Our Braddah, ChadMark

Ni interviews another UTOPIA Hawai’i member, known to some as Chris.  Raised on the Windward side, this sexy 26 year old is Hawaiian, Filipino and Welsh, and can often be found tending to his lo’i wai in Nu’uanu stream.  Let’s find out more about this dedicated Utopian...

How old are you now?

26 I’ll be 27 this year in July 2001

What’s your ethnicity?

Hawaiian, Filipino, Welsh.

Were you born and raised in Hawai`i?

Yeah, Kailua side.

What was it like growing up in Kailua?

It was pretty cool, I went to a small private school over there – had a lot of close friends growing up, we all ended up going to one of the larger private schools later on in elementary and high school time.  We were close knit – we used to go hiking a lot at Bellow’s.  In fact everyday, we’d meet up at somebody’s and BMX it over there, check out the MP’s and throw some stones, find some unexploded ordinances, bring ‘em home, build forts and play houses, circle jerks, and pissing contests – yeah that’s something we used to do a lot, pissing contest.

So, did you mainly grow up in Kailua?

Yeah, I was at Kamehameha during part of my high school, so I used to go back and forth across the island.  That and I finished up elementary at Punahou.  I used to have a lot of friends that I used to cruise downtown with – that’s how I discovered Hotel Street and all the happenings back there.  My dad used to give me $20, so after school me a group of my friends would go around to all the little arcades – but the arcades aren’t there anymore.  They’re all bars and video booths now.  But back when I was a kid, the arcades used to be in the front and the video booths used to be in the back.  We used to see the basic going on’s and stuff like that as kids but we never really caught on to it.  That and you know when we was kids, you never had like ice and crack cocaine; I mean the worst things you had was like marijuana and PCP or something like that, but even that we were pretty much innocent too.

You identify more as what?  Gay or bisexual?

I don’t know.  I identify more as Bi.  I’ve been monogamous with men and with women, but currently I’m in a gay relationship that I hope lasts for a long time.  But ultimately my perfect relationship would probably involve one that has a harem!  (laughs)

A harem with men, women, or both?

Oh we want a variety – we’re equal opportunity sexual addicts!  (more laughs)

Now when did you realize you had an attraction for men and women?

Well you know what?  I was always curious about the penis in general, that it was something I felt needed to be decorated.  I mean, lock me in my room, and give me a few coloring pens and you know – whatevahz!

Decorate it?  Like how?

Just decorate it – I mean I used to color it.  It’s pierced now but back when I as a kid I didn’t know that that was possible.

So, you used to color your own penis?

Oh yeah!  And decorate it, dress it up, tie things to it.  (we both laugh)  I don’t think in a masochistic kind of way though.

So more in an “Interior Motives” kind of way?

Be careful there; leave Christopher Lowe out of this . . .Nah, I mean I thought it needed to be decorated and worshipped and revered.  I always had the fascination with making it bigger.  The first time I realized that guys could be interested in guys was when, along with pissing games, we’d play this game in kindergarten called “who’s thing is bigger?”  There was this kid who used to lose all the time but he was the one who always wanted to play! – (laughs).  But for me, I guess I liked to look at other guys’ penises too. But I kinda new that you weren’t supposed to or you weren’t supposed to make it into a big deal, so my thing was always to make it into some kind of contest like pissing games.

So, it was a way to look at it?

Yeah, it was.

Were you with guys throughout high school besides being in circle jerks?

I had some really close guy friends, and I used to give them massages.  I mean we had our circle jerks, so I could love them as a brother and as a friend, but I didn’t have to love them as a something else.  I had that bond with a few different guys, so I didn’t really need something that was closer than that.  I didn’t really have boyfriends or girlfriends in high school.

So you didn’t really identify with the mahu’s or queens?

Nah, actually I didn’t.  I actually frowned on it a lot.

How come?

Well, I think my aunty had a little bit to do with that.  I remember getting caught one time shutting the car door with my ass and she made me go and shut the car door a hundred times after that and I didn’t understand why.  She said, “that’s not how men do it!” This was a theme that came up for me in my childhood – you know “that’s not how men do it, men do things a certain way, they talk a certain way, they hold a hammer a certain way, they act a certain way, there’re masculine ways of doing things.”  And this was from a lady who had a bigger set of balls then I did! (laughs)  But she’s my favorite, my only, and I guess my closest aunt on my Mom’s side.  Very set in her ways.  She knew as a strong-headed female that it was hard to get a niche in the world, and I guess she assumed that the equally could be said about a guy that was effeminate.  Even if they chose to be with men, if they acted effeminately then it would reflect negatively upon them.

So you think that still affects you today?

Oh yeah, I’ve never been attracted to effeminate men.  I’ve had a couple of boyfriends that were a little bit more effeminate than myself but it’s like, I like women and I like men.  If I wanted something effeminate I’d go get the real thing.  But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with femmy guys.

That’s just not your attraction.

Yeah, that and I get irritated with the accent sometimes.  You know, sometimes you hear a British accent and you get tired of it.  I think it’s flourished too much – Not to sound butch and all that.

Well, it’s just how you were raised, right?

Yeah, but as far as dating guys, I had my first boyfriend a couple of years after high school.  He’s still in the scene, very good looking.  But back when I was sixteen, I would run every day down to the beach at like 4 am.  Usually after my run, I’d go change and jump in the water but that day it was super rainy. I was in the bathroom taking a leak and this guy that had been cruising me for a while came in and pushed me into the back of the bathroom.  I didn’t know what was going on, and he performed fellatio on me.  That was my first gay experience other than the stuff we did as kids; it was my first adult gay experience.  That kind of messed me up for awhile.  This thing happened to me when I was 16 years old and I remember going to the crisis center after it.

How come?

Probably cause I was the very one teasing all the queens when I was growing up!  It wasn’t what I assumed to be the ideal situation.  When I was with my friends and peers, there wasn’t a control factor, but in this case, I felt like I was under control of someone else.  It wasn’t like he forced me or anything like that, but it was stressful for me.  It was something I didn’t want to identify with.  I was really mad at the fact that I could cum like that, and that I could have a physical reaction that was pleasurable.

From another guy?

Not only that but from a situation that I wasn’t comfortable with.  I mean it’s not like I had been with a girl yet.  You know?  It’s like my ideal relationship was going to be the girl I married and had sex with for the rest of my life, and having that person do that to me was not ideal.  It just wasn’t.  I don’t know that if that did not happen that I would not be with males, cause I’d have to admit that I already had a propensity towards it. 

I know you mentioned that you were involved with the sex industry work, how did you get involved with all of that?

Um, well you know how your parents tell you never hitchhike.  (we both laugh)  I had one of those midnight jobs, but my parents didn’t come and pick me up after work.  The bus used to stop running around midnight, so I used to rollerblade down to Castle junction.  This one day, an old man in a little car drives past me, goes all the way down, and it’s a long stretch, then I see him making a u-turn, drives all the way back up and stops in front of me to ask if I needed a ride.

Did you think he was cruising you or that he was some kind of psycho?

Nah, I knew he was cruising me because of that instance that happened before at the bathroom.  On the way home I was complaining to him about not having enough money and having a shitty job.  And he asks if I wanted to make an extra fifty bucks and I just kept talking through that.  But in the back of my mind the wheels started turning.  I was like, what is this guy thinking?  He was kinda shy and said, ‘ah never mind, I didn’t mean to embarrass you like that.’  Finally I had time to think about it, at least for a couple miles and then when stopped the car to let me out, I asked him if his offer was still there, and he said “Huh?” and I asked, “What do I have to do?”  He said I just want to suck you off.  And I was thinking to myself, that’s a little cheap but it was a little after midnight and I wasn’t doing anything else and I thought, hey what the hell?  So I went back with him and he actually was a really nice man and we’ve been friends for several years since then.  His fifty dollar rate did go up after that though!

Oh Reeeally??  (jokingly)

Fifty dollars was just for the first time fee and after that his rates went up.  I realized that this was a pretty good commodity so it was cool.  I think if the guy had shown me some money after he sucked me off in the bathroom in Kailua, I would have had a different outlook on things. 

So, was he the only one that you charged for sex?

Oh no.  After that, I started going to the bars more frequently and just meeting people and being in the scene.  That was another thing with the piercing too, before I got pierced is when this incident happened, but after I got pierced it kind of changed things; the way I looked, the way that I felt, it kind of gave me back something.  I started getting into the club scene and people started buying me drinks and it lead to other things.  I’d see all the tricks, see all these assholes treating their dates badly, and see all these loser boyfriends, the straight guy with his girlfriend that still wanted to get his nuts off.  I met a lot of interesting people, people who were visiting the islands, were here to stay.  I just learned very quickly that if you could become good with your hand and your mouth, being not giving a blowjob but talking your hour away, you could very easily collect your fee without doing anything!  I discovered that a lot of these guys weren’t necessarily looking for sex or even capable of sex.  A lot of them were married and maybe lacked a male companion when they were growing up – or the type of male companion that they admired.  Instead, they chose to get married and now that that was no longer their key priority it was like, they wanted to have drinks with a friend.  I think a lot of guys I met, they were missing something from their lives.

So let’s change it a little bit.  Let’s talk about your being Hawaiian.  Was that always a part of your home culture or was it more Filipino, Welsh, American??  How would you identify your home culture and how you were raised?

It was very typical island local.  My parents are both professionals and speak clear English.  They were brought up in times when it was not good to be your ethnicity.  My grandmother, she has an interesting side because she used to do social work with local charities.  She worked very closely with writing books that had to do with being Hawaiian.  That and I had entertainers in my family and so there was definitely a Hawaiian influence.  How it carried over to the home, I’m not really sure.  I was brought up in a very good home, it was very much Brady Bunch like.  There was always enough money, there was always enough food on the table.  We all went to private schools.  I don’t ever remember my parents fighting in front of us.  We never got beatings although there was a stick and my mom knew how to use it.  We were very much a Kailua family growing up in the suburbs.  When I got into Punahou elementary though, I was a little embarrassed when my father pulled up in their Volkswagen bug and all my friends’ parents drove Mercedes and Volvos, Beamers, Porches.  That was embarrassing until later on I realized about my father that he actually had something going on.  Come to find out that instead of buying Beamers and stuff, he was buying stocks and land – investing.  There’s already land for each of us on the Big Island, here, California.  My mother and I joke because she feels she lives in poverty.

So, did your family have a sense of who you were and what you were doing?  And if so, how do they feel about it?

Well they know about Jemire, my boyfriend.  As far as the sex trade thing, I doubt they had any clue.  But the sex trade, I really don’t want to be a part of it anymore but it’s there.

How long have you and Jemire been together?

Be a year in March. 

Does he get along with your parents?

Oh yeah, Jemire came for Thanksgiving and they asked about him over Christmas but he went back home.  But yeah, they get along.  But you have to understand, I’ve had boyfriends and girlfriends and my parent’s seen this throughout the years.  I don’t know if they may be hoping that I’d go back with a girlfriend, but this time around, they’ve had to deal with it more, because the last time I had a really long term relationship was with a girl a few years ago.  This is one of the longest relationships that I’ve had and brought around them.

So, with your life and all that you’ve been through, how has HIV impacted you?

Well, I’ve always been very safe sexually, with the exception of a few slip-ups here and there.  I’ve never been one to dive immediately into sexual relationships.  With escorting on one side, there really wasn’t a need for one night stands.  I was always against anal things though until my recent boyfriend. 

Do you mean anal as in giving or receiving?

Either, I just saw that as something that lead to a disease or lead to something that was disrespectful.  Plus, most just guys wanted to suck me off and jack me off.

Did HIV ever cross your mind though while you were into the sex industry stuff?

Yes and no.  As far as anal sex goes, I always felt that that was something that you gave yourself of.  It’s been more of an issue in my relationships, purely because there’s more sex in my relationships.

So it wasn’t really about your work, it was more with your romantic relationships.

Yeah, because with my work, the people that I saw were equally respectable to that and equally concerned.  If I sensed that they weren’t, nothing would happen, not even talk.  We could discuss just that and leave it with just that.  So yeah, it wasn’t really an issue, only with my relationships.

Now, that you’re older and wiser and you’ve been through a whole lot, what would you offer to the next generation of kids coming up.  What’s the best advice you could leave?

Try to find the quickest way to be happy with yourself and the things you do.  I think that if more people were happy with what they did and were proud of what they did and how they did it, things would be better for all of us.  Be pono and everything that being pono encompasses.  If you can do that then everything else should fall into place.  I think I’ve tried to be pono in all my escapades.  I feel like I’ve had some good experiences, and I think that I haven’t had anything really bad happen to me because of it.  I’m still alive, I haven’t gotten mugged, beat up, arrested.  I’ve met some really nice people, they’ve even become clients for the computer stuff I do!  Laugh --- Who says you can’t sleep your way to the top?!  (we both crack up!)

I think that sums it up right there!

There you go!!