Devon Hunter

Dear Devon,

As you pursue your new full time career, please know that you are not doing anything wrong… I do not think you are, nor do I think I am wrong for hiring escorts… Also, consider hiring escorts yourself and enjoying them, so that you are learning to be the best you can be. Good luck to you!

T

Dear T -

I definitely believe in fostering Good. And that’s a philosophical point I’ve written about: The difference between encouraging Good and doing Right. To me, Good is eternal – it goes beyond us as individuals. It is what it is, without regard to time and place. On the other hand, Right changes based on the culture/person that is examining how best to accomplish Good.

No matter the time, place, or person, Good is universal (e.g. Love). However, totally dependent on time, place, and person is Right (e.g. cultural mores that regulate sexuality). What is Right to one person may not be Right to another. For example, Boston 2009 does NOT have the same sense of Right as Boston 1709. Boston, in both times, is full of people who want to encourage Good, but this same place at different times has very different ideas about Right and how it leads to Good. Do you actually think a sect of Puritans would get away with hanging 21 people for “witchcraft” in this day and age? The Puritans thought they were Right. So did Hitler. So did the Inquisition. So did the Aztecs. So do the terrorists. In trying to encourage the ideal that is Good, they tried to do what they thought was Right. And that’s the problem: I think people should encourage Good. I do not think people should do Right. Good is for everyone, but Right is only for a privileged few (and who wants that? BLAH!).

And that is the point I want to make: I am totally comfortable that I am encouraging Good in making my transition into this full time career. Affection and respect encourage Good. I provide (without guilt or shame) a service that is desparately needed. We are integrated beings, and if we do not have outlets for our passions/emotions, we die (literally and figuratively). We cannot separate our desire from our selves/ourselves. They are part of a whole. I give people, who many not otherwise have the option, a chance to connect to that deep well of satisfaction. How is that not Good?

And it’s funny you would mention learning by hiring: I am quite honored to brag that Sean Knight (www.seanknightxxx.com) is my mentor. I talk to him daily, we travelled together in Florida all last week (and will be travelling together again in NYC the first week of September), and I am soaking up everything he feels inclined to share. You see… I used to be an educator. I know it’s better to learn from an expert, rather than reinvent the wheel. So… I am already totally invested in doing an “apprenticeship,” and I’ve been lucky enough to make friends/colleagues with one of the best in the US. Sean has already helped me more than I could ever truly repay. He and I have a bond that is friendly, generous, and respectful.

At any rate, I hope this didn’t go on too long. I look forward to hearing your thoughts as to whether or not the October visit is something you would like to commit to. Be well, and I will talk with you soon.

Devon

More info coming soon…

A quick update: We’ve taken some awesome pics with some great models, and the pictures are starting to show up on the www.dcfukit.org website. Here is my favorite pic of yours truly: http://www.fc-kits.org/blogslinks.html. The official launch for the project is Friday, May 29, 2009!

Happy Memorial Day!

I am about to write this blog with the full knowledge that it could set off a series of conflicts later. I also want to preface what I’m about to say by admitting that I am in no way perfect in regards to safe sex. In fact, I’m not very good at being consistent with practicing it. I know the risks, I know the consequences, but (like a huge number of people) I have not completely embraced 100% safe sex (and I don’t believe other people when they say they have: I’ve hooked up with far too many people who claimed 100% and then fell short with me for me to buy into all their nonsense).

All of this stems from the following: 1) Most of the condoms I’ve tried have either desensitized me or hurt me (however, Pleasure Plus are almost awesome and Lifestyles SKYN are passable), 2) Condoms have been served to me (and the rest of the U.S.A.) with a hefty dose of guilt and fear, instead of eroticism and empathy, and 3) Gay + Artist + Middle Class + America = worthless (if I’m not rich, straight, and corporate then I don’t have any real value in this country anyway, right? Imagine the potential extra layers of burdensome self-loathing for people who are poor and/or non-White).

But I recognize that this is not good! I recognize that this needs an adjustment in behavior on my part. I own that I am making bad choices when I opt for natural, rather than safer, sex. I know I am valuable and deserve better, that I should be respecting my partners. I know this. It is one of the reasons I am so intent on helping with promoting the safer sex strategies Dr. Terry Gerace wants to implement on his website. It’s because I truly want to acclamate to taking better care of myself, my partners, and my community/world. I feel bad that I’m not there yet. But I definitely never advocate barebacking.

So, after acknowledging that I need to practice safe sex with better than 50% regularity, I am going to go out on a limb here and call Mason Wyler out as the single most irresponsible person I can think of in adult entertainment. I saw that he was wanting writers for his site/blog, and I submitted my name before I read his content. All I knew of him was that he is a bottom with a reputation for being a gutter slut. However, I’d not actually read his own words before…

Utterly irresponsible… It is bad enough that gay porn is reinforcing the notion for gay men that bareback sex is “better,” but the outright smut from Mason’s own pen breaks my heart a little for him. In his entry “I want Brock Armstrong” Mason Wyler writes that Armstrong is hot specifically because he does bareback sex videos. He then defends this outrageous statement by saying, “That’s right, I said it!” beaming with pride, as if he has liberated himself and his readers from the cold, dark abyss that is safe sex. BULLSHIT!

I’m sorry, but at what point do we start holding people accountable for the net they cast? Yes, everyone is free to make choices in their lives, but at what point does your personal life start affecting everyone else too? Thomas Jefferson said that one man’s rights end where the next man’s begin… okay… so… The porn industry works with people who, in their personal lives, make the choice to practice bareback sex. Fine. However, once the industry becomes saturated with this imagery/attitude, and once the public begins responding by imitating this behavior more and more (and then STD infections explode again), isn’t the industry responsible on some level? Yes, there is still a freedom of choice innate to the consumer, but underneath it all, wasn’t that free choice heavily weighted towards the self-destructive?

Tobacco companies are being held responsible for addicting people to their product and for the health consequences of the general public. Don’t be surprised when the same becomes true for restaurants that offer fat/salt/sugar-laden food. These foods are addictive. Don’t fool yourself – these chains train their customers to want only bad food, to the exclusion of more healthful options. There’s a push to hold these purveyors of toxic food responsible for the product they make. So then, why not adult entertainment too?

I offer this question for debate: Is a person who takes Mason’s opinion into himself, practices the same behavior as his dysfunctional role model (with Mason’s example specifically in his mind), and is consequently infected with a disease, not in a position to hold (himself and) Mason Wyler responsible?

If we as a culture could be gobsmacked by 0.03 seconds of Janet’s titty (which is so completely ridiculous on so many levels that I’m not even going to entertain addressing them), then why aren’t we outraged by Mason Wyler’s wholly chaotic attitude towards safe sex in the midst of a resurgence of HIV infections? I believe that people imitate what they see, and I don’t think it’s fair that gay men seem to see only bad examples. Where are the portrayals of healthy, compassionate, generous same-sex interactions?

Believe it or not, this is the response I got from three different people in D.C. last weekend. I’d asked three people if they’d like to be part of an advertising campaign to promote safe sex. All three rejected me. Two said, “Condoms are so 1985,” and the third said, “Condoms are so 1980′s.” A fourth person finally said “yes,” but I’ve not heard from him since. It had never occurred to me that safe sex was trendy, much less that condoms were connected in some way to fashion. This attitude may explain why D.C. has the highest rate of new HIV infection for 2008 in the United States. Perhaps condoms should be so 2009?

I am trying to help a doctor friend of mine in the capital to get free safe sex kits into various venues throughout the city. We are hoping to generate some new stategies for encouraging safe sex/safer sex alternatives. It is obvious that the standard American model for teaching anything sexual to anybody is a general failure, and I think it’s because the well-intended professionals in this country have done everything possible to make safe sex look like a sterile, dehumanized, anti/non-sexual hassle. Droning on and on about numbers, and threatening people with consequences isn’t working. (Of course it doesn’t help when medicines are advertised showing stunning models.) A different approach is definitely needed.

Dr. Terence Gerace, a medical professional in Washington, D.C., will be exploring options for eroticizing condoms, and will eventually be producing videos that allow users of his website, www.fc-kits.org, to interact in creative ways with the multimedia that will eventually be added to the site. (Just a head’s up: I plan to interview Dr. Gerace soon, so don’t be surprised when you see his name come up again). If you are interested in being part of this project, check out www.fc-kits.org and contact the site administrators.

There are going to be some changes to the blog in the coming weeks. I announce this here in this particular entry, because it is connected to what is happening behind the scenes in D.C. I may be exploring a new avenue of adult entertaiment. One that has, at its core, a philosophy that is not like any other I’ve heard of or seen. Not to be cryptic, but I may have some big announcements about the direction of my career by the end of this summer.