If there’s one thing that I’m not, it’s a visual artist.  I can’t draw and I struggle to paint unless it involves little more than pouring gobs of acrylics and just spreading it around a palette as though I’m icing a cake.  It’s not my sense of color that’s the struggle, but rather the conveyance of anything life-like or even reminiscent of  some thing.  Anything.  It’s the problem of getting the visuals of my mind to translate to the canvas.

Sure, in saying that, I set myself up.  I have absolutely no authority to say the things that I’m about to.  And some might wonder if I should.  Is it fair to throw stones at a media campaign whose only intention is the betterment of society?  Probably not, but I can’t keep it to myself any longer.

And all in all, this shit is really so bad, that it’s pretty awesome.

Exhibit A:

what-it-takes.org's capaign for awareness?

I first noticed this poster on Davie Street a couple of weeks ago, and since then have seen 2 other varieties in various locations around town.  I was so dumbfounded by the thing that I had to stop for a moment and take it all in.

First off, obviously enough, it’s blatant.  Obviously.  What a better way to sell gay men something then have it regarding sex and nudity.  But it’s not the blatant suggestions of sexual intercourse and bondage that bothers me, it’s just about everything else.  Perhaps it was the bizarre proportions of everything in the picture, or maybe the fact that Tarzan looks more like Kenny G than an apparently attractive hero.

Was this some organization’s attempt at re-creating the stimulation that house-wives feel when they pick up a Harlequin Romance at the grocery store?

What really got me about this poster was more in the subtle details: I had to actually ask myself if the monkey in the background was trying to free the fellow on the tree, or if he in fact was the one doing the bondage.  What does the panther have to do with anything?  It’s almost like the artist is saying to us, “I can draw a panther!”  “Look at my monkey, he’s pretty.”

And why does he have only one shoe? and… are you serious?  Do those sequoias really have testicles???  You’ve got to be kidding me.

So maybe they’ve done what they set out to do.  Perhaps What-It-Takes.org‘s intention was to capture the imaginations, and attentions of us “high risk” individuals who wander the west-end.  And, well, it worked.  And I can’t say I’d turn away the opportunity to frolic around some mythical garden of Eden with a handsome fellow, or wait in a tree for Tarzan to swing in at-the-ready, but really??

It just goes too far.

It’s not like they don’t have something important to say.  Honestly check it out.  The message is vital to our community and the world.  For myself though, the message is too fucked up.

I’m sick of having sex thrown in my face.

Maybe I’m alone on this, but the most stimulating thing to me still, is the intrigue and mystery in the long looks across the room before you’ve met someone?  And am I the only one left that loves the biting tension before you have sex with someone?

Apparently.  Sheesh.

And with that, I leave you with this.  Don’t even get me started on this one:

Exhibit B:

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