Hey guys.
Here’s the very first PIECAST with Colby Keller, Adam Gardiner, Karl Marxxx and myself. We chat about overcoming shame, radicalizing gay rights, being a porn star, and adopting Asian babies. Along the way we manage to redefine what it means to be a ‘gay hero.’ All while baking a nice pie.
Download the episode here: https://soundcloud.com/pariswages/piecast-01-colby-keller
Enjoy the podcast, Jerks.
Me: You are polyamorist?
Him: I have been, yes. I’m no longer practicing necessarily, but I believe in it.
Me: Oh wait a minute – are we putting our relationship on monogamy lock down?
Him: No, but there’s not an other. Just one right now.
Me: And Karl Marx is your boyfriend.
Him: You might want to ask Karl Marx that question.
Me: Carl! Just say yes. Everyone wants YOU TO LOVE COLBY!! It really is the JFK and Jackie O of our generation, so just let it happen!!
(laughter)
His Boyfriend: I lift my sunglasses and I nod politely.
Me: OH! So Jackie O. Now we know who the bottom is. Right? So why is polyamory good for a society?
Him: I don’t know if it’s good for a society.
Me: You’re so diplomatic.
Him: Because it’s not for everybody – I believe that the worst possible thing is to think of the world in terms of your own self interest. From one central egotistical position. And relationships whether it’s with one other person, right? You no longer are single entity. You’re seeing the world through someone elses eyes. It’s good to challenge ourselves that way – to expand what it means to be human and I think we do that by seeing the world through different eyes. Expanding that franchise can do that, but it’s difficult. It’s harder than it is with one other person. Three people is harder than two people. Four people are harder than three people.
Me: I had two boyfriends. Can I make that confession?
Him: I think you just did.
His Boyfriend: Did they know?
(laughter)
Me: It didn’t work. They weren’t attracted to each other and I was obsessed with this idea that I couldn’t have two boyfriends if they only wanted monogamy with me. Cause then, like, I’m a dick or something… Can you speak to that?
Him: I think they both thought I was a dick.
Me: We broke up. They both wanted me to be their boyfriend. The guilt that I felt. Not being able to give anyone what they wanted. Including me. I wanted us all to be boyfriends. We tried. We went on vacations together.
His Boyfriend:There are successful throuples and for me one of the biggest frustrations was that I wasn’t impressed with the other person. What hurt more than anything was that I didn’t like the other person.
Me: That made it harder. They liked each other and were friends.
Him: Right. Well. In our case there’s a lot of jealousies there and preconceptions… If you guys would have developed a friendship…
His Boyfriend: We interacted several times over the course of years and we never had a strong connection emotionally as friends. I don’t think that matters. We just weren’t compatible as friends. I was torn between still being in love with this amazing person (indicates Colby) and still not understanding what he was getting out of this other situation.
Me: What were you getting out of it? That’s a hard question. Are you mad?
Him: It was a lot of things. It was an intellectual connection. A sexual connection. If anything we’re almost too much alike. I see myself as much more introverted. The only reason I do a lot of things like this is because of Karl Marx.
Me: Have you topped Colby?
His Boyfriend: Yes.
Me: How do you climb mount bottom? He is a hunk of meat.
His Boyfriend: Yeah he’s a big person.
Me: Do you feel powerful? “I am climbing mount bottom. And now I’ve reached the summit. And now I plant my flag?”
(laughter)
His Boyfriend: I’m not sure. I don’t think about it in that context, no. I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment. It’s just the way we have sex.
Me: I feel like sex is a form of communication. I think monogamy is a selfish idea. I think it’s akin to slavery in the sense that [people are thought of as] property. I don’t think it’s good for society and I’ll tell you why. Because it doesn’t work for straight people, so why should it work for us?
Him: I do think that if you do love someone then you have their interests at heart. If Karl meets someone and decides that he wants to spend time with that person and be in a relationship with them I love Karl to the point where I accept that.
Me: That’s healthy.
Him: And I’ll be jealous, but that’s my shit. I own that shit. It’s not his shit, it’s mine.
Me: That’s fucking awesome.
Me: Do you see yourself as a role model?
Him: A role model? I don’t see myself as a role model, no.
Me: Really? Why not? You came out when you were 15. You have the guts to have sex with boys for a living while everyone watches… I think that does a lot more for gay rights than some sort of Victorian…
Him: I’m not going to pretend like it was something that it wasn’t. I came out because my parents discovered a big stash of porn that I had. I may have wanted them to find it but I wasn’t about to be mister responsible at 15 and say ‘Mom and Dad…’
Me: Right, but that’s the thing about life – it’s not about what happens, or circumstances, it’s how we deal with it. And you dealt with it in a very interesting way. I’ve done some research and I’ve seen the way you present yourself in the media, and I think you could consider yourself a role model. The idea of a porn star even-handedly guiding someone through a threesome is an important thing, because to ignore –
Him: Right. I think everyone has that responsibility to do that. To teach other people to make ourselves better human beings. People have that responsibility.
Me: No. We don’t. A lot of us don’t try. A lot of us are so selfish – you see that, right?
Him: A lot of us fail at that – I don’t think it should be considered special. It should be considered the norm.
Me: I like that. There’s a Victorian tenseness in the gay community about painting ourselves just like straight people. Can you speak to that? I think we’re different and better than straight people.
Him: It’s been a good strategy to make us more palatable to society at large. I don’t think we’re better [than straight people] because I think we should be more radical and we’re not. I don’t think [that gay marriage] is what our political struggle should be about. I think it’s about re-framing it in terms of queerness. I think it’s a ‘queer’ identity which anyone can have. You can be straight and be queer. The idea of conformity – the gays that say ‘I won’t be happy until I’m treated like every other straight person, and that includes marriage…’ not that that’s not something that doesn’t have value, or isn’t a good thing…
Me: It’s a civil rights issue.
Him: Right. But I don’t think that’s what our political struggle should be about. It’s about re-framing it in terms of queerness rather than something specific to our sexuality. Because there are a lot of really horrible gay men – let’s face it.
Me: Why are there so many horrible gay men, do you think?
Him: People want to be accepted. They struggle to give value to their lives. They’re afraid of being different and what that means, so they desperately struggle for conformity. That process (which isn’t unique to gay people by any means) – but I think that it’s something that’s very common. Because first of all, you are different. You’re not having sex like most people on the planet have sex – and instead of embracing that, and seeing where there’s value in that in a radical kind of way, they think of ways to make themselves normal again.
Me: And then they project that onto each other.
His boyfriend: That’s the big thing. The reinforcement and also control over everyone around you. You take your shame and you project it onto people who don’t want it.
Me: They don’t want your fucking shame! You don’t want your shame. Your shame was given to you by your family, and your church, and…
His boyfriend: Keep your shame. Keep it to yourself. Don’t force the rest of us to deal with it…
Me: Or find a good outlet? Like S&M. That’s a good outlet – because then we’ll all have an orgasm in then we’ll all go home and get our work done. I bar tended for a long time in the gay community and I can’t tell you how many times I heard phrases like ‘Ew, you went home with him? You know he’s a drag queen?!’ That’s so much shame… Self hatred.
Him: I think we’re taught to hate ourselves, but we’re also taught to like a certain thing. That’s what the market wants us to do. We need to be attracted to a certain type of body, you know?
His Boyfriend: Look at Ryan Murphy and all the mega-media shit that he’s putting out there right now. Where all gay men are supposed to live in Los Angeles, live in Mc Mansions, and be adopting Asian babies.
Me: Wait a minute. I want an Asian baby.
His Boyfriend: Okay, you can have an Asian baby, but where’s our media that’s cross class, like Roseanne?
Him: I think the thing that’s interesting to me is polygamy – most cultures in the world – that is the ideal relationship.
His Boyfriend: Look at Bill Clinton. When he had that affair, the world laughed at us. We almost shut our government down because he had sex with a younger woman. All the other cultures in the world were like, he should be fucking everything that moves.
Me: Because he needs to do that in order to maintain the ego it takes to run a fucking country!
His Boyfriend: Exactly!
PIEFOLK 