Sideways Glances

Text by
Danny Calvi
Photography by
Danny Calvi
Photography by
Benjamin Fredrickson

Right, pretend to actually read that book as you very casually, out of the corner of one eye watch that dude slip out of his black Speedo. Okay, who are you fooling? You're not even reading. You're just sort of skimming it and thinking about your next meal. Ooh, look who's back... Thank heavens for BUTT's summer reading tips — so great for those of you pretending to read on your voyage to the edge of the sexual universe.

The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame
by Gengoroh Tagame

272 pages from Picturebox

BUTT is totally fascinated by the very adult bara manga of 51-year-old Gengorah Tagame of Japan. He has an enormous cult following in his home country, but this is the first English translation of some of his most celebrated stories. Tagame’s comics are characterized by their protagonist’s complete loss of hope, that is, as they are being raped or brutalized by a couple of studs.
In ‘Country Doctor’ a young doctor escapes the city grind to work in a small village and winds up being nominated as the village kaehime, a kind of hegira who’s basically tasked with being the village bitch. First he consummates the relationship with the village god by squatting on a huge wooden dildo, and then proceeds to suck and fuck his way through the village.

The Castle
by Franz Kafka

304 pages from Penguin Modern Classics

Contributing editor Zac Bayly in Sydney is reading Franz Kafka’s The Castle which reminds him of the overwhelming bureaucracy involved in feeling up straight friends — big effort does not result in big reward.
When Zac goes out drinking with straight guys, he’s immediately trying to touch their butts. If it’s someone he knows very well, he just gets right in there and touches ‘em up. If it’s a good friend (or the boyfriend of his she-bestie) he has to be way more sneaky. He recommends waiting until said straight dude is happily drunk, then your overly frequent hugs and ‘joke’ ass grabs become totally acceptable.
If the guy is trying to hook up with your girlfriend, he must be cool with whatever you throw his way. If the guy in question is closer to the girl he wants to pounce on than you are, tread carefully friend. Zac once had a colleague’s date scream at him, ‘Tweak my nipple again! I dare you! Go on…’ He laughed about it then, but in hindsight, he probably would have got his face punched if he hadn’t. Anyway, read The Castle and you’ll soon begin to identify with ‘K’ as he fruitlessly tries to enter that unrelenting hunk of stone and wood.

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In the Spirit of Grace
by Pat Cleveland

268 pages from Pearl Publishing

Super-runway-informed editorial assistant Richard O’Mahony at BUTT’s right-on sistah publication, The Gentlewoman, heartily recommends this book of poems by the legendary supermodel Pat Cleveland. The poems are organized chronologically over an entire year and Pat does the doodles in the margin too.

Taipei
by Tao Lin

256 pages from Vintage

Contributing editor David Mills recommends this meandering tale of prescription drug-fuelled aimlessness. David says, ‘It’s the perfect beach read… Not much happens so you can drift in and out as you doze in the sun. It’s hard not to be charmed by Tao-Lin’s inventive style and jaundiced asides.’

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Photo by Benjamin Fredrickson

Roman Catholic Jacuzzi
by Michael Bullock
60 pages from Karma

Former altar boy Michael Bullock has written the perfect book for a non-readers because it’s actually a short story in disguise as a book. Michael says, ‘Non-readers can read it quickly and have the satisfaction of saying they read a book’. Plus, the 18-point type is modeled on a religious pamphlet — not to mention being a godsend for bifocal daddy types.
In this very true story, Michael addresses ‘the pink elephant in the Vatican’, that is, the thing we all know: that priests are actually a bunch of homos. Michael’s longheld suspicions are confirmed when he find himself sharing bunks at some kind of crazy priest retreat. After a few jugs of holy wine with a randy brother, Michael comes to understand how the priesthood is actually a perfectly designed closet.

My Life in Masturbation
by Michael Wynne
42 pages from Kiss and Tell Press

Shannon, our favorite book buyer at Printed Matter in New York City, recommends My Life In Masturbation which is not surprisingly rather masturbatory. Inspired by naked playing cards from the 1970s, Michael Wynne experiments with ways of whacking off. Ours arrived with a set of six refrigerator magnets!

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Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle
by Chuck Smith

168 pages from Powerhouse Books

Writer Kevin Killian in San Francisco recommends an art book about the life and work of Texan visionary painter, fisherman and pseudo-hermaphrodite Forrest Bess. Kevin is fascinated by Bess’s ideas of what constitutes male genitalia.
The book features some revealing correspondence between Bess and sexologist Dr. John Money who discovered Bess had been performing his own sort of sex-change operations. For Bess, the ultimate fuck was through the base of his own cock. Mister fix-it pierced a hole right through to the so-called bulbocavernous urethra, a naturally enlarged section of the urethra in search of his own male g-spot.

Published on 31 July 2013