Twink 80s
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Twink 80s
Credit:
Courtesy of Geov Parrish
I was a young gay man in the 80s who got by on survival sex
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The Seattle Times dropped a bombshell on the local political scene last week, publishing a lengthy account of interviews with three separate men who claim that Mayor Ed Murray paid them for sex while they were underage gay drug abusers in the 1980s.
The men – two of whom met Murray beginning in 1980 when he lived in Portland, and the third, a man who filed a civil suit alleging Murray did the same to him beginning in 1986, after Murray had moved to Seattle – gave similar stories.
This is truly gnarly stuff. Money for sex, which was then used to feed drug habits. These sort of allegations, when credible, can abruptly end political careers. No doubt would-be mayoral candidates, scared off this year by Murray’s formidable war chest, are looking anew at their contact lists.
There’s a lot I don’t like about Murray’s record as mayor, starting especially with how he exploits our most vulnerable residents for political points while doing far less than you’d think to help them. But this is much bigger than that. The civil suit doesn’t even need to go anywhere for Murray’s career to be over. The court of public opinion can do that if the allegations are bad enough, and the details here sound really, really bad.
And yet there are plenty of people, especially gay men of A Certain Age, who are defending Murray. To understand why, you have to appreciate two critical bits of context that won’t be included in most news accounts, because those accounts are being written by people who weren’t young gay men in the ’80s.
The very first national gay/lesbian march was held in 1979; the gay rights movement was still a fringe cause in its infancy, and gay male culture was still in thrall to the sexual promiscuity of the ’70s and the reflexive secrecy of since forever. There were no positive role models on TV, or anywhere else, for young gay men.
And, so, a common feature of gay male culture of the era was the notion that young men needed to be “initiated” into their gayness by older, usually middle-aged men. I helped pay for my college expenses (at considerable higher rates than Murray’s more desperate teens supposedly got) catering to the edgier desires of older men like Murray – horny or lonely or predatory or all three. All of them – ALL OF THEM – rationalized their interest in me as not just lust for a hot, barely-of-age twink, but as passing their hard-earned carnal wisdom on to the next generation.
Almost nobody defends those types of practices today. But 30 years ago? It was a cultural norm. As personally nauseating as I find the allegations – and I didn’t care for such men too much back then, either – part of me wants to give Murray a pass. How fair is it to hold him to a shifted cultural standard of a generation ago, and alleged crimes long past the statute of limitations, just because he’s now become a powerful public figure?
But then there’s that second bit of context. AIDS.
I was really, really lucky; my sex work ended just before AIDS (initially, the “gay cancer”) exploded on the scene. We knew how it was spread long before we understood what it was. For a full decade until initial treatments were developed that could keep it at bay, getting AIDS was a cruel, agonizing, utterly final death sentence. It was an invisible holocaust; countless men died while President Reagan couldn’t even bring himself to utter a word about it. The pandemic thrived in secrecy, shame, and the open glee of religious zealots around the country. AIDS decimated every gay community in the country, and those of us who survived were haunted and terrorized.
Murray’s alleged Portland abuse of runaway foster kids began just before AIDS struck – but by 1986, the year the plaintiff says Murray began paying him for sex in Seattle, The New York Times reported that an estimated one million American men had been infected . With no known treatment, let alone a cure. One. Million. Men. Think about that for a second.
That’s more than 300 times the number of people who died on 9/11.
By the time of the allegations in the suit, many tens of thousands of people had already died, including a lot of the people who did sex work for gay and bisexual guys. We knew far more about how AIDS was spread at that point than about what kind of safer sex practices would prevent infection. At that point, the kind of behavior Murray stands accused of wasn’t just abusive – it might have been putting lives at risk.
But there’s this: By 1986, a lot of the young men trading sex for money (or drugs, or housing, or whatever) were dying – because gay men who knew or suspected that they might be infected, and didn’t wish to harm their usual lovers, often turned to desperate – and usually drug-seeking – sex workers instead.
I hope the gay men who inevitably react to this story as an anti-gay smear remember that the sorts of teenage boys Murray allegedly groomed were often themselves gay.
And that regardless of sexual orientation, attacking the motives and credibility of less powerful accusers — as Murray has been doing for over a week now — is a tactic that is most often used to shame and silence victims. It's never a good look.
A version of this essay was published originally at geov.org and South Seattle Emerald .
The Seattle Story Project : First-person reflections published at KUOW.org. To submit a story or note one you've seen that deserves more notice, contact Isolde Raftery at iraftery@kuow.org or 206.616.2035.
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For everyone wondering who exactly is a twink.
White twinks on this app are weird .You don’t dictate people’s action.
Look, I’ve lived in Illinois and seen a lot of Lincolns in my time but this is maybe one of the most unusual? C. 1940 sexy New Deal Lincoln at the DC Office of Public Records https://t.co/3a1nmL8GYM
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Rico is a DC based freelance writer who pens pieces about culture, society and current events. As an out CIS gender man, look for blog posts that are bizarre, fun and sometimes "out there".
We’ve all heard the term Twink and Pup in gay-speak but what do they really mean? For example, is a Twink the same thing as a pup but share different characteristics? Or are gay men thought of as a “twink” in their own unique classification?
The inspiration for this post came from a recent conversation that I was involved with at a bar. A buddy of mine said, “Oh wow – what a cute twink!”.
When I saw the attractive young man he was talking about, I nodded my head in agreement. “Yep, he’s a cute twink for sure!” I said. But that’s when a person in our group injected the following.
“Technically, he’s not a twink. He’s more of a pup. And the two aren’t the same so get your gay lingo right!”
His bit of insight then led to an hour long conversation about the larger topic of gay twinks and pups – plus a few other labels thrown in for good measure – like wolves and otters.
Hey, you have to have something to talk about when you’re checking out the meat at the bar, right?
After we all went home that night – empty handed I might add – I started to do some research on twinks and pups. While I don’t pretend to be an expert, I will give you the basics of what I found out.
For the most part, a twink is a guy who has a slender build. Usually, they are in their 20’s and have boyish features.
Twinks are often thought of as smooth but they can also have body hair. There really isn’t a universally agreed upon construct here.
Many gay men mistakenly think of “Twinks” as pretty but that would be incorrect. You see, if a twink is referred to as having pretty features, they are referred to as a glamour twink . That’s a twink subtype in case you didn’t know.
FYI: Technically speaking, twinks can also be pups but they aren’t exactly the same.
In gay-speak, “pups” are fairly young (18-early 20’s) with the defining feature of having almost zero experience in the gay universe.
Many pups are newbies to our gay world, just taking their first few steps of self-discovery as part of coming out.
Pups can be of all body types, including slender and muscular or roundish and heavy (not the same as a gay cub). Pups can also have body hair or be smooth.
Remember, the defining trait for a pup is their newness to the gay world. After they’ve been out awhile and been exposed to dating, apps, bars, hookups, etc – they then graduate to another classification.
So there you have it – the main differences between a twink and a pup for gay men.
Be sure to check out this post on jocks, wolves, otters and bears on Paired Life!
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By Benji Douglas August 17, 2012 at 1:08pm · 20 comments
Free of an agenda (except that gay one)
Do not sell my personal information
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Our Fire Island forebears were indeed bears, if this woofy vintage film is any indication. Beards, burly bodies, short-shorts, and furry chests abound in this 1976 clip recorded by Nelson Sullivan. Twinks, otters, and even lesbians put in appearances as well.
Sullivan, who passed away in 1989, is responsible for documenting much of New York’s LGBT culture throughout the 70s and 80s. Perfectly capturing the essential feel of the era, he was sort of like Marcel Proust with a video camera. And, presumably, a boner.
How the hell did that green station wagon get there?!
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure … avec des centaines de mecs.
It was a good year to be 22. There was still some time left where the fear of sexually-transmitted, viral-borne death hadn’t arrived to attenuate sexual gusto. But even then I was hardly representative of the Fire Island approach, mentality and freedom. Never, to this day, have I been in a gay bath house, and never wandered off with some nameless stranger to do it the bushes. My titrated adventurousness may have saved my life for all I know. I lost several bolder friends, I do know that.
Nice slice of vintage (furry) gay life. Thanks for posting.
This is one of the most interesting most realistic presentatkion of the gay community on Fire Island loved it
Thom so does the video mention how A LOT of men got infected with HIV and other STDs in the 70s at Fire Island? Or how there are TONS of rich white snobby queens there?
Three guesses for what the cameraman died of in 1989?
Aren’t you prissy and sanctimonious? In 1976, most visitors to Fire Island had never known the freedom and self-acceptance of living “openly gay”, “Out”, in their daily lives wherever they originally came from. They did not get to have boy friends in junior high (now called middle school), high school, any many even in college. Society was very anti-gay, the gay community had lots of internalized homophobia, and whenever and wherever pockets of freedom existed, of course there were excesses that cover compensated for what most of their lives were previously, and for the majority, off of Fire Island. In those days, many guys wee gay on weekends, straight acting Monday through Friday. Very few men were living together. Society didn’t like it, families raised eyebrows. It was the era of “couples” always having separate apartments, not talking about the other at work or school, or among straight friends. If a pair did become known in the non-gay world, your partner was known as your “friend” or your “roommate”. Gay marriage was not even on the radar screen yet. The military was weeding out gays left and right. These Fire Island frolicers were all born during the gay bashing and gay witch hunts of the lavender scare, under Sen Joe McCarthy and NY asshole closet case lawyer Roy Cohen. mere suspicion of being gay, or even unmarried beyond a certain undefined age, could be grounds for loosing government jobs, and of course, no security clearances for gays.
So as you smugly criticize these guys in the film, I urge other viewers to try to place yourselves in their shoes, and imagine what gay life was in 1976. I knew a guy who once told me that he only could feel alive in summer on fire Islan, the rest of the year in upstate New York where he was a teacher, he had no social life, no outwardly gay experiences or appearances.
It’s wonderful how all our gay activists over the years have fought the good fight and won so much for all of us and future generations of gays.
You deserve a piss cocktail for your attitude.
Look up the film maker Nelson Sullivan in Wikipedia. He lived a fascinatingly artistic life, originated from South Carolina and migrated to New York City for the arts and the gay freedom. He established an incredible arts salon in his home that launched many in all different artsy directions. he originally was a classical pianist and composer, but fell in love with film making. He was an early discoverer and promoter of RuPaul and friends with keith haring and Andy Warhol.
And, by the way, he died of a HEART ATTACK.
Read the wiki article. Sullivan left us a beautiful legacy.
I didn’t find dvlaries to be “prissy and sanctimonious” at all. Perhaps because I could relate. As a young man, I turned down many sexual offers. When they were being nicer, people said I was “shy” or “picky.” When they weren’t feeling so nice, they said I was “stuck up.” The truth is, I was awkward and afraid. To this day, I regret some of the lost opportunities but, like dvlaries, I can’t help but wonder if I would still be alive today had I engaged. So it’s a double-edged sword, and that’s what I think dvlaries was hinting at.
The one coming off here as prissy and sanctimonious is Pete. I wonder if he was rejected by someone like dvlaries and is not taking out his bitterness.
Funny, apparently according to Hollywood and magazines the human race has gone through an evolutionary change in the last decade or two and men no longer grow any hair on their chests.
@ DrewSF : Wow, you’re so right. When we look back at the history of the gay community, we should never remember there being any good times, only bad. Forget the Stonewall riots; they led to AIDS. Don’t think about the early Pride marches or the Mattachine Society…remember HIV. And don’t, for all things LGBT, think about a community where we could be openly gay in the midst of a world running rampant with homophobia…just remember that all those people died. Thanks, DrewSF; I’m sure we all feel much better with the reminder.
Interesting how you use “White” as a pejorative. Kinda makes you sound like a race – ist doesn’t it?
It’s a very sweet video. It really was a time of innocence.
Don’t we all live, imagining we’ll never grow old. Wherever these guys are, I hope we gays are embracing them fully.
@ Charles :
Thank you for the defense, Charles.
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And I certainly didn’t want to appear judging. It’s just that when I see carefree groups of us from this moment of time, fear attaches, because now we know there was a monster around the corner in the 1980s, waiting to pick us off capriciously, no matter how sexually rambunctious or cautious we thought we’d been. Hell, I remember the first stories when it was called GRID (Gay Related Immune Disease), and in the uninformed reach for a culprit, suspicion was aimed at inhalants and lubricants.
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I was in the relationship I’m still in by 1976, but my foot slipped -so to speak- plenty in the first five years. The last time being the spring of 1982, not a moment too soon to practice better effort at faithfulness. But I was forced into final goodbyes to several friends (not unlike the fellows in this film), then in the summer of their years, who should be here enjoying old farthood with me. They’re not, and I miss them.
I didn’t think you sounded judemental at all. I thought you were saying quite clearly “Maybe this is why I’m still here”.
@ freddie : he died of a heart attack
I was there and it was liberating. So many men and boys and it was summer. Just a few years after Stonewall; remember gays and lesbians had beeng going to Fire Island for years.
All my summer share house mates? Dead from AIDS. How my husband and I survived; I can only guess. Maybe it was because we left NYC for california in 1975. Summer on the island was the White Party, the Pink Party, yes, the bushes and the sleep arounds and the suyp and the shots. 1976 was Bicentennial and the crowd grew and became bol
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