pornegrafo

visions of movement:
the electrical faggot succession

gavin: ’ i suppose you slept with him? ’ i blurted out half scared to ask.

edward: ‘oh yes—once in a while—he regarded it as the best way to get together with another man. he thought that people should ‘know’ each other on the physical and emotional plane as well as the mental. and that the best part of comrade love was that there was no limit to the number of comrades one could have…”

gavin: ’ how did he make love? ’ i forced myself to ask.

edward: ’ i will show you, ’ he smiled. ’ let us go to bed. ’
it was a warm night and we had just a light eiderdown over us. we were both naked and we lay side by side on our backs holding hands. then he was holding my head in his two hands and making little growly noises, staring at me in the moonlight ‘ this is the laying on of hands ’ i thought reverently. ’ walt. then him. then me  ’ … he snuggled up to me and kissed my ear. his beard tickled my neck. he smelled of the leaves and ferns and soil of autumn woods … the old man at my side was stroking my body with the most expert touch. it was as exquisite as the little bubbles that come up from decaying vegetation in a mud bath, caressing the flesh with a feather lightness. i just lay there in the moonlight that poured in at the window and gave myself up the loving old man’s marvelous petting. every now and then he would bury his face in the hair of my chest, agitate a nipple with the end of his tongue, or breathe in deeply from my armpit. i had of course a throbbing erection but he ignored it for a long time. very gradually, however, he got nearer and nearer, first with his hand and later with his tongue which was now flickering all over me like summer lightning. i stroked whatever part of him came within reach of my hand but i felt instinctively that this was a one-sided affair, he being so old and i so young, and that he enjoyed petting me as much as i delighted in being petted. there are so many possible relationships, and one misses so much if one limits oneself to one sex or color or age. at last his hand was moving between my legs and his tongue was in my bellybutton. and then when he was tickling my fundament just behind the balls and i could not hold it any longer, his mouth closed just over the head of my penis and i could feel my young vitality flowing into his old age. he did not suck me at all. it was really karezza, which i knew he recommended in his books. i had not learned the control necessary to karezza and he did not want to waste that life-giving fluid. as he said afterward, ‘ it isn’t the chemical ingredients which are so full of vitality - it’s the electrical content ’… the emphasis was on the caressing and loving. i fell asleep like a child safe in father-mother arms, the arms of god. and dreamed of autumn woods with their seminal smell …
the next morning he made love to me again, this time gazing at my body rapturously between kisses and growling ecstatically. and the same thing happened at the end. i had the distinct feeling that he felt my coming as if he were coming himself - that in that moment he was me. ‘

gavin arthur and edward carpenter 
conversation on walt whitman & more
transcribed by allen ginsberg

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_refs: allen ginsberg in ‘gay sunshine journal’ #35 (1978). this is a excerpt of the conversation between allen ginsberg (1926-97) and the late gavin arthur (1901-72), setting account of gavin’s memory of an encounter with edward carpenter (1844-1929), who in turn, had a love encounter with walt whitman (1819-92). 
+ walt whitman at 36, steel engraving (1854)
+ edward carpenter at 61 (1905) 
+ allen ginsberg at 37 (1963). photo by richard avedon

ps:
for a deeper analysis of this succession, and the mysticism in their relationship read chapter 4 of  ’ hot little prophets: reading, mysticism, and walt whitman’s disciples ’ (2004) a dissertation by steven jay marsden