BUTT: A Tongue-In-Cheek Romp

I remember the first time I discovered BUTT magazine. It’s pink paper and simple B&W photos beckoned me from the lonely rack at the gay bookshop. It only took one glance to realize I’d discovered a true original.

I’ve spent a good amount of time working and living amongst The Gays. I have deduced that American gays are really quite annoying, campy, and entirely too obsessed with the GAP. Netherlander’s Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom, the Creators and Publishers of BUTT are the polar opposite; real-life Tom of Finland’s.

To discuss BUTT’s content, is to be taken back in time to a different era. An era of throwing caution to the wind and a certain silver Factory. The photography is a combination of dreamy and washed out and up-close and raw. Each issue selects a few gay fringe artists, of different disciplines (and yes, porn is most definitely a form of art to BUTT boys Jonkers and van Bennekom) and interviews the subjects in a casual, no-subject-is-taboo format. An interview with Vermont resident Jason Whipple queries such thought-provoking topics as What’s your crotch scent like?, while an interview with porn director Michael Lewis takes the high road with political banter, You’re not going to say that Israel is heaven are you? There seems to be so much wrong with Israeli society.

It’s this mixture of the inane and educated, the high-brow and the low-brow that makes BUTT entirely unique. Jonkers and van Bennekom never take themselves too seriously and it shows in their writing. BUTT is worth reading for the article titles alone, filthy little gems like, Michael Lucas New York’s Hard-Core Porn Director From Russia Eats Ass in Private.

Search out BUTT, cover your apartment in silver tin foil and support the new avant-garde.

2 comments March 11th, 2007