One of the Mysteries

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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The baby hare begins its solitude soon after birth. Its mother gives birth to it, and to two or three brothers and sisters, in an open nest called a form. They are born fully furred and active, with eyes wide open. . . . Baby rabbits start life pink and naked, blind and deaf and cuddle together with their mother, except when she goes out to feed, in a well hidden cosy place. Baby hares often live alone from a very early age, apart from their mother and brothers or sisters, each in its own separate nest or form. Until they are weaned their mother visits each in turn, and suckles them one by one where they nestle alone. It has been suggested that she gives birth to each separately in a different place, but this seems improbable because new-born litters are very often found in the same nest. The purpose of the separation is clear when one thinks of the dangers of a nursery on the surface of the land; only one can be taken by predators at a time. But how the move is done, if move there is, remains one of the mysteries on which observers contradict each other.


Image: “Harebell and Leveret” by Isabelle Brent.

Morning Light XII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Irish Hare

“The most glorious distinction of the Irish hare . . . is the beauty of its coat, especially in summer. It is never the smokey blue of the mountain hare and seldom so dark a brown as the common hare. It has a preponderance of yellowy-orange, a rusty look, rich as a fox, not glossy but reflective of many shades of light. Pale yellow individuals are not uncommon, and dark ones – so dark that two of our informants called them black – are sometimes seen, but rarely. Ears and tail are longer than the mountain hare’s but the same shape – the ears somewhat rounded or even squarish at the tips, the tail fluffy and entirely white both in summer and winter. The furry soles of the feet are brownish.”

– Excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.


Image: NatureHug.com.

Tan Lines II

Continuing with The Leveret’s appreciation and celebration of tan lines . . .


Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Vile, Gluttonous, and Cruel

Following is an excerpt from blogger Mark Farley’s September 2007 response to author and celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson Wright’s support of the “sport” of hare coursing.

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Hare coursing is an act, banned in 2004, involving dogs racing against each other in an attempt to catch hare. A practice (until quite recently) that had it’s own league, events and championship, the Waterloo Cup.

. . . With Clarissa’s new book, Spilling the Beans . . . she may have done her case no good by not only being equally in support of blood sports but in particular her passion for coursing, in particular. Some of the things she has said in the book may not go in her favour, as she gives the impression that whatever “psycho” Tony Blair puts into law, she is going to whatever the hell she likes regardless.

First of all she tells us that she fell in love with coursing (“a great rural and social resource”) around ten years ago and was proud and steadforth (Sgt Major, Sir!) when she was asked to become a member and outspoken voice for the National Coursing Club, who still house a very pointless website quoting a roman called Arrian who said, “The true sportsman does not take out his dog to destroy the hares, but for the sake of the course and the contest between the dogs and the hares, and is glad if the hare escapes,” like it means anything and is going to help them in any way.

Then she waxes lyrically about the history of the practice stating that the “sport” was depicted on early Greek pottery and that Romans introduced the brown hare into England for the purpose of coursing.

Clarissa, that doesn’t make it right. An educated person like you must realise that one thing history or a passion for has taught us that is that in the past . . . we have been complete arseholes.

“The aim is not to kill the hare,” she says “but to test the respective abilities of two greyhounds in pursuit of it. The points are given for the first dog to pull ahead of the other. No points are awarded for a kill.”

Thank you for the lesson in the illegal sport, my dear. But that’s not the point. The killing does happen, which is why it’s banned. It’s wrong to take enjoyment in taking the life of something for the sake of pastime. Sure, I like to eat meat just like the next man, but I like to try and be ethical about how it suffered instead of standing in a field with a jug of Pimms, gorging on deer pate and guffawing with glee at the splendour of the achievement of one animal’s fight over another much lesser and smaller than thee.

“Opponents of the sport say that the hare is terrified but I have seen hares peacefully grazing on the coursing field a few hours after the event.”

I have seen them take tea, indulge in some light snacks, perhaps a small pork and egg pie. They canter aloofly and bound gracefully, chuckling Wodehouse-like witticisms between them without a care in the world. Look here, I even have a signed affidavit from one such creature, saying that there was no mental distress whatsoever.

My favourite part of her argument is that farmers will shoot the hares regardless if they are not allowed to course, whereas if they are, they will be tolerated for the sake of the event, even if they are constantly eating away at their vegetation.

That’s right. Hare coursing in their best interests. So basically, your conclusion is . . . fuck them. They’re gonna die anyway, yeah? Spoken like a true product of privilege: vile, gluttonous and cruel. I raise my hip flask and salute you!


Image 1: “Greyhounds Coursing a Hare” by Dean Wolstenholme.
Image 2: Photographer unknown.

Morning Light XI

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Leaper

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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A symbol is a sign or object that stands not exactly, but by association or resemblance, for something else. In primitive writing a picture stands for the object named, but as the art of writing develops the same picture is adapted and used for abstract ideas.

This process can be traced in language too: “haring away” for running off in action or thought, “hare-brained” for foolish or a mind that takes unpredictable leaps. The hare is, literally in several languages, the leaper, the one who springs or starts up, and so becomes linked with creation, the springing up of life, and with the quick mind. We often speak of an intelligent mind as one which leaps to a truth where others plod their way by stages; the fool and the genius share essential qualities.


Image: 1: Paul Jenkins
Image2: Sarah Cheese

The Sexual Hero

The following is excerpted from The Gay Man’s Kama Sutra by Terry Sanderson.

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Paragons of [male beauty and] perfection do exist, and occasionally we see them walking down the street and we sigh. But gorgeous men who may look like gods are just human like the rest of us, and while they may be desirable for sex – or maybe just sexual fantasy – they may still be intolerable as human beings.

A beautiful face is no guarantee that its processor is an unselfish lover or a charming companion. Arrogance, callousness, and bad breath are not restricted to the plain and ordinary; and thoughtfulness, concern, and generosity can be cultivated by anyone.

For sex to have long-term meaning, a pretty face and a toned body are not enough on their own. . . . A sexual hero may have a handsome face, he many have a bubble butt, and a penis like a horse’s, but he won’t remain a hero for very long if he does not know how to make his lover feel desired and, more importantly, his equal.

A true sexual hero is someone who can charm his way into your affection, whatever his physical attributes (or lack of them). A man who wouldn’t attract a second glance in a crowded room may have the skills of a true romantic. He may be able to seduce you with his voice alone, or as a caring and attentive lover. Someone who gains his pleasure from your pleasure is worth his weight in rubies.

- Excerpted from The Gay Man’s Kama Sutra by Terry Sanderson.


Image: Willem Kok.

Watchful and Alert

“Hare” by David.

Tan Lines

I’ve always considered tan lines on a man to be incredibly sexy. And by tan lines I mean those areas of flesh left paler than the rest of the body as the result of the wearing of speedos or some other type of swim wear in the sun.

I’m obviously not the only gay man to appreciate and enjoy tan lines. About a Boy and His Briefs, for instance, writes: “Personally, I like a little pale skin hiding beneath my [swim]suit. There is something about the contrast between light and dark flesh that I find exciting . . . intriguing.”

I also think that seeing a naked male body with tan lines can be especially arousing. Think about it: the sight of untanned skin reminds us that what is being revealed are regions of the body that are of special value, beauty, and vulnerability. The presence of tan lines brings all this to consciousness, and signals to us that we’re gazing upon beauty usually hidden, even forbidden, from view.

Tan lines, for me at least, are also a wonderful reminder of summer by the sea – of the sound of tumbling waves, the smell of brine and salt air, the heat of the sun, the promise of desire and fun, and the refreshing enjoyment of a naked afternoon nap in the shaded coolness of a breeze- (or fan-)caressed room.



For these and other reasons, The Leveret is happy to launch a new series of posts celebrating tan lines! Do you have some images you’d like to share? Send them to theleveret2007@gmail.com for consideration. (Believe it or not, good images of guys sporting tan lines are hard to find on the Internet!)



Images 1 and 3: Raphael Laus (DNA, August 22, 2008).
Image 2: jldc8.

Recommended Off-site Link:
Male Tan Lines

Wild and Clever, Bold and Free

Writes stained glass illustrator, Tamsin Abbott:

“When I painted my first hare a few years ago I had no idea of the connection I was making and the relationship I was forming! So many people are drawn to the hare and I am often asked why so much of my work contains hares. I think it could be because the hare embodies all those aspects of nature that we want to believe in, that it is wild, clever, bold and free.

“However, the hare has also long been associated with many myths and folklore, witchcraft and shape-shifters and in a way represents the female spirit of nature just as the green man represents the male energy of nature. I think that we all have a need or desire for a spiritual connection and yet we have become alienated from the major religions of the world and somehow the hare sparks something off in peoples’ minds.”

The Gay Male Quest for Democratic, Mutual, Reciprocal Sex (Part 2)

Following is a second and final excerpt from Gay Men and Anal Eroticism: Tops, Bottoms, and Versatiles by Steven G. Underwood.

(For Part 1, click here.)

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The notion that tops and bottoms are socially and morally unequal creatures has been the overriding assumption about male fucking throughout history. That version of homosexuality was accepted in ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. It was condemned, but still prevalent in Europe through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Age of Enlightenment. Even as late as early twentieth-century New York, gay men operated underground as either the limp-wristed fairies or the masculine “trade” that the fairies pursued.

Today, in a predominately Islamic but westernized country such as Turkey, men who are “active” in homosexual encounters are often not considered homosexual at all. Instead, their domination of passive men is considered evidence of their hyper-masculinity. In El Salvador . . . being fucked is considered a “kind of degeneration,” while the top is “just being a man.” Bottoms are still stigmatized all over the world, including isolated pockets in the West (such as prisons), while tops are viewed as exercising their male prerogative.

The Western view about role separation in male fucking began to shift in the middle of the last century, in the 1960s and 1970s. The seeds of that change were planted several decades earlier, by a few turn-of-the-century authors – Karl Ulrichs, John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and Havelock Ellis – who were the first to launch a movement toward the “normalization” of homosexuality. These writers portrayed gay men as ordinary, normal citizens (not prisoners or inmates in an asylum), no different from everyone else except for their attraction to their own sex. Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion began the first heated discussion over sexuality in a society that was just emerging from the morally oppressive Victorian era.

This effort was thwarted by the followers of Freud who, by emphasizing early childhood traumas as its explanation, categorized homosexuality as a clinical abnormality. Normalization was brought to the forefront once again in 1948 by Alfred Kinsey and his Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Kinsey’s assertion that homosexuality was common and that it should not be considered a crime against nature was met with great resistance in the scientific community. Thirty more years would pass before the American Psychiatric Association would finally remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

By this time a gay liberation movement was under way and the existence of homosexuals was taken for granted. Gay men began to regard the separation of top and bottom roles as a mimicry of heterosexual functions and a form of self-oppression. In his essay, published in 1970, “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto,” Carl Wittman listed four statements he considers anti-gay perversions:

- I like to make it with straight guys.
- I’m not gay but I like to be “done.”
- I like to fuck but I don’t want to be fucked.
- I don’t like to be touched above the neck.

“This,” wrote Wittman, “is role playing at its worst; we must transcend these roles. We strive for democratic, mutual, reciprocal sex.” In a radical reinvention of their own image, large numbers of gay men abandoned the stereotype of the limp-wristed fairy as a relic of an oppressive past. They began to have sex with each other instead of trade. They effectively transformed themselves to become the masculine men they’d always desired to have sex with.

More than three decades after Wittman’s declaration, the effort to understand the meaning of “democratic, mutual, reciprocal sex” continues.

– Excerpted from Gay Men and Anal Eroticism: Tops, Bottoms, and Versatiles by Steven G. Underwood ( Routledge, 2003).


Opening image: “Relationship” by Raphael Perez.