*Contains visual depictions of nudity, sexual acts and genitalia.*

For years I’ve owned a strange drawing, the type I’m unsure of whether or not to stash away in a sock drawer when company comes over. Of course, the dilemma of “to display or not to display” is a defining quality of pornographic art and this drawing is certainly pornographic. I purchased it at the liquidation sale of Wega, a sex-shop and private cinema in the Montreal village. When I decided to look into the artist behind the artwork, I was disappointed to see that absolutely no trace of him existed online.

Intrigued by the absence of information, I set off to the Quebec Gay Archives, sure that among their well-catalogued stockpiles of smut I could dig up something. I asked the archivists about “Le Baron,” the signature on the drawing’s rear. Nothing, a dead-end.

Two days later, however, I received an exclamatory email from the archives. Le Baron had passed by just after me in the hopes of archiving his work. He turned out to be a retired man living in the suburbs of Montreal, and had enthusiastically passed along his contact information. Seduced by this serendipitous timing, I set out to meet Le Baron.

The drawing I have shows a centaur sucking itself off. This centaur is muscular, not in the cartoonish style of much gay fetish art, but veers toward a dignified, somewhat art nouveau realism. The centaur’s

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