Kiss.

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.

I don’t think we talk about the kiss enough. 

The kiss that makes you hard. The kiss that seduces hands to explore. The kiss that is the preview for later. or now. The kiss that says you are important to me. The kiss that can be a real tongue twister. The kiss that feels primal, almost animalistic. The kiss that stings like a bee. The kiss that tastes like Cool Ranch Doritos. The kiss that sucks hair into a vacuumous mouth. The kiss where you see the curve of each eyelash. The kiss where you feel the bristles of each mouth. The kiss that feels dry and moist at the same time. The kiss where fluids have become one. The kiss that lights up the eyes like the northern lights. The kiss that rides down your spin like a trademarked Harley Davidson engine rev. The kiss that makes you cum. The kiss that stays on your lips well into the next 24 hours of your life. 

And the kiss that makes you alive.

Christopher Sherman (He/Him)
Instagram:@photochristophersherman

FAVOURITE HORNY CITY
Written by William Gooding

The question about what place makes me horny is interesting because I can only really think it through in relation to my own story, my reference points growing up, to trauma, desire and possibility. Because of that I’d have to say the city that makes me horniest is Lima.

Lima continues to be much more dangerous for queer people than most large Canadian cities. While there are more and more queer spaces in the city, the society clearly reproduces sets of norms meant to pressure queer subjects into the closet. The family holds up a place of centrality, meaning that the reproduction of the family is seen as essential to one’s own wellbeing along with the wellbeing of the community to which one belongs. 

Given all of this, I always found Lima an exciting place to go because of the ways in which queerness continued to be subversive. When I would go to Lima in my twenties to visit my family, I would always venture out to gay bars in Miraflores and occasionally downtown Lima. At that point, bars were fairly discreet. I would do my research before going to Peru to get a sense of what queer spaces were around and how to get in.

In my early days in Peru, this meant knocking on doors, having a bouncer inspect me through a small window to determine if I belonged or not, and then have him let me into a whole other world. The centrality of Catholicism, of the family and of a culture of machismo made being openly gay, trans or queer dangerous for many of the people who I met those first few years. It felt different from bars in Vancouver, Ottawa or Toronto in that I encountered a whole different world of queerness that was brave, necessary, alternative and cautious all at once.

Not only did I find a community that was hidden away from the mainstream but I also found incredible sex. There was something about the urgency of encounters in back alleys, of sneaking in the family houses of men I just met, or alternatively of bringing them to parent’s apartment and either fucking upstairs on the roof of their apartment building or sneaking them into my bedroom and trying to get them out before my father woke up at 5am to go to work. Sex was ravenous, hot, full of used condoms, cum, saliva, sweat and a different kind of love. There was something so familiar for me about fucking and getting fucked by Peruvian men, feeling the inside of men who for the moment I was in love with and feeling myself being filled. There was something special about tasting their cum and shooting in their mouths or on their chests that felt like life. It felt closer to wholeness, to a cultural and sexual connection than I’d had ever had in Canada. I’ll admit that during these first few trips after coming out, I fell in love over and over again, always falling for this sense of possibility for something just beyond what I experienced in Canada.

Going to Lima now feels somewhat different. The city’s queer scene has opened up and along with that a more familiar sense of gay, lesbian and bisexual identities that reflects sexual minority norms in large Canadian cities. I am now more likely to recognize the music that’s playing than I was, to recognize who drag queens are referencing, to recognize the swagger of younger queer Peruvians. There has been something lost in this transition but also something integral that’s been gained, the possibility of safety and of openness. I have no doubt that sexual subcultures in Lima will continue to push back against Western sexual homonormativities and Catholic demands for familial piety and continue to constitute spaces of sexual frisson that matter, that are material, that we feel as we fuck in new configurations that open up possibilities rather than shut them down. Lima is sexy and will continue to be sexy because it can’t not be.

William Gooding (He / They)
@will.j.gooding

FAVOURITE HORNY FAMOUS PERSON
Written by Sly Vallati
James Dean makes me horny, the eternal figure of youthful irreverence, the rebel without a cause.

Dean exists now merely as a myth. He achieved little fame during the course of his life, having died at the age at 24 and released only one film. Frozen in time, forever young, forever representing a youthful angst that exists inside of us at all times. He is enduring an icon of culture. My discovery of Dean came at a crucial moment of sexual discovery so perhaps he makes me horny in a way that is forever embedded within me, reminding me who I was when I realized I enjoyed dick. 

If you watch any of his screen tests you can witness Dean’s raw sexuality when interacting with men. The test above places Dean and his Rebel co-stars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, who all perished in tragic fates, but that’s besides the point. The tension between Dean and Mineo, who were both queer, makes me horny to this day. The gaze that they give one another will be familiar to any queer, something that lingers too long, the rush and excitement is palpable. Dean had both male and female lovers, he was connected too many Hollywood Golden Era stars from Eartha Kit and Ursula Andress, to a rumoured sadomasochistic relationship with Marlon Brando, whom Dean idolized. The particular moment in time that Dean occupies, this romantic era of Hollywood, makes me horny too. 

Steinem once said that, “when the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.” I guess having a legacy that endures so far beyond you death is the goal. I carry Dean with me, and go to him whenever I need to feel irreverent, angsty, cool and yes, horny. The everlasting embodiment of living fast and dying young and having a lovely corpse, death can be horny too. Maybe my answer should have been death. 

Sly Vallati (He / They)
@sonosilly

FAVOURITE HORNY CITY
Written by David González

My hometown Veracruz, a city spooning the Gulf of Mexico, with weather often described as an outdoor sauna where the flimsy shade of a palm tree becomes the default refuge from the oppressive heat. The same heat that kept my teenage years in a constant state of deviant arousal which I can still feel the moment I come back and my face feels the salty breeze from the Atlantic Ocean. Arousal that for many men living in Veracruz must remain hidden for self-preservation due to the machismo, which plays into a homoerotic game of hide-and-seek, distinctive to many conservative cities.

These cities brew the sharpest sixth sense to detect deviance, where a brief moment of eye contact can tell you the deepest secrets of the holiest and most respectable men, whose true desires can only be perceived by a fellow fag, ready to risk it all for 10 minutes of secret joy.

From married men chasing college guys to 12-year-old me snapping pixelated pictures of shirtless guys by the pier with my hand down Motorola Razr, the thrill of getting caught is the motor that keeps this constant estate of discreet lustfulness, a staple of this city, mocked by people from more progressive places like Mexico City as a primitive place.

For many, the keys to their full sexual freedom remain hostage by the constant threat of being outed and become the subject of humiliation and exile, leading to a drag contest where the category is hypermasculinity, graded by harshest judges, cis men patrolling each other’s behaviour, and where no prize is to be won in this vicious cycle.

This oppression was the soil in which the seed of my kinks and desires was planted, where I discovered that the hatred towards my oppressors can be turned into my most deviant fantasies of submission, along with the guilt that keeps these desires burning within me, making the memories of my time growing up in Veracruz as the horniest time in my life (so far).

David González (He/Him)
@davidgunzalez

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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.