2

2day i spent the day editing film.

a long day in front of the computer,

but it's what i love.

here are a few images from my portfolio that reminded me

just how much i love being gay,

shooting the most beautiful men in the world.

people always tell me i have the best job ever...

and i have to agree, 

100%

 from DNA magazine

from ESQUIRE magazine

 from GENRE magazine

 from KNOCKOUT!, a calendar i shot of ultimate fighters

 from MANNER magazine

from OUT magazine

from DNA magazine


www.joeoppedisano.com

the trouble with me is...

                                       
the opening shot i use on Manhunt...
it never fails.




the trouble with me is,
i never learn...

there are somethings in life that should never be ignored
and yet...
somehow, i do just that.
i don't know if it's just because i'm an idiot,
cause i am...
or if it's because i'm A.D.D.
which i TOTALLY am...
or if it's just i can't possibly do the things i know to be most important.
like say, for example...
the simple fact that i do stupid things
over and over again.

this is now the third time in a year that i
in a rush to get laid,
squeezed on a metal cock ring
that was too small for me, and,
got it stuck.
this one i am dealing with as i type (in agony)
has been on since i hooked up with a big hot hairy daddy
four...count them FOUR days ago.
like the retard i am,
i had to take a cialis also,
which just made my cock swell up even larger than it already is,
and because it's on so tight,
my balls have swelled to at least twice the size they usually are
(and they are already pretty huge)
and they ARE NOT deflating!

FUCK.
i've been in pain for four days,
and i told a friend about this little problem i was having,
and he tells me that he heard i can fuck up my shit forever.
so now, on top of being in stomach cramping pain,
i'm mentally stressing that i'll have to have my cock removed.
something a narcissistic sex fiend like me
fears the most.

i used to make a goddamn living off this cock...
since the age of fourteen,
when one day, at the public swimming pool in my town,
an older guy
(he was probably 40, but i was a baby, so thought he was about 60)
followed me to the urinals, where he promptly pulled out fifty bucks
which he offered to give me if i let him suck me off.
(was he a pedophile or just a man with extremely good taste?)
i mean, i've always looked older than i was...
well, my mama didn't raise no fool...
i saw the fifty bucks and snatched them right outta his hand
and walked over to a stall,
dropped my swimsuit,
and let the old guy slurp out a load.
hello...
anyone who wouldn't have done the same thing is an idiot in my book.
i would see him at the pool at least once a week for the rest of the summer.
i made about five hundred bucks off the guy,
and again, i'll repeat, i was 14.

my hookering career lasted till the bitter age of 40,
when i decided that i just couldn't imagine anyone in their right mind
paying for it anymore...
(not that i'd refuse if offered again).

so now i sit,
alone in my bedroom,
in pain,
with a swollen cock,
and all i can think of is,
how much i want to go get some ass tonight while my cock is still
ridiculously, insanely swollen.
i could probably make good coins off this fucker right now,
JOE!
stop.

i never thought.

i never thought i'd be doing this for two years,
i never knew i'd live to tell the story,
i never thought.

my story is different because it is one that was not written in the stars.
it's a story that was marred by the presence of it's main character, me.
i never listened to anyone, never took advice, cannot be taught, and refuse to obey.
i am a self created being that learns, or does not, from my own mistakes.

at first glance, people think my presence in my community was natural, as i had been around for years, when in fact, i took all the back roads and winding paths i could, almost avoiding the inevitable. my background is fashion, a career that both launched and abandoned me. i started out of college as a fashion editor for W magazine, low on the totem pole, but with grand ambitions. within months of starting my chosen career, i was vaulted into space by the publishers who saw me as something special.
i was, for a few years, the golden child who could do no wrong. my lack of knowledge in what i was doing was the thing that made my approach different, as i just went in, head first, with a certain trust built into my gut. i never questioned my ideas, i never doubted my intuitions, and i never followed tradition. instead, i took the little knowledge i had and morphed it into something i could understand, something that made sense to me, and something that i liked visually. it just made more sense to me that way.

my editors were stunned at how quickly my new approach was in fact tangable and accepted in the industry, an industry that is supposed to be about change, but was secure in it's old school ways. but then here i was, 19 years old, an editor at W, and reaching out and making my statements ones that were accepted and sought after by the old regime, as well as plausable and understandable to my generation. and all i did was take what they had been doing for decades, and twist it. my background being art history and fashion was vaulted by the simple fact that i grew up in the years i had. years of change that had come to fruition by constant change, the deaths of the generations before me of AIDS, and my inner fears and beliefs in experimenting with what was acceptable. i was a child of the me generation, where the only things that mattered were the things i let matter. there were few gay men left in the world from the previous generations, as they had been devoured by a virus that was supposed to have wiped us out, yet, i had survived. somehow, with all of my calloused ways, i had been skipped from the destiny of men only a few years older than me, which made me feel untouchable, yet vulnerable.
it should have been me, too, as i was not cautious, was not careful, and not playing by the rules.
i set up my own rules because quite honestly, i thought my destiny had been pre-written and i only had a few years of life left in me. i was diagnossed with AIDS at the age of 20, and at that time, there was not a lot of hope in sight. so, i chose to live my life the way i saw fit, have fun, party till i dropped, and touch everything i could. and i did.

by the time i was 21, i had been exposed to the grand excess of high couture, had lunch with Dolce and Gabbana and Romeo Gigle, been coddled by it's headliners, had worked my way into the hearts of the industry by being the very thing it didn't understand. that was, being a child of street culture. clubs, music and street fashion were boiling with life. there was something happening underground that i was at the right place and time to be a part of and also report on. i could be accesable to the new trend as i fit in with at it's people, yet i was smart enough to know when to step back and document it. my intuitions of trends was highlighted by my use of cocaine and ecstasy, clubs and the movement music was about to make. house music was in it's glory, washing away a decade of bad music, and it touched us children who had no guidance and made us feel like we belonged, finally, we had something of our own. that very something was the same something that at that moment, had the world in it's hands. it was the birth of a new thinking. a carefree attitude that had been banned years ago when AIDS was destroying the very people it needed. and for a brief moment, there wasn't a care in the world.

house music and club kids ruled the earth, as well as the catwalks of Paris. they infused their insanity to the backbone of society, made every outcast a celebrity, and won the hearts of the world with their modern no holds barred imagination. the usual idea that designers dictated fashion was shaken by the fact that now, fashion was born in the clubs and on the streets by people who couldn't afford to buy it, and so, they created it.

drag queens and club kids who were considered unacceptable because of their very beliefs were being flown to Milan and Paris to represent the new look. people dropped the high priced clothing that kept them safe and secure, and began wearing their underwear as outer wear. bras were worn as tops, and men dropped their drawers and let their underwear show off their newly chiseled bodies underneath. these bodies were there and flaunted because they represented the end of an era that had been, for a decade, covered and hidden by shame. AIDS drugs were keeping men alive, and so, the dying, wasting away look of the gay community was reinvented as a hyper masculine and untouchable. men started going to the gym, showing off their muscles, exposing and promoting the idea that AIDS was now the thing that was dead, and not the people it had effected. we were alive, and had been repressed, so it was time to take back what we had lost. the very same people who had, five years ago been given a death sentence, were now living life in excess, and enjoying every second of it.
marky mark was the way we all wanted to look, and his bad-boy band image, something we all aspired to. i was in the right place, with the right look, at the right time.

by the time i was 24, i had racked up a list of achievements that i would never in my wildest dreams imagined, including becoming a fashion editor for L'uomo Vogue, and styling for clients like Vanity Fair and Vogue, celebrities such as Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera, and i was completely unstoppable and untouchable...i had reached my goal in less than ten years, so, what could i possibly do, or where could i possibly go, next?

Al Parker trilogies

a cautionary tale

i can't sleep,
i guess the three cups of espresso i drank at midnight
made the idea of a good nights sleep
just something that
other people do.

other people.
hmmm,
other people are funny.
they like to speak lies and paint pictures of themselves that
make them seem pretty.
pretty to whom, i don't know,
but pretty in their minds
as opposed to the sick fuckers they really are inside.
one of the sickest fuckers i've come across in recent years is my last ex.
this kid was one of the top 10 psychos
as well as one of the top 3 bottoms
i ever met.
he would swallow my cock in his ass faster than he'd tell me he loved me.
but tell me he loved me he did,
all too often,
and with just as much disdain in his face as he could muster.

the thing that finally ended it between us was him getting caught
in one of his typical lies,
and me,
after smoking two eight balls of crystal,
having had enough of it.
his asshole was great,
but his lies weren't.
he had told me that he wanted to be monogomous.
i think his idea of monogomy is that he gets fucked by only
one man at a time,
while the line of other men wraps around the block.

i had bought him a train ticket to come visit me while i was living upstate.
he called me a half hour before the train departed to say he was stuck in traffic,
so i told him to wait for the next train, or take a bus.
two legitimate options.
instead, i heard nothing more from him for three days.
his mother called me crying saying she hadn't heard from him in three days,
for a second, i got worried.
then, like clockwork,
three days later,
the phone rings.
"daddy?" he said"i fell asleep on the train, and when i woke up, i was in Baltimore"
i laughed hysterically because i think i actually made up that very lie
twenty years earlier.
(mind you, this boy was only 25 at the time)
i asked why he didn't call when he realized he was in Baltimore,
and the lie got deeper.
apparently, he went to call me, and take a picture of the Baltimore train station
as proof...BUT, his camera, which was on his phone,
fell out of his hand into a puddle,
rendering it useless.

whatever actually, by that time i was so through with this boy that it didn't even matter,
except that he cried and begged me to believe him, and so,
out of the goodness of my heart, and the hardon in my jeans,
i forgave him.
until, as fate would have it, i was walking up 8th avenue one week later,
and ran into one of my crystal dealers who,
out of nowhere,
told me he did me a favor last week, and took care of my boy.
what?! was my response, assuming he meant my ex i knew him through.
but alas, no...it was indeed the boy i had just forgiven,
the same boy who after he called me with the story about being stuck in traffic,
called this dealer, crying, saying we had gotten in a bad fight,
and so, he went to the dealers house,
got fucked up, and gang fucked,
by a bunch of guys at the dealers house.

i thanked my dealer, not letting him know this was the first time i was hearing about this,
and went on my way, but as soon as i turned the corner, i called chris (raucci, btw)
and told him i was well aware of his game,
it was finished,
and he was tossed out of any good grace he had with me.
and all for what?
to make me not know he was a whore?
did he think i was stupid?
or was it just that my cock was so big, it blocked any thought process to my brain.
or his asshole was so stretched,
it made the sound of his lies echo into something that sounded pretty.
either way, any good feelings i ever had about him were completely shot,
and i still continue to tell people the cautionary story of him
as a reminder to myself that sometimes even i can be fooled.
fool me once, i'm an idiot, fool me twice, i doubt it.




funny thing is, i ran into chris last week, maybe why he and his story are on my mind.
i saw him waking up 8th avenue as i was walking down, we crossed paths,
but he didn't see me...
when i saw his face wisk by me, i laughed, and turned around and followed him
grabbed his hoodie, which choked him and made him fall backwards.
it was poetic justice to see him fall almost exactly in the same spot where i saw the dealer
two years earlier...and i laughed as he shuffled to get himself off the pavement,
it was then that he started screaming at me,
saying i was an asshole.
and how i ruined his life.
funny, it was that all the things i had said or written about him
had all gotten back to him,
and he was now considered a leper in the gay community.
funny wasn't it?
but the greatest revenge i got from that night was seeing him sitting in a restaurant two hours later, crying to somebody...so i did the right thing, made sure he saw me one more time, laughing.
not with him, but at him.

the pretty ones never look as pretty in bright lights,
their luster fades
and they dim into oblivion.
remember that next time you find yourself getting deceived by someone and their pretty stories
about how wonderful they are.
pretty fades, but disgusting lasts forever.


chris raucci,
at his parents house,
in leonia new jersey

the first day i met him,
i gave him a haircut before we started shooting,
and he, withing minutes of us meeting,
was grabbing my crotch and begging me to fuck him...
i shoulda known, huh?

what an asshole...