(Largely about male prostitution, so distasteful to many, but not, I think, actually over any lines.)

A stone solid pro, a street hustling boy, plying his trade for a better grade of customers, comfortably indoors, in his sexy Water Briefs, at a pool bar:

(#1) [from the Daily Jocks e-mailing of 8/30; ad copy:] Skip through the beach club line ups and go straight to the pool bar in the new PUMP! Water Briefs. The wide waistband on this low-cut cut brief gives you comfort at the waistline. The customised multi layered leg elastic offers the ultimate support and accentuates the butt.

You don’t see an impudent cruise face like — not his real name — Joe Dallesandro’s every day. For the use of his body and his company, you pay $400 (cash) an hour (extra for a few special services), plus the cost of a hotel room at the beach club’s hotel and the expense of a background check on you (he’ll give you references from his regular clients, and, as part of the background check, he has ways of getting references from your previous escorts — JD’s an independent contractor, and a sharp businessman; don’t let that boyish face fool you).

Most high-end hustlers make contact with new johns electronically, but, having come up from working the street as a sassy teen — risky  but thrilling — JD still prefers the physicality of face-to-face negotiation. That also allows him to show his skills at figuring out your desires and fashioning himself into the man who will satisfy them. The cruise of death is just an opening gambit, a kind of best guess as to what you need; experience tells him that most men, especially successful and powerful men, want to be dominated and used.

The briefs. PUMP!’s Water Briefs come in red/navy, blue/green, coral, and black (they’re handsome indeed, though outrageously costly); their features include UPF 50+ protection (no sunburned crotches!), a drawstring (for cinching or relaxing), and white piping accentuating the cup (to draw attention to your package). The latter two features are visible in this front view of the red/navy number:

(#2) Alas, no photo seems to be available of this view with a face, much less the face of the model who plays JD (that model does, however, get a sulky-surly photo in which he’s reclining in a Water Brief)

And you can dance to it. The song for the occasion:

Street Hustling Boy

Well, what can a hot boy do
When he’s down and unemployed?
Then he’s got no other choice
But to get work as a street hustling boy

Ah yes, the strains of Richards/Jagger, “Street Fighting Man”, drastically altered for my purposes. The original, quite different in tone and message from mine:

Street Fighting Man

Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock ‘n’ roll band?
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man

(The music, on the other hand, just commands you to riot, or to explode into sex. You can watch a live performance of the song, at Madison Square Garden in 2003, here; notice the wonderful Charlie Watts — who died just a week ago today — in the midst of the uproar, composedly underpinning the whole business with his drumming.)

(Background from Wikipedia:

“Street Fighting Man” is a song by English rock band the Rolling Stones featured on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. Called the band’s “most political song”)

Rent boys. There’s a Page on male prostitution on this blog, with a lot about stud hustlers as fictional figures, many of them glamorous and arousing — JD’s milieu. But from here on out it’s all actual rent boys, who lead challenging lives, coping with them with hugely varying degrees of grace and control.

From my 11/8/12 posting “Toga toga toga”, a section on

101 Rent Boys [Uncut] [produced/directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato] … a 2000 documentary film that explores the West Hollywood hustler scene [along Santa Monica Blvd.]

(#3) [AZ in 2012:] The film is, by turns, thought-provoking, funny, bleak, moving, and disturbing.

Then, two examples of the art of street photography, taking street hustlers as their subjects:

(#4) Tough street boy (photographer not identified); my title: “But It Pays the Bills”

This remarkable picture shows up in a number of Pinterest albums, where it is of course not sourced, and Google Images has been of no help.

(#5) NYC street boy photographed by William Gale Gedney (photo from Gedney’s 1955-89 repository at Duke Univ.): braving it out, but oh so vulnerable

Two sparks thrown off by these photos: from #5, on the photographer Gedney; from #4, on the idiom of which pay the bills is the central part.

Gedney. From Wikipedia:

William Gale Gedney (October 29, 1932 – June 23, 1989) was an American documentary and street photographer. It wasn’t until after his death that his work gained momentum and is now widely recognized. He is best known for his series on rural Kentucky, and series on India, San Francisco and New York shot in the 1960s and 1970s.

In his lifetime, he did get a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968, which the curator described as a study of “people living precariously, under difficulty”. In general, his work shows keen observation and great sympathy with his subjects.

However, he was inclined to be a loner and an outsider, staying to himself and not fitting easily into the social worlds around him (consequently failing to advance himself in the academic and artistic worlds of his day); instead he single-mindedly devoted himself to his work. Pretty much the picture of a neuroatypical person.

Wikipedia fails to mention that he was (secretly) gay (and apparently pretty promiscuous, as so many of us were at the time), or that he died at 56 from complications of AIDS; he was one of the lost generation of gay men, my generation (except that Jacques and I inexplicably survived).

One collection of his photos, A Time of Youth: San Francisco 1966–1967, was finally published by Duke University Press in 2021.

Paying the bills. The title “But It Pays the Bills” is the second clause, C2, of a two-clause coordination, in which the first clause, C1, describes the job that pays the bills. C1 describes the drawbacks of the job — the minuses of working, in this case, as a stud hustler: it’s illegal, highly stigmatized, physically and emotionally demanding, sometimes dangerous, sometimes distasteful. C2, introduced by concessive but, announces the major plus: you get paid for it.

(C1 can be omitted if its content can be inferred from context. Suppose I am at work, collecting elephant dung at the zoo, when you come along, observe the scene, and raise a critical eyebrow at me. To which I can respond, “But it pays the bills”.)

As you can see from this brief discussion, the VP pay the bills might be the crucial part, but the idiom is clearly much more complex than that. Somehow, nobody seems to mention the but, though it’s in everybody’s examples, as in Wiktionary:

pay the bills: (idiomatic, of a job) To provide enough income to sustain one’s lifestyle. Being a dentist isn’t so glamorous, but it pays the bills.

Two further examples, getting more and more antipathetic to the writer’s job:

(invented example set from usingenglish.com (for learners)) I don’t much enjoy my job as a coal miner/pole dancer/bear wrestler/etc., but it pays the bills.

(#6) A t-shirt from Zazzle

And then another musical interlude, in Erykah Badu’s “Otherside of the Game” (1997) (often listed as “Other Side of the Game”) — see its Wikipedia entry. With the first line “Work ain’t honest but it pays the bills”, meaning ‘the work [as a drug dealer] isn’t honest, but it pays the bills’. (You can watch the YouTube video here.)

Finally, saved for last, a Thought Catalog piece, “I Sell Sex For Money On Craigslist And I Want To Stop, But It Pays The Bills” by [male author] Anonymous on 9/25/13. Yes, a stud hustler — but a modern electronic one, not an old-fashioned street hustling boy.

My birthday — 9^2, 3^4 — rolls around again, in its relentless way, and people are sending me flowers. Well, electronic images of flowers. (Meanwhile, I’m wearing my, sigh, gay dinosaur t-shirt, and I had coffee ice cream for lunch dessert, because it’s my favorite and because 9/6 is, whoopee, National Coffee Ice Cream Day, as well as AMZ’s and the Marquis de Lafayette’s birthdays, 1940 and 1757 respectively.) Today, three floral compositions:

— a sidewalk-crack garden (on the street in Dovercourt Village, Toronto), posted by Randy McDonald on his Facebook page on 9/3 and sent to me by e-mail on 9/4 to cheer me up (despair lurks in doorways, ready to pounce on me and rob me of joy): cleomes and snow-on-the-mountain

— from Benita and Ed Campbell (outside of Denver), a Jacquie Lawson electronic birthday card, “Golden Chain”: laburnum (yellow), drumstick alliums (purple and blue), plus seven parrots and a peacock

— from Rod [Williams] & Ted [Bush] (in Oakland), a different Jacquie Lawson card, “Birds and Flowers”: an arrangement of flowers to be identified, plus several little chirpy birds, with the accompaniment of a much-abbreviated orchestral arrangement of Chopin’s Grande valse brillante

From Toronto. The scene that Randy posted (and then turned into his current cover photo on his Facebook page):

(#1) A sidewalk-crack garden: cleomes and snow-on-the-mountain are annuals that spread their seeds profligately, prodigally, profusely, prodigiously, promiscuously, so if there’s a garden nearby where they’re growing, it would be no surprise that the plants popped up all over the place, anywhere the seeds could gain a foothold, even in cracks and crevices

But there seems to be no such garden close at hand, and the plants have chosen to grow in just a few of the available sidewalk cracks — and there to occupy the cracks densely. This is transparently an intentional accidental garden (an intentionally planted garden — presumably with seeds collected and pushed into those cracks in huge numbers — masquerading as an accidental, “wild”, event) in an unlikely spot. A lovely conceit, a pleasant surprise for walkers on the street.

The flowers: cleomes. Mentioned several times on this blog as a seedy invasive plant, but not discussed in any detail, until now. From Wikipedia:

(#2) A cleome flower close up (photo: Sow True Seed company)

Cleome hassleriana, commonly known as spider flower, spider plant, pink queen, or grandfather’s whiskers, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Cleome of the family Cleomaceae, native to southern South America in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and southeast Brazil. It has also been introduced to South Asia, including the Haor area of Bangladesh and India.

… C. hassleriana is commonly cultivated in temperate regions as a half-hardy annual. Numerous cultivars have been selected for flower color and other attributes.

The flowers: snow-on-the-mountain. From Wikipedia:

(#3) Euphorbia marginata, from the Plants of the World Online (Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew) site

Euphorbia marginata (commonly known as snow-on-the-mountain, smoke-on-the-prairie, variegated spurge, or whitemargined spurge) is a small annual in the spurge family.

It is native to parts of temperate North America, from Eastern Canada to the Southwestern United States. It is naturalized throughout much of China.

… Snow-on-the-mountain has grey-green leaves along branches and smaller leaves (bracts or cyathophylls) in terminal whorls with edges trimmed with wide white bands, creating, together with the white flowers, the appearance that gives the plant its common names.

From the Denver suburbs. The final panel of the Jacquie Lawson animation, a composition primarily in gold and purple / blue:

(#4) “Golden Chain”: laburnum (the yellow), drumstick allium (the purple and blue), and a garden path with a bench to rest on at the end

The plants: laburnum. From my 6/3/14 posting “Plant life by public transport”, with London public transport posters from 1915, among them #2 there “Laburnum and Lilac” ( golden yellow and pinkish purple):

(#5)

Laburnum, commonly called golden chain, is a genus of two species of small trees in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae. … They have yellow pea-flowers in pendulous racemes 10–30 cm (4–12 in) long in spring, which makes them very popular garden trees. (link)

The flowers: drumstick allium. From Wikipedia:

Allium sphaerocephalon is a plant species in the Amaryllis family known as round-headed leek, round-headed garlic, ball-head onion, and other variations on these names. Drumstick allium is another common name applied to this species. … It is a bulbous herbaceous perennial plant.

Allium sphaerocephalon is found in the wild across all parts of Europe except in the northern and western countries ( Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the Baltic States). Its native range extends to northern Africa and to western Asia as far east as Iran.

… The species is prized by gardeners because of its striking floral display. The spherical “head” (technically an umbel) is borne on a long scape, up to 50 cm in height, usually in July. It can contain hundreds of deep purple flowers.

There are many cultivars, in all shades of purple / pink and blue (plus a white variant). A sampling of three from the Breck’s bulbs site (www.brecks.com):

(#6) “Persian Blue”

(#7) “Azure”

(#8) “Rosy Dream”

A very odd digression. (By now, readers of this blog are prepared for postings to go off in almost any direction. If I told you that Mickey Mouse was up next, you’d roll with that, waiting for me to show some connection to laburnums or drumstick alliums. I can’t promise you Mickey Mouse, but I can promise you English country gardens.)

By the sheerest of accidents, while I was looking for images of “Persian Blue”, Breck’s images on Google offered this surprise:

(#9) Apparently, the model for Jacquie Lawson’s animation (with details altered to suit her purposes)

This image must be somewhere on the Breck’s site, or Google searches on it wouldn’t keep turning up Breck’s. I never found it there, but that’s not really important, because the image was just something that Breck’s lifted from yet another place (which Google Images eventually led me to):

(#10) The cover image from Carousel Calendars’ Country Gardens 2021 16-month calendar

Apparently the gardens in question are mostly, or even all, English country gardens, but I’m currently balked at getting information about the photos in the calendar. Carousel Calendars doesn’t supply it on-line, and of course their vendors don’t. I could buy a copy, from one of Amazon’s suppliers or another, in the hopes that it will actually say what the garden is (where it is, and what its significance in its location is) and who the photographer was. (<Rant>Apparently people don’t much care about the context of a scene or the identity of the artist who photographed it; it’s all just wallpaper, soothing in this case, endearing in the case of cat and dog photos, etc.</Rant>) But it would take at least a week for it to get to me, and I’ve vowed to finish this posting today, on my birthday, and anyway I don’t really have a use for 16 full-color photos of English country gardens. (I am dogged, but not endlessly so.) So the details of #10 will have to remain a mystery.

From Oakland. The final panel of the “Birds and Flowers” animation:

(#11) “Birds and Flowers”: I count five flowers in the composition, but I’m not up to any more plant identifications today

Meanwhile, the Lawson animations come with accompanying music. In this case, a familiar composition for piano, Chopin’s Waltz in F major, Op. 34 No. 3 (Grande valse brillante) of 1838 (when the waltz was still a dance craze and Chopin wasn’t entirely sure he could accommodate himself to such an Austrian form). You can watch a spiffy performance of it here, by Dmitry Shishkin at the 12th International Music Festival “Chopin and His Europe From Italy to Poland – from Mozart to Bellini”, Warsaw, 15–30 August 2016.

What you get with the Lawson animation is an orchestral transcription, severely abbreviated to fit the timing of the animation. It took me a few moments to realize what it was.

(Warning: there will eventually be a naked male pornstar, but without his naughty bits visible, plus some mention of feminism and same-sex attraction.)

Two faces that recently caught my eye. I saw them first in a rich context, including the rest of the pose they were in; a background behind the pose; information about the place where the larger photo appeared; and some knowledge about that place and the function of the photo there. Here they are, as bleached of context as I could manage: just the faces:

(#1) Call this person A

(#2) Call this person B

What personas are these two people projecting? What are they like, and what are they doing in the photos?

People will disagree about what they see here — photos don’t tell you what they’re doing; even if they did, they might be self-deluded; and in any case facial expressions are notoriously slippery to interpret — but there are some clear differences at the outset.

First, the facial shapes — A’s more rectangular, B’s more V shaped. In general, B’s face is more delicate, more “feminine”, than A’s. In line with that, A’s face has a bit of facial scruff, while B’s is smooth. So B appears both younger and more twinkish.

Other facial features: B’s lips are a bit fuller than A’s

Then, the facial expressions. B is considerably more engaged with the viewer than A is. B is looking directly into the viewer’s eyes, while A seems to be focused on something beyond the viewer. As people sometimes say, B is looking at us, A is looking through us. People in personal photos, with friends and family as their audience, look at the camera; people in administrative photos (for id’s, licenses, passports, p.r. shots, etc.) look through it. So A’s photo is more impersonal.

On the other hand, A is half-smiling, with modest action at the corners of the mouth, modest crinkles at the corner of the eyes. (A’s more impersonal photo then might be selling A, or presenting A as selling something else; while B is expressing some emotion, not necessarily offering anything). On the other hand, B is unsmiling, expressing dubiousness or truculence: eyebrows slightly raised and knitted, eyes in a V, mouth slightly pursed.

Beyond this, it’s all rich interpretation and story-telling. I might guess that A was a political candidate or an actor, and that the photo was for p.r. Or that B was a queer teenager, dubious about the world; an eyeroll might be coming soon. But those are all great leaps from what we can see.

Note. Something I didn’t notice in the original photos, even when I extracted and blew up the faces, was the fingernails on B’s hand: long and with a dark red polish. That was surprising, given my original assumption that B was a queer guy — perhaps an effeminate guy, but a guy — since everyday effeminacy doesn’t usually come with fingernail polish (yes, yes, I know; the world is complex and varied and offers many surprises; but I think that my generalization, hedged with “everyday” and “usually”, is pretty good).

In any case, the full photo of B came in an assortment of images from Etsy of queer-slogan t-shirts, all of which showed men modeling the tees (or showed just the tees, without any bodies in them), so I assumed that #4 below did too. Eventually, I realized that I was just flat wrong.

The full photos. Corresponding to #1 and #2:

(#3) Not in fact the full photo (from a Hunt for Men gay porn subscription ad in e-mail on 9/11); for the sake of WordPress modesty, I’ve cropped Lee’s fully erect, 8.5″, thick pornstar penis (with a slight angling upwards at the top end)

(#4) From a 9/10 e-mail ad for queer t-shirts available on Etsy, this in-your-face item

The Steven Lee presentation. In #3. I post a lot about facial expressions in gay porn — in those expressions during sex between men, and in the faces they present in ads for gay porn, which are sometimes smiling-buddy faces, sometimes seductive faces, very often heavy cruise faces (conveying dominance). SL’s face in #3 is unusual, like a p.r. photo (advertising his availability in Falcon sex videos and as guide to offerings from studios under the Falcon umbrella).

It might be relevant that SL’s previous job was as a tv weather- and newscaster, for which this presentation would be entirely appropriate.

[In a 1/20/19 interview on the Str8UpGayPorn site, “Exclusive: Gay Porn Newcomer [he was then 27] Steven Lee Talks Forecasting The Weather, Fucking On Camera, And More”, SL noted that this work trained him to work on camera; maintained that he loved the tv work; but added that it was very hard work, with long hours and low pay, so that gay porn was a breeze in contrast. And of course he came equipped that big pornstar dick (and a pleasant face). Other stats from Next Door Studios: that dick is cut;  he’s 6’2″ tall; he’s a top; and his body type is described as “gymnast”.]

A taste of SL at work: a literally steamy still from one of his flicks:

(#5) Cropped for modesty again, but with some teasing pubic hair left for the photo’s intended audience

i’m not interested. Once I started analyzing the presentation in #4, from Etsy, I searched for the source of the item on the site: BrennendeHerzen (‘Burning Hearts’), which is to say, Leokadia Grolmus in Vienna, Austria, providing items on: “Feminism, Queerness, Social Justice”. She turns out to have collected a gigantic assortment of stuff for sale, so it took some time trying out various collections of keywords to find another item with #4’s model in it. Then, this delightful find, “for Lesbians and Sapphics”:

:

(#6) So: presenting as a really cute lesbian, complete with the secret codewords girl in red — the recent girl-on-girl counterpart to the antique queer friend of Dorothy

I’ll get back to girl in red in just a moment, but first a note on the slogan in #4, which appears in t-shirt designs from (at least) other Etsy suppliers, Zazzle, Redbubble, and (my favorite) Shirtcent:

(#7)

do you listen to girl in red? From Wikipedia:

Girl in Red (stylized in lower case) is the indie pop music project of [gay] Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer Marie Ulven Ringheim (born 16 February 1999) [known as Marie Ulven]. She rose to prominence with her homemade bedroom pop songs about romance and mental health featured on the early EPs … Her debut studio album If I Could Make It Go Quiet was released through AWAL on 30 April 2021.

Girl in Red has been cited as a queer icon

… her debut single “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” [was released] on SoundCloud in November 2016

Two developments of Ulven’s work:

— Haley Margo’s album 2020 Do You Listen to Girl in Red, with the line “Does she listen to “girl in red”?”, conveying ‘Is she attracted to other girls?’.

— a 2021 graphic novel based on her life:

(#8)

How the mind does wander.

(As you should be able to guess from the title, this posting is going to discourse on men’s bodies and sex between men, and then mostly in street language — this is the last time you’ll see the learnèd catamite (though I note that the etymology is from Ganymede, which is certainly relevant) — so this posting is very much not for kids or the sexually modest.)

I’ll start by looking at an image from an ad for gay porn from the Titan studio, posted on 9/25 as an exercise in interpreting images. The image is of course specially posed for p.r., not a still shot from porn, so it might bear only a glancing relationship to the actual porn. Bear this in mind when I rehearse yesterday’s comments.

That took me, thanks to a crucial clue from Richard Vytniorgu, to the specific porn scene that image was advertising, which then led to a complex world of gay male identities, personas, and sexual practices.

The 9/25 text. From my posting “Ganymede in fur”:

(#1)

Zeus and Ganymede is what we expect in a coupling of adult man and young boy, so older Servo with beautiful young Domino is a reversal of age expectations. But the older man is slipping his hand into the boy’s underwear, to minister to the boy’s penis; the boy is smiling knowingly at us, his audience, with insolent pleasure; and the boy is wearing a fur coat — together signaling that we have in fact stumbled upon a scene from the queer edition of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs.

I have no idea what the story line is of the video in question — it’s not unimaginable that it’s deliberately framed to go against what the photo seems to tell us, that the boy is actually smiling in anticipation of enthusiastically submitting to being used carnally by the older man. Not unimaginable, but unlikely.

I didn’t recognize the actors, much less the video, so I appealed to my readers. And in a trice (with allowances for the time difference between California in the US, where I am, and Monmouthshire in the UK, where Richard Vytniorgu is), Richard gave me the crucial piece of information:

The twink is @TannorReed [on Twitter] for CockyBoys.

A characteristic photo of Reed:

(#1) Open-faced, amiable, and most often smiling

Reed is young (born 5/22/98; he got into the porn business in 2019); very much twink-sized (quite slender, short — 5ʹ6ʺ — and lightweight, at 130 lbs.); with a standard porn-sized dick (ca. 7 inches, which looks really big on his frame), cut, sometimes attended to manually by his sexual partners. His sexual taste goes beyond mere bottoming to a kind of identity as a receptive (he just loves to get fucked), and a submissive as well (he offers his body for sex with other men and then pretty much does whatever they want of him).

In photos, however, he generally doesn’t read as gay — just as cute, adorably cute. But in a QueerMeNow interview on Vimeo (of 7/9/19), he comes across as way gay, in facial expression, gesture, and speech style; and he explains enthusiastically that he loves being watched, loves collecting huge numbers of fans, and really loves getting guys off. Living pretty much totally immersed in the gay porn business seems to him, right now, like a wonderful dream. Well, he’s young and energetic. But I worry about his future, wonder whether he ought to be thinking about what comes next — there’s surely no way for him to get back on track to going to med school, but something.

[Digression, from my 3/20/21 posting “Johnny Rapid evolves”, on the careers of twinks in gay porn:

While Johnny Rapid has moved from twink bottom boy to daddy-style top, many great twinks just leave the business when they’re no longer credible as twinks, or shift their porn persona from twink to devoted bottom. Great twink Kevin Wiles in a sense did both: he had a long (roughly 10-year — mid-80s to mid-90s) porn career, in which he transitioned to devoted bottom, and then he retired from the business.

I’ll get back to Kevin Wiles in a bit, but here I note that Tannon Reed came into the business as a sort of super-devoted bottom, already presenting himself as intensely receptive and submissive, so it’s not clear where he would go from here — certainly not with a Rapid-style switch to daddy top, which seems totally out of his personal sexual range.

Let me also flag the awkwardness of trying to talk about these sexual identities and presentations of self in terms of a small number of pre-established categories (twink, bottom / top, daddy / boy, receptive / insertive, submissive / dominant, etc.).]

The Cocky Boys video. Once I had Reed’s (stage) name and CockyBoys as the likely studio (Reed has made videos with other studios), it was just a matter of searching through inventories of CB videos until I found one with Reed in furs. The videos come untitled and free-standing, but then they’re assembled into DVDs.

The video in question features the twink Reed and two hugely muscled hunks using Reed for their pleasure:

Sharok self-description: “Persian top living in Los Angeles. Sometimes rough but always passionate.” 7″ dick cut, 5ʹ11″, 210 lbs.

Brock Banks description from a fan: “Perfect Rican papi! Muscular, cute, hairy, uncut and hung.” Versatile; 7″ dick, 5ʹ11″, 167 lbs.

The cover of the DVD (with dicks and balls fuzzed over for WordPress modesty), showing Sharok, Reed, and Banks:

(#2) [Studio pitch:] Our pocket-sized performers are the first ones to eagerly climb and slide on a thick raw cock when the time comes (the fun size boys are Reed, Avery Jones, and Benjamin Blue; DVD released 4/19/21)

From the video, this (to me) very moving depiction of Sharok fucking Reed in a free-standing Flying Cowboy, while Banks keeps his cock hard for his turn at the twink:

(#3) He gets fucked in mid-air with the greatest of ease

And finally, the still from the actual video that comes closest to #1, but now we can see that Reed is submissive, not knowing or insolent; and it turns out that Sharok is sliding his hand down Reed’s crotch to reach the boy’s butt, at which point Reed will open and raise his legs so that Sharok can slide two wet fingers into the boy’s welcoming pussy-ass. A compendium of athletic sexual positions follows, mostly with the two hunks using the boy’s body together for their pleasure, while Reed whimpers and moans.

(#4) Sharok as predator; the fur is never explained, but appears just to be an expression of Reed’s faggy tastes

The variety of sexual identities, personas, communities, and practices within the world of male sexuality is truly enormous, but we’ve grown accustomed to paring most of this complexity down to a binary gender split between masculine and un-masculine (the latter usually labeled effeminate, or, baldly, feminine) — where the label masculine picks out those aspects of behavior and thought that are normative for males in a particular society at a particular place and time. Quite often the gender categories are viewed not as crisply binary but instead as spread along a scale from the masculine to the un-masculine — so that violations of normative masculinity come in lesser or greater degree. But that’s only a small fix to a conceptualization that is grossly inadequate to start with and that invites the valuing of certain ways of being over others according to their consonance with prevailing normative masculinity: normative masculine good, un-masculine defective.

I have more reflections on this topic than I can pack into today’s posting, so I’ll put most of that off to a future posting, though I’ll note here that on this blog I’ve been urging talk of masculinities (plural), and especially homomasculinities — clearing the way for talking about fagginess as just another variety of homomasculinity. (Recall that I’m the guy who’s been writing a lot about butch fagginess.)

Here I’ll continue with some particular cases, from real life as well as gay porn, noting that these cases — Tannon Reed and Kevin Wiles from porn, and Richard Vytniorgu in his own life, plus the Arnold Zwicky of around 30 years ago, when I was sexually active with other men — all diverge significantly from current normative masculinity by not only by taking it up the ass (by “getting fucked like a woman”, as contemptuous straight guys sometimes say) but by welcoming, in fact desiring, the receptive role: we all love to get fucked. Then, when you look at things more closely, it turns out that we represent several different styles of receptive. (Richard V. has suggested to me that Tannon Reed’s and his own submissive styles are even more violative of normative masculinity — hence more likely to arouse animus and contempt — than Kevin Wiles’s and my own active-engagement, power-bottom styles of receptivity. That strikes me as perceptive.)

In any case, a few more notes.

Kevin Wiles. On gay pornstar (and power bottom) Kevin Wiles, in the last section of my 2/9/16 posting “Morning names: wiles, Wiles”:

I’ve been reflecting on KW’s take on cocksucking and bottoming. In both cases, he goes well beyond mere willingness (after all, anyone can learn to perform these acts at least competently) and beyond enthusiasm, into something deeper and more intense, amounting to a kind of sexual orientation of its own, in which he submits with pleasure to another man by taking that man’s cock into his body (into his mouth or into his asshole) and worships it by having it become, in his sexual imagination, part of his own body. He absorbs that cock, as a symbol of the man it represents and the essence of his masculinity, and becomes one with it. He is deeply oriented towards cock (and consequently towards cum), as (I now say) an ubercocksucker or uberbottom (or both, as in KW’s case).

In my case, once I had my partner’s cock filling my ass I was consumed with pleasure both physical and emotional — and then negotiated with my body to get just the kind of pleasure I most wanted from my fucker, while providing him with the kind of pleasure he wanted. Not submissive at all.

Richard Vytniorgu. From my 12/29/18 posting “The side display”, an RV Xmas card with him doing a side display of his body (a presentation of face and buttocks) in a jockstrap, with the title “Christmas Fairy”, conveying the message “I like to get fucked”:

(#5)

In [this Xmas card photo], Richard has stepped out of his academic role (as an authority on modernist figures in English literature) [and his persona as intensely engaged scholar] and slipped into his persona as an affectionate twink bottom-boy. A bold move, but then is [the Xmas card photo] really any odder than Christmas cards in which people pose with the gear of their favorite sport (surfing, skiing, hockey, whatever), or with an assemblage of their beloved pets, or on holiday in some exotic spot they finally got to go to? Photo Christmas cards are portraits, and … portraits express personas. Adorable fairy [more pointedly, adorable pussy-ass fairy] is a persona, one that’s quite important to Richard (and one I enjoy observing), so why not work it into a greeting card?

Then poses of a naked Richard as embodying utterly composed and relaxed receptivity, waiting face down with his ass humped up to be fucked — dog style — or face up with his legs drawn up, exposing his ass for fucking — frog style. Here the latter, cropped for modesty:

(#6) Total twink waiting patiently for the man

Now Richard sends a new portrait shot (a 2021 self-portrait taken in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire):

(#7) Adorably pixyish, with Romantic hair and faggy hands

From his website, about the photos:

In addition to my other work, I have also modelled professionally in the nude / erotic genre for artists and photographers, and these experiences allowed me to cultivate my interest in performing / dancing / acting. They also helped me to become more at ease with my homosexuality and receptive sexual nature — something I had always experienced but felt ashamed of and tried to suppress.

I’m truly impressed with Richard’s willingness to do nude / erotic modeling. I wish Jacques had talked me into letting him photograph me, but I was too uncomfortable with various parts of my body to allow it. At the very least I should have let him photograph me face down with my ass available for fucking, because that was the bodypart I got spontaneous compliments on, yet I was never able to see my reportedly hot ass with other men’s eyes.

Bonus. One of Richard’s next projects, from his website:

Place and Gay Male Effeminacy

My next monograph explores the importance of place in shaping narratives of gay male effeminacy in contemporary European film and erotica (since 2010). This work highlights the importance of place in shaping how gender-nonconforming gay males negotiate a sense of belonging — in their bodies, the home, school, nation, and online.

The work shows how for some effeminate gay males (and particularly for bottoms), fantasy narratives of being born like this or hard-wired in their sexuality constitute an important form of belonging with their sexual behaviour and identity, and speaks to emerging scientific work in support of biodevelopmental pathways to different kinds of gayness.

Lots to think about.

(Men in various states of undress, visibly tumescent while minimally clothed, looking for sex with other men — so not for everyone.)

Yesterday’s mail ad from Daily Jocks, a carefully composed, even elegant, presentation of a muscular young man posing in fashionable form-fitting long johns that highlight his weighty package, while he fixes us with an intense gaze that gay men use in cruising for sex with other men (in another context, it’s the intense, fixed smoulder that straight men use in trolling for sex with women):

(#1) Call him Helgi (it’s Scandinavian and heroic); he’s posing in the trendy bathing room from two other recent appearances of his — on 11/12 in a much cruder pose but still in Helsinki Athletica long johns; and then on 11/3 in very brief white DJX Signature briefs, apparently contemplating the excellent penis contained within

I’ll revisit those two appearances (with notes on the sociosexual worlds of gay men) and then turn to the English garment lexicon, focusing on long johns, tights, leggings, and the union suit.

But first, a bit more about the presentation of Helgi in #1.

(Looking ahead: I would call the form-fitting garment — hugging his buttocks as nicely as his package — that Helgi is wearing tights. Though they look more like dancer’s tights than like men’s underwear tights, which usually have a fly.)

Helgi. Given his looks, he’s probably not actually Scandinavian. In fact, all three photos were taken on the same set, and that set was almost surely in Australia, where DJ is — a long way from Scandinavia. But he’s arrestingly handsome, and the photo in #1 is wonderfully posed, his body slightly turned, so we get his package in outline (beautifully matching the outline of his left pectoral muscle above it), half in shadow half in light (highlighting the curves and planes of his body, and making his belly seem curiously vulnerable).

The photo — call it Helgi3 — deliberately draws attention to Helgi’s really big hands (he also has really big feet, as we’ll see in Helgi1 below), knit together in a gesture I don’t know how to interpret; I’m happy to entertain speculations. I note that what to have the model do with his hands is ever a puzzle for photographers of men’s underwear ads.

I don’t know the model’s name, or the photographer’s, or the name of anyone else involved in putting Helgi3 together, but they all deserve some credit for producing a fine piece of male photography.

Now: interpreting Helgi3. The facial expression is what I think of as a stock cruise face: intense and fixed, unmoving, on his target, neutral mouth and eyebrows, no hint of a smile, nothing threatening either. A dead-serious invitation to approach his desirable body. It’s combined with a half-hard penis, a presentation that many gay men find more inviting than a jutting erection, because it encourages the target to collaborate with Helgi in bringing it to full arousal. So, wow.

Cruising for sex involves both facework and bodywork.

Facework. Facial expressions designed to catch a target’s gaze, hold it for longer than a normal stranger-gaze (so: 3-5 seconds rather than one or two), then to be averted while anticipating the target’s uptake (hopefully, a similar gaze in return), after which the two of you negotiate on how to proceed further; or designed to hold the target’s gaze indefinitely while making an unconditional offer of connection. (The cruising man is usually the dominant one in the latter encounters.)

Only once in my life have I been the recipient of such an unconditional offer from a startlingly handsome man like Helgi — at the gay baths, and he held that stare for a huge amount of time, making it clear that, yes, he really did mean me, not any of the other men moving around in the space. Astounded but gratified, I took him up on his offer, we connected smoothly, he established himself as in charge and his sexual role as top, and we moved on to a pairing that was enormously satisfying to both of us. A dream trick.

More facework below.

Bodywork. The classic position for performing a public cruise is leaning against something: a wall, a post, a tree. Scoring a trick could take a while, so you’ll want some support for your body; and you can then push your crotch forward, or tilt a hip, or whatever will make the message of your body clear. Walls are especially good: no one can come up behind you, and you only have to scope out what’s in front of you. Two exemplars from previous postings on this blog:

(#2) Days in black leather, Urban Cowboy as TorsoMan: he’ll look to the side until he’s sure you’re staring at him as a delicious apparition, then he’ll turn his head, catch you in the public nakedness of your desire, and reel you in

(#3) An indoor variant, using a table for support: Topman 4 U

Helgi2. From my 11/12/21 posting “The long johns, the erection, and the cruise face”, the photo with notes on its contents:

(#4) An aggressive cruise face

… the model’s gigantic protruding erection, which appear[s] to be nearing its terminal moment … a piercing cruising-for-sex face … plus those skin-tight long johns, the lean but powerful musculature (granted, only what you expect in any male underwear model), the luscious golden brown skin, and an assortment of tattoos (whose Hells Angels threat cred is undercut some by the elegant pair of birds)

A much cruder presentation than Helgi3. To start with, Helgi’s penis is just jutting out, like a rocket launched from his pubic symphysis, hardly like a bodypart at all. Then there’s his face.

Back in my 3/31/21 posting “The smoulder”, I looked at an aggressively sexual gaze directed at women by the actor Kevin Smith (as the god Ares in the Hercules and Xena tv series), as here:

(#5) The Ares Smoulder — an intense, narrow-eyed, stare, as in Helgi2 —  plus some bodywork, the display of a muscular manly torso; apparently Smith could turn the Smoulder on and off at will, as a sort of parlor trick

[There are] two more components of the Ares Smoulder: (a) narrow focus: Ares’s gaze is narrowly focused on the object of his attention, not taking in a wider scene; and (b) fixity: his gaze is fixed and unmoving for a significant period of time. The Ares Smoulder shares both of these features with the gay Cruise of Death; indeed, fixity is a major component of gay cruise faces in general, which are held for significantly longer than a normal gaze exchange.

Helgi2 is a pretty good Cruise of Death, while Helgi3 has a flicker of affiliation in the facial expression, echoing the less aggressive display of Helgi’s body in Helgi3 (and Helgi3 is advertising his butt as well as his package).

Other male cruise faces are more receptive, more affiliative, like these two from my 10/17/21 posting  “Two faces”:

(#6) A cruise face I characterized as conveying attraction and interest — a man-to-man flirt face

(#7) A cruise face I characterized as conveying attentive desire — a man-to-man offer of service

Helgi1. From my 11/3/21 posting “An address to his penis”:

A homoerotic pose, with companion poetry [omitted below] set in the world of gay desire … a handsome young man in his white high-rise Signature briefs focused intently on the solidly packed pouch of those briefs and apostrophizing the magnificent penis within:

(#8) Eyes averted, as in the street cruise in #2; otherwise, an elegant composition as in Helgi3, including the half-and-half lighting and the careful matching of the contour of his very muscular left pec to the contour of his pouch

In this photo we see his large (wide at the toes) and quite flat feet; the man is as he is, and he’s not delicate.

Garment time. The high-rise briefs in Helgi1 are a familiar item of underwear on this blog, but the long johns in the other two Helgi photos are, I think, fresh territory here — and appropriate for the season in the Northern Hemisphere. From NOAD, with bracketed comments from me:

pl. noun long johns: informal underwear [for both men and women] with closely fitted legs that extend to the wearer’s ankles, often with a long-sleeved top. [long underwear, thermal underwear, and thermals are sometimes offered as synonyms of long johns] [long johns are often worn as sleepwear / pajamas]

An illustration from the International Jock site: Go Softwear brand Lumberjack long johns (available in black, Bordeaux (dark red), and royal (blue)):

(#9) Lumberjack long johns in Bordeaux (100% cotton, 3-button fly, drawstring waist)

On to tights, leggings, and union suits. All from NOAD:

pl. noun tights: [a] a woman’s thin, close-fitting garment, typically made of nylon or other knitted yarn, covering the legs, hips, and bottom [and typically worn as underwear]: a pair of black tights. [b] a garment similar to tights worn by a dancer or acrobat. [note on [a]: I have worn tights designed and marketed for men; they had a fly; they were clearly intended as underwear]

pl. noun leggings: [a] tight-fitting stretch pants, typically worn by women or girls. [b] protective coverings for the legs.

noun union suit: North American dated a single undergarment combining shirt and pants. [typically, but not exclusively, worn by men] [union suits often come equipped with a drop seat]

From Merriam-Webster online:

noun drop seat: 1: a hinged seat (as in a taxi) that may be dropped down 2: a seat (as in an undergarment) that can be unbuttoned [note two different senses of seat: ‘the roughly horizontal part of a chair, on which one’s weight rests directly’ vs. ‘the part of a garment that covers the buttocks’ (NOAD)]

Summing up: as a rule, long johns, union suits, and tights are underwear; while leggings are outerwear. Long johns are intended to provide warmth, while underwear tights are essentially somewhat more substantial pantyhose.

Bonus: the etymology of long johns. OED3 (June 2016) under the noun long john offers:

Etymology: < long adj.1 + the male forename John …, perhaps after use of Long John as a type-name for a tall person (attested from at least the early 19th cent.). Applied to various objects characterized by their unusual length. [Wikipedia has an assortment of more fanciful etymologies, some having to do with the boxer John L. Sullivan; or as an approximation of Fr. longues jambes ‘long legs’]

In the following main entry, it lists some South American trees, an oblong doughnut, and then the underwear, with a collection of cites that I give here in its entirety because I find it entertaining:

3. colloquial (originally U.S.). In plural. Underpants with closely fitted legs that extend to the wearer’s ankles, worn for warmth during cold weather; (more generally) long underwear of any kind. Also in singular (chiefly attributive).

1941 Sheboygan (Wisconsin) Press 16 Oct. 7/5 We all hope we don’t get our ‘long Johns’ for a while because it is too warm yet.

1962 W. Schirra in J. Glenn et al.  Into Orbit 49 A series of waffle-weave patches on our long john underwear helps to keep the oxygen moving.

1969 J. Gardner Founder Member vii. 115 Boysie picked up the clothes… A suit of woollen long johns, a pair of heavy calf-length stockings.

1985 M. Parfit South Light (1988) viii. 99 Malcolm bounded from porthole to porthole, looking like a stretched silent-film comedian in his baggy U.S. Antarctic Research Program-issue black trousers and his long-john top.

1994 Camping Mag. Jan. 40/2 Long johns and tops made of polypropylene or chlorofibre are best.

2008 R. Beard Becoming Drusilla (2009) xi. 252 I climbed out of the tent in my long johns and asked the male outdoor pursuits instructors to pipe down.

That last item is Becoming Drusilla: One Life, Two Friends, Three Genders by Richard Beard. From the publisher:

A funny and original story of a friendship between two men and what happens when [while camping together as they cross Wales] one of them announces he is becoming a woman. This book holds a mirror to the extraordinary in seemingly ordinary lives.

From Ann Gulbrandsen (in Sweden) on Facebook today, a wonderful still life of earthy carrots:

Ann wrote (in Swedish; what follows is the Google Translate version in English, which is, um, flatfooted, with one paraphrase by me):

Thought to pick up the last small harvest of carrots when it will be minus degrees next week. I clearly underestimated what was [underground]. May be cooking with carrots [Sw. matlagning med morötter] a couple of weeks ahead.

My response:

I like the sound of “cooking with carrots”. Maybe we could use it as a figurative expression meaning ‘to do something exuberantly, in a big way, with great success’. As in “Wow, Ann is really cooking with carrots on that project!”

What I like about cooking with carrots is, first, is the sound relationships of cooking and carrots: two trochees — SW accent pattern — alliterating in /k/ (note the parallel alliteration in Swedish, even taking in the preposition). The phrase wants to be filled out in a brief poem and set to music.

And then, the echo of cooking with gas. From the Cambridge Dictionary on-line (reformatted a bit):

phrase be cooking with gas: informal to be making very good progress or doing something very well | I can see we’re really cooking with gas now. \ After a slow start to the season, the team has finally begun cooking with gas.

Where, you wonder, does this use of the phrase come from? From Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett on their radio show A Way With Words on 6/20/14:

A few years back, members of the Chicago Iron Workers local #1 remade the famous “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photo originally taken in New York in 1932. In 2017 the two photos — which I’ll label Skylunch 4 and Skylunch 1 — were put together in a composite (Skylunch 4+1) on Reddit, which the Chicago Curbed site posted about on 10/17/17.

(#1) Skylunch 4+1: both photos have 11 men, grouped 2, 2, 3, 3, 1; but the tones of the two photos are very different (Skylunch 1 — in b&w, with a hazy Manhattan in the background, with mostly recent immigrant steelworkers — is a piece of magic realism, expressing ambitious dreams of a truly modern Manhattan rising into the sky; Skylunch 4 — in sharp color, with the solid buildings of the 20th century in the Loop constantly in restless revision, with American-born steelworkers, Union guys, in their harnesses and hard hats — is a piece of everyday urban realism, regular guys doing a tough job

I missed Skylunch 4 at the time it first appeared on the net, but in the last few days Skylunch 4+1 has been passed around on Facebook, so I’ve been taken back into the Skylunch world, where the meme has been reworked again and again.

On the Chicago Curbed site, “Chicago iron workers recreate the iconic ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ photograph; The image presents a 21st century take on an American classic” by Jay Kozlarz on 10/17/17:

The image recently [in 2017] reappeared on Reddit’s “Old School Cool” sub accompanied by the original Lunch atop a Skyscraper photo where it quickly climbed the ranks. While the black and white original dates back to the 1932 construction of Manhattan’s 850-foot 30 Rockefeller Plaza (now officially known as the Comcast Building), the re-staging was taken from atop Chicago’s new CNA Center.

I start with a photo quiz. Four pictures of men working as models under several professional names, taken over a roughly ten-year period — during which, being models, they might have changed various alterable aspects of their appearance, like hairstyle and hair color, as well as clothing or lack of it; and since they were models, their photographers might have altered some shots for the intended audience. Your task is to say how many men are shown here, and if there are fewer than four, which photos match up.

Photo A. Guy with tires:

Photo B. Guy leaning against a wall:

Photo C. Guy on the beach:

Photo D. Naked guy:

About Photo A. Now some relevant information. Photo A will seem vaguely familiar to many of my readers, especially American ones. What they’re recalling is no doubt this image:

(#5) Fred with Tires, Hollywood 1984 — on a poster for an exhibition in (apparently) 1988 (see “Herb Ritts” on this blog, in a 9/9/16  posting); the Getty description of Fred with Tires: “Muscular young man, wearing dogtags [AZ: as working-class insignia], work pants, and work boots, carrying two car tires, one in each hand”

The Ritts photo enlarged and cropped, to compare to Photo D, which has the same direct intense  gaze (Photo D is from 1987, and might have been posed deliberately to echo Fred with Tires):

(#6) The model called Fred is clearly a bodybuilder (the Getty’s “muscular young man”), and the pose is  homoerotic (Ritts was openly gay, and an unashamed admirer of the male body) — notably homoerotic (with a cruise face on Fred) if you take this to be a photo of a grease monkey in his garage; but in fact we know this is posed and suspect that Fred is a fashion model in body-shop drag, so maybe that’s just a fashion-model glare, but, still …

As a counterpart to #6, consider this Ritts photo of his friend Richard Gere (the actor), in garage drag:

(#7) Richard Gere, San Bernardino (1977), the photo (one from a shoot) that pretty much got Ritts’s career going

Fred with Tires is also from a shoot, the “Body Shop” series, which has a number of photos I admire more than it, because they’re full of kinetic energy and might imaginably be capturing a working-class guy immersed in his job, manhandling tires: photo A and also:

(#8)

From Wikipedia on Ritts:

(Note the title. Stud hustling and men tricking with men, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

The Daily Jocks ad in my e-mail on 2/7 reproduces the archetypical cruise pose, deployed in both hustling (for sale) and tricking, or hooking up (for play), by men for men:

(#1) [ad copy:]
NEW: UTILITY SHORTS
BE READY FOR ANYTHING
Everyday practicality with weekend style, your new favourite shorts have arrived at DailyJocks.

These are Utility 7ʺ shorts from Helsinki Athletica. Features listed in the ad copy:

For Valentine’s Day, sexual (rather than social) kisses. And since this is my blog, male-male kisses, which have moved me since I was a child. The spurs being some male-male kisses recently in the news, plus a Daniel Mendelsohn piece in Out magazine, “Gay TV and Me: How my life would be different if boys were kissing boys onscreen 40 years ago — like they are today” on 9/20/12.

First, some boys kissing:

(#1) Cover photo for the YA (young adult) novel Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan (2013), a much-challenged book

On the Levithan book. From Wikipedia:

(#2) The book cover

Two Boys Kissing, published in 2013, was written by American author David Levithan. Inspired by true events, the book follows two 17-year-old boys who set out to break a Guinness World Record by kissing for 32 hours. The book includes a “Greek chorus” of the generation of gay men who died of AIDS. Throughout the narrative, the book discusses topics such as relationships, coming out, gender identity, and hook-up culture.

(It’s actually about the art of photography, but showing men’s bodies and man-on-man sex and discussing these in street talk, so it’s not appropriate for kids or the sexually modest.)

The Falcon / Naked Sword store DVD sale ad of 4/9 offers an artful posing of three beautiful male bodies elegantly engaged in a sexual encounter, with their three weighty cocks arranged in counterpoint to the arrangement of the bodies. The ad, with the cocks and balls fuzzed out for WordPress modesty (the actual ad can be viewed in my AZBlogX posting of earlier today, “Three men, three cocks”).

(#1) Penectomized but still stunning: left to right, Jimmy Durano, Luke Milan, and Angel Rock in Alpine Wood Part 1 (Falcon Studios, released 5/15/14); Rock is about to give Durano a pre-fuck kiss; meanwhile, Milan (kneeling between the two standing men, his eyes closed in pleasure) is about to take Durano’s cock into his mouth

Where the photo comes from. Three naked men having sex together is something you can witness in the orgy rooms of male-sex venues of various types. You can find snapshots of the action in many places, but that’s not what #1 offers you. Instead, these guys are actors in a filmed dramatic production on the theme of man-on-man sex — in a genre of movie/video created for the purpose of affording sexual arousal and release to the viewer.

So, point one: it’s staged, for filming.

But this is not a screen shot from the jack-off video Alpine Wood Part 1. Instead, it’s a separately staged shot done for p.r. purposes, carefully posed through some collaboration between the actors (whose real names and lives we know nothing about) and the photographer (and probably some others of the video’s production staff). As I’ve noted before in this blog, these carefully calculated p.r. shots often bear very little relationship to the action visible on film. (Occasionally, actors appear in the p.r. shots who aren’t even in the film, though I view this as just wrong wrong wrong.)

So, point two: it’s a shot staged in a photographer’s studio.

And then this is not a raw take from a shoot. Instead, it’s been carefully touched up, in particular, by smoothing and tinting the men’s bodies to take the photos into a world of hyper-reality: the already quite beautiful men’s bodies have been altered to look like sculptures. They’re no longer mere men, but demi-gods. (Well, yes, they’re into deep kissing, cocksucking, and assfucking, but lots of male gods are into that stuff.)

So, point three, the last point: it’s a shot that’s been massaged to make the actors resemble statues of queer masculinity in action.

I happen to think the result is breath-takingly successful, so much so that I almost immediately came to view the photograph as an aesthetic object and, oh yes, those are hot guys with really great dicks, jesus, I love dick, and yes, I would love to suck Jimmy Durano’s cock, who wouldn’t, but right now I’m enjoying the art gallery, please don’t break my focus. (Your mileage might vary.)

About the film. The intro section of Falcon’s description provides the setting (not that that means a lot, once you start viewing #1 as a piece of photographer’s art):

The hottest studs around sport Alpine Wood … when they share a house in the mountains for a weekend of fun. Leading Director Bruno Bond shows you how a rugged good time gets even better when these scruffy-faced Falcon men [AZ: in #1 Durano and Rock have very neatly trimmed facial hair, and Milan is smooth-shaven; the point is that they aren’t being presented as scruffy louts off the street, attractive though such men might be, but as icons of groomed male beauty] hook up all over the house in spontaneous manly action [AZ: the scene in #1 could scarcely look less spontaneous; fiery, uncontrollable, spontaneous sex is just wonderful, and I can easily get off watching it, but #1 isn’t it]. If home is where the hard on is [AZ: oh, isn’t that cute?], these studs feel right at home in this mountain cabin where the air smells like sex. Alpine Wood, Part 1 features nine of the sexiest young [AZ: this is complex; Milan is the only one presented as just young (lean and beardless); while the other two present as one step more powerfully mature, but still fresh — Rock is 30, in fact], hard and horny guys [in five scenes; #1 represents the third], and they’re bound to burst into exciting action when their lust levels rise with the elevation.

Bodies and cocks. The abstract arrangements of bodies (on the left) and of cocks (on the right):

(#2) The cocks are more or less the bodies exploded inside-out; the two are, in any case, complementary (yes, I know that I’m a really crappy artist, but fortunately this diagram didn’t require a lot of skill)

About the cocks. On the purely carnal front, all three are really fine examples of pornstar dicks: satisfyingly long, but not long merely for the sake of size (the dicks fit nicely with the men’s bodies, look good on them, but are also long enough to be notable); all three thick, but especially Durano’s, which is challengingly so (it’s the center of the composition, and the composition’s second focus; faces are almost always the first focus, and they certainly are here); and presenting at three different angles (Durano’s straight out, Milan’s hanging down, Rock’s projecting up at an angle). As an extra nuance, Milan’s dick is not quite as hard as Durano’s and Rock’s, and that’s pretty much a perfect cocksucker’s hard-on: he’s aroused by the act he’s performing, but he’s not fully aroused, because his attention is, quite properly, entirely focused on the service he’s providing.

Now, most of the composition seems to have been carefully calculated, but the pattern of the three dicks was probably just a happy accident; it looked good, so the photographer went with it.

The arrangement of the bodies. I had this vague feeling that the arrangement of the bodies was an allusion to some piece of art (a statue or a painting); it struck me as somehow familiar. (Male photography, of all sorts, including porn shots and men’s underwear ads, often alludes to specific works of art. I mean, the photographers are professionals, not random people taking snapshots with their phones: they typically have training in their craft and experience with a range of visual art.)

Well, three hours or so of searching has netted nothing for me. The world of visual art with three human figures is extraordinarily rich (so my search, though fruitless, was enjoyable), almost all of it with one of two arrangements of the bodies:

— |||: the three figures with their heads at roughly the same level

— o|o: central superior figure flanked by two lower figures (echoing the male triad pattern)

More rarely, you see a higher figure on one end or the other; a lower figure at one end or the other; or figures graded from one end to the other. That is, almost all logically possible patterns are attested, but with far from equal frequency.

I found only one example of |o|, two superior figures flanking a central lower figure — the arrangement in #1 — and that was from a genuinely obscure sculpture (with all three (male) figures facing the viewer) not worth examining here. And no example at all of |o| in which the two superior figures are facing one another (again, as in #1). Or, consequently, of the even more specific |o| with facing superior figures plus the lower figure facing towards one of the superior figures (again, as in #1). I go into these grinding details because my fugitive artistic memory — which might, of course, be mere confabulation — was of this last specific pattern. In fact, still more specifically, in my memory all three figures were male, and the lower man was appealing to one of the superior men.

Well, like I said, I might just have made it all up. But the fugitive memory was very strong.

In any case, if you know of a |o| sculpture or painting (of any sort) that might have triggered my memory, bring it on!

What I posted to Facebook on 4/8, on the occasion of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. My follow-up said that, yes, the reference was to Agee (the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, on which more below) and added:

 I can’t begin to say how pleasing KBJ’s appointment is to me.

To amplify a bit. This is not the Promised Land, but it is nevertheless a Big Fucking Deal. One of the things about my hero John Lewis that moved me especially was that he truly believed that we could reach the Promised Land in this life (not in an afterlife on Jordan’s other bank) — just not in his life, it would take some time. [More below on Lewis and this astonishing bit of faith on his part.] Meanwhile [Lewis believed], we have to keep moving on the path. KBJ is a highly visible step on the path, and that’s a big thing, a moment of joy.

From the days leading up to 4/8, two photos:

(#1) Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 21 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A face of assurance and judicious joy.

(#2) (C-SPAN) photo from 3/27) Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at [the] hearing

This bit of modest side-eye and the accompanying small sigh are acts of fierce resistance behind the screen of infinitely tolerant equanimity that black people, especially black women, have to maintain in the face of whatever hostility and bullshit white people choose to heap on them (and the hearings displayed both of those, ladled out in giant appalling servings) — acts of resistance meant to be seen and appreciated by other black people. If KBJ looks at you like that, you’ve been branded as a certifiable grade-A asshole (and you really really don’t want her to come over there and explain things to you).

The look is triggered by experiencing hatred, but it isn’t itself an expression of hatred; instead, it’s a cry of SHAME SHAME SHAME!, of moral repugnance, combined with intimations of a slave revolt.

Remember that that look is being wielded by on extraordinarily distinguished jurist who is also famously collegial. She’s amazingly competent and also genuinely nice. Even in the face of wicked baiting by an especially nasty Miss Ann and Mr. Charlie.

Look, I’m a faggot, and we sometimes have to hold our tongues and compose our faces, lest we be charged as dangerously hysterical pedophiles. But I would never stand for this sort of stuff. But then I’m a white guy.

So: my moment of moral outrage. Mixed with enormous joy at KBJ’s confirmation.

Agee. And that book: a volume of intense moral passion. From Wikipedia:

(#3) (Wikipedia photo caption) Walker Evans photograph of three sharecroppers, Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs, Alabama, summer 1936

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans, first published in 1941 in the United States. The work documents the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression. Although it is in keeping with Evans’s work with the Farm Security Administration, the project was initiated not by the FSA, but by Fortune magazine. The title derives from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach [a Jewish work of ethical teachings] (44:1) that begins, “Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us”.

… Agee, who writes modestly and self-consciously about his privileged position in the book’s creation, appears as a character himself at times in the narrative, as when he agonizes over his role as “spy” and intruder into these humble lives. At other times, as when he simply lists the contents of a sharecropper’s shack or the meager articles of clothing they have to wear on Sunday, he is altogether absent. The strange ordering of books and chapters, the titles that range from mundane (“Clothes”) to “radically artistic” (as the New York Times put it), the direct appeals by Agee for the reader to see the humanity and grandeur of these horrible lives, and his suffering at the thought that he cannot accomplish his appointed task, or should not, for the additional suffering it inflicts on his subjects, are all part of the book’s character.

John Lewis. A hero of mine, and of Ann Daingerfield (Zwicky)’s, and of my man Jacques Transue’s, from back in the disastrous days of the 1960s, when we got to regularly view scenes of literally murderous rage by white people directed at black people (every so often those hate-deranged whites actually did murder black folks, or lynch them; John Lewis escaped with his life, but just barely). But I’m getting ahead of my story. Some very bald facts, from Wikipedia:

John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966. Lewis was one of the “Big Six” leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States. In 1965, Lewis led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In an incident which became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers and police attacked the marchers, including Lewis.

A member of the Democratic Party, Lewis was first elected to Congress in 1986 and served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district he represented included most of Atlanta. Due to his length of service, he became the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation.

Heroically dedicated to the cause of civil rights, physically heroic in that enterprise, and then an able and effective legislator, representing not just black Atlanta, but essentially all of it equally.

What the fact-filled Wikipedia account fails to capture is he was an irrationally decent man (decent way beyond rational expectation), full of irrational hope (hopeful way beyond rational expectation) — buoyed by his faith, true, but there his decency and hope were, and some of it was quite astonishing, because it was in fact far from conventional Christianity. What I said on Facebook:

he truly believed that we could reach the Promised Land in this life (not in an afterlife on Jordan’s other bank) — just not in his life, it would take some time.

Conventional Christianity tells us that life on this earth is filled with pain, terror, mistreatment, outright slavery, and wickedness, but that the believer will be rewarded with undiluted and enduring joy and delight after death, with Jesus in the life everlasting. I’m sure John Lewis believed that too. But he also thought that with resolution and determination and good will you can change this world, make it truly better. You can remake this world in the spirit of Christ’s love. But the project will take some time and we have to stay the course.

This John Lewis you can read about in political biographer (and Vanderbilt Univ. professor) Jon Meacham’s 2020 book about Lewis:

(#4) Meacham’s moral concerns, and of course Lewis’s, shine from the pages

Let us walk with KBJ on John Lewis’s path.

Today’s ad mailing from the Daily Jocks homowear company came with an artistic allusion (plus some fairly routine ad copy):

(#1) [ad copy:] 20% OFF – FETISHWEAR Welcome to The DailyJocks Backroom, from harnesses to wrestling suits, check out some of the most intimate products from your favourite brands including DJX, Nasty Pig & many more

It’s a grease monkey homage! To the Herb Ritts oeuvre, specifically to Fred with Tires, Hollywood 1984.

From my 2/1/22 posting “Who was that man?”:

(#2)

—–
Fred with Tires, Hollywood 1984 — on a poster for an exhibition in (apparently) 1988 (see “Herb Ritts” on this blog, in a 9/9/16  posting); the Getty description of Fred with Tires: “Muscular young man, wearing dogtags [AZ: as working-class insignia], work pants, and work boots, carrying two car tires, one in each hand” … The model called Fred is clearly a bodybuilder (the Getty’s “muscular young man”), and the pose is  homoerotic (Ritts was openly gay, and an unashamed admirer of the male body) — notably homoerotic (with a cruise face on Fred) if you take this to be a photo of a grease monkey in his garage; but in fact we know this is posed and suspect that Fred is a fashion model in body-shop drag, so maybe that’s just a fashion-model glare, but, still …
—–

Two things. First thing, production values. Yes, the strategy of the DJ ads is to use maximum exposure of dick and ass — sometimes quite startlingly up against the line of what can be shown in public — to sell premium men’s underwear and various underwear-adjacent goods. The images, however, aren’t crude stuff at all, but carefully posed and framed, with the models coached in stances and facial expressions that will offer their bodies as prime objects of homo-lust

This means, incidentally, that DJ will offer a variety of types of bodies and presentations of them, to cater to the wide variety of tastes and fantasies among its customers. Something for everybody, as they say. As it happens, intense grease-monkey bodybuilders are not my thing at all, but I understand what #1 is offering and admire the craft  that went into it. Other DJ ads speak to me deeply (though I’m not much of a customer, since I have what is surely a lifetime supply of entirely satisfying, and masculinely pretty, Tommy Hilfiger briefs).

In any case, the ads are high-quality professional work on everybody’s part.

Second thing, artistic values. They’re not just well done, they’re done with style and panache. Quite often, they’re self-consciously artistic, showing off their visual effects and making reference to the visual traditions of Western art, sometimes to specific art works — or (as in this case) giving a bow to earlier highlights from the world of male art.

Quite enjoyable stuff. I hope the art directors and photographers had some fun creating it for us.

Power to the Pouch. Premium men’s underwear ads, aimed at man-inclined guys like me, are heavily pouch-focused (first the face, then we get literally down to business), because that pouch contains the prize, holds the power of desire. Sometimes the prize is outlined in loving detail through the fabric of the pouch, sometimes the pouch is merely weighty with its contents. But the pouch is prominent.

Pouches then take on symbolic lives of their own, for some cohort of observers. With the result that guys like me are likely to see photos like the one below, from an Etsy ad that came in my mail today, in sexual terms:

(#3) [ad copy:] Soft, simple fabrics and neat natural dyes — name a more blissful combination. This Earth Month, support small shops and explore handcrafted creations colored with marigolds, indigos, and other earthly finds. Happy April!

Mesh shopping bags in attractive natural colors (and several sizes). Which sacophiles like me will be inclined to see as resembling genital pouches. Delightful, sweet genital pouches.

So I found the photo quite pleasing, even pacific (rather than urgently arousing). Considered as actual genital pouches, Golden Boy would be uncomfortably thick for me, Indigo Boy uncomfortably long, but as symbolic pouches just hanging down at rest, each of the five is beautiful, each in its own way.

More precisely, 1958 through 1995, so not quite 40 years. For my face, in 8 shots, the last two providing more of my body as well. Today just the visuals, with little commentary, beyond locating the photos in time, place, and occasion. (My day was consumed by labors of an non-writerly sort. Not at all unpleasant, though mighty sweaty, but unexpectedly time-consuming.)

#1. Spring 1958, my high school yearbook photo. Crewcut, Alpine nose, weak chin, “pretty eyes” (or so the girls told me), nice smile.

(#1) The photo in which I come closest to resembling my mother rather than my father and grandfather

#2. Fall 1958, photo for the Freshman Herald for the Princeton class of 1962. Retooled for the Ivy League, and (I believe) altered by the photographer to make me look more masculine. At the photographer’s direction, unsmiling and with glasses — to look more serious.

(#2) And then the sleepy eyes; my eyelids do this unless I consciously hold my eyes open for the camera

(#3) Summer 1972, with Ann Daingerfield Zwicky visiting family friend Ann Winn in Lexington KY (the two Anns and everybody’s bourbons from this photo).

(#3) Zwick the Slick; in the late 60s, I added the beard to bulk out my chin, and I’ve kept it ever since

#4. At “graduation day” (spring 1982) for the 1981-82 fellows of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Tamara Hareven and Preston Cutler cropped from the photo):

(#4) Nice guy, big nose, really sleepy eyes

#5. Winter 1986, in the Stanford main quad, on my beginning my first winter as visiting professor at Stanford, photo for the departmental display of faculty and staff.

(#5) I hate having my picture taken, but the grad student who was assigned the task of cajoling the photo out of me did a nice job of it, I think (she got me talking about the classes I was teaching); gray hair setting in, more amiable glasses, only mildly sleepy eyes

#6. Winter 1991 (or a winter very close to that), at Macy’s men’s store in Union Square in San Francisco, wearing a beautiful scarf that I’d just bought there. Or maybe later that day, at some soc.motss event. Photo by Tony Hartman (a serious photographer, partner of Steve Dyer, who created the Usenet newsgroup net.motss, which became soc.motss, which eventually supplied me with a huge family of lgbt-folk and their friends).

(#6) Grayer still, a different pair of amiable glasses, big smile, eyelids held open (and the nose is less obtrusive in front shots like this one, versus side shots like #4); #5 and this one were my go-to pictures for many years (I can no longer pretend to be this young)

#7. AZ as hunk (well, small-boned hunk), in Jacques’s and my Palo Alto living room in January 1993, at an ad hoc gathering of some soc.motss-folk.

(#7) Lean and hairy, lightly muscled; soc.motss sleveless tee, beautiful surfer shorts from an actual Santa Cruz County surf shop

#8. More AZ as hunk, September 1995, at a party during the motss.con — the annual soc.motss con — that year at a hotel in DC.

(#8) This time in an OUT In Linguistics t-shirt, looking very happy — it was a wonderful party — and about as fey as I ever look (absorbing good gay vibes from Gadi Niram, whose hand you see on my shoulder, and who was wearing a truly wonderful dress)

Tomorrow: some commentary.

First, a Google Alert on 7/27, leading to a notice for a gallery retrospective of Jill Zwicky’s photography, that notice in turn leading to an extraordinary obituary for the artist — not so much a death notice as a loving celebration of her life.

The notice, in “Out and about in Petaluma” (in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco) by the Petaluma Argus-Courier staff on 7/26/22:

Vibe Gallery opens a retrospective: The Photography of Jill Zwicky, from July 19-Aug. 3. The reception on July 30 is from 5-8 p.m. to celebrate Zwicky’s life and work, a photographer who died in 2020. [AZ: no, I can’t postpone the appositive modifier of Zwicky like that, any more than you can; it should be: to celebrate the life and work of Zwicky, a photographer who died in 2020]. She was a graphic artist who took up photography later in life, focusing on photographing nature. There will be refreshments and live music by David and Reed Fromer at the reception. Come celebrate Zwicky’s life and support Vibe Gallery

The graphic:

And then, from the Marin Independent Journal (local daily paper in San Rafael CA) on 6/31/21, a celebratory obituary written by Jill’s dear friends, Judy Anderson and Jill Rayna Lippitt (only slightly edited by me, mostly to divide the thing into paragraphs):

Jill Ann Zwicky July 31, 1948 – October 9, 2020 Jill grew up in the small Central California town of Coalinga, where everyone knew everyone else, and still does – even after moving away after high school. She got her bachelor’s degree at Sonoma State University, and lived the balance of her adult life in Novato – always with an adored cat as her companion.

Jill was a bright light; an award-winning photographer, talented, musical, athletic, and full of mischief. Playful, and the life of every party, her presence lit a room. She was clever and witty and had a contagious smile, a true joie de vivre. As passionate as she was joyful, she cared deeply about nature and her many circles of friends. She was as beautiful on the inside as she was to behold.

Never seeming to age, even while suffering from the cancer that quietly took her life. Jill cared too much for her friends to burden them with concern. After a beautiful day, filled with heart-connections, having kept the full extent of her illness to herself, Jill died peacefully after collapsing into the arms of Jill Lippitt, her devoted caregiver and friend.

Jill was a joyful and eager playmate, always open to adventure. Her many beloved friends have memories and stories to tell about shared travels, hikes, camping trips, mountain biking, drumming, chorus, kayaking, boogie boarding, ping-pong tournaments, as well as hours-long, deep conversations over lunch that would spill into dinner and beyond precious memories that will live on in stories shared again and again.

Jill was an artist, a graphic designer by vocation. The covers of countless books were brought to life through her vision and craft, but her true calling was photography. She came to it late in her life and strove to perfect her craft. She was a natural, excited by what she saw through the lens of her camera. She was fearless in her quest for the perfect shot, traveling miles, climbing over barbed wire fences in the dark, crossing fields and streams to set up and capture the exact second a spectacular wave broke, or a moonrise or eclipse, or a long exposure of the Milky Way. She was in her element, her work, the manifestation of pure joy and talent.

Her photographs were accepted in any number of juried shows, including every year she submitted them, to the Marin County Fair, where she was awarded honors. Her photos also have been included in several nature calendars, and are featured on the cover and inside of this year’s Wonderful Wild Marin Calendar 2021.

Jill spearheaded the effort to reclaim her hometown’s cemetery from the dilapidated state it had fallen into from years of neglect. She organized key folks in the region – and those like her who had moved on but still had loved ones interred there – to come together to fundraise and do work parties to re-sod, re-landscape, and establish adequate irrigation, so as to turn the Pleasant Valley Cemetery into a place of beauty once again. Her ashes were interred there alongside her parents.

Jill’s parents, John and Christine Zwicky, preceded her in death. She is survived by her beloved brothers, Mike Zwicky and Kirk Zwicky; her sister-in-law, Lorrie Zwicky; her nieces, Amy Carter and Lindsey Prentice; grandnephews Cooper Carter and Camden Carter; and grandniece Dylan Prentice. Jill leaves behind her deeply cherished friends, who were to her like family: Jacki and David Fromer and their whole extended clan, who regarded Jill as one of their own; her beloved goddess-children Kaya Usher and Isaiah Usher; her dear friends from childhood, Annette Leroux, Genesse Gentry, and Rick Freitas, who was like a brother to her, long after their youthful relationship had ended; and her photography buddy, Rick Helf. Jill also leaves behind so many beloved friends: Jim Arena, with whom she worked for years and dearly loved; cherished friends Judy Anderson, Terry Lockman, Suzy Bean, Deborah Anker, and so many more! She also leaves her beloved friend, Jill Lippitt, who was her caregiver and devoted companion through her struggles with cancer over the last two years of her life.

As for Jill Lippitt (in Jenner, a small coastal town in Sonoma County), she lists herself on LinkedIn as a Vipassana meditation / dharma teacher; is a member of the Sonoma County Coast Municipal Advisory Council (representing Jenner); and serves on the board of directors of the Jenner Community Center. I hope that she’ll be able to dance at tomorrow’s reception for the JAZ exhibition.

… as explored in the playful animal artwork of photographer Yago Partal, available for inspection in his 2017 book Zoo Portraits and for sale from his on-line site. The book cover, which shows a panda character holding a portrait of a koala character:

(#1) The portraits are meant to bring out characteristic features of a creature — not, however, as abstractions, but as embodiments in highly individual animal personages, with their own personal names: Bao the giant panda, Cooper the koala

Yes, I’m playing with two senses of character. From NOAD:

noun character: 1 the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual: running away was not in keeping with her character. … 2 a person [AZ: perhaps, better a personage / a figure / an individual] in a novel, play, or movie: the author’s compassionate identification with his characters.

(Hat tip to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky.)

From Partal’s site, the artist’s description of his photomontage project (somewhat awkwardly written in the third person):

Zoo Portraits is a brand name that was born in 2013 based on a creative project developed by Yago Partal, a photographer and producer living in Barcelona city. Influenced by the animal kingdom, cartoons and fashion since he was a child, he found his voice in a game we all like to play: the humanization of animals. The project initially started as a marketing campaign to publicize photo books for models, actors and actresses. He made several portraits by mixing the animal world with elements of fashion in a collage, half photographic and half illustrative, that soon came to life itself as a separate project and its later consolidation as the brand Zoo Portraits.

But here he speaks directly to us:

About Me: Photographer. Digital artist. Zoology student. Emotionally involved with biodiversity loss and climate change.

For as long as I can remember I have been passionate about two things: animals and creating images. Two paths that ended up coming together and have led me to do what I do.

The animal portraits (of farm animals and pets as well as wild animals) are by turns deeply moving, poignant, charming, and funny.

Five animals. As depicted by Partal. My three totem animals — anteater, penguin, woo(l)ly mammoth (which will have to be represented here by an elephant cousin) — and my two gay-type animals — otter (a sleeker bearish guy, as I once was), bear (as I am now, still hairy but considerably bulkier).

The anteater. A totem animal assigned to me in college because the Z of my family name clanged with the ant-slurping zot sound made by the anteater in the B.C. comic strip; Zot became my nickname and the anteater my totem creature (both retired after I left Princeton, except for my later jokingly adopting the pseudonym Zotling ‘the Zot of linguistics’). I’ve come to think of the B.C. anteater as called Zot (in the strip he’s just the Anteater), and I’ll get to him in a moment, but first Partal’s anteater, who has no name I’ve been able to find, but who couldn’t possibly have a silly name like Zot:

(#2) A deeply thoughtful creature, he might be named Ernest or Albert

Now about the comic strip, from Wikipedia:

B.C. is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Johnny Hart. Set in prehistoric times, it features a group of cavemen and anthropomorphic animals from various geologic eras.

B.C. made its newspaper debut on February 17, 1958 … Since [Hart’s 2007] death, … Mason Mastroianni has produced the strip

… The Anteater: eats ants with a sticky, elastic tongue and a ZOT! sound. Hart actually drew something of a hybrid — with the long ears of an aardvark and the bushy tail of a giant anteater. (This character was the inspiration for Peter the Anteater, the University of California, Irvine team mascot. Also served as the inspiration for the mascot of the now disestablished US Navy fighter squadron VF-114 the “Aardvarks”.)

Zot the anteater takes his pleasure by feeding at an anthill:

(#3) An activity that evokes the pleasures of licking and sucking (resonances that I’m sure my college friends fully appreciated) — but Zot’s sensualist satisfactions very often go awry (who knows what might be lurking in that anthill?)

The penguin. In a display of Zoo Portraits:

(#4) Roald the emperor penguin: row 1, column 4 (plus all the others for you to appreciate)

The mammoth. Well, the elephant, in another display:

(#5) Bagus the Asiatic elephant (cousin to the woolly mammoth): row 2, column 1

The otter. In yet another display:

(#5) Gorou the sea otter: row 3, column 4

The bear. From a number of bear species, presented in a variety of costumes:

(#6) Liam the American black bear

(The face is great, but I don’t think I’d ever wear that shirt.)

For a while last week, most googling I did in which men were involved brought me, as the top hit, an Etsy supplier of framed reproductions of vintage photos, offering this 1952 black and white photo featuring three male competitive swimmers with their trophies:

(#1) We know nothing more — where the picture was taken, who took it for what purpose, what competition they got those trophies in, what school or club they swam for; we wonder how their lives went on after this (if they’re still alive, they’re well into their 80s)

But there’s a lot to see in the photo. Especially in the young men’s facial expressions; in their general male body type, often labeled as swimmer’s body (even on men — underwear models, gay porn actors — who have no particular natatory associations); and in their bodies as engines for swimming as a sport. And also a lot to say about the passage of time since 1952.

Decades. As it happens, the years 19X2 (from 1952 on) were all significant years in my professional life (my personal life was considerably more chaotic). Notes, decade by decade:

— 1952: I became 12 in September, and moved then from grade school to (junior) high school.

— 1962: I graduated from Princeton in June, started MIT in September — the beginning of my career as a linguist

— 1972: after three summer Linguistic Institutes of the Linguistic Society of America in my home institutions (UIUC in 1968 and 1969, Ohio State in 1970), I went on to the 1972 Linguistic Institute at UNC Chapel Hill — as Associate Director, representing the LSA in the Institute’s administration (yes, things happened fast in those days)

— 1982: a year’s fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences ended in June, and I moved on to another Linguistic Institute, at UMD College Park — again as Associate Director

— 1992: well, I was president of the Linguistic Society of America that year

Now it’s 70 years since 1952 and, oh my, a new academic year is beginning; the Stanford Linguistics BOY (Beginning of Year) party happened on Friday. (I’m not physically up to such things, but I celebrate the concept.)

Facial expressions. They could have posed stiffly, with wooden faces, for the photographer. They could have projected dominance, the pride of victory. They could have been wreathed in smiles of delight at their achievement. Instead, all three of them regard us with open, serious but amiable, faces, the corners of their mouths signaling the beginning of little sweet smiles, their eyes exchanging gazes with us. They are competent, nice guys who have done a good thing, and they are adorable.

And the little guy in the middle is the star. (Here I confess that compact little guys are one of My Types. On the other hand, lean muscular rangy guys (like the other two in the photo) are ★My Type★, and that’s because it’s the way my man Jacques looked, so I’m kind of imprinted on it.)

Swimmer’s body (as a physique, or body type). Like Jacques, or like this guy is a JOR Rainbow Pride swimsuit (whose head is out of the photo so you’re not overpowered by his facial expression but have to look at his body as a body:

(#2) Well, yes, his body has been smoothed by digital magic, but the crucial features are all there — including the broad muscular shoulders and substantial but not obtrusive pecs

The favored body type for underwear models, and one of the favored types for gay porn actors — and, apparently, favored on Grindr and other hook-up sites. Echoes of the Greek athletic ideal in there, and a clear relationship to the bodies of actual competitive swimmers (but …)

The ideal swimmer’s body. From Swimming World, “What Makes the Perfect Swimmer’s Body?” by J.P.Mortenson on 8/19/22:

Although swimmers with a wide variety of body types have found success in the sport, most at the international level tend to look similar, sporting tall and muscular bodies – typically with long torsos, long arms and short legs.

Go back and look at the guys in #1 again. The two tall, long-legged, coltish guys on the outside and the shorter one in the middle. They all have broad shoulders (for powerful stroking) and long torsos (putting the center of their body mass near the lungs, allowing for greatly expanded lung capacity), which are V-shaped because of those broad shoulders and the slim waistline of an athlete who burns off an enormous number of calories working against the water. But the little guy has proportionally the broadest shoulders, and his torso is just as long as the other two guys’, though he’s several inches shorter than they are. He is, in fact, close to the swimmer’s ideal.

The Swimming World piece also suggests large hands and feet, which can act like paddles, but I can’t judge that from the photo in #1.

Now, all of this in a champion, 6ʹ3ʺ Ryan Murphy (look, it can’t always be Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte):

(#3) Ryan Murphy’s long V-shaped torso, with gigantic chest capacity (plus the spread-lipped smile) (photo: JD Lasica)

Wikipedia on Murphy:

Ryan Fitzgerald Murphy (born July 2, 1995) is an American competitive swimmer specializing in backstroke. He is a four-time Olympic gold medalist and the former world-record holder in the men’s 100-meter backstroke.

I know, I know, these guys — Phelps, Lochte, Murphy, a few others — look like they were differently dimensioned by nature, and to some degree that must be true; there are no exercises that will lengthen your torso or your arms or make your hands and feet bigger. Then the rest is fierce motivation and hard training.

Meanwhile, I note (as I do regularly) that there’s a lot to be said for just doing things well and gaining satisfaction, even joy, from that. Even if you don’t get a trophy.

(There will be discussion of penises and vaginas, some of it using street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Having discovered and posted about a vintage photograph of three young men displaying their swimmer’s bodies (which I bought and mounted on a bookend, to make a free-standing portable photo display), I was led by Etsy to other sources of somewhat similar photographs, in particular the trove of photographic male art offered by The Male Image Art Shop (dba TheMaleImageArtShop), among which this photo caught my eye:

(#1) “Dmitry and Matteo”, as advertised on-line: the more Slavic-looking bodybuilder type on the left is presumably Dmitry, and the more Mediterranean-looking swimmer type on the right Matteo; their gazes are fixed on us, the viewers, with no expression; Dmitry has a friendly, or perhaps a proprietary, arm on Matteo’s shoulder

Other than this, we know nothing. But we struggle to extract a story that it’s telling us, some story about the relationship between the two men (and possibly about why they’re posing for us), so we ask: when was this photo taken? where are they?  why are they naked? what are their lives like? what does that arm on the shoulder mean? is this photo a slice of these men’s lives, or are the men random male models posed to create a puzzle for us?

We can look at the photo as a doorway into a story. We can look at it as a formal composition, a carefully balanced 2-shot that’s “about” the faces, the muscles of the men’s bodies, and the alignment of their limbs. We can look at it as an aesthetically satisfying object, for the pleasure we derive from the arrangement of its parts and from the richness of the story they tell. We can also look at it as utilitarian art, valuable for the desire it can provoke; I unapologetically cop to finding Matteo, in face and body, smokin’ hot. (Others will have a similar response to Dmitry; chacun à son goût.) These are potentially complementary, rather than conflicting, responses.

So I ordered a crisp well-made reproduction of D&M, 5×7, just the right size for my small metal bookends. And I had a fortune cookie fortune to add as a kind of caption:

You will soon discover your hidden talent

On Monday the photo arrived.

Surprise! The picture includes their penises — nice everyday dicks, on the small side of normal for Dmitry, on the high side for Matteo. But if there are dicks on view in a scene, they vie with faces as the focus (as a slogan: Cocks Rule), so, suddenly, “Dmitry and Matteo” became an adventure in phallicity. And couldn’t be displayed in the public areas of my condo. (My bedroom is a virtual forest of images of and simulacra of penises, but elsewhere in the house they’re concealed. My living room is scarcely a woodland of innocence, but I draw the line at confronting visitors with dicks on display and penises on parade.)

Solution 1: consign the mounted photo to the X-rated bedroom. There’s not much horizontal surface left there for such things, and I was hoping to put D&M in context with photos of other men displaying their bodies (and sometimes their affections as well), like the three-swimmers shot from 10/2:

(#2) From my posting “Swimmer’s bodies”: from an Etsy supplier, a 1952 black and white photo featuring three male competitive swimmers with their trophies

Solution 2: conceal the dicks. I regularly do this with the images from the Tom of Finland calendar hanging in the public space, some of which go so far as to show ToF’s supersized male organs — which I hide with little Post-It strips that can be easily lifted for the sake of the curious. I was preparing to do this for D&M when my eyes lit upon a bowl of attractive seashells next to my work table. Oh, those conch shells — the shells of large sea snails — would do the trick very nicely; just hold them in place with some rubber cement.

And the conch shells come with a double symbolism. One side of which you’ll appreciate from my finished art project:

(#3) Bonuses in the photo: on the table, a rainbow Z mousepad; behind it, glimpses of some books for current projects (the series continues with Murray’s Homosexualities, Nussbaum’s Hiding from Humanity (on shame), an anthology on Critical Race Theory, and Tobia’s Sissies)

What you see here is the top side of a conch shell, the phallic side. But turn it over, and you get a sexcavital side — vaginal or anal or oral in symbolism. In a Philadelphia Tribune piece “Caribbean Current – Conch shells offer an earful and mouthful of joy” (about conchs as food) by dscott on 2/28/2020, this image of the sexcavital side:

(#3) Urban Dictionary reports a use of conch as a colloquialism for the vagina (among a number of other uses); similarly (but in more widespread use) for Spanish concha; meanwhile, it occurs to me that getting conched /kaŋkt/ would be a fine playful slang substitute for getting fucked, combining the insertive and the receptive images in one package

Conchiana. From NOAD:

noun conch: 1 [a] (also conch shell) a tropical marine mollusk with a spiral shell that may bear long projections and have a flared lip. (Strombus and other genera, family Strombidae, class Gastropoda) [b] a conch shell blown like a trumpet to produce a musical note, often depicted as played by Tritons and other mythological figures.

From the Philadelphia Tribune piece, on conchs as earful as well as mouthful:

Conch shells come in a variety of colors and sizes, but the shape of the shells are usually the same. Once the meat is removed from the shell, it is used for jewelry or sold for its decorative beauty. The shell is also used as a musical instrument known as the seashell horn or shell trumpet.

If you have hear the sound coming from the shell, you would know that it sounds very much like a wind instrument. The seashell horn through the Caribbean region is blown during competitions such as track and field, soccer matches and even during victory parades.

The conch seashell horn is also used as a signal to send messages to rural communities. It often signals a fisherman’s return from the sea with a fresh catch. Upon hearing the unique sound, buyers head to the seaside to purchase fish, conch, lobster etc. You can’t get them any fresher.

And on to the Tritons, who are, in plain terms, really horny (in several senses) mermen. From photographer Andrew Prokos’s site, “Library of Congress Neptune Fountain VI”:

(#4) [text from Prokos:] A black and white fine art photograph featuring the bronze statue of a Triton blowing a conch shell, from the Court of Neptune fountain at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

You’ll notice that this Triton is not only horny, but also hunky; compare him to Dmitry in #1.

A just-installed photo gallery on the wall above the desk in the study of my condo. An addition to the visual density of the place, providing enjoyment for me, but also intended to absorb and please friends and visitors (I am a deeply sociable person, and I like to entertain, in several senses.)

About Street Life. A display of six sex-tinged (but not actually X-rated) photos of men on the street (from Samson McGee, who maintains a gigantic library of malesex photos for sale), each with a fortune from a fortune cookie. I have given them titles and ordered them below in a kind of natural progression; here with the fortunes:

— Soon Paid Off: street hustler, iconic and tough; All of your hard work will soon be paid off.

— Performance over Speed: street hustler, not at all toughened up yet; People forget how fast you did a job — but they remember how well you did it.

— Time Not Money: two sailors, possibly cruising, maybe even hustling; A friend asks only for your time and not money.

— Offer Affection and a Sea-going Hard-On: two sailors strolling, one with a hard-on; Love is being offered to you, be affectionate in return!

— Offer Affection and an Unbuttoned Hard-On: two guys talking on the street, one with a hard-on and his fly open; [once again] Love is being offered to you, be affectionate in return!

— Fish Sticks and Moose Knuckles: two guys talking on the street  in front of a shop selling fish sticks (one sporting a tremendous moose-knuckle); Every wise man started out by asking many questions.

Once again, I would like to give you a photo of the display, but I have to wait until I can get someone to take a picture for me.

The visual density of my environment. First there are the books — in the big main room, the study, and the bedroom. Mostly a deeply random collection of things saved from the dispersal of my 40,000-volume professional library, though there are some coherent subcollections. But possibly worth scanning: I doubt that there’s anyone else in the world with this collection of titles, so you might find some surprises.

Then on almost every remaining horizontal surface, collections of objects — remarkable, pretty, funny, sexy, artfully made, full of affectionate associations. Gay symbols, penguins, mammoths, phallic symbols. In the heavily X-rated bedroom, representations of dicks, simulacra of dicks, creatures with bodyparts in the shape of dicks, and so on.

And on almost every available vertical surface, artworks, cartoons, collages, Zwicky images, postcards (men, animals, food, whatever), and photographs, both family photographs  and hot guys. In the heavily X-rated bedroom, a huge assortment of my XXX-rated homoerotic comic collages.

Much here to amuse the eye and engage the mind. Come visit sometime.

Following up on earlier postings about additions to my domestic environment, which came with mumblings of getting pictures of these things (I have no way to take photos myself any more) — now fulfilled by Erick Barros and his phone.

First, the new photo gallery “Street Life”. Then, the new equipment in the kitchen: wheat straw bowls, mugs, and cups to add to the plates from an earlier order.

The photo gallery. The earlier posting: from 5/21, “Street Life”:

A display of six sex-tinged (but not actually X-rated) photos of men on the street (from Samson McGee, who maintains a gigantic library of malesex photos for sale), each with a fortune from a fortune cookie. I have given them titles and ordered them below in a kind of natural progression; here with the fortunes [I’ve added index numbers]:

— 1 Soon Paid Off: street hustler, iconic and tough; All of your hard work will soon be paid off.

— 2 Performance over Speed: street hustler, not at all toughened up yet; People forget how fast you did a job — but they remember how well you did it.

— 3 Time Not Money: two sailors, possibly cruising, maybe even hustling; A friend asks only for your time and not money.

— 4 Offer Affection and a Sea-going Hard-On: two sailors strolling, one with a hard-on; Love is being offered to you, be affectionate in return!

— 5 Offer Affection and an Unbuttoned Hard-On: two guys talking on the street, one with a hard-on and his fly open; [once again] Love is being offered to you, be affectionate in return!

— 6 Fish Sticks and Moose Knuckles: two guys talking on the street  in front of a shop selling fish sticks (one sporting a tremendous moose-knuckle); Every wise man started out by asking many questions.

The photo:

(#1) The top row has photos 2 3 4, the bottom photos 1 6 5; to look at them in order, start with 1 in the southwest corner and go clockwise around the photos

(You might want to embiggen the image to see the photos better.)

(Yes, I know, not a classy mounting job. The mounting pins are extremely hard for me to handle.)

Wheat-straw-ware. To replace heavy, breakable dinnerware and flimsy, ugly cheap plastic plates. Photos of the individual items in earlier postings (most recently, in my 5/25 posting “Equipment days”). But now you can see them installed in my kitchen — on a counter, where I can reach them them (things in the cabinets are barely reachable or unreachable):

(#2) Right by the stove, in with the complex scheme by which my meds are dealt out (daily strips of plastic boxes, then little cups to take stuff to the table in); the mugs and cups are distributed around the house

I’ve grown fonder and fonder of the colors with each passing day.

Why, you ask, does an old man who lives alone and has almost no visitors who aren’t caregivers, have so many bowls and plates? Well, the makers sell them in sets of 4,5, 6, or 8, so they accumulate fast. And it’s a hassle to try to order just 2 or 3.  Anyway, I’ve taken to rotating through the colors as I use them; the variety is pleasurable.

Tonight’s sandwich for dinner came on a large rose-pink plate, with a pickle on  a small beige plate.

And with this posting, my Memorial Day comes to an end.