As it Turns Out, Girls Love Boys Love
"Straight guys really ought to know about this," we're told by Scooter, a local cartoonist and signmaker, "because, I mean, talk about a sure-fire place to pick up women." He's talking about Yaoi-Con, a yearly gathering of the mostly-female writers, artists, and fans of Yaoi (also known as "Boys Love"), anime-styled comic books about young affectionate men. (Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that; but for now let's forgo a discussion on the intricacies of manga. Okay?) Scooter's a soft-spoken fellow, with a pointy, Freudish beard; he started drawing Yaoi about six years ago when he was introduced to the genre. "I figured, how hard can it be? There's not too many lines to draw," he says as he flips through his sketchbook. Well, yes and no - flip through some of the featured artists in Shonen Comics Volume One (of which Scooter is one) and you'll see a range of artistic styles that you might not ordinarily expect from what is, on first inspection, a naughty-gay-cartoon zine.
These days, Scooter's the artist behind Boy Sluts, a pr0nographic line of comics following the adventures of a troupe of smutty young fellows who bear a suspicious resemblance to a real-life group of Boys who Scout; a group whose leadership is notorious for being somewhat more repressed with regard to sexuality, despite an odd fetishizing of the virtues of boyhood. Scooter, himself a former Eagle Scout, says he isn't trying to stir up trouble with his comix, which are available for purcase through the Boy Sluts website and at several Castro-area bookstores. On occasion, he's had to provide reassurance that the Boy Sluts aren't pedophilic ("if they look like kids to you, it's only because I can't draw well enough to make them look like grown-ups"), but he hasn't yet attracted the attention and inevitable ire of the scouting-related group that he satirizes. And if the Scouts ever do complain, we'll know that someone in their upper eschelons has been cruising around Yaoi-Con ... no doubt, seeking to pick up women.
Some photos of Scooter hard at work are available on our intrepid photographer's Flickr account.