Devon Hunter

I absolutely LOVE this video. I have been watching it multiple times each day, because the dancers look so happy and free. I also love it when gay men act like gay men (or when straight men aren’t afraid to let loose). This video is so well done on so many levels: 1) there are a variety of bodies, 2) a variety of races, 3) a variety of movers, 4) a real sense of fun and ecstatic energy, and 5) they’re all fucking gorgeous. Period. People who say otherwise are just being hateful out of jealousy or habit (which is a symptom of the underlying reason WHY THIS VIDEO NEEDS TO BE SEEN).

This video made me feel really good on a day when I was having all sorts of self-esteem issues, and you know why? Because these are gay porn models being visible, and cute, and sweet, and seductive, and friendly, and fun. They are utterly charming here. They’re not just grunting and cumming. They’re being real people: They know the words to a sassy song, and they like to dance. I love this video, and I admire all the models in it.

I love this video so much that I posted it on my personal (not professional) Facebook, so that my friends and family could see it. I will probably share it on my blog. I already had crushes on several of the models, but now I want to marry all of them. (I’m a greedy bitch like that.) Randy Blue has some absolutely marvelous models.

I like it that we are out of the closet. I like it that Kylie has seen it and enjoys it. I like it so much that I finally broke down, went to iTunes, and bought several Kylie albums that I’d been meaning to get for a while. Sex sells. But so does happiness, and that is what gushes out of this montage.

Haters be damned. This project fucking rocks my world.

One of the topics that comes up every once in a while on my blog is the intersection of race and adult entertainment:

• Race, Homophobia, and Porn
• Race and tipping at strip clubs
• Black dancers work too hard for too little

For some time now I have been having a little back-and-forth conversation with Angel Cruz, a former model on CoCoDorm.com, a live video chat site featuring Black and Latino college guys. Angel enjoys blogging, and you can visit his site by clicking on this link. He enjoys making lists, and asked me to talk about some of the men of color who I think are sexy.

Of course, I can’t just say, “Oh, he’s hot.” That’s just not my style. I prefer to analyze and hone, so if you’d like to read a bit about the nuances that I find attractive in men, you can visit this page and see some sexy images of models who often don’t get the camera time they should. I will be filing this under the Interviews tab, though Angel doesn’t like using that term.

Hello, all!

Here’s the link to the interview I did recently with MOC Blog. If you have any thoughts or responses, feel free to comment either here or at MOC Blog. I am adding this blog to my list of friends, and this link will also be under the Interviews tab at the top of the screen.

Good morning – I hope all of you had a good weekend. I certainly did. I got to catch up with Sean Knight in Atlanta, and I saw M. Night Shymalan’s “Devil.” I loved it! I am always impressed by how he can take so little and make so much out of it. And I have always been a fan of leaving the scariest parts unseen. I scare myself quite enough that way, thank you very much. It really is a very well crafted little movie. People who don’t like it are probably critical of Shyamalan as a person, rather than allowing themselves to enjoy this story (which he conceived, but did not direct). I did an artistic photo shoot, and I can’t wait to show you the new dance shots from it! I also got to have a very nice interview with the people at MOC Blog. I will post that interview here once it is made available on the blog over there. We discussed the intersection of racism, homophobia, and gay porn. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I will be doing three new Falcon projects in October, so you will find those going live around February of next year, which makes them a sort of Valentine’s Day gift from me to you.

Have a good week!

One of the reasons I wanted to wait to respond to the question posed on March 17, 2009′s entry concerning race is because I wanted to view the situation in a club outside of the South. Before I continue, I would like to add that I welcome comments and constructive discussions here; however, if I do say something that is insensitive or irresponsible, I invite anyone to point it out.

To paraphrase a concept articulated by Obama during his campaign: We can’t talk about race until we talk about race.

In the the Carolinas and Georgia, where most of my experience in clubs has occurred, there is a residual tendency to treat Black men as un-/non-/anti-sexual Others who are tolerated for “diversity’s” sake. I do not notice this overtly generalized and dismissive treatment towards Latinos, nor towards Asians; however, it does seem that White dancers with red/orange hair and fair skin fill a niche as equally narrow as Blacks seem to do.

I am sensitive about race and other parameters for identity, but I am not afraid of discussing them in simple terms.

So, as an experiment, when the dancers at Secrets in Washington, D.C. asked me last night what it’s like at Swinging Richards in Atlanta, GA and PT1109 in Columbia, SC, I said candidly, “You can do well, depending on the night. I’ve noticed that Black dancers struggle there, even if they work three times harder. That’s not the case for Latinos and Asians. Although overt racism in the traditional Southern mode is mostly gone, Black men are still mostly invisible as sexual entities to gay white men where I live.”

I started this conversation specifically because there was a Black dancer in the room, and I wanted to see what his response would be, in terms of being in D.C. (which for some reason people presume isn’t connected culturally to the South just because there are some embassies there and a few people who can read and write in French).

This was his response: “He’s right. White dudes in the club normally look past me. I do well at private parties where I have been booked specifically.”

“Why is that?” one of the White dancers asked.

“Well,” the Black dancer said, “look at magazines. What do you see?”

“White faces,” I replied. “There still aren’t anywhere near enough non-White models representing beauty. We are taught what is beautiful by what is implied, not simply by what is said.”

“For a long time I made most of my money off women,” the Black dancer added.

“Women don’t tip,” another dancer immediately chimed in.

“Yeah, they do,” the Black dancer shot back. “That was my whole career for years. But it’s not just the South – Black dudes don’t usually do well in New York City either.”

“It seems to me,” I said, “that women are often more sexually adventurous in their tastes, and that men often define their preferences more rigidly. And,” I added, just so that the Black dancer wouldn’t think that Devon “White Boy” Hunter has it made in the shade, “it’s not enough to be White. I’m completely invisible next to Brad. He’s the default setting for gay white male desire.”

“Yeah,” one of the Latino dancers added thoughtfully. “He’s blond haired, blue eyed, fair skin, perfect complexion, and built like a Greek god.”

“Mhm,” I added. “I’ll never be tall. White isn’t good enough: I’m short. I’m not hating on Brad: He’s perfect. He really is exquisite. But next to him, I might as well be Black.” (To which the Black dancer nodded in agreement and understanding.)

This is such a complicated, convoluted conversation in American culture. On the one hand I felt as if my thoughts had mostly been confirmed by this dialogue; however, there was the nagging part about Black guys not doing well in New York City. If what he says is true, then racism isn’t a Southern tradition (as so many presumptuous Yankees like to assume), but an American tradition (which definitely doesn’t make it any less awful just because racism ain’t a Suthren thang).

So, to more pointedly address the question of what my experience has been, in terms of interpreting how race affects gay male entertainers: White is the default preference for the manufacturer’s setting; Latino, Asian, Indian, and Native American are all exotic enough to be sexually alluring, despite their ethnic features; and Black is invisible. What I have seen is that White and Latino entertainers make the most money, that Asian dancers are often watched with some degree of skepticism at first, and that Black dancers (when they aren’t discouraged) are forced to work far too hard. And yet all of this can change, depending on issues surrounding personal style, attitude, stature, body type, and exotic features (e.g. an Asian dancer with blue eyes). And yet those individual nuances are lost if a patron completely marks the Black body in his mind only enough to avoid walking into ”it” like any chair.

I personally feel that there is a specific gap in the training of gay desire. There are simply not enough Afro-centric (or other minorities’) faces in the “All-American” homoerotic publications. People want what they see: So long as Black men aren’t held up as objects of beauty unto themselves on par with men of other races, Black entertainers will be relegated to Blacksploitative sexual imagery. I have met very few Black male adult entertainers who did not actively seek to align themselves with the clichés perpetrated by MTV and BET. What’s worse, the few Black dancers I’ve known who weren’t “ghetto” made even less money than their “hard” counterparts.

Is there not a space or two in one of Abercrombie’s group-shots of 13 nubile honkies for a little more realistic portrayal of our cultural landscape? What’s even more problematic is that I often sense that Black men who aren’t thugs are even more displaced outside of gay desire than their bruiser counterparts. Where do Black men in general (and non-Gangsta Black men specifically) fit within the framework of gay masturbation material?

Hear, hear for equal opportunity exploitation!