I wrote back -- about what it means to be straight-identified and attracted to another man.

Here's the second:

Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 5:20 PM

Subject: straight guy here

I wrote a few days ago, but was too chicken to read your reply. I am straight, but would not mind some cock on cock stuff. I think dude's assholes are gross, and sure wouldn't stick my cock in one. I think you understand real guys.

Scott

Maybe I'm the only person reading this who cares about Scott.

I don't know.

I think many of you only care about Scott as potential meat -- someone you can rub with, get off with, and forget -- or maybe as a potential LTR.

And if he's not either of those, he might as well not exist.

But Scott is your brother.

And he does exist.

And he's come to this site -- and to you -- for help.

And as I've said to you repeatedly, how you respond to him is a measure of you as a man -- in some ways the only meaningful measure.

Because if you can't identify with and help someone whose life and needs are so close to your own -- you probably can't help anyone.

You're too self-absorbed.

Too shallow.

Too selfish.

Think about Scott, think about what his alternatives are -- basically the religious right or the analist left -- and then:

Donate.

And if you don't donate, please don't write to me telling me money's short this month or you can't afford it.

If Oscar Vallejo, who's Mexican and works as a waiter, can afford $10 per month -- so can you.

Truly, those emails I get saying money's tight make me embarrassed not just to be a part of this website, but to be part of the human species.

Because it's such a transparent and self-serving lie.

For almost five years, our sites have been here to help guys like Scott -- and you.

For the first three of those years I paid for them entirely out of my own pocket.

Now I can no longer afford to do so.

You have to pull your weight.

Many hands make light the work.

Many small donations will do the trick.

A few large donations will also do the trick.

But no donations means we'll fold.

Bill

Bill Weintraub

Re: We're way short for April

4-4-2005

Guys,

The response to this appeal has been very poor.

We've gotten a few donations, but nowhere near enough.

And your communal failure in this regard has, frankly, sickened me on this whole project.

If we'd had the money during these last six weeks of concern about an HIV superstrain, we could have mounted an advertising campaign which would have reached tens of thousands of men and permanently altered the debate in the community of men who have sex with men.

Instead you sat on your hands, and as a consequence we were relegated to one corner of gay dot com -- and that only because of the kindness of a stranger.

Today yahoo carried a story about gays responding to crystal meth.

What's the response?

Counseling and peer support groups and poster campaigns.

Meth Anonymous and psychotherapy and advertising:

The current prevention campaigning tries to promote the concept of healthy, meth-free [anal] sex. Peter Staley's latest ads, for example, feature posters of buff male models, accompanied by the slogan, "Crystal Free and Sexy."

New York City's health department contributed $300,000 last year to support the activists' education campaigns. More money is coming this year.

$300,000.

To promote meth-free anal "sex."

To be spent on the same message using the same techniques as condom campaigns -- which have failed.

Yet why do gay men do drugs during sex?

To push past the pain of anal.

The physical pain.

And the psychic pain.

That's always been true.

That's not a secret.

That's how poppers became popular.

Guys use poppers to push past the pain.

That's well-known.

Yet, so far as I know, I'm the only person in gay male life willing to say so publicly.

To say there's a link between drug use and anal penetration.

We've had these alarms about unsafe sex and drugs in the community for years.

The response is always the same.

And the drugs and the unsafe sex always make a comeback.

Of course that's not all I'm willing to say publicly.

I also say there's a link between effeminacy and anal penetration.

That effeminacy both facilitates and is a consequence of anal.

That effeminate gay men have embraced the worst of the oppressor's lies about men who have sex with men -- that they are not really men.

And that the community should support neither effeminacy nor effeminate men.

Because it should not support that lie.

That's truly fundamental guys.

And MSM life cannot change without attention to those fundamentals.

If you want me to continue to speak out publicly, and to provide a platform on which you may speak out, you have to donate.

Your actions -- not mine -- over the next few weeks and months will determine the sort of world you'll live in for decades to come.

A world of disease and effeminacy and promiscuity and drugs, dominated above all by anal penetration.

Shit sex.

Shit sex has poisoned the lives of men who have sex with men.

And without your support of these sites and our work, it will go on poisoning those lives.

Including your own.

Because there's no escaping the life of your time.

That's one possibility.

The other is to join with your fellows in working toward a world in which sex is phallic, fidelity is prized, and masculinity honored.

It's your decision.

And your call.

No one else's.

Bill