Christopher Sherman

This newsletter is celebrating sexual diversity, differing desires, relationship structures, 
and individual choices based on consent. Sexuality is an important part of being human.

Have a horny day. 

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Dorothy Entering Technicolour

The world wide web made me gay. Those three W’s played a very critical and pivotal role on my yellow-brick road to queerdom.

My family got a home computer with internet in 1996. I was fourteen in that year. There is a very clear division in what was my life before internet. There is also a very clear division in memory before the internet would provide me access to my first images of search term “naked man” and “gay sex”.

There is no greater THRILL even to this day of waiting 2 minutes as you waited in your horniness to view your first “gay orgy” image as the Netscape web browser slowly loaded - or better yet waiting 8 - 12 minutes to watch one of your first 30 second gay porno clips. What your imagination could do with those 30 second clips.

With the discovery of each new image - and homosexual sex search term - the neural pathways in my brain felt like a cargo ship carrying the world’s supply of fireworks after being set on fire. Home internet for a fourteen-year-old poorly closeted homosexual in a pretty homophobic 90’s Canadian city could best be described as my first Oprah’s Trademarked Aha Moment!

My homosexual internet introduction could best be described by the scene in the Wizard of Oz when the camera films Judy Garland Dorothy from over her shoulder as her life goes from sephia to colour in the blink of an eye. Dorothy entering Technicolour.

The World Wide Web turned my life into technicolour. But much like the best parts of life they are not always easy to access. All great journeys have challenges. My horny challenge of 1996 was the location of the computer. There beside the one television in the house, boxed in by two royal blue couches sat the computer - allowing for a comfortable audience of 6 to watch both boxes. The home computer became the focal point of the room. Not the optimal space for discovering the world of gay sex - and not a great place from an interior design perspective.

Ah, the days when you couldn't use the phone and the Internet at the same time. In the 90’s to access your internet you needed to sacrifice the phone line and potential callers if you wanted to surf Spice Girls message boards and the Rosie O’Donnell Show fan online chat groups.  But dialling onto the internet was another story completely. 

The sound of accessing the internet was wild and loud for a sound that had not existed years before. It sounded like a telephone was manually dialing on speakerphone 100 angry cats who were puking and hissing in a corner of the room while there was audio static on the line. A traumatizing sound for someone just looking for dick at 3am.

To combat computer placement, I would wake up at 3am with my little Casio watch alarm under my pillow to surf the internet. My mother worked nights and my dad was a deep sleeper, but it still was a proceed was caution mission. My sister would often fall asleep to a VHS in the built in TV/VCR popular combo of the time adding extra static audio cover for my family room porno mission. 

The first few times I saw gay sex and gay pornography I felt an over serge of excitement like I had never felt before. An excitement that comes from the core of you. A pleasure and ecstasy so foreign to you but also so familiar. I remember feelings almost like I was going to puke, like when a dog gets too excited and decides to puke in its tracks. It was also the moment I knew I was not alone and that a lot of questions and gapping missing pieces started to show themselves. Being gay had new meaning and life for me. There was more. There is more.  

The home computer was bought by my Omi with her school teachers pension money. It arrived in my home attached with great aspirations that both my sister and I would get straight A+’s on our school essays. Those results never materialized. But the journey of self-discovery went from being passive to passionate thanks to surfing the web.

The world wide web blew open my queer mind to what could be possible. I was Dorothy entering technicolour. 

Have a horny day. x

Christopher Sherman (He/Him)
Instagram:@christophersherman_photo

FAVOURITE HORNY BOOK | TELENY OSCAR WILDE
Written by Alexis De Bonis

I always loved transgressive, scandalous, audacious and licentious books. Books anonymously born. Books without identity, which flirt with the censorship. Books secretly sold and however that everybody knowns. I love fugitive books. I found them powerful because the author frees himself from all the heavy moral and the established order. He gives oneself the freedom and he speaks truth to power.

The twenty year old boy that I am, admires the strength of these authors. They express the most personal things they have: their desires, their wishes, their fears, their thoughts, their creativity…

Being free is sexy. Being yourself is sexy.

The book that embraces freedom, love, sexuality and the fragility of human beings is Teleny. It was written by the famous dandy and aesthete: Oscar Wilde.

Published for the first time in London in 1893, the book is an ode to homoeroticism. In each chapter, references from the holy book are used to describe the love between two men: Teleny and Camille. This sanctifying their love.

Moreover, there are plenty reminiscences to classical mythology and literature. Wilde wrote this book in an exquisite poetic way. I turned the pages frenziedly. Each sentences, made me more and more horny. By reading the lustful scenes, my senses were exalted. I wanted to join them, to feel them. At a point, I let my fingers skim across the fervent paper. I was on alert, my imagination bursted out, my heart beat increased, my breath was coming in gaps. My hands, firmly held the book, but suddenly the inanimate paper turned into skin. I was overwhelmed with emotions, strong and passionate feelings. They made me cry: my sap tears flowed.

To confess that this love and carnal story made me dream and made me horny is really rough. During the high school years, I saw people falling in love, I saw people being able and allowed to express their sexuality for their first time, while, for my first time I explored my sexuality secretly with a stranger.

After sending to each other pictures, he gave me his address. I didn’t even know his name. I will always remember my footsteps in the noisy wooden stairs, I was afraid. When I reached the right floor, the door was partially open, he was waiting for me, no move back was possible. Dear reader, I share this with you for the first time. I’m frightened and also ecstatic to share you this. I now my relatives will never found out about this text, this makes me more comfortable: it’s easier to introduce myself to you, an unknown reader because you don’t have any expectation from me. I tell you who I am and what I did and you deal with it.

I read Teleny at the end of high school and it was liberating to see a man devoting himself to an other man in a romantic way. For a long time, I was muzzled by the shame, kept prisoner in the cage of silence and attached by the rope of fear. I deprived myself from love. To me, this feeling seemed unapproachable. Today, I’m learning to embrace my identity. I met Teleny and I will always be grateful.

Alexis De Bonis
@alexis_debonis

FAVOURITE HORNY MOVIE | MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
Written by Sardar Singh

Do I have a favourite film that makes me horny? As I ask myself this question, I’m transported back to 16 year old me, sitting on my mum's sofa, feeling engulfed in fear and thrill. On-screen, Hanif Kureishi’s, My Beautiful Laundrette. One hand on the remote, the other down my pants and an ear listening for the door - and they say men can't multitask.

Everything about this film is defiant, queer, and erotic. Debauchery at its finest, yet it's not a typical south London criminal racket at the center of the story, rather an aristocratic Indian immigrant Muslim family working to earn their place in Thatcherite England, at any cost. 12 years on from that moment and I ask myself, when did I become so boring? Being outed at 20 and finally escaping repression and policing of my sexuality at 25, when did freedom and liberation equal mundane? 

This film unlocks memories long forgotten before apps like GrindrEats™ existed, when all we had were sites like craigslist, “meet me at the canal path at 6.30, ill be wearing a black hoodie”, how else did a closeted teen in 2008 meet guys? Oh, my naive heartbreak, clocking guys in my small town with their girlfriends/wives, just days after our intimate transaction. Back then what turned me on was risk, danger, and secrecy. I met guys without bias, it was like roulette of who turned up at the meet. I find myself questioning if GrindrEats™ serves to only indulge my biases and take away from the thrilling experiences of the past. 

What makes me horny for this film today isn’t what it was before. Younger me was turned on by the sex and their love story, older me is turned on by the sex, romance, risk, politics, feminism, and the outright spunk of the director.

Sardar Singh
@sardar_sardarsingh
www.queersikhnetwork.com

FAVOURITE HORNY MUSICIAN | Julian Casablancas
(lead singer of The Strokes). 
Written by Nadia Litz

This will be a surprising answer to some who know me.  Shortlisted was Depeche Mode’s Never Let Me Down; Henry Miller’s The Rosy Crucifixion; Twin Peaks’ Audrey Horne; Correggio’s 1530 painting Jupiter and Io (in which a naked woman in the woods is erotically ‘taken’ by a looming mist of blue fog, swoon).

With so many sultry choices why go with something as basic as a rock star? And why Julian?  Well, the loins want what the loins want.  Julian is everything I’m not:  out-of-control, chaotic, blurred, vacillating between goofball and self-serious… Actually I am all of those things too, but I try very hard not to be.  So in Julian I project everything in myself that I repress and watching him fully embody and embrace what I repress, makes me hot to fucking trot. Watching Julian perform, he has this immediacy to him.  That’s the best way I can describe it.  What he is, is happening right the fuck now. And in that moment I want it. 

I feel that way when I watch Nick Cave perform too.  He was shortlisted, but I feel like there’d be too many complications with Nick.  Someone’s ego would get in the way. Trauma bonding would occur.  One of us would end up carving the other’s name in blood, ruining our high-end habiliments…  Not Julian.  Julian would pull my pony tail, hike up my second hand acid wash mini skirt, leave fleeting teeth marks on my pale skinny neck.  Afterwards he would count the freckles on my nose, spoon me while singing Total Eclipse of the Heart, softly in my ear.  We’d cap the night eating high-cholesterol takeout in our dirty sweatpants, watching Key & Peele reruns… and that would be it. 

He would leave in the morning, but maybe not before he took off his gold stud earring and put it in my ear – a sweet hommage to John Bender from the Breakfast Club (also shortlisted).  I wouldn’t worry about whether he’d call the next day or if he liked me.  I’d know he wouldn’t and that he did.  For the ultimate turn on is no insecurities and very little, if any, thinking.  I think I’d have that with Julian.

EDITORS NOTE: Nadia’s Directorial Debut The People Garden is an beautiful art film starring Dree Hemingway and Pamela Anderson. *There is a scene where Pamela Anderson hang/flies in the rainy trip tops in the most incredible cape/dress you have ever seen.

Nadia Litz
@__litz

A PLACE I AM HORNY FOR
Written by Craig David Long

I’ve come to find another 
promised paradise. 
Finally one that is not trying to kill me 
in the rip tide
of some far corner of a forgotten 
and unwanted beach we are
relegated to.

I like the immediacy of the stars here 
at night, forward 
and upfront.
Clear as my thoughts,
I swim in them —
a pool of thoughts and stars.

The ghostly white spider I had to kill 
crawls across 
my windshield as I drive, 
long white legs like long white chest hairs.
My own hairs bristle at the thought of them against my skin …
I try not to swerve into 
the dark,
headlamps illuminating nothingness.

Would anyone know if I was gone?
I write an FYI and then delete it,
preferring to keep my life
private
and safe
to myself.

Maybe that’s why we come here.

I don’t care if it rains
seven days or seven years.
Otherwise the cacti and yucca trees
wouldn’t bloom.
I’m told I’m lucky to be here this time of year,
and I know that,
even though I’m alone,
thorny and
blooming for no one but myself.

She said anything can hurt you in the
desert. She said,
“I’ll let you go ahead first.”
So I look out for rattlesnakes —
the kind of men that make a lot of noise,
wanting it hot and raw and rugged,
but then slither away before they let you see them for who they 
really are.

The canyon trails, though, they are 
these things —
hot and raw and rugged.
And I am horny for it all.
I have never been so hard for a rock.
A rock like the body I meet
in the dark room of a condo gym at night.
I’m here to live out somebody else’s fantasy.
Big man,
Mr. America,
doesn’t show his face.

These lizards crawl out of the 
cracks of America,
scampering across the landscape
to find this sun,
but then scuttle into dank bars off the strip
to sing karaoke just the same.

I interrupt their song by merely
walking in.
Or they creep on me at the pool
instead of saying hello.
I don’t say hello either.
I acknowledge them with eyes
only enough to let them know 
I know 
they see me here.

It’s not for me, this place —
so I leave.
Nevertheless,
it is for me,
we have it,
and it is ours.
Another gay oasis,
barren and decrepit as it may be,
that I’m sure I’ll come back to searching 
for the same thing 
all over again.

Craig David Long 
craigdavidlong.com
blog.craigdavidlong.com
@craigdavidlong

Business and Pleasure

By Sonny Josephine

Part 1: Lessons Learned

I deleted Grindr again. It took less than a week for me to realize that redownloading it was a mistake. Men expect women on there to do free sex work. We aren’t men. We’re not like them. Playing into their twisted scenarios isn’t our idea of fun. All I want is to be held and kissed and wanted for something other than my body. I want to be loved. But I keep looking for it in the wrong places. I’ve said many times before that I wouldn’t find it there. But men are just as awful on other apps. 

I know the only reason I downloaded it was my faint hope that Jacob would see my profile and miss me, want me, and in my wildest dreams, message me to profess his love. Tell me that my love for him isn’t unrequited, that it’s not all in my head. When I was with him, he gave me my first taste of everything I want from a man. And that wasn’t just sex. It was chemistry and gentleness and consideration and affection and laughter. Intimacy beyond sex. How did he expect me not to get attached? I know he told me he wasn’t looking for a relationship. And eventually when he realized I’d grown attached to him he didn’t even want to hook up. And when he came back a month after saying that, he set boundaries like not opening my messages until days later. How could someone be everything I want when I'm with him and the exact opposite when I’m not? That part really kills me. And I’ve tried so hard to move on but every man seems to fall short. I don’t even think it’s about him anymore. It’s about the way men treat me. Finding a good one is so hard. And exhausting. Clearly he wasn’t a good man. But he had qualities that I want in a boyfriend. Qualities I haven’t been able to find since. When I was in his arms I felt whole. Like I’d never felt before in my life. Ever. And I’m so scared that I’ll never be able to find that feeling again. 

I’ve talked to at least fifty men since we stopped seeing each other. Most of them don’t make it passed the online conversations before fucking it up. The ones that do find a way to fuck it up when I meet them. Most guys have ulterior motives. Like it’s just about putting their dick in something. Not at all about who they put it in or if they care at all about that person. And they are so fucked up that most of them will tell you that. That they’d fuck a melon if they could. The thing is that I’m already a prostitute. And I try my best not to engage with men like that when I’m not on the clock. But they are all like that. The only difference is that most can’t afford to pay. 

The guy I hooked up with last night was the final straw. I left work early to be with him which was a mistake on my part because he was just like any client except he wasn’t paying me. Like most of my clients, I was waiting for his call, expected to play out his fantasy and not be myself, not be a person but a thing, any sign of humanity was a boner killer. When I got to his place, I was too tired and depressed to convince myself that I wanted the same things he did. I’d been drinking that day and my hangover was settling in. I wasn’t horny in the slightest. He was waiting for me in the shower and wanted me to play out his fantasy where I join him and force feed him big black dildos. We clearly weren’t on the same page. All I wanted was an emotional connection. I wanted him to want me beyond the services I could offer. So I told him when I got there that what he was asking of me felt like work. Like my actual job. Like something I should be paid for. Even though he was about the richest bastard I’d ever met, he never once offered to pay. Thus I had no motivation for going through with his requests. I even told him, I don’t want money, I just don’t want to do this right now. I just wanted him to want me for me.

So we tried. He held me but I didn’t feel anything. Not once did he even try to kiss me. He stuck a dildo in my mouth instead. He kept telling me that he was an empath and that he considers and even feels other people's emotions. But like every man, his words were not lining up with his actions. He didn’t care about me at all. Every word out of his mouth was about big black cocks. I oscillated between being his sliding scale therapist and whore the entire time, my only fee being the possibility that we could be something more than this. I told him that me coming over was a mistake. That he’s more passionate about big black cocks than me or anything I could say or do or be. He really ought to pay someone for that kind of thing. For therapy and for sex work. I’d call him a fag but I’m starting to think that sexual preference is just a myth. All men seem to want cock. Maybe I just think that because I’m a tranny. 

To add insult to injury, I have a cold now. Maybe it’s the flu. I’ve lost my sense of smell and I keep coughing. If it’s covid again I hope I die this time. I know I got it from sharing that fucking dildo with him even if it was for just a second. Manipulated into doing it after we cuddled for about five minutes. It took me about five seconds to come to my senses and say no I’m not doing this. I wasn’t turned on. If I was, then I would, but I can’t. All I wanted was to be held. It still irks me that this man pretended to care about me and then when I finally agreed to meet him, the only thing he really cared about were those big black cocks. In the place of any affection or affirmation was him telling me that he fantasizes about sucking off all of his black friends. And that because he has a small cock that his fetish for BBC was the natural hierarchy of things. Not exactly Maslow. And the only saliva we exchanged wasn’t from a passionate kiss, but our shared spit on a 10 inch black dildo. And now I’m fucking sick. I can’t believe this is my fucking life. Not only did he not pay me, but he made me sick and has impaired my ability to make money from men who actually have the decency to pay. I never thought I’d be calling my clients decent men. But at least they don’t lie. They understand that what they want is transactional. 

So today, when I woke up sick, I deleted all of my dating apps. No Grindr, no Bumble, no Facebook dating. At least when I’ve been sick before it was from men who actually paid me. God I really know how to pick them. Maybe I deserve this. Time’s never wasted as long as lessons are learned. That’s what my friend Tayla said anyways. I’m sick and the disease I have is being attracted to men. That void where my heart used to be has been filled with mucus.

Sonny Josephine
@sonny.josephine

FAVOURITE HORNY TRANSPORTATION | BUS RIDES
Written by Tom Hsu

i’ve been thinking long and hard as i text on my phone on this busy bus. i start reminiscing fucks from quick hook ups, past lovers, current friends... list goes on and some how the places we meet also plays a role. the good spots we would find together and brought others to share. how we would slowly naked ourself, gentle kisses under the blazing summer sun, bodies meet and cocks touch. how he would slide his hard on in and—

here’s my stop, but now i want to keep going.

Tom Hsu
@tomhsu
www.tomhsu.com

FAVOURITE HORNY MUSICAL SONG | “Let The Sunshine In” HAIR
Written by Evan Spergal

Ever since I was little, my Dyslexic, ADHD brain has caused me to be distracted by stimulation. From Saturday morning cartoons to school recesses where I'd escape into the school grounds' natural habitat. Umbrella trees become secret burrows where I make teddy bear sand potion (a mixture of light and dark sand or dirt). I'd save any rocks with markings, convinced I had found fossils with magic powers.

Years later when the Food Network arrived, I'd watch it fully entranced by the delicious looking dishes. I never got horny or fetishized the food, though I felt edged and starved to be pleasured by nurture.

Before studying screenwriting at UCLA I had been studying acting my entire life. Dedicating my life and career to an industry that had a predesigned superficial mold I never quite fit. The final straw that broke my pursuit in acting was when a casting director told me "The only thing standing between me and a lead male role was my voice". He explained the way I looked didn't match the way I sounded.

All I could think in my head was why can't a lead male have a slight lisp? I felt like the way I sounded was a handicap. The frustration of straight men playing Gay rolls was all I could focus on.

I think humans are instinctively programmed to crave nutrition just as a plant does sun. I'd be lying if I said I've never cruised an unmarked trail in the bushes. People are quick to assume what's lurking in the shadows is dangerous, though what they're failing to recognize is that it's their own religiously affected ideologies that chased Gay,/Bi, Heteroflexible men into the shadows in the first place.

No different than a flower in the shadows bending its growth in pursuit of nutritious sunlight. Not ideal- though not all of us are rooted in unhindered sunlight.

I want to finish this up with a insert from the song "Let the sunshine in" from HAIR

We starve, look at one another, short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of looney tunes
Somewhere, inside something there is a rush of
Greatness,... Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in

Let the sunshine in...

Evan Spergal
@evanspergel

HornyTV | Nate Stetson in
“No Business Like Show Business”

A TRIBUTE TO THE LEGENDARY ETHEL MERMAN

Nate Stetson
inktr.ee/natestetson

Clifton Mooney
@gauchecowboy
cliftonmooney.com

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Made in Toronto. Canada. Recognizing the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.

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