"Instructor gives conditioning exercises to aviation cadets at pre-flight school, Iowa City, Iowa." September 1942; Iowa City, Iowa; photograph unattributed; 80-G-473132

Hi --

Earlier this year BLUE magazine of Australia commissioned me to review a newly published book of old photos titled AT EASE.

AT EASE sold extraordinarily well to men who (like me) derive a particular kick from "iconic" vintage images of sailors and Marines in and out of uniform. But it bothered me that few, if any, other reviewers found it at all disturbing that conspicuously censored from this 160-page pictorial subtitled NAVY MEN OF WAR WORLD II is any unpleasant reminder of, you know, WAR.

The above photo is not from AT EASE. Obviously?

It’s in color. Not to mention the telltale late-20th-century barracks-as-motor-lodge furnishings.

But it’s fascinating to consider how much these photos have in common. Beyond the seemingly “classic,” “timeless” apparently inherently homoerotic aspect of buddy portraits among brothers-in- arms, there is the unsettlingly seductive anonymity:

The photos in AT EASE are “public domain” images inexpensively obtainable via the National Archives.

The digital “pics” of the two Marines have been so widely circulated on the internet that it’s “fair use” to publish them in an essay addressing similiarities with and differences from combat zone photos taken 60 years previous.

The most instructive difference between then and now? I would suggest: who’s behind the camera.

BATTLE BUDDIES

. . . is the working title of the third volume in Alex Buchman’s AUTHENTIC ACCOUNTS OF SEX IN THE ARMED FORCES series. The theme is love among (/ with) military men in wartime.

By the way, if you were hoping to contribute to Buchman’s book but missed the deadline, don’t feel too badly -- so did I! And the deadline has now been extended to 31 DEC 05. To download the call for submissions in .rtf format click buchman-call-III

Apropos Alex, a couple months back he made his first-ever bookstore appearance, reading Dink Flamingo’s chapter from BARRACKS BAD BOYS, in our ex- adopted hometown San Diego, in a double bill with Rich Merritt -- author of SECRETS OF A GAY MARINE PORN STAR.

And apropos Rich -- not until he got back in touch with me last year did I even remember the roll of film he asked me to shoot of him . . . that Sunday he took me to brunch at the Officer’s Club on Coronado? In any event, I’m very honored that he chose to include this “vanity shot” in his first book.

Ironically, I took relatively few photos in San Diego -- and only began to play at being a professional photographer after I moved to Bremerton. Some of the messier details of how this came about are confessed in my contribution to BARRACKS BAD BOYS. It’s a huge honor for both Alex Buchman and me that this story, “Trouble Loves Me,” has been singled out for inclusion as the final chapter in BEST GAY EROTICA 2006. (Thank you, Editor Richard Labonté and this year’s judge mattilda!)

The same month -- next month, November 2005 -- sees the publication by Simon & Schuster of a special US edition of Mark Simpson’s wonderful SAINT MORRISSEY. Not merely “reissued/ repackaged,” but augmented by a photo insert with captions to live by....

“The third sex has been tried and failed” happens to be one of the themes of my own new book-in-progress. . . .

“Use photography as a weapon” was the motto of John Heartfield, creator of this anti-Nazi propaganda image from 1934.

As some of you know, at age 21 I left my hometown Grand Rapids, Michigan to “chase” the first great love of my life -- my best friend from high school -- who was stationed at a US Army base near Frankfurt. With the unexpected result that Germany became a second home, and which I only left nine years later, after the end of the Cold War and the start of the Gulf Wars.

In Frankfurt, concomitant with acquiring a passion for American military men, through the inadvertent influence of my friend Heinz I also came to love . . . cognac! And, slowly, the German language.

Fast forward: last year I accepted a commission to author a book on the nightmarishly complex / contradictory history of homoeroticism / homosexuality in National Socialist Germany.

Surpisingly, or maybe not, more than a little of my research so far has a lot to tell us about today.

Thanks for your support and patience: Bill, DC, DF, DG, DL, DTS, DVZ, EG, HK, JLB, KJ, KO, MS, MBS, RHF, RM, RR, SL, SK . . .

-- Steve

PS I'm honored and flattered that someone has launched a "Steven Zeeland Discussion Group." I myself don't plan on reading any of the postings anytime soon (I wouldn't, you know, join any club that would have me as a member.... Plus which it's more fun discussing someone when they're out of the room). But I'm very happy to promote the group:

Yahoo! Groups - Steven Zeeland Discussion Group

Zeeland certainly lives a less glittering and more peripatetic life, and to an English audience his reports have an exotic gloss it would be unfair to to think Simpson could equal - not least his account of his friendship with Andrew Cunanan, the killer of Gianni Versace.

Andrew DeSilva, as I knew him, was a rival, not a friend. Not hardly. I paid as little attention to him as possible. But the more I ignored him the closer he got.

After Andrew made the FBI's "most wanted" list, I accepted an invitation from the literary editor of Seattle's alternative weekly THE STRANGER to write an essay on the overlap between Andrew's social world and mine.

After Versace's murder I turned down invitations from tabloids and tabloid TV. Instead, I shared what material I had to offer with TIME, the WASHINGTON POST, a writer for VANITY FAIR. . . . When the results appeared in print I winced but could not laugh. Pretty much the only words attributed to me by respected US journalists were the isolated tidbits in my story most milkable for shock value. So I ended up getting a taste of "gutter press" exploitation, without the remuneration.

But of course, even in conjunction with an erroneous definition of "glory hole," it was valuable national exposure, right?

Buchman and I did accept a four figure sum from a photo agency for usage of a snapshot taken of him with Cunanan by the "gay spree killer"'s first victim -- the very first picture taken on the Polaroid Captiva "party camera" Cunanan had presented Buchman. I'd let THE STRANGER use the image as an exclusive, and only belatedly thought to exploit it for cash. "You could have gotten twice as much had you called me a week ago!" bellowed the photo agency head. (Four and a half years later, I'm still waiting for a check from the agency's Paris bureau.)

Buchman heeded my admonition and applied most of the ill-gotten gain toward his college tuition that semester, and had just enough left over to pay for a week in Rome.

For a long time I planned on giving the Cunanan camera to John Waters for his serial killer memorabilia collection. I tried writing him once but the package was returned.

Now, next on my list of memorabilia for sale is that camera; a reproduction of the photo (Buchman is keeping the original); and maybe an audio CD-R disc containing two phone messages I didn't realize I had until one day last year when I popped in an old microcassette to be sure there was nothing on it I couldn't tape over and was startled to hear Andrew's voice inviting Buchman to dinner. "And don't worry, I know you haven't got a lot of money right now--"

"I'D LIKE TO DROP MY TROUSERS TO THE QUEEN/ EVERY SENSIBLE CHILD WILL KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS..." (Morrissey)

THE QUEEN IS DEAD: JARHEADS, EGGHEADS, SERIAL KILLERS & BAD SEX is a collection of letters between British writer Mark Simpson and me published last year by Arcadia Books, UK.

I haven't read it. Not out of any embarrassment over certain unsanitized details of my lewd vagrancy. (On the contrary; my life is an open book ... literally.) I just selfishly prefer my limited-edition-of-one set of Mark's personal letters to me v. the konsumprodukt available in the US from amazon.com.

But I do like looking at THE QUEEN IS DEAD. For me it has something of the exotic gloss of a record album in the import bin:

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1-900850-49-4

Designed and typeset in FF Scala and Scala Sans by
Discript, London WC2N 4BN
Printed in England by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire

I'm also impressed with (and grateful for) the acuity of our reviewers' critical comments. Honestly, I never really expected to see THE QUEEN IS DEAD published at all -- much less widely reviewed, slated for translation into Portuguese, and at Christmas listed by THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY as one of their

Especially interesting (and, for me as a first-time author in the UK, instructive) have been the assessments of British journalists published in mainstream newspapers.

I don't know to what extent these letters are edited. Anyway, they read beautifully: certainly, an e-mail correspondence would have been very different in flavour. There's a neatness about the exchange of ink and paper that seems to suit a sergeant-major formalism in the soul of both writers.

Thank you. And, "right on" : E-MAIL SHOULD BE RESTRICTED BY LAW NOT TO EXCEED THE WORD LENGTH OF TELEGRAMS IMHO. STOP.

Simpson always comes across as a very public figure while Zeeland, with his low profile, his drifting across state lines, seems more the genuine inhabitant of the demi-monde that Simpson espouses.

In June, VILLAGE VOICE Executive Editor Richard Goldstein flew in from Manhattan to spend a night on the town with me and some sailor friends. We partied hard. So hard that Richard very nearly woke up the next morning with a tattoo on his buttocks. On returning to NYC he filed his report, which was published in the VOICE's annual queer issue: Men Who Love Military Men Too Much — And the Sailors Who Oblige Them. I thought that Richard did a fine job portraying the milieu that I have written about and continue to inhabit. Regrettably, I failed to anticipate certain consequences, including, but not limited to: a long list of friends being summarily blacklisted from the tavern mentioned in print; the summary dismissal of the Native American single mother working at the bar the night of Goldstein's visit — for not refusing to let me take photographs; a death threat; and being forwarded anonymous third-party e-mail crediting me with inspiring a military investigative service crackdown / witch hunt.

All this for an article about STRAIGHT MEN in the military.

Goldstein wrote:
"The feeling between them is merely manly, and its goal is friendship, not mating.". . .

"The row over gays in the military has made servicemen hyperaware of homosexuality. 'That may help people who embrace a gay identity,' Steve says, 'but progress has come at the expense of a certain traditional freedom among military men to enjoy physical intimacy without any implications for their identity.' Instead of allowing out-and-proud gays to serve, Steve would rather see the ban on sodomy lifted. Any sort of sex off-duty would be permissible-and uncategorical. Don't ask, don't name."

The same week, I was admitted to the emergency room of my local public hospital with symptoms not dissimilar to those described in media reports of a West Coast outbreak of a virus spread by dust particles contaminated by the saliva of waterfront rats. Also, my day job as Editor came to an unexpected end over creative differences.

To anyone who tried to contact me during this period and never received a reply, I apologize.

No more editing another author's books for me. My new role model is Carl van Vechten.

  Summer 2000 saw the publication of my photographs in the VILLAGE VOICE and HONCHO, which featured a 17-photo layout of mine in its July issue. I'm also quite proud of the photo that adorns Kerwin Kay's Male Lust (despite the mixed results of his mandate that the cigarette hanging from Bremerton sailor Cast Boy's mouth be digitally amputated).
  Thanks in large part to a flood of encouragement from e-correspondents, I'm returning to work on the project formerly known as "MILITARY HAZING." Details to follow.

  January 2001 sees the publication of my letters from and to Mark Simpson: THE QUEEN IS DEAD: JARHEADS, EGGHEADS, SERIAL KILLERS & BAD SEX by the prestigious London-based small press Arcadia. Though nothing at all like my first four books, this epistolary collaboration with notorious ANTI-GAY badboy Simpson will be of interest to anyone steeled (or reckless) enough to brave the risk of "T.M.I." about the sordid details of my private life ca. 1994-1998, and to queer theorists.

Though I continue to read, and archive, every letter sent my way, answering all of the mail this site generates would be a full-time job in itself. Perhaps if the right patron comes along I may yet enjoy the luxury of "just" pursuing my research. Meanwhile, my e-mail address is the same, steve@stevenzeeland.com, and I'll do my best to answer as many letters as I can. Thanks.

Steve