Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst who advanced the work of Freud by reinterpreting some of the masters’ basic tenets. Lacan wrote extensively of a “mirror stage” in a child’s psychological development. Above, Philadelphia artist Rebecca Fuchs has applied Lacan’s theory to her stunning new series of photographs.

Lacan maintained that infants pass through a stage in which the external image of the body creates in the psyche a mental representation of the Self — or an I. For Lacan, this mirror stage establishes the ego as fundamentally dependent upon external objects, on an other. In Lacan’s world, without an other the I doesn’t exist.

Fuchs shows how bathrooms and locker rooms become, for many of us, places where the mirror game takes on a highly-charged, precarious connotation. She stages her photographic narratives in public restrooms and school locker rooms to highlight the acts of mimicry and performance associated with such spaces. Locales where, she writes, “the self is performed and peers are mimicked.” (more…)

Welcome to the United States of Rapture.

Can there ever be enough Jesus? Having won their War on Christmas (yes, we are happy to report, it will be held again next year) and signing up their flocks in Republican voter drives, and enlisting all those happy, shiny evangelicals as “Marriage Protectors” (not to be confused with Athletic Protectors), Christians in America are straining under their persecution.

It is a persecution that comes from living in a country where false religions are unpunished by public burnings at the stake, where science is still taken seriously, where the death prayers and earthquake fatwahs of the Reverend Pat Robinson have become — shock! — a national joke!

Because Jesus is simply not ubiquitous enough, not embedded in art, books, movies, songs and gift-shop brick-a-brac enough, Nightcharm lists some rare but recent sightings of this obscure First Century Deity — hard because in America, his hidden catacomb cult is relegated to megachurches, cable networks, and weekly councils with the President.

Here then are our favorite moments in Jesus USA.

Oops, we forgot. First a prayer from the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. Please bow your head …

Amen. And take it away, Jesus …. (more…)

Jesuses come and Jesuses go.

It is said each generation remakes God in its own image.

No surprise then that this Easter Sunday we have the Matthew Passion, a bold but, from all accounts, flawed Off-Broadway play that draws a parallel between Jesus, gay-bash victim Matthew Shepard, and an HIV+ gay man wracked by the guilt of having survived so long with AIDS.

In a a style reminiscent of Angels in America, the plot weaves in and out of the lives of the three men, with dream encounters between them ( the HIV man is acting a part in a play about Matthew Shepard), climaxing in a meeting of the three on the hill of the Crucifixion, above, with the two gay men cast as the thieves, one despairing of his life, the other filled with the promise of a better world to come. (more…)

Welcome to the Museum of Unnatural History.

This summer parents can take their kids to a slew of multimillion dollar Creationist “Museums” where the deer and the dinosaur roam as Adam and Eve bathe beneath thundering waterfalls, their male and female parts coyly obscured by leaves, spray and dogma.

A museum in name only, these mini-Disneylands are cropping up throughout the Southwest and present a hodgepodge of naive Biblical beliefs, long discredited by scientists, as well as serious scholars of religion. Here children “of all ages” (as they say at the circus) are taught that dinosaurs traveled on Noah’s ark and that the earth — like Zsa Zsa Gabor — is only 6, 000 years old,. “That would mean, ” quipped biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, “that the earth didn’t come about until after the agricultural revolution.” The “Young Earth” creationists derive their numbers from Biblical genealogies; actual estimates, based on radiometric dating, place the earth’s age closer to 4.5 billion years.

Thus we see the latest skirmish in the centuries-old battle between religion and science. Coexistence is really not possible, despite what moderates contend. This is a battle to the death, and a battle vigorously waged for the only reason that matters: the victor gets to decide ultimate reality — a ground that both sides claim exclusives rights to. Of course that particular battle has long been over — over that is except for the shouting. As the score stands, it’s Lions 10; Christians 0. (more…)

Muggles are the cwaziest people, as Elmer Fudd might say if he could ever get the hat with the earflaps off and forget about wabbits.

Elmer meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, at right), in a just released still from the upcoming summer release Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix .

As the quite teenaged Harry demonstrates, every boy has a magic wand in Potterville — but we’ve already gone on at rococo lengths about the nude cheek of stage actor Daniel.

Harry knows all about knuckleheaded Muggles and their small-minded ass-backward Dursley ways. He would not be surprised — as neither were we — to read a story that appeared today in the Washington Post:

Pentecostal chaplain in the Army has a crisis of faith, switches to Wiccan and is booted out of the military. (more…)

I’m not happy ’til I’ve found the quiver in a man. The hidden part that trembles. I don’t think I’m anywhere near home base with a sex partner if I haven’t beckoned to and found the involuntary part of him that shudders and opens and spills out what’s in it.

I’m not talking about cum necessarily. Although in porn, I’m almost always only interested in the cum shots. Even the most self-conscious porno star/poseur can’t come to orgasm — at least for the nanosecond his body and psyche are able magically and unconsciously to call it up — without delivering something completely unguarded, something irresistible to him — something he can’t help sharing with whoever catches the quick grimace and rolled-up eye that accompany the enigmatic blast-off. (more…)

People are missing the not-so-obvious heart of Lifetime’s latest dollop of TV goofiness, the twice-weekly show Gay, Straight Or Taken. Yes it’s a reality show. And yes it feels like the unfortunate offspring of the romance-driven Boy Meets Boy and Fox’s horrifyingly bad Playing It Straight.

But Gay, Straight or Taken is much more than its premise of a gal in a quandary — trying to date and mate whilst maintaining her dignity — suggests. As a cultural phenomenon the show continues to smudge the already blurry boundary that divides straight, gay, bi and try anything guys. A tide shift that started with the 90’s metrohetero and is looking to end with the 00’s uni-sexual Ubermensch.

Gay, Straight or Taken’s set-up is lame but beguiling (in a train wreck sort of way): Attractive gal must decide which of the three attractive guys she is scoping might be single, straight and not taken (I guess for Lifetime if you’re homosexual it’s not possible that you’d be dating or married — you’re simply a promiscuous slut). If Miss Gaydar Savvy chooses correctly she wins her hunk and a trip to some exotic location. (more…)

It seems that in this age of safer sex, men’s body fluids have become taboo, and the wetter the action the more forbidden it’s become. There are now even special terms for buttfucking without a condom: “bareback” and “raw.” It’s not politically correct to advocate unsafe sex, but allow me to boldly state a generally unspoken fact — fluid exchange is what it’s all about.

When two men melt into one another, their fluid passions are supposed to intermingle, too. When our body fluids mix, we share all sorts of hormones, and chemical processes occur. Of course, the world is no longer our petri dish, and it’s not safe to cruise around doing chemistry experiments with every man who makes eye contact. But in a monogamous relationship, consider some of the following fluid possibilities:

Like raindrops on roses, precum is one of my favorite things. Those clear glistening droplets are so wonderfully slick; they are perfect for basting a hard cock. When my man is looking at porn pics on the web, I love to sit under the table between his legs and gently squeeze out drop after drop of his precum. The supply seems endless, as is my fascination with the stuff. If your man tends to drip a lot of precum, here’s a way to make him blow a double load when he shoots off:

While you jerk him off with one hand, reach below his balls with your other hand and apply some light but constant pressure between his balls and anus. What that does is close off the plumbing that carries the precum and jizz. When your man is ready to explode, let go of the pressure (but pick up the pace on his cock, of course). The first couple of squirts of his orgasm will be pure precum, and then he’ll start pumping his semen. Precum tends to shoot much faster and farther than semen because it has a lighter consistency. (more…)