Twenty years ago the above photo was taken.

Twenty years ago I began taping interviews with military men.

Twenty years ago my oldest nephew was conceived; now he has a son!

Traditionally, 20 years = the span of a generation -- genealogically speaking.

This summer I've researched my family tree. Passionately, even obsessively. As if it were a book! Which-- Well, just wait and see. Turns out my family history is way more Zeelandic than I ever knew. Sex! War! Floods! More floods! Stubborn devotion beyond reason! Sailors! Floods!

Meanwhile, it's August 2009, and -- as you may have noticed -- stevenzeeland.com has been fully redesigned. Lovingly so. By hand -- the very same professional hand that created this site almost 13 years ago (the span of a generation in some cultures). Eric take a bow!

Nobody could ever ask for better friends.

Thank you.

- Steve 

 It's never too late to come clean:

When I was a boy of nine, in 1969, I wanted to be an astronaut.

Teachers and family were heartened by this unexpected indication of "normality."  I was granted special permission to sit in with the sixth grade class to watch historic TV broadcasts.

Only . . . by definition it was not normal! None of the boys at my suburban Grand Rapids, Michigan elementary school showed any degree of the same enthusiasm.

Possible contributing factor: the "Apollo 1" mission? You see, Roger B. Chaffee (that's him on the right on raft, in silhouette) was from Grand Rapids. You have to wonder what sort of an influence it had -- the hushed silence in my hometown about this handsome Navy aviator's NASA martyrdom by immolation.

Last month I traveled to Pensacola, Florida -- home of US Navy aviation. Scheduled seven hour air travel ended up taking 24 hours (because cowardly pilot declined to land in Memphis, because of alleged tornado, which I admit did appear visible from my window seat, but still). Violent unscheduled landing in Little Rock was first of three separate occasions over three days when I felt like end-stage Icarus.

Yet I survived. Without so much as a sunburn. And the second half of the trip was bliss beyond words.

Ever since I'm (mostly) back to smiling like when I was nine. Sincerely!

- Steve

Hi --

It’s taken far too long, I know.

But: this past November US voters signalled “thumbs down” to George Orwell’s perpetual war. . . . Maybe these three (anonymous, internet-circulated) sleeping Marines will live long enough to vote in the next election? That would be my prayer.

(Interesting, that these 21st century American men at war seem more comfortable with homosocial intimacy than the anonymous soldiers of 100 years ago I found last week in a forgotten photo album in the basement of the house I grew up in. . . .)

ALL THIS AND WORLD WAR TWO

For over three years now I’ve been extremely hard at work “escaping” from the unfathomable horror of Orwell’s famous book 2004 come to life by researching the relatively less horrific topic of military homoeroticism v. homosexual panic in Nazi Germany. (Less horrific if only because it’s 60 years past.) This book is my first *commissioned* project -- in contrast to my first five books, it did *not* begin as a labor of love. And yet as the manuscript takes shape I’m ever more amazed at the *overlap* in underlying themes--

For better and for worse, Germans were at least 50 years ahead of the English-speaking world in the study of human sexuality per se, to include serious, widely read literature exploring the key role of homoeroticism in military life. (Most of which has never been translated into English, and very little of which is know even in Germany today. Between Brownshirt book burnings and Allied area bombing, much of it went up in flames. And then came the harshly hyperconservative 1950s. . . .)

Anyway: please wish me luck in completing my first of at least two volumes -- it’s far and away the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced; the topic is too serious to cut any corners; and last week my funding was cut! After three years of full-time research (on something that for me is anything but a personal “kick”) I’ve endured too many nightmares to NOT see it through.

LIFE DURING WARTIME: YEAR 5

To all my buddies -- Army and Air Force men I knew in the former West Germany, and one man I came to know 10 years later -- who helped me with photos, supplemental interviews, and most of all with friendship: please accept my apology for the unforeseen circumstances that at this writing continue to necessitate postponement of BARRACK BUDDIES *SECOND EDITION*. Namely -- once again -- you guessed it -- the war.

Strange but true: I was brought up to believe that making money off of war is ... wrong? Given that my first book was set against the backdrop of the First Gulf War (... not to mention the fact that, in the years since, more than a few young men have written me that reading my books inspired them to enlist!), how can I in good conscience peddle a deluxe illustrated new edition at a time when--

At a time when I can barely stomach watching the news from Iraq.

But then, I’m the type of person who does not slow down to look at car accidents, and who -- blah blah blah -- finds the 11 o’clock news more obscenely exploitive than a lot of adult video .

PORN UNDER PUNCHES

Offhand, I can’t immediately cite other authors and editors who, as Alex Buchman and I, have been singularly distinguished in an award-winning adult videomaker’s mass-produced prurience -- with not only prominent product placement, but also porn star protaganist pronunciation of passages from a serious work of non-fiction erotica, in this case BARRACKS BAD BOYS: AUTHENTIC ACCOUNTS OF SEX IN THE ARMED FORCES VOLUME II.

A year ago today, Dink Flamingo of activeduty.com was being out-pornoed by regional TV news smut-hounds stirring up a sweeps weeks scandal -- indignantly reporting live from his front lawn that when they had peered into the windows of his home they had seen people inside but upon ringing the doorbell no one came to receive their intrusion.

To date, the only non-developmentally disabled journalistic account of the scandal is my friend Mark Simpson’s DETAILS story.

Dink is my friend, too. (His trilogy of confessional accounts taped, transcribed, carefully cross-checked and edited by yours truly into three respectable chapters -- over more long hours than some authors spend on entire books -- is the veritable backbone of BARRACKS BAD BOYS.) Alex Buchman was a real-life (good) bad boy Marine; I am (or so the critics of THE QUEEN IS DEAD agree) a doomed “chaser” of military bad boy strays. . . . But Dink -- for better and worse -- has taken his parallel passion to a point beyond, say, MILITARY TRADE.) One secret we have in common is that both of us -- for longer than fleeting seconds, but less than tortured months of sleepless nights -- seriously toyed with the idea of becoming Army chaplains.

Anyway, Dink is contributing to Alex Buchman’s third and (according to Buchman, adamantly:) final installment. But he’s one of a half-dozen contributors (truth be known, myself included) still struggling with his definitive chapter in a book titled BATTLE BUDDIES, compiling authentic accounts of men getting physical in wartime.

What’s the hold up? My publisher is impatient, does not -- cannot -- understand. . . . Here too: thanks, more than I can say without sounding hokey, for your understanding.

“WHY DO YOU THINK THE NAZIS WORE BROWN?”

Everybody loves you (/hates you) when your new book is out and getting attention. . . . When my first book was in press and my Senior Editor commissioned COMING OUT UNDER FIRE author Allan Berube to write the Foreword, I was on cloud nine. . . . When Allan and I met, it came as a shock that even after *big press* success and with a film deal in the works he was still struggling to make ends meet -- after he’d devoted TEN YEARS OF HIS LIFE researching a definitive history of gays and lesbians in WW II! Four or five years later he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant to research the book he’s been working on since -- free of worry about funding his next meal. . . .

My book on homoeroticism in Third Reich Germany may or may not lead to a $300K endowment permitting me to work on the next volume free of worry about paying for pet food. But I believe that I can now understand and admire Allan Berube better than I was able to in 1992; more importantly, I can truly view him as a role model. Given the gravity of his project then and mine now, what should come first?: rushing the most difficult/sensitive, astonishingly wildly nuanced, potentially most valuable of writings to just get paid -- or researching/writing as I have for three years, in the interest of going all out to realize my own untapped potential in delivering a book that can be the most substantive possible addition to “the literature” and at the same time an exceptionally “good read”?

Jeez, was that an embarrassingly rhetorical question-- Again, wish me luck.

TANGIBLE PRODUCT: CD, PHOTO CD, TAG TEAM SIGNED O O P BOOK

For those of you inclined to smirk at -- or admire -- my “ueber-80s” author headshot on the back of BARRACK BUDDIES (the so-called Flock of Seagulls pic -- actually taken in late 1991!), the above video capture is me in 1981, live on cable TV with my first band Zyklon. (Awkward name? Not if you have the patience to learn our youthful philosophy in adopting it.)

Industrial Music a la Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, and to a lesser extent something resembling early Joy Division at their most electro-Brechtian -- those are the simplest reference points for the 25th anniversary reissue of THE HEARTLAND by grim-records.com. I did the artwork and wrote the liner notes. And for those of you who know my story ... well, Zyklon ceased to exist 25 years ago this month, on the day I left Michigan in pursuit of my first soldier lover in Germany. But if your iPod playlist is unacquainted with any variation on the genres *noise*, *industrial*, or even Kraftwerk, this is a CD worth purchasing as a collectible, probably better left unplayed.

Of surer interest to fans of my military interview books and/or visitors to this page attracted by images of military men:

• TWENTY [make that 18 --sz] copies of the 200 signed, limited edition SEADOGPHOTO photo CD-R remain available.



• THE QUEEN IS DEAD: JARHEADS, EGGHEADS, SERIAL KILLERS & BAD SEX is a collection of transatlantic personal letters (and small but high-resolution photos) between me and my closest writer buddy, Mark Simpson -- before he became internationally famous for coining “metrosexual”; before the clock turned 2000 and nobody, not even us, persisted in old-fashioned pen palship *on paper*. Published in the UK in the year 2000, QUEEN garnered glowingly positive reviews in prestigious places -- including top British newspapers such as THE GUARDIAN and THE INDEPENDENT (who named it one of the “books of the year”). That was all well and good, but now, finally, this improbably successful book is where I first pictured it: like an obscure import album on vinyl ... out of print ... *rare* and getting rarer by the day. You can probably still find a copy used or even new for under $20. But I have 15 [make that 14, thanks DG --sz] or so new copies autographed by Mark Simpson that I’m adding my inscription to and alternately donating to libraries and offering to supporters on a first come basis for $50 by check or PayPal (to order, click on the above image to the “old” link for the Photo CD, and simply change the amount to $50 -- I’ll cover postage, even internationally).

There’s more, much more to report--

But only so much fits on a postcard.

- Steve

PS My health? After this year alone racking up $10,000 in outstanding bills for medical testing (given my “pre-existing” lung problems I’m uninsurable), my new pulmonologist says that I look “young” (!) “and healthy,” but he wants me to obtain a follow-up CT scan just to make sure a new “area of consolidation measuring approximately 4.5 X 4.5 cm not noted on the prior exam” is not, at worst, a tumor but hopefully merely an “acute process compatible with” my bout with pneumonia back in November. . . . Meanwhile, I’ll send a free CD, photo CD, or copy of QID to the first person who knows Latin well enough to (WITHOUT GOOGLING!) translate three words on my radiologists’ report that echo my adopted personal motto: ABNORMAL BUT STABLE.

"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

Hi Everyone -

Sorry for the long silence since my last "postcard." And that for seven months the only updates to this page have been plugs for merchandise.

I wish I could 'fess up to laziness, greed and/or simply being too consumed by research /debauchery. I wish I didn't have a "better" excuse.

A doctor's excuse.

IN 25 WORDS OR LESS

It's probably not cancerous. Probably it won't kill me anytime soon. But it seems I'm paying a price for all the secondhand smoke I inhaled during the course of my research. My doctor has suggested that it may not be too early to start thinking about the possibility of a lung transplant.

DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB

If you actually counted the words in the above paragraph, chances are you're someone who reads books.

The one aspect of my life as a "self-employed" writer/editor (/independent scholar, sometimes photographer...) that friends always seem most envious of is the hours.

The one aspect in the life of anybody with a regular job that I envy most is the benefits. No matter how miserly. More than anything else, right now I envy anyone with health insurance.

BLOOD AND FIRE

. . . is the motto on the door of the Salvation Army, my neighbors across the street.

Four years ago when I moved from Seattle to Bremerton I told friends that I was prepared for "a lot more smoke and more blood in my life." I was speaking as a non-smoker and vegetarian. I didn't foresee that the blood would be my own.

In June I started coughing. The medical bills became a problem after September, which is when I started coughing up blood.

Last week I finally saw a Seattle pulmonary specialist, who diagnosed my lungs as irreversibly damaged and resembling those of a lifelong hardcore smoker. He recommends resectioning (i.e., removing part of my lung).

NOT A LOBOTOMY, A LOBECTOMY

I haven't yet attempted to place a dollar amount on this "very expensive" thoracic surgery. For now, it's enough to know that it would cost more than my total gross income for the last two years combined. For now, it's challenge enough trying to figure out how I'm going to pay the pulmonologist. The radiologists. And certain other medical bills I haven't even opened yet--

AND keep on writing books (which - a sad fact not widely known - almost always costs an author more out-of-pocket expense than is covered by a publisher's advance).

The fact that I can still work disqualifies me from receiving any federal assistance. But even if I were in a coma, I still would not qualify for State assistance as long as I continue receiving even $.01 in royalties.

One thing is clear: this year, stretching my royalty checks to keep my Sacred Birman (" like loyal dog captured in cat body ") Chester in IAMS would take a miracle of loaves-and-fishes proportions.

THE US OF eBAY

After months of resistance, at the persistent urging of friends ("But Steve, your situation is, er, well, DESPERATE...") I am adding a PayPal donation box to this page.

I'm told I'm not the first author to ever beg for patronage.

And that coughing up blood is about as literary as illness gets.

Also, that were I born of noble stock I would feel no shame whatsoever about pleading for assistance. But as a third-generation Dutch-American from suburban Grand Rapids, MI whose father and grandfather were shopkeepers, I have an easier time asking for money in exchange for goods.

At this writing, all I have listed on eBay are signed copies of THE MASCULINE MARINE and MILITARY TRADE ("ENHANCED"). And doubly autographed copies of A NIGHT IN THE BARRACKS. But I do have more to sell. . . .

1. For discerning collectors, I am creating a "MEMORABILIA" page. Offered for sale will be unusual, one-of-a-kind items (some prohibited for sale on eBay).



2. An excellent new book I've contributed a chapter to will be out sometime this summer (see below). If you purchase this or any of my books, please consider ordering them directly from me -- or through my links to amazon.com (the small commission I receive from amazon.com sales is actually slightly higher than my royalty for each book sold).



3. In the coming months I will also be offering for direct sale limited edition CD-R's: a photo CD containing several hundred never-before-seen "best of seadog" original images of sailors.

And as many as four audio CDs.

So, "all is not gloom and doom," I was just about to type. But that's not strictly true. Globally, nationally, locally, as well as personally, I have to say I've never before known quite this level of gloom and doom.

Then again, I have a pretty strong record of . . . thriving on adversity?

I've returned to work on the second edition of my very first book. Looking back, it might never have been published at all were it not for the gloomiest event of my life up until then: the Gulf War.

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU BLOOD, MAKE BLUTWURST

It's funny how . . . things connect?

Last week I reconnected telephonically with Scott, the first soldier I interviewed for BARRACK BUDDIES. When the book was published, I promised that Scott and I were collaborating on a short story about his sexual adventures in the Gulf War. It took us years to accomplish it, but the result ("Semen in a Bullet") was eventually included in Alex Buchman's A NIGHT IN THE BARRACKS.

And it was nominated for inclusion in Susie Bright's BEST AMERICAN EROTICA 2003, which is now off-press.

Meanwhile, Alex Buchman's second non-fiction military erotica collection -- BARRACKS BAD BOYS: AUTHENTIC ACCOUNTS OF SEX IN THE ARMED FORCES -- is in production, and should be out around September. My contribution is a story about how I started taking pictures of sailors in smoke-filled bars. The title: "Trouble Loves Me."

More soon (this time I mean it),

--Steve

PS For those who would prefer to mail a donation, my address is PO Box 1237, Bremerton, WA 98337 USA. (Everyone who helps -- or who already has -- will receive a signed, numbered copy of the limited edition Seadog Photo CD upon its release this summer.) Thanks.

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--"

"WHAT'S NEW?"

"I've lived through worse times," I told a friend last week. "But I was younger then."

FLASHBACK

The second week of September 2001 marked the 10 year anniversary of my relationship with THE HAWORTH PRESS.

TRAUMA

Probably I don't need to explain how it happened that celebration of this anniversary was preempted by breaking news.

LASH-BACK

At the height of mid-80's cold war tensions, I was working as a civilian employee on US Army bases in Germany where terrorist bombings occurred with such frequency as to almost become routine.

One of my current projects is editing a 10-year anniversary second edition of my first book, BARRACK BUDDIES. It was during the 1991 Gulf War that I left Germany -- my home since 1982. My interest in interviewing (and later photographing) US servicemen grew out of my stubbornly dogmatic pacifism. Seeing all my GI friends go off to war was more than I could take.

None of my friends were killed. And within months I found a publisher for my interviews with them....

Ten years later I find myself in a military town emptied of sailors "off to war."

STRAY CAT DRESS BLUES

Actually, as it happens almost all of my Navy friends here had already been discharged before 11 SEP 01. Most for getting into trouble. I've always had a soft spot for rebels, troublemakers, military bad boys (and military bad girls too, now).

Last month I turned down an invitation to write a feature story for a prestigious glossy magazine on the state of "gays in the military under George II."

I could have used the money. Badly. But (a) my work has always been more documentarian than political; (b) since my first invitation in 1993 to appear on HARD COPY I've consistently said no to any media exposure I feared might inadvertently exert any negative influence on the conditions under which service personnel work and live. And (c) for the last five years or so the primary focus of my work has been chronicling homoeroticism among military men who do not necessarily identify themselves as gay.

Since "9-11" I've also been ruminating on the question of trivialization.

That my studio photography of sailors these last two years has largely been limited to men (and women) on their way out of the Navy just sort of happened. It's since become requisite. Even so, the second week of September I "blacked out" the galleries of half-naked sailors on this site in acknowledgement of the special sacrifices demanded of active duty service members.

In a statement on the direction I see my work taking, I wrote:

My photography (as my five books) is neither commercially nor politically motivated. Occasionally, I do work up something resembling a spark of lewd-vagrant voyeuristic prurience. Mostly, though (and more and more...), I'm just a not-ready-for-PBS documentarian.

KEYWORD PHRASE: "time capsule."

From here on my writing will likely concentrate on the closing decades of the 20th century: preserving stories that would otherwise go unrecorded.

And sharing some stories of my own.

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