Wicked Gay Ways

On August 13, 2016 we publsihed our inaugural issue which was taken down by the host website (without notice just a few months later citing their reason as a violation of their anti obscenity clause. This only happened after a routine phone call from us to request some work on the website. While we lost the website we had access to all of the material and we recreated highlights from that first issue which you can find here.

Reyes Meléndez

Reyes began his artistic training at the age of 13 when he was awarded a full scholarship to the Art League of San Juan, In San Juan Puerto Rico. He studied painting, drawing, printmaking and photography and cultivated his passion for art. Reyes graduated in 1984 from the University of Puerto Rico with a bachelor's degree in science and quickly moved to New York City, where he received a full scholarship from the printmaking workshop of Robert Blackburn. In 1986 he graduated with a master's degree in Communication Design from Pratt Institute, fulfilling one of his childhood dreams.

Reyes is a founding member of the organization OPART Puerto Rican artists. Reyes has exhibited his work in New York City, Puerto Rico, Italy and Australia. You can see more of his work at www.issuu.com/reyez and Instagram REYEZONE. Reyes shares his time between New York City, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Ibiza, Spain.

“Laurel”

By Susan Dipronio

This is it. My first and only woodcarving. Ever. Soft wood. A scrap she found somewhere: Laurel - always a thrifter, recycler even in the early seventies when she attempted to teach me how to carve.

I had forgotten about the carving, and her, until recently when I was unpacking the almost 200th  move of my life. I opened a box that had been stored away in my mother’s basement decades before. A time capsule, as it turned out, filled with numerous journals, concert posters, those flattened pennies from railroad tracks, a greasy leather headband, green peasant shirt with mirrored edges and this, this one. small .wooden plaque.

This simple carved silhouette is the footprint which took me back to remembering Laurel:  An incredibly talented artist, brilliant musician, songwriter, singer and a builder of eco-housing – by hand – her’s – a house which hung off a cliff above a stream.  But This world was never big enough to hold Laurel. I mean, she lived, loud. I've never met anyone like her - and I haven’t seen her in over 20 years…..

At one juncture point in us knowing each other and connecting in different parts of the country, there was that time when I rolled back to my hometown. I was in desperate need of a respite from hitchhiking all over the country, crashing in strange places, protesting the injustices of a world which at that time, I naively thought could be fixed. And there she was, Laurel, My rightfully self-proclaimed goddess and I landed right back into her life. 

Laurel  had become the founder of a small women’s commune which she had named “Sojourner Truth.” In the dining room, hanging on the wall, was a beautiful wooden  plaque she had carved of Sojourner. –and we prayed to it. Not really, but it made me want to create something tangible for once. It seemed alive to me as I traced the crevices and caressed the curves with my fingers. And so, one afternoon when we were on a break from our frequent feminist political discussions, eating brown rice and lentils. she pulled out a small knife and a block of wood. And then patiently, whistling a bit of Mozart, Laurel showed me how to embrace my vision and carve with the grain.  Ironic, since we lived against the grain – that's always stuck with me. 

But this girl, this rockin’ amazing girl, I had met long before this carving came to be. I was still in high school, sorta. Back in after another suspension. My friend Leonarda (yes it really was her name) wanted me to meet this amazing person she knew. A girl who never had to go to school and lived alone !  

It was one of those winter nights in Buffalo. Desolate. Bitchin’ cold.  We bused it up to the part of town where a couple of coffee houses and strip bars intermingled with a dash of secondhand sorta antique stores and used book stores. The kind of dense dark places where the air was pungent and mysterious people hung out late into the night touching on early mornings. Like William Burroughs, I imagined, smoking opium, discussing Sartre and Descartes. I felt I was home when stepping into, inhaling the air of the groggy literati.

It turned out that Leonarda’s friend lived above one of the book stores. Those dirty window creaky door musty smelling places. Selling dime copies of  crumbling tomes interspersed with new poetry books from City Lights and, of course, the Communist Manifesto.That little red book we all carried, understood very little about it, but held close and waved it around – a passport to backrooms -- and bedrooms.

 When we got to the store, we paused, the windows above it were open.  Music was screaming through them, raining down on us – it was Dvorak, the New World Symphony, ta dah !! the universe called !– pounding. then a screeeech !!! of a needle ripping across vinyl  and abruptly the switch to rock was on !  The front door was unlocked.  This girl trusted everyone. All people were her people.  I was impressed..

Reverently, Leonarda turned the handle, we inhaled and walked in. we stood there for a moment, like in a cathedral, peering up a steep stairway of what seemed to be a hundred steps.the smell of burning candles wafted over us from above. Janis Joplin was wailing away accompanied full throated by a blizzard of a girl perched at the top of the barely lit staircase.Her hair was scattered as if by the hands of a hurricane where it then froze in mid wreckage. Some Medusa-like sandy colored strands knotted and twisted dropped down below her shoulders tickling her huge droopy breasts which hung and swung to the beat under a peasant shirt thin as a spider web. her hard nipples drew lines through it, like big smiles. Hypnotizing me. She had on these Army-navy bell bottomed jeans embroidered and painted.  they danced around her hips. From beneath her hair dangled earrings, huge hoops – I noted -huge – like mine, but with bells in the middle. (some things you never forget)

Laurel was barefoot, I noted and grinned, drawn in already. She was holding a bottle of wine in one hand, and a huge joint in the other. I remember her mouth. Unforgettable,  bigger than Julia Roberts. Half her face was covered with teeth! Her eyes were blue glass and big and knowing. I mean she knew -- everything. She spotted us and like a scout finding a new passage to the west….. halted her singing and signaled exuberantly with both arms outstretched!

- and as we stepped up to her and she stepped down to us – suddenly everything became a blur and we tangled up tumbled down within each others arms legs hair, and bells- our mutual patchouli scents embracing -and we splattered to the bottom.  This girl from another planet, still holding the wine and smoke, intact, not a drop spilled or a vapor lost, her warm buzzing arms wrapped around me --yells : “hey Paesano ! welcome !” gives me the biggest kiss, her lips almost inhaling my mouth,  ‘cause she had the biggest mouth – wet and sloppy – pulls back a little, those clear eyes looking right through me, leans her warm wet forehead in to touch mine. And then, from above us, like a blessing,  Janis was singing “take it! take another little piece of my heart now, baby! “

 -  and Laurel, she took my heart....

Susan DiPronio.

q tristesa 

The unmaking of a master 

By Jose Luis Cortez

tanta drenalina!!! q me causo esta experiensia, lust bliss domination 24- 7 hard on,  summiting to an Adonis giving him all my power shaking of exit men as he spends my little fortune all of my making  putting all those ideas in his mind trying to manipulate his attention it was too good to be true, it did not last, now  a beautiful friendship  a bromance  like he called it   in danger of disappearing all of my own making.

I remember shaking as he whipped me with a wooden stick my first black and blue PROOF of our intensity. I remember when he said that he wanted it to last forever to grow old together that before I died TO tell him that I was glad that he was my master mi everything  not crying any more everyday like before that he wanted us to be one  my hard ons were no longer 24 -7 and I no longer resented giving him my money, but wanting to make money not for me but for him doing his laundry with a raging hard on AND  while doing it feeling like a dumb ass for not having the strength to be a good slave and discovering that servicing him was no longer pleasing me no longer feeling like a creepy old man lusting for a boy that never lusted for me and never would, he’d never hold me in his arms as I fell asleep nor hug me tenderly instead, standing up over me, he peed on me like a dog, and caressed me with his feet’s as he stepped softly on my head remembering when he ordered me to kneel for him in a crowded mal.  ahh!!!!

 When he would get all exited getting ready for a session he’d call me, tying me up with duct tape and hand cuffs  pinching my nipples with wrenches, he loved taking pictures of the  freshly made bruises he’d just created, while saying, ahh  beautiful!!! beautiful !!! What have I done;  broke 2 harts at once 

o my god as I write this to feel better i only feel worse diantre!!!! yo q me estaba viviendo la película cuando me dijo camina a mi lado nunca frente a mí y no te vallas de mi vista nunca sin permiso cuando me dijo te quiero con cojones !!!!!

Me quiere con cojones pero no me desea ni un  poquito ahh

 y yo q con tocarlo me bastaba. Q he hecho!!!! No pude costear costear mi 24 -7 sueño mojado q pasa, q nada basta, por que reina la insatisfaccion?

I wanna...’ by Stiofan O’Ceallaigh / 2016

I wanna…

…Fall asleep with my dick inside you /

I wanna taste your citric tears /

I wanna Maud Gonne you /

And Bruce La Bruce all over you /

I wanna…

…Start a riot inside you /

And cross swords

As we piss on the pink triangles /

And when you’re not looking…

I wanna…

…Seduce you with sleazy bird song /

… And hate it when you faint /

I wanna light fires as you bathe /

And de-commercialize you /

I wanna…

… un-un you /

Then sheepishly glance at the terror on Terra /

I wanna swap eyes and nightmares /

And breed the strangest stranger within you /

I wanna…

…jizz-jazz beside you /

(After I un-hogtie you) /

I wanna up, down, in, out and on you /

And I wanna hate you and paint you /

I wanna…

… dance the Truvada with you /

I wanna delight in de-lighting in the “dis-ease” /

I wanna write on your ass and heart with spontaneous permanence /

I wanna deprive you of oxygen then breathe over you /

I wanna…

… drink you, lick you, luck you, fuck you /

I wanna plan your fake suicide /

And then laugh at the commander in black in blue hue /

I wanna cum and 35mm you /

I wanna –

… really, really, really, really, really slowly shake your branches /

And then run around you and through you /

I wanna sniff as you snuff me /

I wanna –

I wanna do “nothing in particular”.

Didier Garcia, (Philadelphia). Didier García is a queer Latinx multi-disciplinary artist, musician and DJ. Hailing from the Dominican Republic and with roots from Colombia, Didier grew up in Queens, New York. After many years in the performing arts he goes on to discover graphic design and begins his career as a visual artist. In 2004, shortly before graduating college, he sets forth to establish a graphic design studio. Didier's personal work explores and celebrates nature, sex, love and intimacy.

Barry Eichner: (Philadelphia). Barry has always been drawn to the leather, BDSM, fetish lifestyle.  The images of the leather daddy and even their boys have always tended to be strong, typically masculine images showing domination and submission.  Barry’s work explores these areas seeking soft, tender, vulnerable intimate moments.