Linc thinks…
About quite a lot actually but when the editors at the Star Observer
asked me to put together a cheeky monthly column about
gay sex and dating, well…
Who could refuse that opportunity!?
=============
Not me, so here they are!
(The first one could be a clanger, just warning ya 😝)
The art of the douche…
For anyone who is new to the wonderful world of douching, the initial, confronting explanation of how the practice all works is a little disconcerting and might make the prospective anal novice consider a career as a top or a side - less muss and fuss!
But if you can switch off that voice that says you look ridiculous trying to manoeuvre yourself into a position which allows access to one of those more difficult to reach crevices, the art of gently pushing warm water into your rectum offers piece of mind for those concerned about someone bumping into something in the hallway.
A few tips and tricks when it comes to preparing yourself for the internal gurney.
Number one is - don’t use a gurney! Just kidding, that is one awkwardly long rigid trigger handle!
But seriously, there are a number of suitable aids you can purchase to assist with the practice - gone are the days of filling up an empty coke bottle!
Enema Bulbs are probably the most common and safest option for the occasional douch - they are made of a reusable rubber bulb with a nozzle on the end that gets inserted but keep an eye out for a bulb with a flexible tip! The rigid plastic ones can be a little stabby.
Enema Bags are similar to the bulbs but seem more an oldy-worldy type of solution - they come with tubes and hosing and nozzles and hooks (and ropes and pulleys) for that frightening, complicated gravity fed douching experience.
If you’re a power player who grew out of bulbs or bags years ago, a Shower enema may be the way to go though again, there are some very important things to take note of when going down this track. DO NOT insert the Shower enema - a thin hose installed and fed directly from the shower pressure - before you turn it on or you could find yourself feeling extremely full, very quickly. You’d also want to check the temperature of the water before inserting or you could do yourself a damage!
Is douching even necessary though? The human rectum is extremely efficient at keeping things high and dry until it’s called upon to do it’s thing and if you pay attention to what your body is saying and the timing of your processes, it is possible to play around up there without it ending in, oh let’s say tears.
Print Edition of the Star Observer
March 2023
Mardi Gras - the especially warm embrace that is community love ❤️🏳️🌈❤️🏳️🌈
Do you remember the anticipation of your very first Mardi Gras? You finally make that fateful decision to attend the biggest, gayest celebration of queer culture and togetherness on the Australian entertainment calendar and the building tension and excitement seems to be a crested wave you are riding with little control on how you’ll land… but you’re pretty confident you’ll have a blast along the way!
You arrive amongst a growing crowd and the atmosphere doesn’t disappoint - the palpable feeling of acceptance in the air, no matter your size, shape, colour, sexual preference, gender identity - on this night, you are hundreds of thousands of international hearts, beating as one.
The human barricades along the parade route are five bodies deep but somehow, everyone catches a glimpse of the circus as it winds along it’s inevitable journey - lead by the iconic Dykes on Bikes and adoringly followed by a rainbow cacophony of gyrating dance moves, blinding sequins and lots and lots of sweaty flesh.
The importance of the spectacle, the warm embrace of acceptance - all of this was a wonder for a 26 year old country boy from Cairns in the early 2000s, whose only exposure to such openly displayed gayness until that point had been fevered and sneaky looks at the ABC’s coverage of the parade that started in 1994. But it didn’t seem real back then, being so far away - Mardi Gras was something that happened “Down South” and had no bearing on the complicated and dangerous life of a gay teenager in Far North Queensland in the 90s.
But being there in person, witnessing that parade for the first time - trying not to stare like a slack-jawed yokel at the sights!
Standing on the ubiquitous but somehow still hard to purchase milk crates, riding the atmosphere of love and acceptance and for the first time ever, feeling the especially warm embrace that is community love.
And in 2023, the gay Christmas that is Mardi Gras has an extra special kick, with Sydney WorldPride marking Australia’s first hosting of WorldPride!
That familiar anticipation is building, and with the added excitement for WorldPride and a post-covid tension about to release two years of pent-up party pressure - you’d best hold onto your hats Sydney! Because the world is coming to celebrate, and at a time when our hard won rights and freedoms sometimes seem tenuous at best, we gonna get loud!
Print Edition of the Star Observer
February 2023 - World Pride Edition
Catfishing - a danger of online life
Following on from a previous column about one of the bad behaviours that humans and as an obvious extension of that, queer folks, do to each other and it got me thinking about other abhorrent behaviours that technology makes it easier to inflict on each other, especially in the, hopefully dying, days of toxic social media - one that immediately sprang to mind was the shockingly easy to initiate and weaponise - Catfishing.
Catfishing - if you haven’t heard of it or been affected by it in any way, you would be in the slim minority as this terrible behavior, based around general internet trickery, seems to be running rampant right now! Which also ties in with the terror almost ten million Australians are currently feeling, thanks to the shadowy Eastern European figures that got their sticky fingers on millions of Australians’ sensitive medical information recently.
Catfishing can be as simple as someone using fake images on a hookup app to entice a victim into wasting a few hours of their time in sexy chat, within the relative safety of the internet, knowing they have no intention of meeting, hence getting away with using said fake images.
But this behaviour can escalate, enhancing the charade to the extent where it takes up years of someone’s valuable time, thinking they are speaking to the love of their life who just conveniently never seems be able to make the planned meet ups, most often extorting money from their ‘partners’ before the canard is exposed for what it is - some mentally ill person’s idea of a good time, perhaps even enjoying the anguish they have caused once their trickery comes to light.
It’s a cruel variation of the previous column’s subject, or perhaps the act of ghosting someone can be the crushing end of the Catfishing game, brought suddenly - when a victim is ghosted, the harm, while no less hurtful, has an end, hopefully allowing the chance to heal, while the catfishing is the continuance of the game, building to the inevitable devastating revelation.
And there are so many variations of the con to be on the lookout for! Not to mention the fact that the perpetrators of the hoax can sometimes even be a part of your close social circle, cruelly inflicting the pain and then getting double the thrills because they’re comforting you on one shoulder while emotionally shoulder charging you with the other!
Online Article Star Observer - Published January 2023
Body Dysmorphia is a cruel bully
Do you have a touch of the body dysmorphia?
Does this sound familiar? You’re taking a saucy selfie and peering at your body and hating on yourself, then 12 months later, you’re looking through your phone and come across those photos and you think to yourself “hey, I actually look pretty good there!”.
Then being confused about the state of your mental health where you can look back to 12 months ago and see something completely different now, to when you actually took the photo?
It was shocking to hear during an interview earlier this year that someone who appears, from the outside at least, to have perfect body confidence, a man making it in the entertainment industry who spends a lot of time honing not only his craft but also his body, suffers too.
He’s in an upcoming release in which he bears a lot of flesh but this particular artist has an Instagram page too, in which he also bares a lot of flesh and the question was asked whether the Instagram page, which is a few years old, helped him to mentally prepare for the making of his movie which required him to be fairly undressed a lot of the time, which was when he shared with me the fact that he himself suffers from body dysmorphia!
Mind. Blown.
And that the confidence that he shows on the outside by sharing his body through these different mediums, despite the fact that he has these voices in his head telling him that he does not meet the lofty expectations society has set for us, is inspirational.
This stunning example of someone who society deems beautiful, who appears on the surface to be confident and sexy, shockingly, also suffers from body dysmorphia and here I was thinking it was only something that people carrying extra weight suffers with.
Imagine my surprise to find that somebody who works so hard to successfully achieve that sculpted form, also regularly looks in the mirror and sees something distorted staring back.
How do you shut these voices up then, or at least turn the volume down?
It helps if you can talk about these concerns with other people in your life, whether it’s someone you talk to professionally or just confiding to your friends and family and discovering that more of us are going through these difficult internal monologues then we would’ve thought!
Print Edition of the Star Observer
January 2023
“No, I’m not talking about a sweaty, gritty session of lovemaking next to a pottery wheel to the strains of Unchained Melody“
“No, I’m not talking about a sweaty, gritty session of lovemaking next to a pottery wheel to the strains of Unchained Melody“
No, I’m not talking about a sweaty, gritty session of lovemaking next to a pottery wheel to the strains of Unchained Melody or a conversation with a demonic form three feet above their bed covers (there is no Dana, only Zuul) - I’m talking about one of the more recently coined terms to describe when someone you’ve been forming a relationship with, romantic or otherwise, suddenly (or gradually) removes themselves completely from your life - ghosting. And while the term ‘ghosting’ is a fairly recent addition to our vernacular, appearing about the same time as social media and our digitial addictions, the practice has probably been around for as long as humans have been.A relatively recent example from before our digital obsession, ‘Friends’ touched on the subject when eternal pop culture sensation, Jennifer Coolidge guest starred and Monica and Phoebe discuss how to ‘cut out’ their recently returned acquiatance due to her objectionable behaviour. When Monica asks Chandler if he’s ever done that to anyone, he relies “Nope, had it done to me though. Feels Good.” Behold, the early 2000’s version of Ghosting.Anyone who has had this unpleasant experience happen to them can attest to the fact that it does not. Feel. Good.And why do people do this to each other? Is it a lack of character or maturity to actually tell someone that you are no longer interested in investing in a relationship with them and that it would be better for everyone if you went your seperate ways?Or is there something more sinister happening?
There are certainly some people out there who just like to cause pain to other people and want to watch the world burn and the act of ghosting someone by cutting them out of their life without any notice to the other person, allows them to revel in the pain and confusion of that person as they try to come to terms with the sudden withdrawal of contact.
Just one of those peculiar human traits, though if you yourself have enough battle armour on to weather that storm, you should console yourself with the fact you dodged a bullet because this obviously immature or psychotic person decided to let you go - there is a chance to salvage your ego and mental health if you can look at the experience through the positive lens that you escaped!
Have you ever been ghosted? 🤔
Print Edition of the Star Observer
December 2022
“Consent is sexy” is a phrase that has become more common place in our everyday vernacular, to the point where the phrase and the idea behind it more specifically has even started to find its way into everyday discussions on social media posts of many friends as they’re discussing their various experiences around the real life interactions in LGTBQI spaces around the country.
It’s very interesting to hear how the conversation has changed in the years that we’ve been cocooned in our homes thanks to covid, only to now emerge with the vocabulary to talk about difficult topics in a more open and honest way.
For example, I recently had a lightbulb moment with an experience that made me recognise for the first time what consent might look like for a gay man negotiating the pleats of gay dating with an unexpected and certainly not consented to, thumb up the butt.
I won’t go any further into (that’s what he said!) the details and I certainly don’t have any hard feelings personally about the experience myself because for me that’s the part of the fun of being with a new sexual partner and discovering the things that I might not have realised I liked before hand but I am self-aware enough to have that moment in the shower later where I was like ‘huh’ - technically, this is what all the kids are talking about!
It also got me thinking about the other times in my life that, if looked through the lense of today’s acceptability, might not exactly be kosher - like the time one morning after a Mardi Gras party whilst in bed with a older and obviously more experienced fellow who, mid gravy-stroke, slapped me across the face hard enough (but soft enough) to snap my head to the side but as I’m sitting here re-living the memory, I have a huge grin on my face, which appears every time I tell the story and I think, that wasn’t consented to and yet… I kinda liked it.
It is important to know that NSW officially changed its consent laws in June 2022, which included specific reference to requiring consent for every step along the way “Consent to one act does not mean consent is given to any other act”, a requirement which could get some into trouble in these early days of the new laws.
A thumb and a lightbulb moment about consent…
Print Edition of the Star Observer
November 2022