White Buffalo's Return to Emerald Island

All Hail to the Queen
The fags bash the bulbs to make the starts brighter

All peace to the Earth
As orbs of white light moat Emerald Island

2,000 years ago a young woman appeared in the shape of a white buffalo and gave a family a sacred pipe and made them guardians of the Black Hills. Before leaving, she prophesized that one day she would return to purify the world, bringing back spiritual balance and harmony. The birth of a white buffalo calf would be a sign that her return was at hand.

In 1994 a white buffalo was born in Wisconsin. In many communities there is an aboriginal renaissance occurring, a return to the land is manifesting.

In 1998 Dry Bones Breathe: Gay Men Creating Post AIDS Identities and Cultures was published. Writer Eric Rofes put forward the idea that the AIDS-As-Crisis-Model was long outdated and a new era of focusing on gay men's wellness had arrived.

Its now 2009, 200and mine and I wander the urban Canadian terrain for white buffalo tracks and modern gay male culture.
A pull back-A pull forward,
A pull within-A look outside.

Dry Bones Breathe
Gay men break backs
First Nation women get ignored
The land heaves and sighs.

PAUSE.
I got my panties in a knot a few months ago when I started visiting gay guy social networking sites like MANHUNT and DUDESNUDE. At first I was just jealous of all the lovely bodies that will never be mine, that I will never have.
Here they all are,
stretched,
flexed
out
aching to be clicked,
hooked,
favorited,
chatted and
poked.
I found myself heavy and full with minor outrage.
THE GAUL- WHERE DO THESE GUYS GET OFF?

But then I got over myself and I meant it...

Where do these boys get off?
Where is public sex?
Do these dudes nude know that their flesh is for the viral masses (if so GREAT)
Or do websites create a sense of enclosed space so they think that they are in some version of inside?

I had up into that point never seen a cock just hanging out for all to see
so sexually,
so publicly,
so in the realm for of all.

But there one was, attached to a barista I kind of knew, but now knew better. Tomorrow when I order my coffee I wondered, Would I feel a new intimacy with him? I kept clicking- there was his cock rock hard, there was him smiling with his arm draped around a friend (did she know that she was on this website?), there was his cock again.
With every image I saw I was getting to now him better. I knew what his bedroom looked like, that he had gone to Paris (and taken a dirty photo in the Louvre's washroom) and that he was uncut. Is this now how gay community is formed? Is this the new 70's? (if so great [?])

Last summer I was accepted to do a video curatorial residency in which I would use the moving image to explore how sites like MANHUNT and DUDES NUDE were changing the sexual landscape for gay men.

I had it on my mind that in the face of AIDS, in the face of the internet
sex had not only gone underground, it had gone post-ground and now cruising existed only in the ether.
I was wrong.
The beauty of me is my ability to be wrong, my ability as a vegetarian to eat bacon and crow.

Sitting after dark in Toronto's Queen Park I befriended a man who had been cruising this park all his life. The year that Rock Hudson died of AIDS, he decided to come out. It has made him, if he does say so himself, an expert at giving blowjobs.

He tells me how he calls this park Emerald Island- cause it is- basically we are sitting in a large traffic circle in the middle of a city, permitered by trees, our feet thick in luscious grass and roots aching to come up.

Every few years he tells me the city tries to make the park less welcoming by taking down trees or adding more lights. He laughs and says it doesn't matter- the fags just bash the bulbs to make the starts brighter.

Sitting there frustrated by the lack of play, the willy-nilly fear of men to man up and hook up we start talking. Darting hungry eyes shoot us dirty looks. "WHAT?" I say with my mouth and shoulder, its not like you are doing anything.

We watch for a while as the little guy who wants to be the big guy circles the big guy who wants to get with the little guy.
It is as boring as shit but counts for action tonight.
Finally against a tree, the big guy lets go (did I mention he is on roller blades), the little guy wins and a crowd gathers to watch, stare and play.

The beauty of dry bones breathing is tempered only by the fact that parks such as this still echo all that is hurt inside of gay bones.
Not only is this place a hunt for the great white cock, leaving brown, yellow red cocks dangling in the wind- there is no room for dudes without cocks or cocks without dudes.
Desires are still so repressed that getting laid under the stars, white buffalos winking from the road, is still a revolutionary act. And there is no room for openness, no room for further transgression. We have done our part by coming out they seem to say.

Before I ever went to cruising park I romanced the idea that in such places you fucked what was there. That beauty became relative and a bell curve of hotness was recreated every time someone came or left.
And this is true.
And this is not true.
Our culturally informed idea of beauty still permeates past the trees.
Old guys walk around with nary a wink,
Fat guys sit dejected, staying in the background instead of being rejected.

White buffalo breath revives dry bones.
But animals we are not.
But just spirits we are not.
But online profiles we are not.
But post-AIDS we are not.

Take off your shoes, your socks, your shirt and your pants.
Walk barefoot on the land. Naked.
Find a place to lie down in the grass.
Press your sex to the ground and feel the flex flux of 6 billion souls.
Get off
Get up
Keep going.

White buffalo breath revives dry bones.
Fucking strangers revives faith in humanity.
Being outside reminds you that you are human.

Take off your shoes, your socks, your shirt and your pants.
Walk barefoot on the land. Naked.
Find a place to lie down in the grass.
Press your sex to the ground and feel the flex flux of 6 billion souls.
Get off
Get up
Keep going.

Take off your shoes, your socks, your shirt and your pants.
Walk barefoot on the land. Naked.
Find a place to lie down in the grass.
Press your sex to the ground and feel the flex flux of 6 billion souls.
Get off
Get up
Keep going.
Sept 2009 Ted Kerr

Ted Kerr is a Canadian based writer, artist and actionist whose work primarily focuses on queerness, HIV / AIDS and expression. Find more about him on his website.