The Boy Is Beautiful returns for its fifth and most mouthwatering issue yet. Heterotopias journeys through the queer spaces we build to survive, seduce, worship, disappear, and become. Bursting at the seams across a whopping 228 pages, the magazine drifts through orgiastic rituals, architectural fantasies, nudist beaches, activist networks, dark rooms, drag stages, poetry, cruising grounds, and sun-struck islands, tracing queer space-making from Ancient Greece and cyberspace, to pleather-lined dungeons. Inside, our cover photographer Spyros Rennt moves through Berlin warehouses and Aegean dawns; legendary East London drag deity A Man To Pet reflects on twenty years of spectacle and community-building; and René Habermacher stages his Odyessy in original Versace couture. Elsewhere, Prishita Maheswhari-Alpin explores India’s contemporary kink culture in Beyond the Kama Sutra, Kleanthis Kyriakou drags up architectural education through Queer School of Thought, and Theodore, the designer behind the cult brand Intellectual Leisure, shows us around the temple of Kavla. Lucas LaRochelle maps queer memory through Queering The Map, Domhnall Nolan discusses designing spaces and furniture for pleasure, while curator Davy Pitoors reflects on the burgeoning queer art scene through Queeriosities. Newcomer hawtie Alexandros, photographed by Dario Laureano, leads a sun-drenched pilgrimage through the gay pantheon of islands – Mykonos, while Ilias Sapountzakis traces the history of Greece’s hottest nudist destinations. Smutty reader confessions collide with the feverish artworks of Berlin duo Greif Lazic, alongside queer poetry, Dionysian rites, cruising beaches, activist histories, sex goddesses, and enough sweat, seawater, poppers, tears, lube, and techno to fog the windows of Olympus itself. Featuring photography by Nick Knight, Mara Desypris, Angelos, and many more, Issue #5, Heterotopias, asks what becomes possible when queer people carve worlds of their own – ecstatic, filthy, tender, fleeting… and yet defiantly eternal.
