:

And in some ways, of Gay... So Joy of Gay Sex both, reflects White's then more healthy, reparative, productive relationship with Silverstein, where, like, you know, he discovers that therapists aren't all homophobic and trying to cure him, but, you know, can be, like, helping him work through, you know, guilt and shame and anxiety, etcetera, etcetera. And that helpful relationship with Silverstein is part of the genesis of book. But, also, the book really helps White as a writer, both, like, helping him think of himself as a gay writer, someone who's, like, addressing a gay audience, and as someone who is gonna learn how to write clearly. So White's first two novels of the mid seventies, forgetting Elena and Nocturnus of the King of Naples, are both these, like, coded, complicated, kind of Nebuchovian, Borgesian, meta

David Sessions:

They're also very they're very modernist kind of formalist in style as well.

Blake Smith:

Right. They are they are austere, complicated, not fun. They are codedly about... Like like, forgetting Elena is about Fire Island, but you wouldn't know that unless, you know, you... We're told.

Blake Smith:

And neither of them sold well. It was it was really a challenge for him to get the second one published at all.

David Sessions:

Right. And he... In all of his accounts, you know, he tells this... The story of how he came to write the joy of gay sex. He tells it in his memoirs, his his...

David Sessions:

One of his later memoirs, he has many memoirs, city boy. He tells it in his earlier, you know, autofictional book, from the nineties, the Farewell Symphony. He actually had a, he did a interview with Christopher Street when it came out right here. I'm showing it for the camera for those of you listening.

Blake Smith:

Who is this woman on the cover?

David Sessions:

That is Bertha Harris who... She wrote the joy... The lesbian version, the the joy of lesbian sex. Oh. So they they knew each other.

David Sessions:

She was also a writer and had a novelist... Had a novel out, and they both kind of had to decide, you know, okay. Am I gonna associate my name with a gay sex book? And White says, you know, his reasoning was ultimately... He's like, well, I guess at this point, you know, I've already have two novels out.

David Sessions:

They haven't sold. Maybe it'll help. You know? Maybe maybe maybe if I write a commercial bestseller, you know, maybe it'll help.

Blake Smith:

So this makes him some money and establishes him as a writer, like, a gay writer for gay men. But, also, like, just in terms of the pros, I mean, we'll we'll see when we talk about some of these entries. Some of them are... Like, have neat kind of fictional framings, like imagining you are the character in a little vignette. And there are some touches of Ed White pretension.

Blake Smith:

There are phrases in French. There are references to Proust, etcetera.

David Sessions:

There's references to war and peace But Proust.

Blake Smith:

He really breaks through and writes in a style that is accessible to, you know, someone with a high school education. Like, he's he's learning to write for, like, a much larger audience in a way that's not dumbed down, in a way that's not, that doesn't lack for style, still that's distinctly his. But he's he's learning to do some of the things that then he'll do in, like, a boy's own story in '83 or some of his subsequent fiction. So this is... Like, the commercial hack work is good for him.

David Sessions:

And, yeah, and people noticed that. People who knew him, like, noticed that even at the time, you know, his, he he mentions... He quotes one of his friends in the interview with Christopher Street saying... You know, talking about how they could see his personality in the writing even though it was a sex manual. And this friend said, how clever of you to have done a novel in the format of a sex manual.

David Sessions:

I adore the melange of fantasy narratives of autobiography coded as advice of sentimental educations and double dealing reflection.

Blake Smith:

Who said this?

David Sessions:

He's quoting, like, a paragraph long quote from someone else. Kinda sounds made up. But It... That sounds very

Blake Smith:

Ed White. Yeah.

David Sessions:

Right. Right. Exactly.

Blake Smith:

Love her. Love that.

David Sessions:

But, yeah, like, even from just a line here or there, you know, some of the prose and, like, the... You know, it has very Ed Whiteian flourishes. It's kind of funny a little bit. It's kind of... It has a, like, a froth to it.

David Sessions:

It's like a frivolous elegance, I would say.

Blake Smith:

Right. And, I mean, as as we quote things, you know, we'll we'll we'll give readers a taste of this. It's also... It's similar in tone to the then slightly later, states of desire where he, like, for Christopher Street travels around the country talking with gay men, and there's, like, maybe some real interviews. There's some made up stuff.

Blake Smith:

There's some, like, zhuzh and fluff, and, you know, some some touches of the, but ultimately delivered in a way that's, like, designed to be accessible to any reader of the magazine.

David Sessions:

Yeah. So I... The reason, like, I kind of wanted to talk about this, you know, it's it's sort of a good bridge as we move into more contemporary texts from our... What we started with and talking mostly about the seventies and Christopher Street. One of the things that struck me or got me, like, you know, I've known about this book for a long time, but what that I thought was interesting is when I opened the the...

David Sessions:

When I just opened it in the first line, the first line... The opening line of the introduction is male homosexuality as it is today is a brand new phenomenon, which is, like, exactly the point of view of Christopher Street and all of the people that we've talked about. This is... We are we are inventing a culture. And so it kind of immediately, like, inscribed itself in that mode, I think.

David Sessions:

And so I thought that was interesting.

Blake Smith:

So this is something... Like, the introduction to the first edition of Joy of Gay Sex is actually one of the clearest and smartest gay theoretical text of this whole period. And it's a shame that it's not, let's say, more anthologized, better known, but it... I think it it both reflects a certain, like, awareness of Foucault, who Edmund White isn't yet friends with, but will become friends with in a few years when Foucault comes to New York and gets into the Christopher Street scene with people like Michael Denneny and Richard Senate. But it also, like, anticipates and goes beyond what Foucault at the time of the writing, like, in 76-77 yet knew.

Blake Smith:

And it's it's actually a clearer and stronger statement about the novelty of what gay men were doing in this era than texts like Halperin's hundred years of homosexuality, than some of the later, like, queer theoretical text. This is really in, like, four or five pages. It's a succinct, super smart, super cogent explanation of what is uniquely novel and historically contingent, unprecedented about the gay culture that men were building in late twentieth century America. And so, like, very quickly, white and silver steam moved through. Like, homosexuals had maybe been around forever, but the models of homosexuality in ancient Greece, in early modern Europe, in the Victorian era are organized around differences in status, age, class, or are conceived as, like, socially marginal, as somehow, like, avant garde, as transgressive.

Blake Smith:

And what's unprecedented is that we have two adult men loving each other reciprocally. One doesn't become a woman. One doesn't become somehow, like, emasculated or abased. Right. They could have a lifelong relationship, and it's not indexed to some supposed pedagogical purpose or some other kind of social alibi that this is serving some particular end.

Blake Smith:

And, I mean, maybe more optimistically, they're imagining that this distinct, like, postwar American gay kind of homosexuality is about or is is is, linked with the undoing of stereotypes about the homosexual. Mhmm. So that if before, like, the homosexual is, like, you know, the invert, the pansy is some, like, identifiable human type, now homosexuals are gonna have, like, the full range of, you know, possible lifestyles and gender expressions and whatever. Like, what defines the homosexual is just having romantic and erotic relationships with other men, and not... That doesn't necessarily say anything about, like, your gender essence or your character.

David Sessions:

And this is why this is one reason that for, you know, various people in the Christopher Street scene, you know, Ed White himself writes about this in his, you know, essay on the seventies, why... And Foucault also sees the rise of the... Of gay masculinity as important. Like, not because it's the only way to be gay or because it defined somehow as, you know, some some normative way that gay men should be, but but because it's kind of trying out something, you know, gay men have never gotten to be masculine as gay men before. They, you know, they only had to put it on as a kind of costume or to to, you know, to pass as straight.

David Sessions:

Now they get to do it in a gay way. And so that's a form of, you know, what Foucault would say something like creative forces or creative energy about.

Blake Smith:

Right. And there's maybe a bit of a of a tension or a paradox or maybe, you know, white and silverstein are somehow wrong, but their wish is to say, like, what's going on with, like, the new modern American gay homosexuality is not just that it's, like, yet another historical regime that organizes sex between men, but that this one for the first time is not organized around, like, this particular kind of power imbalance or, a stereotype of, like, who the homosexual is, but that these stereotypes are breaking down, opening up so that gays can be masculine, feminine can be... You know, like, two masculine men can be together, two feminine men can be together, whatever. And that they're looking forward to a kind of post transgressive, post avant garde sort of gay identity where, like, gay men can be gay, can be living out like, their homosexuality openly and fully integrated members of society. So that, like, now your homosexuality doesn't say anything about your personality, about your position in society.

Blake Smith:

It only says something about your relations with other men. But they also think that, like, that doesn't mean that gay culture is going to disappear or become nothing. That, like, this is what

David Sessions:

But it's not still central to who you are or is that

Blake Smith:

Right. It's... And it's precisely because people are excited about participating in this gay culture, coming out into it, developing new gay lifestyles and new forms of life, that that's what's opening up these stereotypes and allowing for the possibility of, like, assimilation into the mainstream of society. So for them, there's there's not a sense that, like, oh, gay culture will disappear as soon as oppression ends.

David Sessions:

Yeah. And that's one of the things I think we find interesting about this period because before, you know, before it later gets, you know, I think around the nineties, even though these divides have have sort of been there since the beginning, it gets really calcified into these. Like, either you are... You want homosexuality and gay identity or if you even, you know, you probably don't even believe in that, you believe in queer, you know, that to be some kind of permanently marginal, anti normative thing to be, or you want total assimilation, you know, and that would be like Michael Warner or or you're Andrew Sullivan or Bruce Bauer, and you want just... You're saying that, like, sexuality is not important, you know, that it's just...

David Sessions:

You know, we want to completely blend into society or get to a point where it doesn't matter or doesn't define us at all. And then all... But already back in the seventies, people had a conception that kind of avoided both of those, you know, those dead ends.

Blake Smith:

So... And to say, like, this is different than run of the mill gay therapy slop today, and that it has one of the smartest kind of gay queer theory text that there is. So, like, these... Everyone should read these five or six pages. Like, they're absolutely crucial.

Blake Smith:

It's, like, the the clearest statement about the what's important about the novelty of modern gay homosexuality. And yet, this is also a book, that it it is like... There is this brilliant theoretical introduction to what is in some ways a glorified self help book, which very much has the tone of the whole future industry of gay life coaching.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although, it's like somehow it prefigures that. It sounds like it it...

David Sessions:

You recognize a family resemblance, but it somehow is just better than all of the others. Like, it it it somehow transcends it.

Blake Smith:

Because, I mean, these these are, like, two smart people. I haven't read other stuff by Silverstein, but, you know, this is why in some way at, like, the peak or, like, moving to the peak of his writing powers. I should say before we get into, like, the body of the text, which is all of these fun entries in alphabetical order. Right? So it's it's

David Sessions:

it's written, like, in kind of encyclopedia style. You know, a b c alphabetically ordered, you know, short. Although most of the entries are fairly short, you know, a half page or a page. But some of them, sometimes some

Blake Smith:

quite get quite extended. Some of them are like really little stories.

David Sessions:

Some of them... Even including some unexpected ones, you know, go on for quite a while.

Blake Smith:

But to give you a sense of, like, these these two different men, their voices are blended. You can... You know, some of the touches are unmistakably out of white.

David Sessions:

So apparently, the... What I've read about how they... Their working process was that Silverstein wrote the first draft and that White then rewrote them. So the final version is White's writing, but it has, you you know, contributions from Silverstein in there. And then in other places, he talks about how, you know, Silverstein had his, you know, his perspective as a practicing therapist, you know, his encouragement of, you know, people's emotional issues and their self esteem and the need for warmth and tenderness and stuff like that.

David Sessions:

And then Ed White had all the experience of cruising and, you know, anonymous sex. And so he, you know... So so they kind of came together, combined forces in that way.

Blake Smith:

White as a as a... White on his own, you know, can be, disgustingly cynical or cynically disgusting. And maybe Silverstein without White would be, like, too saccharine. But, you know, this is, like, a book that's pitched at helping people and affirming your self esteem and yada yada, but White has some, like, bitchy little asides here and there. And one, like, clue to their two different personalities is in the dedication before we even get started.

Blake Smith:

So Silverstein says to William from Charles, and White says to all my tricks from him. Thanks, Horace.

David Sessions:

His tricks that he was not seeing while he was... Apparently, they had a very short production schedule for the book, and he was... He he says in a couple of places that he was so... You know, he had to write it so fast that he he was so busy. He did not have time to have sex, but, you know, he was horny, you know, from writing the book, but that didn't have time to have sex.

Blake Smith:

Well, look. Maybe he should have been hornier for some of the other books because this this cooks... Yeah. Maybe he was wasting too much of his, vital energy.

David Sessions:

Okay. So there's... You open a book like this and it has... You know, it's it's not necessarily meant to be read continuously, although you can read it that way. So I was curious, like, how did you approach it?

David Sessions:

Did you like... Was there something you, like, flip to immediately, or did you read it, like, straight through?

Blake Smith:

Well, for me, you know, I open up... So I should say there are three illustrators, two of whom are just terrible. And

David Sessions:

I knew I knew you would have opinions about the the images.

Blake Smith:

The Michael Leonard, these are beautiful. I love these. He was, like, born in India in the thirties or something. He's British. And then the So what is

David Sessions:

the medium? I couldn't tell what the medium of those is. Is that like a... Is it a?

Blake Smith:

Yeah. I don't I don't know how he does it. It has this weird grainy pointillist kind of texture.

David Sessions:

Yeah. It looks almost like a a digital filter, but it's too early for that.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. Yeah. But I find them very horny. I I love the way that, like, the bodies are are cut up in funny ways. I love, like, the the color of the skin.

Blake Smith:

He loves, like, a a bit of a bit of white showing on a tanned body.

David Sessions:

Yeah. This, I'll show this one again in my light. This one here of the the ass with the tan lines.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. This is just like... Also, the sheets look great. The unmade bed looks great. It looks much better than mine.

David Sessions:

And then it has all all of these, like, there's some ancient Greek, like, vase paintings. There are some Roman mosaics.

Blake Smith:

And then there there are these terrible ones of, like... This this apparently is called the crab. The crab. Have... Has anyone ever...

Blake Smith:

I mean, readers, listeners, viewers, whatever, write in if you have ever participated in crab sex, because I don't know what the fuck is going on there.

David Sessions:

Well, I have to say, I I tested it out after reading this book.

Blake Smith:

Okay.

David Sessions:

No. Not... Actually, not while having sex. Look. We we, Jason and I rec read this together, kind of like read some of it out loud together.

David Sessions:

Partly because the one... The first ones I happened to read were just so funny. But we were... We stopped on the crab one, and we were like, okay. We we were clothed at this point, but we were like, okay.

David Sessions:

Let's let's figure this out. It's very it's very strange.

Blake Smith:

And and was this successful? Because it... It's described in the book as a tricky position.

David Sessions:

No. It's definitely tricky. I don't know I don't know how you could comfortably have sex in that position. But

Blake Smith:

Right. There there is apparently some way you can be hitting each other's prostates just right. We... I mean, David and I also discussed before the show began this very cosmopolitan kind of suggestion in the blowjob passage that suggest... And and this this makes no sense to me.

Blake Smith:

But if you're taking a shower together, you can fill your mouth with hot or cold water and engulf his penis.

David Sessions:

Now how This is very, yeah, this is very Cosmo just making shit up to, like, have cover lines.

Blake Smith:

Like, I I, you know, I have I have never had a mouthful of cold water on my penis. I have never tried it the other way. You know, I remember years ago, there was a Cosmo suggestion that you make your lover a ball koozie, that, like, you take a half full glass of water, put his testicles in it, and then use a straw to blow bubbles into the cup.

David Sessions:

Oh my god.

Blake Smith:

Just create, like, a mini jacuzzi for his sack. And, I mean, look, if if I had to fill out x number of sex tips every month, month after month Yeah.

David Sessions:

Exactly. You have to get creative if you have to write, you know, 16, you know, sex positions or or, you know, sexplanations. Or

Blake Smith:

Okay. But... This this is a book that somehow has brilliant theoretical historical insights, stupid tips about, you know, crabbing. And... Yeah.

Blake Smith:

What... I'm I'm I'm curious, David. You know, I I had some favorites, but but which entries

David Sessions:

Okay. Well, you didn't answer. I wanted to hear it. Like, did you did you turn to... Was there something you were so eager to read that you flipped to it, or did you just kinda read straight through?

Blake Smith:

Oh, no. I flipped around. I flipped around. Right. I mean, there...

Blake Smith:

Because so many of the images are compelling or disgusting, and then so I'm just reading around those. Mean, I I think, yeah, probably the the the crab got to me because I just wanted to understand what could this be. There's also, like, there's all of these very, like, not hot guys cruising each other, which I find, like, that's great representation.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I flipped around at first, and then I tried to, like, read through just kind of looking. I was also looking at, like, the length of different ones. Like, why is this one, you know, longer than that?

David Sessions:

Why is x longer than y? Are there any that stand out as, like, strange? Some of them have... Some of them are, like, really objective and covering different perspectives, and they're like, well, some people might like this and other people might like this. And then some of them just start, like, bang with an opinion right at the beginning.

Blake Smith:

Right. And in in many of the entries, if you were trying to use this book to look up something, you would have trouble because, for instance, shooting the rapids. Now I don't I

David Sessions:

don't know what the fuck

Blake Smith:

that is. And then it it... Premature ejaculation or shooting the rapids is one of the most common forms of performance anxiety. See, stage fright. Now I'm not gonna be looking up either stage fright or shooting the rapids.

Blake Smith:

You know, you you really just have to read through the book

David Sessions:

to There are also, like, there are two entries for both premature ejaculation and difficulty ejaculation... Ejaculating under different names. So that's odd.

Blake Smith:

Well... Right. I mean, we we might learn something about the particular difficulties of the authors or the difficulties they found most annoying in lovers?

David Sessions:

Most salient. Yeah. There's a number of things that are just oddly named, like calling straight people who go to gay bars camp followers.

Blake Smith:

Camp followers. I... No. I loved that.

David Sessions:

I loved camp followers. That was fun that was fun, but, like, not something I had heard before. And then there's other things that are, like, a familiar concept, but they have an odd term for it.

Blake Smith:

The camp followers is is immediately followed by camping where... Right. They're imagining that, unfortunately, camp is over or it's about to be over. Gay guys are not funny anymore. They're not joking around.

Blake Smith:

Feminists don't like it. Butch gays don't like it. And Susan Sontag has said the last word on the subject.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Everyone really thinks at the time... Like, in the late seventies, everyone really thinks that camp is over, the drag queen is over. You know, they really think all those are, like, dying with the, you know, now passe closeted, you know, tittering gay culture.

Blake Smith:

And even when they did all die during AIDS, nevertheless, camp is still with us.

David Sessions:

So Yeah. Right.

Blake Smith:

Mhmm. You know, it's not so easy.

David Sessions:

A lot of the ones that I thought were amazing or hilarious were near the beginning. So they're kind of like in the in the early in the early letters. I like this part of... Okay. So we won't...

David Sessions:

We we don't have time to read the entire list. I thought it would be fun to like go go through like A to Z, but but we'll have to skip around somewhat. The first one is androgyny, then we have anus, and number three is bars, which I I thought the bars part was... There were some funny bits in the bars. It tells you how to become a regular at a bar, and then it's like, once you become known in a bar, people will probably gossip about you.

David Sessions:

You will find that you have a reputation, and that even your sexual preferences will become common knowledge.

Blake Smith:

True.

David Sessions:

Which is 100% true. And they go on to say that you shouldn't, that shouldn't make you feel weird. Actually, it saves you time because when other people know what you're into before they even ask you, you know, they'll... You know, if they know you're just a bottom and they're a bottom, then they'll... They won't even bother you.

Blake Smith:

Right. I mean, I I remember very distinctly being, you know, 19, Central Arkansas gay guy, and, like, my fag hag at the time was, like, at a party talking to some gay guy. And he was like, aren't you friends with, like, Blake such and such? I've heard he's a real freak. And, you know, she tells me about this.

Blake Smith:

And at at first, I'm mortified. And then after, I'm like, you know, that's a time saver.

David Sessions:

I mean, yeah, when when you don't know, one does tend to waste time chasing boys that are, you know, incompatible.

Blake Smith:

People are always throwing themselves at me thinking I'm a top. I just wish they knew.

David Sessions:

Do they? Do they?

Blake Smith:

No. No. These are not. Never in my life. Never never.

David Sessions:

Say you're contradicting your previous statements.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. I have never never had such a problem. You were struck speaking of early in the alphabet by beauties.

David Sessions:

Okay. So this might be my this might be my number one favorite in the whole book, because the whole thing is amazing. I would say... I would characterize it as the beauty's interest... Entry is all about, like, how difficult it is to be hot.

David Sessions:

Is that is that what you would say?

Blake Smith:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so a handsome gay man has, as everyone knows, the power to catch dozens of glances the moment he steps into a bar, strolls along the beach, arrives at a party. Sometimes it seems that doors, social, sexual, even career doors, open for him magically. What most people forget is that beauty also inspires envy and nastiness.

Blake Smith:

It's hard out there. Good looking men can head off some of the criticism. White and so... And then white and silver's team, like, have these suggestions for how hot guys can get people to like them by being admit self pitying about

David Sessions:

the problem. If you if you are a hot guy, you have an obligation to tell everyone else how hard your life is so that they'll know that you're normal like them.

Blake Smith:

It'll really endear people to you. Yeah. It'll it'll puncture their fantasies and their resentment and allow you to connect with people. Now I don't have an image of Silverstein on my mind. Ed White was handsome in the late seventies, but he was not...

Blake Smith:

Yeah. He... Like, I don't know that he was a a beauty. I mean, maybe Silverstein had some patients who were truly burdened by Yeah. He's actually

David Sessions:

he's actually pretty handsome on this cover of Christopher Street here.

Blake Smith:

He's totally like the most handsome guy in your office. You know?

David Sessions:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Blake Smith:

But, like, would I be destroyed by him psychically, like, from having seen him? Would it be some death in Venice shit? No. No. I don't.

Blake Smith:

I don't.

David Sessions:

But anyway, after they've given you all these instructions... Actually, one of the things I like about this book is that modern day therapy, a lot of it is about why everyone else is the problem. You know? Everyone else, at least at least therapy talk, like the speak, the TikTok version of therapy, a lot of it is about like why everyone else is the problem and you are, you know, a perfect saint. Everyone else has anxious attachment.

David Sessions:

Everyone else has... Is a narcissist, you know, whatever. But you, not you. One of the things I like about this book is how often the advice is that you are the problem.

Blake Smith:

Which is... It is the true lesson of, like... I mean, what therapy is supposed to do, there's a kind of one two of, like, you get to express your stupid feelings, and then the therapist tells you, like, okay. Well, now what? What are you gonna do about that?

Blake Smith:

But... Yeah. I mean, the the difference, I guess, between, like, a a competent practitioner of therapy and the way that we might have therapy concepts available to us is, like, in the latter, I can be like, well, how are other people the problem? In what particular way are other people crazy?

David Sessions:

Mhmm. And there is a lot in this book because it is also a... I would say that it is a text It is a political text as well. It is a text of gay liberation. There's politics running all the way through it.

David Sessions:

So there is a lot of like gay people have these particular... Some of these particular problems or these particular feelings because of oppression and homophobia. There's almost nothing about the pathologies of gay men as a whole, or this is why other gay men are the problem or they're bad or they're pathological. If it's at the individual level, it's almost always saying like, it's you. You're the problem.

David Sessions:

Your mindset and expectations are the problem.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. So there... I mean, there's a lot of ones that move really well between, like, the one on alcoholism, like gay alcoholism, or, like

David Sessions:

Mhmm.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. You're going to the bar to meet people. You feel bad because you're not meeting people, or you have to get drunk in order to be able to talk to people. You get drunk when you're rejected, blah blah blah blah blah. And then you're an alcoholic.

Blake Smith:

So, like, there there almost certainly is, like, a higher incidence of alcoholism, I think, among gay men. Right.

David Sessions:

Yeah. And and drug use for sure. Yeah.

Blake Smith:

And on the one hand, Silverstein and White, like, talk about this. This is a social problem. This is a problem that, you know, has its roots in homophobic oppression. On the other hand, while we should be fighting for our civil rights and into homophobia, and there is a section that's actually quite good on civil rights in the joy of gay sex, which I'm sure is not in the joy of straight sex. But on, like, the practical level, what can you do about it?

Blake Smith:

You know? Maybe you should be more conscious about your drinking. Maybe you should go to the gay.

David Sessions:

Right. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. But, anyway, all of that to say, after they have enumerated all of these responsibilities of the hot person, of the beauty, you know, these things that you have to do to keep other people from hating you.

David Sessions:

If you don't want other people to hate you or to be always just barraged with envy and nastiness, these these are the obligations you have to do, the the things you... The list. And then they say, love this. Of course, it all requires the patience of an angel, and at times, you may long to be ugly.

Blake Smith:

So so many beautiful people, I'm sure, are... Although, look. I'm not a therapist. Maybe if you are a therapist, you have hot gay guys lined up around the block waiting to come into your office and cry about how they wish they were ugly. Could be.

David Sessions:

But, you know, as mentioned, there is... You know, we have this entry on, you know, the travails of of hot people. There is not an entry about ugliness. I made a list as I was reading of the entries that this were surprisingly missing or that I might Perhaps. Else is it?

David Sessions:

Ugliness. Although that, you know, there is a lot of stuff. You know, there's one about body image. There's one about... You know?

David Sessions:

So that might kinda cover ugliness. So so maybe it's just there under different things. Other things that I thought were missing, there's no armpits, no balls. Oh, no balls. No un...

David Sessions:

Underwear as mentioned briefly under fetishes, but not really talked about. But, you know, there's one reference to jock straps, but that's not talked about very much. Condoms are Oh, yes.

Blake Smith:

Well, it's... That's surely in the second edition that is in the, you know, post AIDS, wrap it up. And there there... You know, not to be needlessly morbid, but there is something unfortunate about White and Silverstein are both... You know, there...

Blake Smith:

There's several pages quite responsibly on sexually transmitted diseases or whatever we're calling them now, but they are both in a kind of pro promiscuity ideology. Like, you know, in in their, section on lovers, like, you know, they're in favor of long term romantic relationships, but they think, like, it's quite normal and even maybe politically good for them to be sexually open. Like... And you don't even have to be sexual with your lover anymore. You can both have sex with other people and not have sex with each other.

Blake Smith:

And, you know, this is not accompanied by advice to wrap it up or, you know, reduce your number of sexual partners. So

David Sessions:

Right. Yeah. And and if you think about it, they were kind of in a in a moment... Like, they talk a lot about, you know, very... The STIs that you can...

David Sessions:

You could get at the time, and they're in a moment kind of like we are now where it's, you know, they don't know about HIV yet. The the things that are most common that people get all the time, you know, are treatable, so they're not the end of the world. So they kind of write from that perspective that we might, you know, have sort of gone back to.

Blake Smith:

Right. Who knows what we don't yet know about now in our pre whatever moment. I mean, to all the horrors out there, I hope you're having fun, but you got five years.

David Sessions:

But... Yeah. So no... There's nothing in... You know, there's all this sex, you know, quite technical sex advice and...

David Sessions:

But nothing about nothing about avoiding illness.

Blake Smith:

They're also... So right. There's there's some technical sex advice, some of which holds up. I mean, if, yeah, readers wanna practice, any of the more wacky things and let us know, I'm not gonna be doing the crap. I don't I don't have the back for it.

Blake Smith:

I don't have the lower back strength I think to be pulling this off. And then there's sort of... There's political stuff. There's, like, civil rights. There's, like...

Blake Smith:

You know, there's, recommending that you go to consciousness raising meetings, which is very late seventies. I don't know if White actually went to those, these kind of group therapy sessions where, like, gay men are imitating feminists?

David Sessions:

Yeah. I think he did, either he did or I'm confusing him with Martin Duberman. Martin... The historian Martin Duberman has a has a memoir about his therapy, you know, years in psychoanalysis, you know, and and how like he continued going to this... Going to psychoanalysts years after he lived a basically openly gay life, you know, was still always...

David Sessions:

We forget, you know, psychology and psychoanalysis had such prestige at the time that a lot of people like Ed White, even though they were enjoying having gay sex and having lovers, they still thought that because scientists said that they were disordered, then they must be.

Blake Smith:

And and, you know, this is a good point insofar as, like, it's easy to make fun of the corny, self affirming, you know, not particularly intellectual dimension, both of, like, much of the joy of gay sex, but also, like, contemporary gay therapy slop where, you know, communicate, love yourself, take time for yourself. But especially in the seventies, like, thinking about, like... You know, it's not just that, like, society is homophobic, but psychology, particularly, like, the the way that people have been understanding the self, sexuality, human relations, like, the vocabulary that they have available to think about all of this stuff is homophobic. So that, like Right. Mhmm.

Blake Smith:

This this book is really important in making available to them in clear, fun language, with, like, cute drawings, like, a a different conceptual repertory for doing therapy speak.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and...

David Sessions:

Right. And because most of us have not, we may have grown up with certain types of home... Expected types of homophobia, religious homophobia, or whatever. We haven't really grown up in a time where homophobia has that kind of scientific prestige behind it.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. And and indeed, like, the homophobia that White and Silverstein imagine people encountering in this, like, when they talk about, like, coming out to your family or coworkers or whatever, like, religious and conservative prejudice is not it's it's not really imagined. Like, what's imagined is

David Sessions:

that That is interesting. Yeah.

Blake Smith:

Neurotic discomfort. So, like, the homophobia becomes, like, psychologized, but it's not grounded really in people's values or worldview. I mean, there's something maybe overly optimistic. Like, it... It's coming from a very, like, secular East Coast kind of framework, that, like, homophobia will disappear because it is itself a symptom of people's bad psychology that the profession of psychology can cure.

Blake Smith:

With with light... So my favorite entry is this, sort of fictional vignette. I will not read the whole thing. It is several pages. But there is, coming out

David Sessions:

The coming out intro. Yeah. That was that was one that I marked as, like, a central one to talk about.

Blake Smith:

For White and Silverstein, this means, like, your first homosexual sexual experience, and, like, your kind of gay awakening, which is not how anyone uses this term anymore and not Right. Really how people were using the term in the late seventies, at least in the pages of Christopher Street.

David Sessions:

Okay. So that struck me too. So it's like this short... This erotic short story almost of, like, you know, he meets this boy on the beach. They go up to the hotel room and he has sex for the first time.

David Sessions:

And then the boy says like, I've brought you out or you've come out. And I was like, wait, that's not... I don't I don't think that's whatever what coming out meant. But then it kind of goes on to like can somewhat confusingly suggest that, you know, all the different meanings of coming out are like it's a process or this ongoing thing. So it it it does sort of cover the range of the semantic range there, but that...

David Sessions:

I also thought that was odd.

Blake Smith:

Right. I I would like, you know, besides the the strangeness of what they mean by coming out, I do love this this sexual vignette, which seems like... I mean, here's Ed White actually writing about a gay sexual encounter in clear, fun language really for the first time. And if if you compare, he had already written Nocturnes for the King of Naples, but he was struggling to find a publisher for it. So it comes out the following year, '78.

Blake Smith:

If you compare, like, the scenes of cruising at the beginning of that novel, which are so metaphorically elaborate, you barely can tell what's going on to the, like, nifty.org erotica prose of this. Like, this is really, like, a light year ahead. Like, it's it's it's fun.

David Sessions:

I don't know we... If we have elaborated on this, but Blake and I are both fans of nifty.org.

Blake Smith:

Love Nifty. Love her. You know, Data Lounge is gone, but Nifty, which has been up for, like, thirty years or something.

David Sessions:

Nifty, by the way, it's a it's a repository of not fan fiction, but, like, you know, written... Internet written erotica.

Blake Smith:

Erotic stories. Our own. Yes.

David Sessions:

I never have asked you, though, which category you like. Authoritarian. Authoritarian. So

Blake Smith:

let's see. You've gone to the far end of the beach where you know men in pairs and groups hang out just because... Well, just for fun. You don't really give it much thought. You're wanting to sun with these guys, but you do notice your mounting excitement.

Blake Smith:

They all seem to be having fun. In the water, two slender fellows are sitting on the shoulders of beefier guys and are playing war. Near you, another group, all well built and methodically tan, are playing cards on a blanket and listening to a transistor. Blah blah blah. You see a hot guy.

Blake Smith:

His chest is almost hairless except for a fleur de lis of down around each nipple. Now that's that's a classic Ed White retent. You know? Right.

David Sessions:

I have to I have to say I was like, ew.

Blake Smith:

Well, right. Is... It... Has that ever... Does it ever come in that shape?

Blake Smith:

That's crazy. Right? That's right. His legs, however, are luxuriously furred and powerful. In a rush, that forbidden desire to touch this body comes back over you.

Blake Smith:

Now here's here's another classic Ed White touch coming up. Here's where it gets fucked up.

David Sessions:

Luxuriously furred.

Blake Smith:

Luxuriously furred.

David Sessions:

Start over, but I... I'm gonna use that phrase luxuriously furred.

Blake Smith:

His legs, however, are luxuriously furred and powerful. In a rush, that forbidden desire to touch this body comes back over you. He looks so much like an older version of Tommy, the kid you messed around with when you were 14. But what did that shrink tell you back in college when Shane faced you and told him about you and Tommy? Oh, that's just a phase.

Blake Smith:

And then, like, throughout their sexual encounter, you keep thinking about Tommy, the 14 year old, which is like, okay, Ed White. Please go to jail. Like, I am not I am not thinking about... Like, you know, like everyone in middle school, high school, I had, like, crushes, sexual experiences, whatever. I am not thinking about that while

David Sessions:

I I am not I read that as kind of, like, cause back... Callbacks to where your kind of your memories... Like, almost Proustian string together, connections.

Blake Smith:

Proustian memories of a 14 year old boy. Yeah. That... I mean, that

David Sessions:

is Remembering a feeling that you had previously when you happened to be a teenager yourself. Right?

Blake Smith:

Mhmm. It's it's a palimpsest, but it's also pedophilia. I mean, love him, but you you also see, like, in, I think, 1980, 1981, a first section of a boy's own story appears in Christopher Street, first love, where it's like two 13 year olds doing it. And, you know, I wanna be a real one. You know?

Blake Smith:

I I I love being, transgressive, love being antinormative, but I, you know, I can't I cannot hang out there with Ed White and Dennis Cooper. And

David Sessions:

Well, Dennis Cooper is, you know, a real one. I think Ed White has quite quite wide range of tastes.

Blake Smith:

Well, but if if if you can be thinking about a 13 year old while you're doing anybody, you know, it's, it's not illegal.

David Sessions:

Okay. Come on. Come on. This this boy has, like, never had sex before. Like, it's it's just awakening his teenage memories.

Blake Smith:

It's it's a teenage dream. That's what Katy Perry meant. Yeah. But it truly... So one, it's it's True.

Blake Smith:

Banger. Written. It's... And it's like... It...

Blake Smith:

It's Ed White's mature style. Like, come... It's crystallizing in this, and it's it's great from the fleur de lis nipples to the 14 year old. It also really recalls... I'm sure, David, you have not watched Without You, I'm Nothing, the Sandra Bernhardt movie from the early nineties.

Blake Smith:

But course not. Sandra Bernhardt. She's this, you know, performance artist who, like, much admired of Gary Indiana, friends with Madonna for a bit in the nineties, still around. And she's sort of like a lesbian who does, like, a kind of drag. Like, she does, like, these character performances.

Blake Smith:

And she has a great one that begins... The year is 1979, and you're straight. And it's about, like, a straight guy somehow accidentally ending up at, like, a gay club in the Castro and listening to Sylvester and realizing he's a faggot, and it... Like, just, like, this wonderful five minute arc. She is a genius.

Blake Smith:

All gay men need to know Sandra Bernhardt. And, yeah, the the, like, you. They're like, you are a closeted guy. But little do you know, by the end of this story, you're gonna be sucking and fucking.

David Sessions:

The coming out one also has... It has one of the many moments in this book. Like, it's kind of... They're kind of threaded throughout a bunch of different entries where they they really present, like... And I think this is, like, kind of a theme that we've talked about is, hating on other gays or other types of gays as a form of, you know, either internalized homophobia or insecurity or whatever.

David Sessions:

Like, they're very they're very against this kind of... You know, that's always a sign of pathology if you are kind of setting yourself apart or or or above other gays, which is

Blake Smith:

That's right. Like, you... We should be in an attitude of it taking all kind of fruit to make fruit cup. And the... Yeah.

Blake Smith:

The last stage of coming out is identifying with other gay people. This final achievement, a sense of solidarity with gay men and women presupposes a secure self evaluation to express anger and contempt toward other gays to say, I like regular guys like me, but I hate queens and leather freaks, etcetera, etcetera, is only another subterfuge for low self esteem. So the final stage of coming out is not hating other faggots.

David Sessions:

Mhmm. Oh, yeah. And I'm

Blake Smith:

We are all working toward that final stage.

David Sessions:

I am just remembering this, but I really liked the way that it... Toward the end of the fictional part of the coming out entry before it switches into, like, its analytical prose. It's like, you go on vacation to Fort Lauderdale with Ned, and it's describing kind of like, as... Now that you've had this first sexual experience, you're in the process of coming out. Like, as you go through the hotel and see the, you know, the the boy at the counter looking at you, You see a a gay couple go by.

Blake Smith:

You know how to spot them now.

David Sessions:

And this dawning realization that other gay people are all around you and that you are now part of something. I really like... I loved that, like, as a as a kind of capturing of what that feels like or what that should... How we should conceive of that as, like, as, you know, we are entering into something. We we...

David Sessions:

One of the great things about being gay is that we now belong to something. We are not... And it's like

Blake Smith:

The the church organist you meet who lives with his much younger companion who he's teaching the art of organ building. And

David Sessions:

because he phrases it in this really beautiful way because, you know, because, you know, in this in this fictional narrative, you're... You happen to be on vacation with your straight friend, You aren't with... You know, you can't, like, engage with the other gay people. And so it says, you wish you were with them. And then you realize that you are.

David Sessions:

They're a part of your world, and you are a part of theirs. You're not alone anymore.

Blake Smith:

Also, like, Fort Lauderdale, I am not aware. I I have never been, did not know.

David Sessions:

Fort Lauderdale is very gay. Yeah. Okay. Still today.

Blake Smith:

See, we we we all learn by returning to the classic text.

David Sessions:

It's kind of... It's like an older gay retirement area. It's kinda Palm Spring, the East Coast version of Palm Springs.

Blake Smith:

I am sure I can't afford. But if a sugar daddy wants to make me

David Sessions:

Which by the way, I had no idea that until I was reading Brad Easton Ellis' The Shards that Palm Springs is like in the desert. Yeah. They call it... They... I thought it...

David Sessions:

You know, I just assumed from the name, it was like a coastal, you know, California beach place.

Blake Smith:

That's the power of Southern California real estate branding. Okay. Do we... There's there's not really... Like, because of the alphabetical encyclopedic nature of the book, it does not have a clear arc.

Blake Smith:

So, I mean, having covered its political, its, sexual, technical, its fictional dimensions, and some of its psychological advice to the beautiful in their struggles. What what do... Do do you have a conclusion in mind, or what's a what's a place to land?

David Sessions:

Some of them I thought were... There were a couple that I just thought were funny, like, funnily written. They really love the word buns. They overuse it for ass cheeks. I guess they did not have a

Blake Smith:

There is an entry for buns, which is not the word I would be looking up.

David Sessions:

They did not have access to cheeks, I suppose. I don't know. Maybe people said that at the time. There's an entry called bottoms up, which is... It sort of means...

David Sessions:

It basically means being in in a position we would call ass up. It doesn't have the connotations of being, you know, ass up like a cum dump in a hotel room. But

Blake Smith:

that's just the... I mean, your ass is either up or... They they have a section about, like, being fucked on the side called scissoring or Scissoring. Or florette or flourage or something, some some absurd thing that no one has ever said. Also, Ed White at some points calls six nine ing soissant nothing.

Blake Smith:

He's very

David Sessions:

Of course, he does. Okay. But, yeah, this this is just, like, funny writing in the way that it's kind of corny and and cringe. For a man who is turned on by the touch and the sight of buns, nothing could be more exciting than to see his partner lying on his stomach, legs spread, just waiting to get fucked. This position hotter than when your

Blake Smith:

face is hidden from me.

David Sessions:

Anyway, there's also some very corny writing... Or actually, this might have been the first one that I, obviously, I turned to the rimming entry. We will have more to say about rimming in a later episode. But, so I turned to this one. It has a lot of rather corny writing in it as well.

David Sessions:

The rimmer shouldn't attack the asshole. It's part of the... True. It's a part of the body that should be approached with slow teasing motions, working first in wide circles and then darting in unexpectedly. You've been feeling the small I can

Blake Smith:

feel in its burrow.

David Sessions:

I know. Okay. So so this this is the way that the book, you know, impacted my actual sex life. So we were, so I read that one aloud, and we were just, like, cracking up because it was so silly sounding. And then later, like, I think I was, like, about to eat his ass, and he was like, are you gonna dart in unexpectedly?

Blake Smith:

Well, yeah, he shouldn't have asked because then how can you answer? It won't be unexpected. But it's true. They also say this in the blow job thing, which is that it can easily become repetitive. And if you're bored, they're bored.

David Sessions:

There is also, there's an essay in slate from when this... From the fortieth anniversary of this book, which was, like, 2017, so like almost a decade ago. But there's a guy who's like, you know, he's writing about how it... How this book was... You know, he found it when he was in college, and it was really important to him, and then about reading it later.

David Sessions:

And now he's like, apparently, side now, and he's like, it's really biased toward fucking, and and apparently, he's... He was a little miffed that it did not have enough to say about cock sucking.

Blake Smith:

Oh, that's... Well, the... I mean, there's like a page on the blowjob. It's true. I guess they could have given more.

Blake Smith:

I I don't know when side started. It wasn't but a couple years ago, right, that that was available as an identity.

David Sessions:

I I firmly believe that being a side is fake. I

Blake Smith:

mean, what... You know, I mean, I I have been in relationships where we're not really doing anal. You know, as with... It was with for some years, a guy whose dick was too big for him to comfortably and didn't really enjoy.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Yeah.

Blake Smith:

No. No. I I

David Sessions:

I know it's like it's a, you know, it's a thing. You know, some people prefer that. Just making it into, like, an identity is is odd to me.

Blake Smith:

Yeah. I mean, we we don't really... You know? I mean, there's lots of things that I'm not that into, and I don't need a word for it. But, angry sides plea...

Blake Smith:

Like, I'll say this I'll say this in in favor of the sides. As a community, much less annoying than the foreskin people.

David Sessions:

Oh my god. Oh my god. Yes. I completely agree about that.

Blake Smith:

David and I were raked over the coals in the foreskin subreddit.

David Sessions:

Worry.

Blake Smith:

They were very hostile to my whole deal. I was not taking the issue seriously enough. Yeah.

David Sessions:

Oh, okay. I thought they were pretty pretty

Blake Smith:

positive about us. They do not like their issue being approached in a tone of levity.

David Sessions:

I I see. Or by gays or people who are not, you know, initiated into the lore, I guess. Okay. There was a part that I... So in the category of things that, you know, them saying you're the problem, giving

Blake Smith:

you tough

David Sessions:

love, I can't find where it was... Which one it was in. But, they they address some of, like, things that are very modern, like very... Sound very contemporary, very much in modern gay therapy slop. And it's something like if you...

David Sessions:

It's talking about, like, a kind of like alienation or hookup culture or something like that. And it's like, many gay guys will create for themselves a life life of nothing but anonymous sex and then complain that all men want is anonymous... All gay men want is anonymous sex.

Blake Smith:

Yes. I... Yeah. I don't remember what what this was in, but, yeah, there's there's there's a great paragraph to this effect.

David Sessions:

But I thought that was I thought that was, you know, a, an example of them being like, no. You're the problem. You... Your mindset and the way that you approach gay life creates these problems for you, but also a kind of addressing this this sort of very common trope of gay therapy slop in the way it should be addressed, which is like, you are finding what you're looking for.

Blake Smith:

Well... And, you know, you have, I guess we both have, promoted the podcast in the, r s for gay subreddit. Shout out to our wonderful listeners. But many of those people are the worst losers on earth, and a lot of the a lot of the posts are like, why is gay culture x? And what it means is, like, why am I x?

Blake Smith:

Why am I attracting x? And the answer is, like, because you're giving loser, because you're engaged in loser ish behavior. Like, why did the dogs follow me home while your pockets are full of doggy chow? So

David Sessions:

Yes. Yes. Exactly. Okay. Anything else we, anything else we wanna say?

Blake Smith:

You know, RIP Ed White, RIP Charles Silverstein, at some point at some point, dear viewers, you know, I will be briefly appearing as a talking head in this utterly shameless Ed White documentary, but I don't I don't know how much screen time I will end up getting.

David Sessions:

Yeah. I I thought was that supposed to have come out by now.

Blake Smith:

But Yeah. I mean, you know, wheels are in motion.

David Sessions:

Well, anyway, we have said... You know, as we have said with Andrew Holleran, as we have said with other... Not a lot of other books where, you know, where we can be pretty hard on books, but I think this is... This belongs in the canon. This...

David Sessions:

You know, it makes the cut.

Blake Smith:

Oh, yeah.

David Sessions:

It is it is a classic. It is, you know, exactly right in a lot of ways.

Blake Smith:

It would be so wonderful if there were a reissue of the first edition or or maybe of the, the first edition with, like, you know, Felice Picano has a preface to the, AIDS edition. So, like, you know, you should you should also hear about how you ought to wrap it up. But the illustrations are really cool. It's a really interesting time capsule, and it shouldn't be $75. It would be great if, you know, you could get it for not so much money.

David Sessions:

Right. Yeah. And there's, you know, there's a lot of... As always, the parts about parts about homophobia and gay liberation or, you know, those parts are, like, a little bit dated or not exactly the the world that we live in. But, you know, as we found, you know, in our, you know, better part of a year now, doing the show, you know, a lot of a lot of things haven't changed.

Blake Smith:

Well, gays are still alcoholic sluts who are mean to each other, so that has

David Sessions:

not changed. Love us. And and gays still think that gay culture is the problem when in fact they are the problem.

Blake Smith:

And so, right, we're we're saying gay guys need to go to therapy? David and I need to become life coaches. That's the next... That's our advocate experience, the Off Christopher Street experience. For just $500 over a weekend, we'll fix you.

David Sessions:

Hey. As as the listeners who have emailed us so far know, I will I will write back to you for free. Like, you know, I won't

Blake Smith:

First email is free. Will correspond with you

David Sessions:

at length, for free.

Blake Smith:

Do you want underwear that that costs you?

David Sessions:

Yes. Yes. If you want my if you want my used underwear, like, tell me what to do to it, and, you know, that will be... I will send you some rates.

Blake Smith:

Oh, no. No custom. No cut. This isn't Bert King. No.

Blake Smith:

You get it the way you get it.

David Sessions:

Okay. Well, so wrapping up our first our first episode on gay therapy slop. We should be we should be honored to have this as gay therapy slop, you know, if It's

Blake Smith:

all downhill from here. This is this is the only one that's good.

David Sessions:

Yeah. Finding the boyfriend within the velvet rage, you know, way, way, way down the hill from this. So

Blake Smith:

So watch out this.

David Sessions:

Alright. We will see you all next time when we pick up with either our next Therapy Slap text or something else. Till next time. Have a

Blake Smith:

good you and ourselves. Bye.