Previously untapped memories

tumblr_m1igwy8BsB1qfvv6oo1_1280.jpg

WHOA. It’s astonishing that such a random old ad — spotted on Dionne Warlock — could tap into such a well of memory. It’s not mental memory, really: I can’t really recall anything about where or when I would have seen this ad. Maybe it was in that one random copy of GQ i bought when I was about 13 or 14, or a catalog we had around the house. It’s kind of an emotional memory, I guess. I just remember this feeling of being utterly fascinated by these handsome men, at a point when I was way too young to make any sense of that. I stared at this picture A LOT.

I had a particular fascination with the guy on the left, who Google reminds me was Jeff Aquilon, a dude who is apparently considered one of the first male supermodels. He’s certainly handsome, but in a way that doesn’t inspire the same vivid reaction it did back when I didn’t quite even know what attraction felt like. It’s so weird to be reminded, in a gut sort of way, what that was like.

Oh! But here’s another ad I similarly recall, with a different guy, from the same source:

tumblr_m0u2bzKQp71qfvv6oo1_1280.jpg

I bet I kept these in a scrapbook at one point. I can’t really remember, but I’m sure I must have had something like that when I was a wee lad.

Update: Another! 1983? Sounds about right. These must have all come from the same magazine, and I must have had one from the same time, if not the same magazine. This is really all too vivid.

tumblr_m1jtvq2DSk1qfvv6o.jpg

Stay gold, Ponyboy

tumblr_m059srwBsb1qzi80d.jpg

I was a little obsessed with this movie and book during my formative years, for reasons I couldn’t — or wouldn’t — quite figure out at the time. I learned about sex by reading some incredibly graphic Outsiders fanfic written by a girl in my class when we were 12, which tells you a lot about how many stories you hear about Catholic school have some basis in fact.

Similarly, I was secretly fixated on this cover for this book, by the same author:

Rumble Fish

Mapplethorpe and friends

Robert Mapplethorpe and friends

Robert Mapplethorpe and friends hang out in the West Village in 1978, as caught on film by amateur photographer Leonard Fink. Part of a set of images Fink captured of men at rest and at play around the West Village in the late ’70s, featured in the most recent issue of Pink Mince.

And let me be shameless here for a moment: please try an issue of Pink Mince, whether it’s this recent one or one of the back issues. Each is a stand-alone exploration of theme. I’m very proud of the work by so many talented people I’ve been able to gather for each issue, but the whole project is a drain on my resources and every little bit of support will help keep it going.

Zinged again

This book! It’s good, but more unnerving is how often its arrow hits the mark:

It wouldn’t be strange to get it and then to decide as Perkins did that this one particular person gave it to you, one out of ten or fifty or a hundred, maybe because that person made you feel something special, had done wonderful things in bed or gotten you to trust him physically and mentally as no one else ever had.

— Horse Crazy, Gary Indiana

Spinsterish but sensual

Have you ever found yourself reading a novel or something, and then stumbled across a passage that resonated so clearly with something that was in your head, or that you’ve done before — OR BOTH — that you almost felt a flush of embarrassment, like some stranger had caught you in the act?

That night I put aside my fiction of former defeats, former glories . . . and began writing a letter. It began reasonably, as a sort of old-fashioned, literary coda to the afternoon. How pleasant to have met you, and so on, the kind of letter no one writes anymore, which naturally has its peculiar charm for the startled recipient. A courtly letter. Spinsterish but sensual. I felt in there brief time we conversed that I was speaking with someone of extremely rare sensitivity, and that you, of course, sensed my physical attraction to you, and were gracious enough to take this in stride, giving me the opportunity to show you the kind of person I am. I know it’s eccentric to come right out with this in a letter, but I have been so moved by your beauty that I, that, at this point everything floundered, I ripped the letter into shreds and started over.

— Horse Crazy, Gary Indiana

Oh, and when I factor in the irony of who recommended I read this, I just want to crawl under a rock and die of self-consciousness. So busted, even if it was unintentional.

For an extra chuckle of relevance (albeit to other things), though, this was in the very first paragraph of the book: “Things commence in reckless hope and die away in stifled longing, not that we had hoped for much from the Staten Island Ferry.” Perfect.

If that’s all found in the first 4 pages, I’m almost terrified to continue.