I was a Teenage Sexualist: I went to see the American version of Queer As Folk at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival a while back, and for me one of the most amusing parts was the peculiar significance of a magazine photograph of Patrick Swayze in the life of two burgeoning masculine sexualities. This led me to think back to my youth, dim and distant though it might be, and to attempt to remember what impacted upon my naive sex-scape.
The first thing I remember having a … strange … significance was a teen book about two boys who fell through a ball of energy in a woodland and emerged in Ancient Rome. I remember very little about it, except that the two boys clearly came from some kind of parallel world because they kept talking about how where they came from, the ancient culture that followed Hellenism was centred around Reme, rather than Rome. It doesn’t sound very sexy, but it worked for me. [Do you know the name of this book?]
Two other things, I am, however, quite clear about. The first was a bizarre piece of SF called Planet of the Warlord. It’s the closest thing to a weird hot S&M fantasy you can imagine. The cover of the copy that I still own has a huge golden masculine robotic body (with a diseased grey face emerging from it) attempting to crush our long-haired hero, Keill Randor above a pit of almost pubic tendrils. Douglas Hill was clearly a bit of a pervert, but the book is extraordinarily strangely sexual. I’m horrief that I’m revealing too much here. You will stop me if I go too far, won’t you?
The other thing was, I’m afraid, Cocoon. I’m not proud, but there it is. And before you ask, no I did not find Don Ameche particularly arousing. But it is a film full of short, scruffy, Steve Guttenberg goodness. Mostly naked goodness at that – except for the odd tight t-shirt. And you must never forget that extraordinary alien sex scene with the injection moulded female. This may have formed the basis of many a pointless crush for years to come. Short, pointless, irritating. Come to think of it, teenage fetishes have a lot to answer for.
[Darren was a teenage sexualist as well.]