Home
Artists
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register
Partychan Telegram ThePornDude
Home Artists Posts Import Register

Sewers of Paris: The Fantasy That They Sold Us (Ep 425 - International Male/Jesse) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-20 16:16:02
Imported:
2023-08

Downloads

Content

My guest on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week is Jesse Finley Reed, co-director and co-producer of the new documentary All Man, which dives deep into the famous (or infamous) catalog/magazine International Male. If you were a curious young queer in the 90s, chances are good that you took a furtive look through the pages of International Male, or had copies hidden in places only you knew about. It was a source of daring, adventurous fashion, and plenty of exposed male flesh. When it comes to telling the story of the rise and eventual fall of International Male, Jesse has a particularly personal connection — going back to his teen years and a doctor who completely changed the course of his life.

Comments

GeekFilter

We went to the final days of the International Male store in San Diego! I’m sure I have a catalog or two around still. This will be a fun listen!

knope2001

SO very glad I made a point of not missing this episode! International Male and its hotter brother catalog Undergear hold a special place in many of our backstories. But somthing else drew me in far more deeply. Jesse's fear of AIDS and the impact on his life brought back incredible feelings. AIDS absolutely gutted the gay male populations of boomers and later silent generation folks in their prime. Those of the community who survived and learned to live in the new normal of friends left and right receiving death sentences, they were changed in ways unimaginable. But those of us who followed behind and spent our formative years in the shadow of the depths of the crisis, we learned very clearly that GAY=AIDS and AIDS=DEATH. How do you navigate coming of age when it might kill you? How do you find your community when half of that community might be dead before you’re 25 or 30? When news of AIDS starting seeing widespread coverage the gen-xers were between 2 and 17, and when news of the cocktail started giving us glimmers of hope in the mid 90’s we were 15-30. But even then it took years for it to really be refined and become widespread. There’s a whole generation in that period who bear the scars of learning what it meant to be gay in that environment when it meant death. For years and years, news of any mildly-famous man who died before perhaps 60 was an automatic AIDS suspicion, and while it was very often concealed we knew what to look for. “Long illness” or nondescript “cancer” were telltale. So was if little of their personal life was mentioned, or perhaps an ex-wife. One more of us gone. Some of us chose celibacy and obsessed for years if we slipped up. Is it better to know or not know? Many had very stunted developments of relationship skills. Some paired off quickly with a wide range of results. Certainly some joined the broader gay community with comparative abandon as the invincible young do, moving to the gay ghettos and gayborhoods and finding chosen family. But many plunged deeply into the closet; others remained on the fringes, not necessarily closeted but too terrified to make friends who would die or become one of becursed friends yourself. Many got married to women because when your options are the life you were taught to want versus death, you can convince yourself of anything. I really think there’s a dearth of storytelling in that age window. For younger people if a guy is much north of 40-45 in the rare instance such topics come up we’re considered semi-venerated “elders” who lost unimaginable numbers of friends. For so very many of us who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s that’s not our story at all, but we’re survivors of a different sort. Thank you, Jesse, for sharing your story and thank you as always, Matthew, for giving it a platform.

GeekFilter
>>113362784

It was pre-smart phone and people weren’t super thrilled when you whipped out a DSLR in a store! But if I come across anything I’ll let you know!