‘I Don’t Understand…This Free Love’

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The Horrors of Tacky Jewelry

Well, this was supposed to be my Halloween post, but alas, I have minimal control over how my time is prioritized and bosses usually aren’t sympathetic to employees taking a half day off for, well, anything, but especially for finishing a blog entry. But that’s fine, because in the U.S., November 2024 is way more terrifying than Halloween ever thought about being. So, consider these porno horrors a respite from the terrors of real life.

I first learned about the 1975 movie SEX DEMON from an episode of the Ask Any Buddy podcast I’d listened to a couple years ago. Host Elizabeth Purchell’s excitement at having found a print of director J.C. Cricket’s long-lost film was infectious. I immediately wanted to see it, but it turned out I’d need to book a flight—on a time machine. The podcast dropped on October 8, 2021, and it was largely focused on promoting upcoming screenings of the film in New York and Los Angeles. So, like my wanting to look like Jake Gyllenhaal, I had to accept that viewing Sex Demon was another thing that wasn’t going to happen for me.

Vintage newspaper ad via 
Dirty Looks.

Fast forward to this year. I’m still no closer to looking like Jake Gyllenhaal (apparently that requires more than prayer), but Sex Demon did get released on Blu-ray by AGFA and is now sold through Vinegar Syndrome’s sister site, Mélusine.

Lovers Jim (Steve Spahn, left) and John (Jeff Fuller) begin
their second (or third) year together.

A traditional gay anniversary gift.

At the movie’s opening, Jim (Steve Spahn, who looks like Heather Matarazzo cosplaying as a young John Travolta) awakens his older lover to announce it’s their third anniversary (referenced later in the movie as their second because Sex Demon has more important concerns than continuity). Jim then presents a tube of KY to his boyfriend John (Jeff Fuller, who sort of looks like Chris O’Dowd if you’re not wearing your glasses). John forgot their anniversary, but Jim sucks him off anyway. Even so, John rushes to a Christopher Street antiques store for “something special for someone special.” The special something he buys is a godawful gold medallion that Flava Flav would find a little much, overpriced at $20. Jim loves it, though, and refuses to take it off, even wearing it while he and John finally get around to using that KY.

The curse of bad taste.

But, as we learn via an unpacking flashback scene at the antique shop, complete with a Vaudeville-style voice over, “THIS MEDALLION IS CURSED!” The first sign of the curse occurs while Jim is doing dishes. He breaks a glass, then cuts his hand trying to pick it up. He promptly passes out, which isn’t surprising as he spills enough blood to make one wonder if he severed an artery. Then the cabinet doors fly open, and a box of cake mix falls to the counter and a colander falls to the floor. Scary! Later, though, John asks about why all the dishes were on the floor, suggesting that director Cricket initially had something more spectacular in mind than the ejection of a single box of cake mix.

Considering the city’s rat problem, I’m sure most New
Yorkers would prefer a kitchen poltergeist instead.

Jim dreams of an occult orgy, the participants of which are all wearing white eye shadow and gold glitter face paint. The sucking, fucking and fisting (yikes!) all takes place around a small altar displaying that cursed medallion front and center, along with a ceramic skull and a bunch of candles for extra spookiness. John awakens early in the morning to hear animal like grunting coming from the kitchen and goes to investigate, losing his tighty whities along the way. He discovers his lover sitting in front of the open fridge, eating raw meat.

Caught.

Foreshadowing.

An unhappy ending.

Now fully possessed by the sex demon, Jim goes to the nearest gay theater, the Gaiety Male Burlesk, which was managed by Cricket at the time. In the theater’s restroom Jim forces a guy to blow him (never mind that the guy pretty much offered to do so willingly). Jim then bends the guy over a sink and fucks him, breaking his neck and killing him the moment he cums. Another trick gets taken back to the apartment. After another forceful fuck (“Cum, you bitch!”), Jim stabs the guy in the ass with a screwdriver. Upon discovering the scene, a horrified John can no longer deny that his lover is possessed.

A scruffily attractive Good Samaritan, who had come to John’s aid earlier when Jim assaulted him on the street and who remains by his side for the rest of the movie, has remarkable insight on the situation, even knowing from which antiques store John bought the cursed medallion. John and Scruffy immediately go searching for a priest to exorcise Jim. Panama Johnson is the unfortunate man of the cloth tasked with casting the demon out of young Jim’s body, getting a mouthful of piss for his trouble. God’s one weakness! But it turns out what God can’t fix, a flight of stairs can.

Not even an exorcist can help: Panama attempts to cast out Jim’s
demon while John and a scruffy Good Samaritan look on.

So, was Sex Demon worth the wait? Yes and no. If you approach it as a grimy gay indie, Sex Demon can be a lot of fun, especially if watched with other people (those New York and L.A. screenings must’ve been a blast). It’s over the top in the best way, a cult movie in need of a cult. Cricket may be spoofing The Exorcist, but he wisely plays it straight, as it were. Fuller gives a more believable performance, but it’s Spahn who steals the show, never letting his non-existent acting skills stop him from just fucking going for it.

John hopes using the anniversary KY will vanquish
 Jim’s medallion demon.

Sex Demon is less successful as porn, with only Spahn’s flair for sucking cock and that occult orgy saving it from being a total erotic failure. Put another way, only those turned on by that scene in Pink Flamingos where Divine blows Danny Mills will need to have tissues and Jergens (and maybe a therapist’s phone number) handy while watching Sex Demon.

Sex, Murder and Crisco

Though I was glad to finally have a chance to see Sex Demon, I’d feel kind of cheated if I’d paid almost $30 for one hour-long movie. However, I paid almost $30 for three hour-long movies (the disc’s full title is Sex Demon…and Other Hauntings). Plus, you get trailers for other vintage gay porn titles. What a value!

Possibly the former lady of the house.

The homo horror continues with 1971’s DEADLY BLOWS, directed by Max Blue. Our lead is a young, overall-clad man who kind of resembles an extremely stoned Elijah Wood. (Though performers are listed, their roles aren’t. Stoned Elijah may be the performer credited as Stewart Morrison, but I could find no confirmation). Anyway, Stoned Elijah spends his days at his (?) large, Spanish colonial house, working in the garden or just chilling in his tree house. He doesn’t seem to get out much, but he does get a fair number of visitors. “Many people come to my house. Each one comes for his own reasons. None of them were invited,” says a narrator who sounds better suited for a film warning teens about the dangers of drugs than a gay porno. He certainly doesn’t sound like the sleepy-eyed, curly-haired stud we see on screen.

Stoned face.

Among those visiting Stoned Elijah are a handsome dark-haired artist and a friendly looking, bearded hitchhiker. Stoned Elijah seems welcoming at first. The artist initially wanted to draw Stoned Elijah’s house, but suspecting there might be more going on beneath those overalls asks to draw Stoned Elijah instead (“I could feel his eyes stripping away my clothes and my defenses,” intones our narrator with all the passion of a loan officer explaining the terms of your mortgage). The hitchhiker is treated to a bowl of broth and some bread (“I was in one of those paternal moods,” explains the narrator), then offered use of the shower, which he is more than happy to share with his host.

Stoned Elijah does indeed have a beautiful body, so it’s easy to understand why his visitors are so taken with him. But Stoned Elijah also has a big sexual hang-up: he can’t finish without finishing off the guy he’s fucking. The artist he beats to death with a hammer. Fittingly, the artist appears to have red paint running through his veins. Using that red paint as lube, Stoned Elijah strokes his cock in time to a Johan Sabastian Bach composition (Invention 4, maybe?). Sexy.

This is one way to avoid an awkward encounter with a trick afterward.

At least the artist got to cum first. Stoned Elijah strangles the hitchhiker mid-fuck, which is just plain rude.

The fine line between erotic asphyxia and murder is about to be crossed.

Murder is wrong, but the hair of Stoned Elijah’s
visitor is a crime.

Our homicidal hunk worries that his next unexpected visitor is a policeman even though he’s driving a green muscle car (“Maybe it was the police, and they were using a special trick car that didn’t look like a police car,” wonders our increasingly unhinged narrator). But it’s the artist’s roommate, who’s got too much sideburns and not enough mustache. Also, he might be wearing a wig. Stoned Elijah is at first evasive, then invites Sideburns inside. The artist is quickly forgotten, the two guys making out as Toccata & Fugue in D minor blares on the soundtrack. (“The whole thing was not what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to do it,” says the narrator, now sounding like he’s reading the transcript of a Sarah Palin press conference). Sideburns is extended the courtesy nutting before Stoned Elijah attempts strangling him. Things don’t go as planned, though, and Sideburns gets away. Stoned Elijah realizes there’s only one way his story can end, and that way ain’t prison.

Deadly Blows kind of has as similar vibe as Tom DeSimone’s Sons of Satan, which isn’t a surprise. Max Blue was a nom du porn of Nicholas Grippo, who produced many of DeSimone’s films before becoming a caterer to the stars. Deadly Blows is better than Sons of Satan in many ways, with a simple but slightly elliptical storyline, lush cinematography and a better-looking cast. Unfortunately, with the exception of our main character using red paint blood for lube, the sex scenes are as bland as those in Sons of Satan. There is little variation in the action and, apart from Stoned Elijah and the hitchhiker, little heat generated by the performances. 

Only the third feature, 10:30 P.M. MONDAY (1975), directed by Lucas Severin, really delivers as porn, albeit porn aimed at specific tastes. With its black and white wrap-around and overall surreal narrative, it’s also the most artsy movie on this disc if not the most original (it’s basically a grittier rip-off of/homage to Wakefield Poole’s Bijou). The main characters are a couple in their mid-to-late 30s. One of the men—tall, lanky and bearded Jeremy Wheat—is still very much in love, but his boyfriend—stocky Jeff Staller, with a thick mustache and dick—is growing bored. Staller openly cruises other guys in front of his lover and ignores Wheat’s attempts to initiate sex, preferring to jack off instead.

Marriage.

Getting ready for his big night.

The next day Staller puts a letter in their mailbox before he leaves for work. Wheat opens it later, and all it says—spelled out in letters cut from a magazine—is “10:30 p.m. Monday.” Wheat doesn’t know what it means but gets ready for whatever it is when the hour nears, taking a shower, blow-drying his hair (and balls) and donning his freshest denim ensemble. At 10:29 a Rolls-Royce pulls into the driveway and, voila, 10:30 p.m. Monday is now in color. The car delivers Wheat to a warehouse, where he’s greeted by a sexy bartender in leather chaps (Sextool’s Val Martin), who gives him a beer. Other men arrive, all of them wearing strategically ripped jeans. The men stand around talking and drinking beer, then hands begin to wander. One man bends over the table, offering his ass up as a snack to the guy next to him. Others follow suit

Let’s get this party started.

A sensual moment before breaking out the Crisco.

Weeeeee!

So far, so good. A cast of rugged guys, all into what they’re doing and enjoying doing it. Then the fisting started. A whole bunch of it, and not the comparatively reserved ass play seen in Sex Demon and Left-Handed, but full-on, Crisco-up-to-the-elbows, let-me-see-if-I-can-reach-your-esophagus-from-here handballing. For me, this is when 10:30 p.m. Monday became a horror film. The cast, however, appears to be having a good time. Per Elizabeth Purchell’s commentary track, the cast features men from L.A.’s leather scene, so all this fisting was, well, just another Monday night for them. It’s the cast’s excitement for what they’re doing that really sells 10:30 p.m., making it the hottest of the three movies on this disc, though only if you’re into fisting. Like, really into it.

Another relationship saved by group sex and fisting.

All in all, Sex Demon…and Other Hauntings is best enjoyed as a time capsule, a journey back to when, as Purchell has noted, there was no distinction between gay porn and gay cinema. Consequently, the sex in these movies often seems incidental to the filmmaking, rough though it may be. But regardless of erotic impact, Sex Demon is worth the investment. There are certainly worse gay takes on The Exorcist you could watch.

More than Man Enough

I first became aware of Buck Angel nearly two decades ago, while perusing videos on TitanMen.com (I’m a patron of the arts). Buck was featured in the 2005 video Cirque Noir (only watch at work if you’ve already turned in your two weeks’ notice), but the trailer is very discreet about what makes Buck stand out from his porn star brethren. I ultimately passed on the video because fisting, but the Cirque Noir trailer did pique my interest in this Buck Angel guy. That’s when learned Buck Angel is not like other men.

Buck Angel is “a man with a pussy.”

I’ll admit my interest in Buck Angel the porn star pretty much ended there (I like dick, OK?), but several years later, when director Dan Hunt’s 2013 documentary MR. ANGEL hit Prime, I decided to learn more about Buck Angel the man, for reasons I’ll elaborate on later.

Like the Cirque Noir trailer, the first few minutes of Mr. Angel are coy about what makes its subject unique. Scenes of Buck in the shower, shot from the shoulders up, touching up his bald pate with a razor are intercut with home movie footage of Buck as a little girl, let us know he’s trans, and Buck lets a Berlin cab driver (and audience) know that he’s in the sex industry, telling the driver that he prefers Berlin’s openness with sexuality (“[The U.S. is] very scared of naked people,” he laughs). It’s not until Buck arrives at his Berlin destination, the Venus Show, where a life-size poster of him nude adorns the wall of his booth, that the audience learns what made Buck unique among porn performers of that time.

Buck Angel’s beauty regimen.

At first, he seems surprised by the poster or, rather, that event organizers went with such a graphic image, but he’s happy with their choice as it confronts attendees at the Venus Show with his exceptional anatomy. “With pants on I just look like a dude.”

Buck Angel with his co-workers.

Just another day at the Venus Show.

It’s getting to know the Buck Angel with his pants on that is the primary focus of the documentary. Though there are many segments focusing on Buck Angel, porn performer, Mr. Angel is not a porn documentary. Instead, it shows audiences that while Buck may not have the genitals of a cis-gendered man, and his job isn’t a typical 9-5 office gig, he is, basically, just a dude, albeit one who must see a gynecologist.

Buck’s a pretty likable guy. Quick to laugh, thoughtful and, considering some of the shit he’s had to deal with, remarkably positive. I mean, these people might not like him but fuck them.

Bored now.

Yet even in the world of adult entertainment people can’t see the man for the pussy. A meeting Buck has with Lucas Entertainment founder Michael Lucas proves disheartening, the pouty-lipped porn star/mogul, who has made a video catering to fart fetishists, sees little market value in videos featuring a man with female genitalia. No cock, no sale.

“Just because I have a pussy does not make me not a man,” Buck says, later asserting, “I’m not an ‘it.’”

For the record, Buck says he decided against bottom surgery because penises created in the operating theater just aren’t up to snuff. Given that phalloplasty sounds like a grueling ordeal to go through only to wind up with dick that can’t even get hard without use of a prosthetic, it’s easy to see why he’s better off just using a strap-on.

Buck shows off his tattoos.

Still, it’s not easy for people to understand how someone can identify as one gender while having the parts of another. I certainly didn’t, which is what led me to watch this documentary initially. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get the message my first watch.

Learning I was the Asshole from a Man with a Pussy

I don’t come out well in this story, but here goes. Way back in 2012, my husband and I were having lunch with some friends. At the table was a friend who came out as trans a year earlier. I’ll call him Frank. Frank was in town for the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta, and he mentioned seeing Buck Angel, who was a featured guest at the conference that year. This is when I decided to make what I thought was good point: “But Buck Angel still has a vagina. Would ‘he’ even count as a trans man?”

Yes, I said that. Aloud.

Buck Angel is poised and ready to blow narrow minds.

It was a stupid comment. I know this now. It was uttered in ignorance, not malice. This probably doesn’t make it better, but I kind of meant it as a joke. Frank, however, didn’t take it that way. “Why should that even matter!?” he asked angrily, and a bit too loudly for my comfort. I, in turn, reacted like a Boomer comedian told his rape joke was offensive and tried to justify my wrong-headed observation (i.e., that unless a person got top and bottom surgery, they were merely transvestites), which only made Frank more indignant. I recall someone else at the table—not my husband, BTW—making a clumsy attempt to defend me, but all that did was draw fire until someone else mercifully changed the subject.

My ignorant comment was a teachable moment. If society is grappling with the concept of nonbinary identities now, they weren’t even acknowledged in 2012. We didn’t even know the word nonbinary existed. Even within the LGBTQ+ community there was a reluctance to embrace the “Ts.” Unfortunately, instead of explaining the dynamics of gender identity, Frank chose to dress me down for being a transphobe. The lesson I learned that day? Don’t talk to trans people.

I didn’t say much for the remainder of that lunch, and I was the first to announce our departure (my husband had to leave with me; I was his ride). Months later, when there was another get-together occasioned by Frank being in town, I declined to attend. In fact, a full year passed before I agreed to be in the same room as Frank, and while he didn’t appear to have any hard feelings—our previous interaction was never even brought up—I was still wary, and chose my words carefully in his presence, if I spoke at all.

MTF performer Wendy Williams and
FTM performer Buck Angel are about to
fuck with viewers’ minds in Buck Fever.

That humiliating lunch with Frank was very much on my mind when I decided to watch Mr. Angel the first time. Consequently, I was less interested in being educated than vindicated. And I thought I was. Early in the documentary, MTF porn performer Wendy Williams (not the beleaguered former talk show host) comments that even she was perplexed by Buck Angel. “I was doing all the things that make me mad,” she admits, like using the wrong pronouns. I took Wendy’s admission as absolution. I wasn’t the bad guy! Even other trans people questioned whether Buck Angel really “counted” as a man.

Except, that’s not what Wendy said. Wendy herself hasn’t had bottom surgery. It wasn’t until I rewatched the documentary for this review that I realized her shock had nothing to do with Buck’s identity. She just hadn’t seen “a man with a pussy” before watching one of Buck’s videos. Today there are entire websites dedicated to FTM performers; they were still an anomaly in the early 2010s. 

My repeat viewing of Mr. Angel made me reassess that cringey lunch in 2012. I had to face the fact that Frank might have been unfair, but he wasn’t wrong. I was the asshole.

It would be nice to say that I’ve since reached out to Frank with my belated understanding, but it’s too late for such tidy closure. Frank died of a heart attack in 2018.

Transitioning from Porn to Activism

If I had trouble wrapping my head around Buck’s gender identity, it was doubly so for his family. “It’s easier for me to deal with the transgender side than it is the porn side,” his sister Tracey says. “I almost feel it’s like you hit people once with being transgender, now you smack them again because you’re in porn.”

Buck Angel and his then-wife Elayne on Tyra Banks’ show.

His father Bill, whom Buck describes as a man’s man, had an especially hard time accepting Buck for who he is. Though Buck appears to have a good relationship with his parents at the time this documentary was shot, you can still see his father struggling to accept his son. Bill’s a good sport when they watch Buck being interviewed on Tyra, laughing when Buck tells Tyra Banks that he loves his vagina. But when Buck complains about the interview being on an episode focused on “sexual oddities,” Bill doesn’t understand the objection. “But you are…. ‘Oddity’ means you’re not with the norm.”

Selections from Buck’s 1980s modeling portfolio.

Angel-in-progress.

But while his family may not entirely understand Buck, they are grateful he’s still with them. He attempted suicide in his teens, which led to an extended stay in a psychiatric ward, during which his father never came to visit. As a young adult Buck found some success in the 1980s as a model, but the money from that also gave him the means to get drugs and alcohol. Addiction led to the end of the modeling career. Self-harm, homelessness and sex work quickly followed. His parents realized they were going to lose their daughter one way or another. Gaining a trans son was preferrable.

Buck’s mother Patty visits him during his recovery
from a hysterectomy.

“There are a lot of people like me,” Buck explains to his father. “I consider myself very normal. …I don’t want the world to go around thinking people like us aren’t normal.”

This is a hard sell now, and it was a hard sell then. Here’s a sampling from Buck’s inbox:

• You are one mixed-up individual. You need help, and bad.
• Well, I can’t really be nasty to you because you’re a girl, but people like you should be put to death.
• I hope you die of AIDS, you freak of society. You’re so arrogant and disgusting you have to change your sex trying to play God. I swear if I ever cross paths with you, I will have a gun and it’s going in your face.

Offsetting the hate mail are the messages from trans youth. Though many of them are asking for money to pay for their surgery, their messages also emphasize Buck’s position as a role model, something he embraces. He speaks on a panel at Yale (“It’s totally weird being here. I didn’t even fucking graduate high school.”) and posts videos about trans issues on his website, which he still does today.

Buck, his future ex-wife and their dogs relax at their home in Mexico.

The documentary itself serves as an extension of Buck Angel’s outreach. Buck may not be ordinary, but his day-to-day life appears perfectly normal, especially the scenes of him with his then-wife, body piercer Elayne, at their home in Mexico, where the couple moved after marrying in New Orleans. She seems wonderfully supportive (“That’s not a small cock, it’s a huge clit,” she helpfully explains to one middle-aged attendee at the Venus Show)—that is, until the cameras stopped rolling. A year after this documentary was released, Buck and Elayne divorced, very messily. Though she said in Mr. Angel that Buck was “the man of [her] dreams,” Elayne was suddenly a TERF in court, claiming their marriage wasn’t legal under Louisiana law because Buck never got bottom surgery, and therefore not a man, and not entitled to spousal support. The judge ruled against her.

Buck Angel, circa 2023.

Buck is still going strong. Now in his early 60s, he’s become a motivational speaker, hosts a podcast (saw that coming), and sells his own brand of sex toys. He’s still quick to laugh, still thoughtfully outspoken, and still just a dude.

Buck also sells merch, like this “Tranpa” mug.