Not a bit shy,
Their desire
Writes its name
In the sky.

Batman and Superman, locking together, man to man:

(#1)

Madrid wall art by Ze Carrión

Image from my superhero-sex posting, which also has an erotic BatRobin slash image. Batman of the Gayverse is one randy superqueero, with a jones for any hunk in a cape. But Superman is his great antagonist, his great ally, and his great love.

The two heroes bring their names to their encounters. Superman, beyond human, beyond ordinary masculinity; Batman, the wielder of a heroic bat, also devotee of bats. From GDoS:

noun bat [metaphor based on bat ‘club’] (US/Aus) the penis [first cite 1930]

noun bat-boy (US gay) a hitchhiker who allows a homosexual driver to fellate him in exchange for a ride [1972 Rodgers, Queens’ Vernacular]

noun batman 1 (Aus.) a man with a large penis [1983] 2 (Aus. prison) an onanist [1990]

noun batsucker (Aus.) a fellator or fellatrix [2002]

Then the subtitle of this posting, SuperBat of Pink Steel Forever, which combines the slash name SuperBat with one film name for each of the heroes — Man of Steel and Batman Forever — and tops it off with pink steel, which GDoS offers as a harder, stiffer alternative to wood and woody as slang for the erect penis (first cite 1997).

Briefly on the films:

(#2)
Batman Forever is a 1995 American superhero film directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Tim Burton, based on the DC Comics character Batman. It is the third installment of the initial Batman film series, with Val Kilmer replacing Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne / Batman. The film stars Chris O’Donnell, Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey. (Wikipedia link)

(#3)

Man of Steel is a 2013 superhero film featuring the DC Comics character Superman. It is a British-American venture … The film is directed by Zack Snyder, written by David S. Goyer, and stars Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Christopher Meloni, and Russell Crowe. Man of Steel is a reboot of the Superman film series that retells the character’s origin story. (Wikipedia link)

SuperBat imagery has been around for quite some time, and the genre is truly enormous — no surprise, given that it unites two figures who are separately prime objects of homoerotic desire. But in the last few years, as plans for a SuperBat movie were announced, and then when the movie itself appeared last year, SuperBat wall art flourished.

On the movie:

(#4)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a 2016 American superhero film featuring the DC Comics characters Batman and Superman. Directed by Zack Snyder and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, the film is the second installment in the DC Extended Universe following 2013’s Man of Steel.

… [The film] is the first live-action film to feature Batman and Superman together, as well as the first live-action cinematic portrayal of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg. In the film, criminal mastermind Lex Luthor manipulates Batman into a preemptive battle with Superman, whom Luthor is obsessed with defeating.

(The film has not been well received by critics. I haven’t seen it, but the official trailer comvinced me that I don’t want to.)

And now more SuperBat wall art:

Reported by frequent correspondent RPG, this pairing at the southern end of Canal Street, Manchester, England, in February (the artist has not been identified):

(#5)

The piece has a Pop Art feel to it, thanks in part to “superhero bubbles” (or “explosion bubbles”) with KISS in them. An assortment of these bubbles:

(#6)

And in New York and London, from a Huffington Post piece on 4/4/16, “Superman And Batman Are Kissing For Equality In New York City: ‘I wanted to create a dialogue about equality by taking the two most alpha male superheroes and placing them in this embrace.'” by Chiara Piotto:

(#7)

On street walls in London and New York, Superman grabs Batman’s sky blue mask, and they share a passionate kiss between their capes. The London-based contemporary urban pop artist behind the street art, Rich Simmons, tells HuffPost Italy that he has conceived of this composition because he wanted to spark a conversation about equality “by taking the two most alpha male superheroes and placing them in this embrace.”

Simmons, who has exhibited artwork in London, Geneva, Tampa, New York and Los Angeles, says that his artworks also intend to challenge the notion of heroism. “It is sometimes more heroic to simply stand up for your beliefs, stand up for equality,” he says.

“If you were in need of being saved from something, would it matter if the person who could be your hero was gay or not?” Simmons asks.

He exhibited his first “Superman Kissing Batman” work on canvas during his solo show at the Imitate Modern gallery in London in 2014. Over the past few weeks, in the run-up to the “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” film debut, he created the life-size paste-ups in Croydon and Soho in London and Lower Manhattan in New York City.

Then there are a great many SuperBat works that are either conventional paintings or digital art. For instance, this SuperBat kiss, one of a number of SuperBat compositions on the 9GAG site (a platform headquartered in Hong Kong):

(#8)

Frustratingly, neither the artist not even the person who posted the image to the site is identified. There is an artist’s signature, but I haven’t been able to match it to an artist. (If you can, please let me know.)

Then, on the DeviantArt site there are a number of homoerotic digital art pieces by Huang Dian, using the handle vitnaa, among them these two swoony SuperBat compositions:

(#9)

(#10)

From the static image to the moving image, in a live-action SuperBat music video. From a piece in Out magazine on 3/10/16, “Watch: Batman and Superman Share a Kiss” by Nicholas Richard Rees:

Coheed and Cambria have made superhero fans around the world infinitely happier. The progressive rock band’s latest music video, “Island,” features Time Square’s posse of costume characters. We won’t spoil the entire video, but Batman rescues a very cute Superman from a couple of unsavory animal characters before going in for an epic smooch.

You can link to the video from the Out piece.

(Men in fetishwear, or less, starting with today’s Barcode Berlin model from Daily Jocks, with a caption from me. Steamy and suggestive, but no more.)

(#1)

Felix, an athletic
Submissive, can be
Viewed, or used, at our
Fuggerstraße showroom
From 2200 through 0200
Daily – rated AA for
Beauty, AAA for
Agreeableness and
Experience

What especially struck me about the photo was the elegance of the lines of the model’s back muscles and lateral muscles, emphasized by the play of light and shadow. In male art — painting, drawing, photography, or sculpture — the lateral muscles can be featured in views from the back (as here), the side, or the front. A collection of examples…

Paintings (rear views).

(#2) William Etty (British, 1787-1849), Male Nude, Kneeling, from the Back, circa 1840

(#3) Manuel Ignacio Vázquez (Mexican), Desnudo masculino (Male Nude), 1823

Charcoal drawings (rear views).

(#4) William Willes (Irish), Rear view of Seated Male Nude, c.1808

(#5) Amateur artist Hongtao-17, gay male nude

Photographs. From various photographers, different views.

(#6) Michael Stokes, side view

(#7) Michael Stokes, side/rear view

(#8) Rick Day photo of Richard Rocco, front view

(#9) David Velez “The Rear Window”, side/front views

(#10) James Demitri photo of Daniel Garofali, front view

The Flandrin pose. Showing the male body from the side:

(#11)

Some postings on this blog on the pose:

on 5/13/11 “The Flandrin pose”: 3 examples, including the Flandrin original

on 5/23/11 “Another Flandrin pose”: Flandrin original and another

on 11/27/11 “Prairie Flandrins”: two Flandrin photos

(Men’s bodies and sexual desire, decidedly racy but not explicit. Use your judgment.)

The latest from Daily Jocks, with an offer of the 2018 Pump! calendar:

(#1)

Male photography by Rick Day for the Pump! firm, projecting carnal desire and carnal desirability in equal measure. The model — I think of him as Cal, for Calendar Boy — is presented displaying his muscular body (upper arms, pecs, abs) in a pitsntits come-on pose, wearing a Pump! Cooldown Boxer in Red (the color of hot sex, in blatant pouchwear), and with a High Desire face (slit eyes, slack open mouth, and what you can imagine are flaring nostrils). The inset of Mr. Feb. gives you the butt shot to match the pouch display, offering both foci of gay male desire..

The point of the ad photos is to offer something for everyone: you can identify with the model or desire him, want to be him or do him. The ad copy that accompanies the photos usually emphasizes comfort and support, sometimes style, but always intangible masculine values. A regular Pump! ad (as usual, headless, to put the focus on the crotch):

(#2)

The ad copy:

Stay up late with the PUMP! Free-Fit Boxer. This full micromesh body boxer offers total comfort, while its sleek design aesthetic exudes masculinity, athleticism, and sophistication. A new take on the everyday classic, this boxer brief stands out with its statement white contrasting lines and statement waistband. Get active and own the night with the PUMP! Free-Fit Boxer.

This is the second 2018 calendar on offer from DJ. The first was their very own production, described in my 12/6/17 posting “gruggerware”: 12 months of the Melbourne Chargers Rugby Union LGBT Football Club.

Saturday night was Midsummer’s Eve (St. John’s Eve), yesterday Midsummer Day (St. John’s Day) — so that last night was Midsummer Night, when the fairies frolic. (As they did indeed, at SF Pride events.) Meanwhile there are cartoons: a Bill Whitehead Free Range cartoon from 9/6/17, in the July 2018 issue of Funny Times; a John Atkinson Wrong Hands cartoon that came to me from Eleanor Houck; and a Scott and Borgman Zits cartoon in today’s King Features feed.

First come the cartoons, then come the holidays. (Apologies to Brecht and his Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral — pleasure first, then the serious stuff.)

Whitehead’s cat psychiatrist. (‘psychiatrist for cats’):

(#1)

Previously on this blog:

on 6/15/17, in ” For Saul Steinberg”: #9-11 three Bill Whitehead cartoons

on 6/11/18, in “In case of cartoons, see therapist”:  #3, a Strange Brew cartoon with a psychiatrist who wants his cat patient to stay off the couch

Cats’ fixation on sharpening their claws on furniture is a recurrent theme in Whitehead’s cartoons. As here:

(#2) Two art lovers taking the audio-guided tour of the Cat Art Museum.

A Whitehead bonus: a mammoth cartoon:

(#3) How’s it curvin’, Swarthy?

Atkinson’s art school of fish. The title is a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau): art school + school of fish:

(#4) Piscine parodies of 15 artistic styles

I’m especially taken with the Warhol tin can.

Slaying and gigging in Zits. Jeremy’s father is confounded by his son’s enthusiastic announcement:

If Goat Cheese Pizza slays, we could be gigging at Warped!

(#5)

If Walt Duncan doesn’t recognize the name of his son’s rock band, Goat Cheese Pizza, then he’s terminally inattentive, since the band’s been around — and practicing in the Duncans’ garage — for months (or years; it’s hard to calibrate the passage of time in a comic strip with the passage of time in the real world).

Three words down, three to go. The other proper name is the name of a music festival, Warped, which has been a Jeremy topic for several days. Maybe his dad missed it. But at Warped should help Walt to guess that Warped is an event or a place, and since it’s going to make the biggest day of his life, probably an event, and since Goat Dog Pizza is involved, probably musical. So: maybe not comprehensible in complete detail, but far from gibberish.

Then two verb forms, PRS slays and PRP gigging. Surely Walt has experienced the noun gig and its verbing; they’ve even made it into NOAD, labeled merely informal:

noun gig-2: informal [a] a live performance by or engagement for a musician or group playing popular or jazz music. [b] a job, especially one that is temporary or that has an uncertain future: he secured his first gig as an NFL coach.

verb gig: [no object] perform a gig or gigs.

Now intransitive slay is (apparently) a relatively recently innovation, a more colorful version of kill, as when we say that a performer really killed, performed very impressively, by really (metaphorically and hyperbolically) killing his audience.  From GDoS on this kill:

verb kill: 1 (orig. US) to affect another person in a non-lethal way. (a) often constr. with dead, to amaze or delight, esp. an audience [1st cite 1770; from 1899 on, all the cites are transitive]

And from OED2 draft addition of June 2015 under the verb kill:

trans. colloq.(orig. U.S.). To do or perform (something) impressively or conclusively. Also: spec. to do extremely well at (an examination subject). Frequently in to kill it. Cf. nail v.6d.

1899 Werner’s Mag. Jan. 376/2 Kill, to do easily.

1906 Dial. Notes3 ii. 143 Kill, to pass an examination perfectly. ‘I killed math.’

1968 C. Baker et al. College Undergraduate Slang Study 147 Kill it, do well on an exam.

1982 Campus Slang (Univ. N. Carolina, Chapel Hill) Spring 5 Kill, to do something extremely well: She killed that song.

2001 Snowboard U.K. Sept. 43 Hamish McKnight was killing it on a Burton Junkyard snowskate, pulling off big indys and even getting close to 360 flips over the first box in the boardercross.

2011 T. Rayburn Pulse (2012) xiv. Matt said you totally killed the interview.

2012   P. Coughter Art of Pitch ii. 48 You have to go out there and kill it, make them love us right now, and inspire the team.

Intransitive kill ‘perform very impressively, succeed absolutely’ is just a step past kill it.

Meanwhile, slay has developed senses analogically to kill. The beginning of this development, in sense c from NOAD2:

verb slay: [with object] [a] archaic or literary kill (a person or animal) in a violent way: St. George slew the dragon. [b] chiefly North American murder (someone) (used chiefly in journalism): a man was slain with a shotgun. [c] informal greatly impress or amuse (someone): you slay me, you really do.

Then from there to ‘do or perform (something) impressively or conclusively’, especially in slay it, and from there to intransitive ‘perform very impressively, succeed absolutely’.

The later steps in these developments are not yet in the big dictionaries, but I’ve heard all of them. If Walt Duncan doesn’t recall having heard them, he could at least have made guesses as to Jeremy’s meaning on the basis of things he does recall having heard.

Instead, he plays the curmudgeon card: you just can’t understand a word of what teenagers say.

Midsummer. Now to the really serious stuff (though there will be some male art; I promise). From Wikipedia:

Midsummer is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between different cultures. The undivided Christian Church [the church before the split into the the Roman and orthodox churches, and then of the Roman churches into Catholic and Protestant] designated June 24 as the feast day of the early Christian martyr St John the Baptist, and the observance of St John’s Day begins the evening before, known as St John’s Eve.

… Midsummer is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between different cultures. The undivided Christian Church designated June 24 as the feast day of the early Christian martyr St John the Baptist, and the observance of St John’s Day begins the evening before, known as St John’s Eve.

Many different customs in different places. As I’ve written, in my 3/30/18 posting “Pride Time #5: on Barceloneta beach”, in Catalonia it’s the de facto national day and also a big gay day:

As for Sant Joan, St. John [in Catalan], in #2: his celebrations mark midsummer, the national day of Catalonia, and (for gayfolk) a high point of Pride Month. From Wikipedia on the traditions of Catalonia:

June 23: Midsummer. Revetlla de Sant Joan: Celebration in honour of St. John the Baptist … takes place in the evening of June 23. Parties are organised usually at beaches, where bonfires are lit and a set of firework displays usually take place. Special foods such as Coca de Sant Joan are also served on this occasion.

June 24: St. John’s Day. Dia de Sant Joan; Christian feast day celebrating the birth of Jesus’ likely cousin, Saint John the Baptist. This is considered to be the national day of the Catalan Countries.

So we are inevitably impelled on to last night, Midsummer Night, and of course to the Shakespeare play (and Mendelssohn’s music, and various movies). Which took me to the Shakespeare Illustrated materials by Harry Rusche (of the English department at Emory Univ.), in particular to his material on Joseph Noel Paton and his 1883 painting Oberon and the Mermaid:

(#6) Left to right: The mischievous fairy Puck; Oberon, king of the fairies; and the mermaid

This painting inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream was exhibited more than three decades after Paton’s prize-winning The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania (1847) and his Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (1850).  Oberon and the Mermaid illustrates a scene we do not actually see in the play; just before Oberon sends Puck in Act II, Scene i, to fetch the love-in-idleness with which he will enchant the lovers he asks Puck if he remembers a particular night when once I sat upon a promontory

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.

In the painting Paton depicts the memory of that night.

The impish Puck with batwings is reminiscent of the earlier paintings on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the scantily clan Oberon reveals a new element in Paton’s work. In discussing the semi-clad figures of Oberon and Titania in The Quarrel and The Reconciliation, Alison Smith suggests in The Victorian Nude [: Sexuality, Morality, and Art (1997)] that by “the 1850s, painters such as Joseph Noel Paton and Robert Huskisson had arrived at a softened fairy type, tempering any suggestion of eroticism by a delicate treatment, and enhancing their creations with the addition of gauze wings, flowing hair and wispy robes.” Paton’s contemporary the critic of the Spectator approved of Paton’s style, remarking that his “sense of the voluptuous . . . carries him to the verge of what modern ‘decorum’ will tolerate, never beyond it” (Smith 92). No such sense of decorum, however, governs Paton’s rendering of the nearly naked fairy in Oberon and the Mermaid. Victorian attitudes toward the male body in art had changed significantly in the 33 years between Paton’s earlier paintings and this one done in 1883. Smith traces these changes in a section of The Victorian Nude, “The male nude” (pp. 135-42), beginning with the exhibition of Frederick Walker’s Bathers (1865-67), a picture showing a number of young men and boys disrobing on the bank and swimming naked.

Once again, it ends in male nudes.

A gift today from Maggie Ainsworth-Darnell: a great big poster version of this steamy photo, folded up in a recent release of the game Cards Against Humanity:

(#1) Kiss 2017 – Paul Octavious x Cards Against Humanity

Maggie decided immediately that this had to go to me; she knows my tastes — it’s not just a kiss, but a same-sex kiss, in fact between men, and, for lagniappe, interracial, and also a male recasting of a lesbian kiss in a famous 2002 poster by UK photographer Tanya Chalkin (1971-2018):

(#2)

Background: the game. From Wikipedia:

(#3)

Cards Against Humanity is a party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements using words or phrases typically deemed as offensive, risqué or politically incorrect printed on playing cards. It has been compared to the Apples to Apples card game, originated from a Kickstarter campaign, and has received media acclaim. Its title references the phrase “crimes against humanity”, reflecting its politically incorrect content. [first release May 2011]

Background: Paul Octavious and the poster. @pauloctavious (“A New England Jamaican living in Chicago”) on  Instagram 9/27/17:

(#4) The artist in repose (photo by Ryan Lowry)

When I was in college, you couldn’t pass a room on my floor without seeing this poster. You know the one I’m talking about…the one with two women making out in their underwear titled “The Kiss.” [#2 above] It’s a beautiful image and will forever remind me of the band TATU (ahhh memories). However, as a closeted gay man at the time, it always made me a little sad. Not the image itself but the fact that every time I looked at it, all I could think was that an image of two guys in the same pose would be considered gross, or likely not even allowed in the dorm. As my four years progressed through college, this poster haunted me with those thoughts. That sadness. . Years have passed since I last thought about that poster. Then something happened, it was as if my dreams for closeted freshman Paul were about to come true! Cards Against Humanity asked me if I’d recreate this image by Tanya Chalkin for a new generation as they’d turn my image into a poster and include in a Cards Against Humanity College Pack! [#1 above] They had no idea about the back story I had with the image and I couldn’t believe I’d get to finally make it my way! Sooo we made it and boy did we make it! .

Background within background: t.a.T.u. The duo mentioned by Octavious. From Wikipedia:

(#5) Julia and Lena, on an exceptionally modest (for them) album cover

t.A.T.u. were a Russian music duo [active 1999-2011] that consisted of Lena Katina and Julia Volkova. The duo was managed by Russian television producer Ivan Shapovalov while in the group Neposedy…
The duo established their world success with their debut English-language single “All the Things She Said”, which gained acclaim from music journalists and critics. The video of the single, however, generated controversy worldwide, showing the girls kissing in the rain in school uniforms.

Background: Paul Octavious the artist. On the Great Discontent site, a 5/2/14 interview by Tina Essmaker with the artist, with this brief summary:

Paul Octavious is a Chicago-based photographer and designer. He has done work for Nike, Wired, Print, the Wall Street Journal, Mercedes, Hermès, and the New York Times, among others. His work has been featured by the New Yorker, the New York Times, swissmiss, Huffington Post, the Paris Review, and The Fox Is Black.

What follows is a detailed account of the stages in Octavious’s career.

Some Octavious works. Hard to choose from the wide variety of his works (many playful or gay-inflected or both), but here are four:

A vivid hybrid fruit, a waterapple or pinemelon:

(#6) “Twotti Frutti No. 1” (2005)  — note punning title

From the series ResHue Dogs (more punning) for PAWS, a Chicago non-profit that places rescued dogs:

(#7) A magically multicolored mutt

From the Lean With It series, showing trees that have grown at steep angles, with people leaning precipitously parallel to them:

(#8) A summer scene, Impressionist in feeling (there’s a winter counterpart)

And from the Book Collection series, of witty constructions made up of Octavious’s books:

(#9) “Bookbow” (book + rainbow), a Pride rainbow of books

(Hunky men in minimal swimsuits, but nothing actually X-rated. The posting is about the presentation of self in photographs, via clothing, stance, gait, facial expression, gaze, and the like. Not much about language here.)

11/9 Daily Jocks sale ad for Marcuse underwear and swimwear:

(#1) Come Wander With Me

He came from the sunset
He came from the sea
He came from my sorrow
And can love only me

He said, “Come wander with me, love
Come wander with me
Away from this sad world
Come wander with me”

The garment. It’s the Marcuse Arrest Me swim brief, available in at least the following colors: in lime, pale blue, white, grey, red, black, marine (blue), pastel green, yellow, orange, pink, blue.

The DJ ad offered:

20% OFF MARCUSE THIS WEEKEND

If you want to look good and feel great, you might not be able to resist the sexy designs and enhancement features of a pair of Marcuse underwear or show off by the pool with a pair of their very low rise swimwear

Super low swim briefs for people brave enough to bare some skin and look super sexy! Simple design with embroidered gold Marcuse logo at the back.

The model in #1 appears to be striding out of the surf. He’s loose-limbed, very loosely (as well as minimally) clothed, with fly-away hair and a complex expression: narrowed eyes, slack open mouth, maybe half-smiling, maybe flirting, maybe teasing, maybe cruising. More on reading faces in a moment, but right now study the way his body is presented, and compare it to a standard presentation for men in premium homowear — here’s another model, posing statically in a different color of the Arrest Me swim brief:

(#2)

#1 is (staged as) informal and unposed, while #2 is a male-art formal portrait, with the subject holding a conventional pose I’ve called pitsntits.

The facial expression in #2 is also conventional, a variant of the Cruise of Death, a penetrating, dominating stare. In #1 we get something more like a snapshot taken unawares, and the model’s face can be read in many ways; it’s intriguing in a way that #1’s is not (I’ve posted dozens of underwear ads with facial expressions like.#2’s).

The background. Nevertheless, #1 probably isn’t just an informal framing; it’s likely an allusion to the landmark gay porn film Boys in the Sand, and more indirectly to the whole mansex on the beach genre of male art, gay porn, and gay cartooning.

On the first, see my 9/25/15 posting “Boy in the sand”, about a DJ TeamM8 swimwear ad, with an AZ gay-erotic poem; also about Cal Culver / Casey Donovan in Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand, where the central character rises naked out of the sea.

On the second, see my 6/30/17 posting “In the dunes, in the dunes”, with a take-off on the song “In the pines” and some reflections on the genre of mansex in the dunes, on the beach.

The song. The accompaniment to #1 above is (verse 1 and the chorus of) the song “Come Wander with Me”. Despite appearances, not actually a folk song, but instead a haunting folk-like song written for a tv show. From Wikipedia:

“Come Wander With Me” is the final-taped episode of the American television series The Twilight Zone. (The Bewitchin’ Pool, however, was the last to be broadcast.) This episode introduced Bonnie Beecher in her television debut.

… The “Rock-A-Billy Kid”, Floyd Burney, arrives at a small town in search of a new song. …  Next to a lake, he encounters the singer, Mary Rachel, who reluctantly plays a song for him about two [doomed] lovers who meet in the woods.

(#3) The Bonnie Beecher recording

The singer. And a note on Beecher, from Wikipedia:

Bonnie Jean Beecher (née Boettcher, April 25, 1941), later known as Jahanara Romney, is an American activist and retired actress and singer.

Bonnie Jean Boettcher was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Art and Jean Boettcher. She knew Bob Dylan during his early career, and may have been the inspiration for his song “Girl from the North Country”. Some of Dylan’s earliest recordings were recorded at her Minneapolis home in 1961.

… Beecher married Wavy Gravy (born Hugh Romney) in 1965; the couple has one child. She has worked as Administrative Director (under the name Jahanara Romney) of Camp Winnarainbow since 1983. Her husband (under the name Wavy Gravy) serves as director of the camp, which is located near Laytonville, Mendocino County in Northern California.

Two recent items about men trying to look attractive (to other men): on the Kitsch Bitsch Facebook page today, 1950s physique model Mel Fortune festooned for Christmas (the image is entertaining but just barely not X-rated, so if such images trouble you, leave this posting); and a William Haefeli cartoon from the latest (12/17/18) New Yorker, featuring a pair of his upscale urban gay men negotiating a date / trick.

(Hat tip to Chris Ambidge for the Kitsch Bitsch treasure, with his note:

It’s approaching Christmas. The trendy word for decorating this year is “festooning”.

More on festoon below.)

(#1) [KB caption:] KITSCHMAS DECORATING TIP #22 … festoon your packages properly

(#2) “If you knew how many times I changed my clothes before coming here, you wouldn’t ask me to take them off.”

Mel Fortune and men’s eyes. (I should probably have resisted it, but I am weak.) First, the physique magazines: see my 7/17/16 posting “A remarkable website”, with a section on Bob Mizer and his physique photography in the 1940s through the 1960s. The photos were often pretentiously themed, but many were consciously antic, as in #1.

Then, Kitsch Bitsch (website here), who mines popular culture for kitschig images. From NOAD:

noun kitsch: art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch.

The image in #1 hasn’t yet been filed on KB’s main site, but there’s plenty of Christmas magic there, under the heading “Welcome to My Home … at Kitschmas!”. KB is fond of the verb festoon there. Two examples:

DECORATIONS GALORE! My decor is not limited to the interior or the front of my house! I dress the swimming pool in the season’s best! My guests gasp with delight at the sight of a Cotton Candy Kitschmas with sleigh and reindeer floating and festooned in pink toule and pink cotton batting! Swimmingly Sweet!

COCKTAIL TIME! The late-night gang will be stopping by at the cocktail hour! I change into a more festive skirt and shoes. I simply roll the smaller television set back in and festoon the larger televison cabinet with a tablecloth and sparkley garland! I ready the eggnog and jello molds, then hide the daytime decorations and lampshades! The night-time pals can cause quite a ruckus! But I do provide a lute to accompany the evening’s caroling!

[Festoonish digression. From NOAD:

(#3)

noun festoon: [a] a chain or garland of flowers, leaves, or ribbons, hung in a curve as a decoration. [b] a carved or molded ornament representing a festoon. verb festoon: [with object] (often be festooned with) adorn (a place) with ribbons, garlands, or other decorations: the room was festooned with balloons and streamers. ORIGIN mid 17th century: from French feston, from Italian festone ‘festal ornament’, from festum, (plural) festa ‘feast’.

Beyond these bare lexicographic facts: festoon is the object of word attraction — specifically, word amusement — for many people (of whom I am one). We find it giggly. So, obviously, does KB.

What I believe to be a complete record of festoon on this blog:

— first, in a memorable example from my dangler postings, starting with my 3/2/11 posting “Dangling advice”, about “Shawn walked on to the stage, festooned in well-wishing posters and blue and yellow balloons”; later references to the festooned Shawn / stage in postings from 9/25/13, from 4/15/14. and from 3/4/17

— then, in postings on playful Cahoon names (including the interior decorator Festoon Cahoon, who is, however, not actually mentioned in these postings): from my 7/16/16 posting “Morning name: Colquhoun”:

a letter of mine published in Verbatim some time ago [posted on this blog here], on several language games, the first of which took off from an Olive Cahoon who married a man named Cahoon and so became Olive Cahoon Cahoon. That set some of us off to playing with the family name Cahoon and its far-flung members: Monsoon Cahoon, Rangoon Cahoon, Pontoon Cahoon, and so on.

— in my 9/24/17 posting “A sapsucking planthopper”, with a straightforward festooned:

[on the coat of arms of Pennsylvania:] The state motto, “Virtue, Liberty and Independence”, appears festooned below [an array of symbolic images].

— in my 8/13/18 posting “The nacho cart”, in the mildly antic obit headline:

Joël Robuchon, a French Chef Festooned With Stars, Is Dead at 73

End of digression. Enough with the festooning.]

I dressed for you. Haefeli’s gay guys are dealing, not terribly well, with one of the complexities of romantic / sexual coupling: the trappings you take on to make yourself attractive to a potential partner may well become irrelevant when you reach the getting naked together stage — or even impediments to intimacy. The clothes (on which you might have spent considerable effort to choose them and to wear them just so) only get stripped off. Fragrances that are attractants at a distance might be unpleasantly powerful at ground zero. For men, taking off basket-enhancing clothes might reveal unexceptional equipment; and facial scruff that advertises your masculinity and toughness (note the scruff on both of Haefeli’s guys) might well just induce beard burn in your partner. For women, carefully applied makeup, mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, and so on can become messy annoyances in a passionate clinch.

For Haefeli’s guys, fretting obsessively over the way they present themselves is especially comical, because the two of them are pretty much cut from the same cloth, with only tiny differences distinguishing them. Of course, when differences are tiny, each one becomes that much more significant.

(On the theme of Like With Like in the gay male world, see my 7/26/10 posting “Like/unlike”.)

The audience for tomorrow’s moment of revelation, in J.C. Leyendecker’s remarkable Saturday Evening Post cover for Christmas 1900:

A portrait of the Magi, the Three Kings (or Wise Men), owing much to Art Nouveau style, and with the artist’s characteristic attention to the physical masculinity of his models.

(Hat tip to Tommy Lee Whitlock on Facebook. This posting is somewhat abbreviated; I’ve been sick.)

First, the religious festival, from NOAD:

noun epiphany (also Epiphany): [a] the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12). [b] the festival commemorating the Epiphany on January 6. [c] a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being. [d] a moment of sudden revelation or insight. ORIGIN Middle English: from Greek epiphainein ‘reveal’. The sense relating to the Christian festival is via Old French epiphanie and ecclesiastical Latin epiphania.

Then the Magi. A very complex story, with highlights from Wikipedia on the Biblical Magi:

Encyclopædia Britannica states: “according to Western church tradition, Balthasar [or Bathazar] is often represented as a king of Arabia, Melchior as a king of Persia, and Gaspar [or Caspar] as a king of India.”

… In one tradition, reflected in art by the 14th century (for example in the Arena Chapel by Giotto in 1305) Caspar is old, normally with a white beard, and gives the gold; he is “King of Tarsus, land of merchants” on the Mediterranean coast of modern Turkey, and is first in line to kneel to Christ. Melchior is middle-aged, giving frankincense from his native Arabia, and Balthazar is a young man, very often and increasingly black-skinned, with myrrh from Saba (modern south Yemen).

… The subject of which king is which and who brought which gift is not without some variation depending on the tradition. The gift of gold is sometimes associated with Melchior as well and in some traditions, Melchior is the old man of the three Magi.

On the gifts: myrrh functions as an anointing oil, also used in embalming; frankincense as a perfume, especially in incense form. More below.

On this blog, in a 12/24/16 posting “This year’s most puzzling Christmas card”, about Christmas in Barcelona, featuring the Three Kings (with Melchior as the old one).

The distribution of the kings over the three ages, three gifts, and three names varies from context to context, though in modern times Balthasar is young and black. I haven’t found a key to Leyendecker’s intentions about the kings in his magazine cover; the details on them:

left: young (and black) king — certainly Balthasar — bearing frankincense

middle: old, bearded king, bearing a jar of myrrh oil

right: middle-aged king, looking decidedly Egyptian, bearing gold

(I have some personal interest in these matters, since I am Arnold Melchior Zwicky, son of Arnold Melchior Zwicky and grandson of Melchior Arnold Zwicky, so Melchior’s my guy.)

Frankincense and myrrh. Their plant family, from Wikipedia:

The Burseraceae [#90 in my running inventory of plant families] are a moderate-sized family of 17-19 genera and about 540 species of flowering plants. … The Burseraceae are also known as the torchwood family, the frankincense and myrrh family, or simply the incense tree family. The family includes both trees and shrubs, and is native to tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

The plants in the family are the source of fragrant resins, in particular:

Frankincense … is an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes, obtained from trees of the genus Boswellia in the family Burseraceae (Wikipedia link)

Myrrh is a natural gum or resin extracted from a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora [of the family Burseraceae]. Myrrh resin has been used throughout history as a perfume, incense, and medicine. (Wikipedia link)

Leyendecker. The subject of my 1/22/11 posting “J. C. Leyendecker”. A significant American illustrator and commercial artist, creator of (among other things) influential images of American masculinity, Leyendecker was a gay man whose very popular illustrations were often unobtrusively homoerotic. And the Magi as a subject allows an artist to indulge in whatever  form of exoticism appeals to them; see above.

Uri and Avi
Sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

The US/UK children’s chant — meant to embarrass the kids named in it –realized in this photo of an Israeli Jew I’ve called Uri and a Palestinian Muslim I’ve called Avi (not sitting in a tree, but standing flagrantly in public):

(#1)

The photo came to me from Michael Nieuwenhuizen, who found it (unsourced) on Facebook and was moved by it (as was I), as a depiction of men kissing openly and as a depiction of romantic attachment across the boundaries of race and religion — doubly transgressive, and for gay men like Mikkie and me, doubly satisfying.

As it turns out, Mikkie was hoping that it depicted a real-life kiss between a Muslim/Jew male couple  — composed by the photographer, of course, but nevertheless a record of the affection and passionate attachment of an actual same-sex, cross-religion couple on an Israeli street. I was dubious: posing the men in characteristic headgear of their religions looked too calculated, so I suspected it was a visual fable, a fiction of an imagined, achingly desired world.

Mikkie and I then went on searches for the source, which we quickly found. It’s a new photo, from this month, by Italian photographer Matteo Menicocci. The story, from TVM News (Television Malta, the national television station of Malta) on 1/12/19 , in “Photograph leads to major debate”:

Matteo Menicocci is an Italian photographer and an LGBTIQ activist.

The photographer decided to work on a photographic project with the intention of provoking and at the same time raising awareness on the already existing gap between different beliefs and the dangerous sentiment of homophobia.

Menicocci got his inspiration after spending a holiday in Tel Aviv with his partner Riccardo. He explained that during their holiday they ended up victims of homophobia and were insulted on several occasions. Menicocci felt the need to publish a photo which promotes love and peace between sexes and religions. In the photograph Menicocci is seen wearing traditional Palestinian garb, whilst his partner Riccardo is wearing a Yarmulke, a Jewish symbol, and they are kissing each other.

Mikkie was gravely disappointed. The photo doesn’t depict a moment of triumph for proud public display of man-on-man affection, but is instead an imagining of a better world that might some day come to be, a Peaceable Kingdom where boundaries of race, religion, class, and so on cease to be significant, where the Jewish lion can lie down in love with the Palestinian lamb.

Sim Aberson has suggested to me another work of visual fiction, one that shows a version of life for actual gay Israeli Jews coupled with Palestinian men, rather than spinning a utopian fantasy for such couples: the film Out in the Dark. From Wikipedia:

(#2)

Out in the Dark (Hebrew: עלטה‎) is a 2012 Israeli romantic drama film which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012 and in Israel in the Haifa International Film Festival in October 2012. It is the directorial debut of Michael Mayer (מיכאל מאיר).

The film tells the story of the relationship between Roy, an Israeli lawyer, and Nimer, a Palestinian psychology student. The film was released commercially in Israel on 28 February 2013.

The relationship has to be kept in the dark, in the closet.

Man-on-man affection in public. Mouth to mouth kisses, holding hands, cuddling and snuggling, and so on. In general, these actions are highly stigmatized, likely to arouse hostility, to elicit sharp comments — even vicious physical attacks — and (if continued) to result in expulsion from public places. There are safe spaces (gay clubs, places in gayborhoods, and the like), but in most places most of the time you have to be vigilant.

The hostility is usually even greater when a couple visibly cross significant social boundaries — in race or religion, in particular.

Man-on-man kisses are especially likely to trigger hostility of various sorts. Thanks to Dennis Lewis for this story from tv channel 4 in Jacksonville FL: “Sailor’s same-sex kiss prompts cheers, jeers: Mayport spokesman says Navy has always been gender neutral” by Vic Micolucci on 12/27/18:

(#3)

Jacksonville, Fla. – A couple married for a year embraced and kissed Friday for the first time in months after a long Navy deployment as a crowd at Naval Station Mayport cheered and cameras recorded the moment.

The ceremonial first kiss is a part of every naval homecoming, but because the one as the USS The Sullivans returned from the Middle East with 300 sailors aboard was a same-sex couple, so this one got a lot of attention and significant backlash.

The first kiss is decided by lottery. Sailors’ spouses donate to a good cause to enter a raffle.

Kenneth Woodington won, and when his husband, sailor Bryan Woodington walked off the gangway, they locked lips for the first time in seven months…

“I was excited and I could not wait for it to happen,” Bryan said. “I knew I was going to dip him.”

“When he got off the ship, I lost all control, I just dropped everything and I just ran,” Kenneth said.

While the kiss was greeted by cheers at the base, News4Jax got jeers. Viewers bombarded the station with phone calls and emails objecting to the decision to show the kiss.

– How sad that your station has dropped to such a low as to show a gay couple kissing on your newscast.”

– I’ll never watch your news again!!!! So long, News4Jax.”

– I thought this was a ‘family friendly’ news channel.”

The couple is aware of the negative comments. Internet users posted them on Naval Station Mayport’s page, as well.

“It didn’t really bother me,” Kenneth said. “Honestly, I’m the type of person who doesn’t really care that much about what people say.”

“My grandmother always taught me, she said, ‘You know some people have a different life and this is how they are and you just have to treat them as such, and treat them with kindness and respect,'”  Bryan said.

These newlyweds said they’ve received more positive feedback than negative and the Navy has been nothing but kind and accepting. Both said this can be a teaching moment, that it’s 2018 and they feel that love is.”

“I wanted to give him nothing but love and care and understanding right out the gate, so I think we just fell for each other really hard and we both knew what we really wanted,”

Bill Austin, spokesman for Naval Station Mayport, said a same-sex first kiss has happened before and it is not an issue for the Navy. He said the seagoing branch of the armed forces has always been gender neutral and on the forefront of progress.

(This story doesn’t mention the crossing of the race boundary in #3.)

Not in front of the children — because man-on-man kisses are sex acts, appropriate only in private (if at all), while man-on-woman kisses are displays of affection, entirely permissible (even cute) in public.

Since man-on-man kisses are sex acts, they set off a chain of metonymic associations that zips right to images of anal intercourse between men, which is of course disgusting. (Men holding hands will do it too. For some people, just displaying a Pride flag is enough.)

Many straight men react to images of men kissing with the same sort of disgust that images of maggots evoke.

And of course fundangelical Xtians view loving relationships between men as a direct affront to their deity.

And on and on.

The dream of liberté, égalité, fraternité. As represented in the fiction of #1 and advertised in the performance in #3. A time of peace and brotherhood. From Wikipedia:

In Abrahamic religions, the Messianic Age is the future period of time on Earth in which the messiah will reign and bring universal peace and brotherhood, without any evil. Many believe that there will be such an age; some refer to it as the consummate “kingdom of God” or the “world to come”.

According to Jewish tradition, the Messianic Era will be one of global peace and harmony, an era free of strife and hardship, and one conducive to the furtherment of the knowledge of the Creator. The theme of the Messiah ushering in an era of global peace is encapsulated in two of the most famous scriptural passages from the Book of Isaiah:

Isaiah 2:4 (KJV): ⁴And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Isaiah 11:6-7 (KJV): ⁶The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. ⁷And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

These images of peace and love in a world in which impediments to unity, artificial boundaries, just vanish were profoundly appealing to the Quaker artist Edward Hicks, who returned again and again to the dream world of the Peaceable Kingdom. From the Worcester (MA) Art Museum site:

(#4) Edward Hicks (American, 1780-1849), The Peaceable Kingdom (about 1833), oil on canvas

Trained as a sign, coach, and ornamental painter, Hicks painted over a hundred versions of his now-famous Peaceable Kingdom between 1820 and his death. His artistic endeavors provided modest support for his activities as a Quaker preacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The theme of this painting, drawn from chapter 11 of Isaiah, was undoubtedly attractive to Hicks and fellow Quakers not only for its appealing imagery but also for its message of peace … Into many versions, including the Worcester painting, Hicks incorporated a vignette of William Penn’s treaty with the Indians, an image he adapted from a popular painting by Benjamin West. Hicks may have viewed parallels in the two parts of the composition, inasmuch as Penn, who had introduced Quakerism into Pennsylvania, had also brought about a measure of the peaceable kingdom on earth.

In #4, the Englishman and the Indian are portrayed as free and equal, brothers in Hicks’s fancied peaceable kingdom. So in #1, the Israeli and the Palestinian, in Menicocci’s fiction of a better world.

A follow-up to two earlier postings today, about art works of various kinds focused on the male buttocks. The first, “Buttocks display” was largely about men’s premium underwear ads celebrating male buttocks — work by professional photographers (using professional models), carefuly posed and lit, and often very artfully framed, but also clearly attentive to the sexual desirability of the models’ bodies. Art with a homoerotic eye. One brand of what is known as male art. (For a collection of books on the genre, see the Page on Male art on this blog.)

The second posting, “The art of the buttocks”, looked at some mainstream art — notably, paintings by the early 19th-century artist William Etty (who specialized in nudes of all sorts).

And then there’s frank (gay) porn, in which buttocks play a central role (because anal intercourse does). Covered very extensively on this blog (see the Page on pornstars on this blog).

The first thing to be said on these distinctions is that you can’t tell just by looking; you might need to know quite a lot about the context in which a work appears, to judge the intentions of the creator and, especially, to judge the work’s place in the social worlds surrounding it.

An early stab of mine at making some distinctions in this area: my 3/19/13 posting “Porn/art”:

I’ve often reflected on the line — not at all clear — between gay porn photography and male [primarily homoerotic] art photography. The easy delineation has to do with intent: gay porn is intended to get guys off, male photography is aesthetic appreciation of the male body. But of course motives are mixed: porn can be artfully done, male photography can be arousing. There’s no one reading of an image.

A case in point: the main image in this TitanMen ad for a post-St. Patrick’s Day sale, viewable on AZBlogX here. Carefully composed — certainly not great art, but well crafted — with a dose of humor in the green shamrock on the model’s ass. What makes it porn is in part the context, plus the presentation of the model as a hole to be fucked. (But there’s male photography not much different from this: Steven Vaschon’s two Rear View books, for example.)

Vaschon’s two books are loving celebrations of male buttocks — homoerotic celebrations, but also readable as very high-quality male nudes in the mainstream tradition. A significant part of the homoerotic effect is that the photos come by the dozens in books with nothing else in them. The covers:

(#1) Rear View, 2003; b&w, small format

(#2) Rear View 2, 2005: luscious color, some sepia, large format

(Totally steeped in queerness, with some really steamy male photography, but it’s mostly about culture and art, and only incidentally about men’s genitals or mansex — so caution advised for kids and the sexually modest.)

It started with a blow-in card that fell out of the most recent issue of Out magazine:

(#1) Hard-cruisin’ Daddy: an abstastic  Daddy type, displaying a Cruise of Death face, with narrowed eyes and intense gaze — Boys faint on the street from the sheer intensity of his combined sexual desire (for them) and sexual desirability (by them) — while modeling a remarkable suit from a high-fashion designer

It then turns out that there is even more here than meets the eye, because the model is in fact presented as knowing — not actually just  a very hot guy (if this is your taste) caught cruising for (gay) sex on the street, but a model engaged in a performance for his viewers, deliberately projecting a specific sexual persona. (Male photography is full of photos of men presented as captured in fleeting moments of inadvertently displaying their bodies or engaging in various kinds of intimacy with one another, but there’s also a huge genre of self-conscious posing, and #1 is solidly in the latter genre.)

The blow-in card is taken from the cover of the April/May 2020 issue of Out —

(#2)

where it accompanies  the piece “Celeb Photographer Mike Ruiz Is As Interesting As His Subjects” by Richard Pérez-Feria.

And then there’s more. As I said above, the whole thing is steeped in queerness. Just as the Firesign Theatre once proclaimed, in the title of their fourth comedy album (1971), the wonderfuly surrealistic I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus, the theme of #1 can fairly be said to be

(I think) we’re all faggots on this ferry (and that’s a really wonderful thing)

The magazine’s core audience is fags (like me); virtually all of the male editorial staff are fags;  in particular, the writer of this piece, Richard Pérez-Feria, is a fag; the photographer for #2, Rick Day, is a fag; the subject of the piece, Mike Ruiz, is a fag; the designer of the suit Ruiz is wearing in #2, Franco Lacosta, is (quelle surprise! a gay fashion designer!) a fag. All of them quite open in their sexuality. This is all fabulous to me; when I was struggling so painfully with my homosexuality as a young man in an intensely homophobic place, I could scarcely have imagined that anything like this would ever be possible.

[Digression 1. The label fag. I use this to refer to a homosexual / gay / queer man, and if it offends you, you can do a global substitution. But I choose the label carefully. Originally, it was to reclaim a slur, as gay and queer had previously been reclaimed. It’s uncomplicatedly a C[ount] noun —one fag, two fags — and it’s refreshingly in your face (we’re here. we’re fags, get used to it), so it’s easy to use.

More important, fag has repeatedly been used to refer disparagingly to the most obvious of my brothers, the femmy guys that nobody could mistake for straight — the “bad gays”. But they’re the leading edge: they are as they are (for whatever reason, really, who cares?) and they’re not in a position to blend in, as guys like me did for years without thinking these things through. They stick out, and they get the shit intended for the rest of us heaped on their heads. They are our public saints (rarely, alas, our leaders), and they deserve to be  celebrated.

(Besides, I think faggy guys are just hot. But then I have a complicated sexual history.)

In any case, I want to stand with the faggy guys. (I note that in their sexual interests, faggy guys are all over the map.  And that when I was sexually active with men, I was a pussy-ass faggot — that is, I loved to get fucked.) Whatever you might have seen in the way I presented myself. I now think it’s especially important for me to say this — it’s a kind of moral duty, in my view — clearly and repeatedly, to people who know me as an earnest scholar and as an amiable and empathetic friend): I am, in a significant way, just like the faggy guys so many people deride as sick and worthless. Judge them as you do me.]

[Digression 2. Blow-in cards. From Wikipedia:

In advertising, an insert or blow-in card is a separate advertisement put in a magazine, newspaper, or other publication. They are usually the main source of income for non-subscription local newspapers and other publications.

… Bind-in cards are cards that are bound into the bindings of the publication, and will therefore not drop out. [AZ: most magazines come to me with both types of cards.]

Background: the magazine. Very briefly, from Wikipedia:

Out is an American LGBTQ news, fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any LGBTQ monthly publication in the United States. It presents itself in an editorial manner similar to Details, Esquire, and GQ.

All of this is accurate, but the focal audience for Out has always been fags, and still is.

The story, beginning:

The first time I laid eyes on Mike Ruiz, back in 1997, when he walked into my office to show me his photo book for a possible assignment, I remember thinking, He’s the photographer? We should be shooting him. But there he was, looking like a Tom of Finland illustration come to life, but smiling and giggling like a 9-year-old. It was then, as it is now, a contradictory cocktail of tough and sweet. Who could resist? Oh, and the fact that he’s among the very top tier of American celebrity, fashion, and portrait photographers isn’t just icing on the cake — it is the cake. Ruiz is here to slay, brothers and sisters, and I’ve been rooting for him since our very first encounter.

About  the writer, who has become the new editor in chief of the magazine, from a news release on 2/29/20: “‘Out’ and ‘The Advocate’ Magazines Announce New Leadership”

Pride Media, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ media company, announced a new and innovative leadership structure with the appointment of several editors Friday.

CEO Diane Anderson-Minshall will serve as executive editorial director of all five brands: Out, The Advocate, Plus, Pride, and Out Traveler, overseeing 15 editors, three social media experts, and five creative arts staffers who each work across the brands.

Richard Pérez-Feria [born 9/4/64 in Boston MA] has been named Out’s new editor in chief. A gay Latinx man, Pérez-Feria is an award-winning New York-based journalist who is currently editor in chief and CEO of Saratoga Living. He began his career at Esquire before moving on to 7 Days. Early in his career, Pérez-Feria was the founding editor in chief of Poz, the National Magazine Award-winning publication for people living with HIV. He later was editor in chief at Time Inc.’s People en Español, the country’s largest magazine for Latinx and Spanish-speaking readers. He’s also been editor in chief for numerous magazines and websites, including Elliman, 7×7, Vegas Inc., HudsonMOD, Celebrity Style, Gym, Music Choice, Shape’s Fit Hollywood, Burn!, Teen Celebrity, TennisMatch, Brash, PersonalMD, NowItCounts, and, most recently, PuraPhy and Saratoga Living.

Pérez-Feria is a sports and fitness guy, among all those other things.

About the subject of the article. From Wikipedia, the bland details:

Mike Ruiz (born December 8, 1964) is a Canadian photographer, director, television personality, former model, spokesperson, creative director, and actor

(#3) Daddy-meat Ruiz porning for the Modus Vivendi homowear company: displaying his extremely gym-toned body in a pitsntits pose, plus a prominent package thrust out, a modest cock-tease in his MV skivvies, and of course the Cruise Face (those overdeveloped glistening muscles are a real turnoff for me, but then for some of my friends this is come-in-your-pants hot; each to his own)

Ruiz, who is of French Canadian and Spanish Filipino ancestry, was born in Montreal in 1964, but raised in Repentigny, Quebec, Canada. He moved to the United States at age 20 to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. After modeling for a decade he moved to Los Angeles to study acting. In 1997, Ruiz appeared in the independent film Latin Boys Go to Hell.

At the age of 28 Ruiz began in the field of photography…

[Digression 3. Latin Boys Go to Hell. From Rotten Tomatoes on the 1997 film:

Spurned by his heterosexual cousin Angel, distraught photograher’s assistant Justin falls into the eager arms of model Carlos [played by Ruiz], thus enraging Carlos’s insanely jealous occasional lover Braulio whose girlfriend Andrea in turn falls for Angel. Beginning as a straightforward melodrama, the story eventually becomes a parody of popular Latin American telenovelas.]

Back in the real world, Ruiz was (of course, openly) partnered with Martin Berusch for several years, until Berusch suddenly died in 2016; Ruiz then married Wayne Schatz in May 2019.

Note that Ruiz has been both the topic of male photography and also the photographer of other men’s bodies. This is not uncommon: many fags can move back and forth easily between being objects and agents. It’s the way we live.

About the designer. The remarkable suit Ruiz is wearing in #2 is by Franco Lacosta New York. Again, I start with the bland Wikipedia version:

Franco Lacosta born in New York City, New York is a Puerto Rican television personality, producer and fashion designer. He has worked with networks such as ABC, NBC, CWTV, Bravo, and NuvoTV. He is best known for his on-camera appearances for TV shows including America’s Next Top Model, Model Latina, The Bachelor, and The Bachelorette. Lacosta’s menswear designs are presented by New York Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

… In 2013, Franco launched his namesake line [of men’s fashion], Franco Lacosta New York.

More informatively, from his own website:

Franco Lacosta is an international high fashion model turned photographer and menswear designer. Born in New York, raised in Puerto Rico, Franco studied Art History at Pratt Institute. During these formative years in college, Franco had the opportunity to meet the master Italian couturier Gianfranco Ferre, who offered him an internship at his design house in Milan.

This gave Lacosta the opportunity to learn and understand the business of fashion and opened the door to his career, which encompassed multiple aspects of the fashion world – starting as an intern, becoming a model, brand ambassador, designer, collaborator, beauty expert and photographer – providing a full spectrum of experiences in the industry and the ultimate knowledge necessary to creating a successful brand. Throughout the years, Lacosta worked in Italy with Gianfranco Ferre where he was featured in Italian Vogue; in Paris as brand ambassador with Yves Saint Laurent, in London with the likes of style patron Isabella Blow, and lastly in New York, where, amongst others, he has been capturing the exceptional designs of Naeem Khan in his photography. Additionally, he captivated the audiences all across America in the original content that he has co-produced and created for the TV network NBC Universal, while being featured in shows such as Model Latina and America’s Next Top Model.

Lacosta currently resides in Chelsea, New York, where his studio is also located. After having gathered vast experiences in the fashion and beauty world, he is now establishing a progressive menswear and accessories lines.

(I note with irritation that Lacosta seems to have gone to some trouble to conceal his age.)

Before I go on to appreciate Lacosta’s presentations of himself as a hot fuck, and to puzzle at the attractions of his men’s clothing, I note that Lacosta has a husband of 20 years and that the couple have a daughter; the family is remarkably sweet. Lacosta himself is keenly, painfully, aware of the social and political context he works in; from an interview on the DuJour site:

“As a gay [person], you’re bullied as a child,” adds Lacosta.  “Most [of us] are. And all of a sudden you realize there’s great power in being who you are. So you’re no longer a victim. You’re a victor.”

We are all fags on this ferry. And we’re not going to take it any more.

Lacosta presenting himself as simultaneously a hot piece of meat — I WANT YOU! — and the designer of very quirky men’s fashion:

(#4)

I appreciate the hot-guy part, but I’m perpetually baffled by most of what happens in high fashion, especially for men. The jacket in #4 looks to me like a playful joke, but I can’t imagine paying great chunks of money for it, much less wearing it in public; maybe it’s just a runway thing, not meant for the real world. Meanwhile, back in #2, Ruiz is modeling what strikes me as a totally preposterous Lacosta suit; it made me giggle. (Ok, I’m a rube. I suppose I actually am a rube, despite the extensive veneer of my amazing education.)

Yes, we are all fags on this ferry, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up my faculties of judgment.

About the photographer. And then there’s the fag who took the pictures. Again, I’ll start with Wikipedia:

Rick Day (born July 30, 1962) is an American photographer based in New York City. His work concentrates on advertising photography and video.

… Day published his first [homoerotic] coffee table book, Players, in 2008. His second book, Pioneers, released in 2010, debuted at number one on the Amazon.com best-selling erotic book list. Players Two was published in 2011, and All Players was released in 2012. To date, all of Day’s books have been released through publisher Bruno Gmünder Verlag.

I have the first two books (Players and Pioneers), both frankly and celebratorily homoerotic. Like all of Day’s work, knowingly so. The models are posing for us (by posing for Day), enjoying our gaze and inviting us to get off on them, if that’s our pleasure. But they’re also abstract objects of male beauty, to appreciate on those terms.

As the Wikipedia piece recognizes, all of his earlier work was published by Bruno Gmünder Verlag, the premier outlet for male art of many kinds. For whatever reasons, this commercial arrangement ceased to be satisfactory to Day, so he’s struck out as an independent operator, using Kickstarter appeals to fund his new books.

From his Kickstarter appeal, with a colorfully hard sell:

My last book “Castings” was a playful musing on my social media, a kind of journal of my daily life.  A fun, cheeky, sexy collection of images featuring top agency models and instagram ‘celebrities’. Uninhibited, daring and fun.

(#4) What can I say? Pantingly sexual, and very carefully composed

This new book ‘Carnal’ however has been inspired by the puritanical forces that are taking over America. These forces are finding their way into selective censoring of social media. The erasure of erotic art, to me, represents a crisis point of culture, of democracy.

I don’t need anyone telling me what I can and cannot see.

Art empowers when it’s transgressive, scandalous, nude, erotic. Art is where minds are opened, ideas challenged, viewpoints explored, where one can be free, even if for a minute.

You can sweep carnal longings under the rug but you cannot get rid of carnal cravings.

It will always be there.  ALWAYS.

So please help me bring this book to life by supporting my Kickstarter.

It is the most racy book that I have ever published.

Your hunger will be quenched

(#5) From the book

And that’s the news from Fag Central.

The full title: LOVING A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s – 1950s. Assembled by Hugh Nini & Neal Treadwell (5 Continents Editions, 2020).

(#1) Front cover of the book

From the introduction to a Queer Review interview by editor James Kleinmann with the authors (11/1/20):

A married couple themselves, Neal, who works in the cosmetic industry, and Hugh, a former ballet dancer turned ballet teacher, have been together for nearly three decades. While browsing in an antique store in Dallas, Texas around 20 years ago, the pair stumbled across a photograph from the 1920s of two men in a tender embrace. That unexpected discovery sparked a passion that has resulted in their still growing “accidental collection” of around 3,000 photographs of men in love. A selection of over 300 of these images is featured in their beautifully produced new book which was published internationally on October 14th 2020.

A beautifully produced volume, with minimal text: an appreciative note “Amantes Amentes”, by Paolo Maria Noseda (pp. 6-13) (Noseda elsewhere   defines himself as “an interpreter, translator, speech coach, ghost writer, consultant in the field of international communication, writer and occasionally teacher and student”), and the explanatory essay “An Accidental Collection” by Nini and Treadwell (pp. 14-23).

The photographs are surprisingly moving (and, yes, Nini and Treadwell are aware of the common practice of close male friends — “best buddies” and the like — taking photos of themselves in entirely non-sexual physical closeness, but argue that in many cases the exchange of facial expressions between male couples and their body language clearly indicate a loving relationship).

The publisher’s advance synopsis:

Loving: A Photographic Story of Men in Love, 1850-1950 portrays the history of romantic love between men in hundreds of moving and tender vernacular photographs taken between the years 1850 and 1950. This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public. Taken when male partnerships were often illegal, the photos here were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes, family archives, old suitcases, and later online and at auctions. The collection now includes photos from all over the world: Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, Latvia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Serbia. The subjects were identified as couples by that unmistakable look in the eyes of two people in love – impossible to manufacture or hide. They were also recognised by body language – evidence as subtle as one hand barely grazing another – and by inscriptions, often coded. Included here are ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, photo strips, photomatics, and snapshots – over 100 years of social history and the development of photography.  … The photographs – many fragile from age or handling – have been digitised using a technology derived from that used on surveillance satellites and available in only five places around the world. Paper and other materials are among the best available. And Loving will be manufactured at one of the world’s elite printers. Loving, the book, will be up to the measure of its message in every way. In these delight-filled pages, couples in love tell their own story for the first time at a time when joy and hope – indeed human connectivity – are crucial lifelines to our better selves. Universal in reach and overwhelming in impact, Loving speaks to our spirit and resilience, our capacity for bliss, and our longing for the shared truths of love.

And an ad for the book with a display of six photos from it:

(#2)

You can also watch a charming video, “Loving: A Short Documentary” (roughly 8 minutes long), available here.

(Men’s bodies as sexual objects — women’s, too — and sex between men, all of this discussed in street language, with edgy images, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

At the intersection of the pinup-girl world (AZ Page here) and the premium men’s underwear world (AZ Page here), two recent ads from the Daily Jocks people: from 3/28, under the mail header “Model of the week: Freddy”, an ad for OnlyJox subscriptions, already of interest to me for its display of male buttocks as sexual objects for a male audience and for pushing the line between softcore and hardcore porn in doing so; and from 4/2, an ad for the DJ Easter sale, already of interest to me for its display of the front surface of the model’s body as series of sexual objects for a male audience, from the framing of his penis in a jockstrap though the sexualized presentation of his armpits, pectoral muscles and nipples.

The 4/2 ad is also quite clearly the photographer’s carefully composed re-creation of a classic pinup pose using a male model. And then I realized that that the 3/8 ad was in fact a bow to yet another classic pinup pose.

The two ads, from the wonderful world of designer jockstraps:

(#1) 3/28: the model Freddy, tail in the air, offering his ass; stroking his dick, apparently, out of our view; displaying his muscular shoulders and back (his traps and lats); fixing us with a knowing cruise face; and playing with his gorgeous springy hair (“and his hair was perfect” — Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”)

(#2) 4/2: the model I’ve called Aradesque, offering his dick; with his legs spread to suggest the availability of his ass; displaying his muscular pecs and abs and a hairy armpit; and with his cruise face (dark wide eyes in a carefully groomed and made-up face)

For gay men, the two primary sexual features of the male body are the asshole (to fuck) and the dick (to jack off, suck, or be fucked by). The buttocks are technically secondary sexual features — the fleshy portals to the asshole within. And then there are the other secondary features, further signals of attractive masculinity, in particular facial, body, and armpit hair; and powerful male musculature (Freddy’s back, Aradesques’s arms and torso).

Both models are performing versions of what I’ve called butch fagginess (see my 8/14/18 posting with that title, and others following it), in which a primarily high-masculinity (often exaggeratedly so) presentation of self is combined with at least a few elements that are conspicuously, conventionally un-masculine, indeed faggy: slogans on clothing, facial expressions, stance, a conveyed urgent need to get fucked (as with Freddy), un-masculine bits of clothing or colors (like Aradesque’s neon pink jock), make-up (Aradesque’s eye make-up is fabulous), whatever.

Freddy. Freddy is humped up, with his tail in the air, displaying his buttocks as sexual objects (and incidentally displaying the declivity of his lower back as sexual as well; see my 3/30/21 posting “Tramp stamps”, with its section on the erotic potential of the lower back).

Then from my 10/25/16 posting “tail in the air”, on the Fuck Me Please (FMP) interpretation of tail in the air:

FMP manages to combine the root sense of tail with its metonymic extension to the rump of an animal (including the buttocks of a human being) and the further metonymic extension from ‘rump, buttocks’ to ‘vagina’ (and to suggest a further metaphorical extension, in gay usage, from ‘vagina’ to ‘anus’) — so it hits all the sexualized senses of tail except the metaphorical (shape-based) extension to ‘penis’. The larger point is that FMP connotes receptivity and submission.

The crucial element in FMP is raising the hips, putting the rump up in the air. From Wikipedia:

Lordosis behavior, also known as mammalian lordosis (Greek lordōsis, from lordos “bent backward”) or presenting, is a body posture adopted by some mammals including humans, elephants, rodents, felines and others, usually associated with female receptivity to copulation. The primary characteristics of the behavior are a lowering of the forelimbs but with the rear limbs extended and hips raised, ventral arching of the spine and a raising, or sideward displacement, of the tail.

Or, as in “Sex positions for gay men” (from 2/12/16):

(4) bottom kneeling (a genicular fuck), commonly called doggie/doggy-fucking

— or, in crude terms, taking it like a bitch.

In fact, lordosis in dogs in heat is generally not nearly as pronounced as in, say, cats or rats, as you can see in this illustration from the Petsoid site (with pet advice) from 2/26/20, “How Long Does a Female Dog Stay in Heat” by Anna Liutko:

(#3)

Now, #1 is intended as porn; it’s an ad for DJ’s OnlyJox subscription service, which supplies images of DJ models for (I paraphrase) the private pleasures of the subscribers. Freddy in #1 is in between soft porn and hard porn (aka softcore and hardcore), but towards the high end; it’s pretty much right up against the line.

Linguistic digression: scales and labels. #1 belongs to the category of porn images, a category that is often conceptualized as a collection of images arranged on a scale between two end-points, two poles, customarily labeled as soft and hard, with the whole scheme analogized to other scales using these labels for the poles: hardness for minerals, for sleeping surfaces, for cheeses, for penile erections, etc.

I’ll leave the concept of scalarity unanalyzed here, trusting in your naive intuitions for my present purposes — though there’s a considerable literature in semantics on scales — but will concentrate on the assignment of labels.

A scale doesn’t necessarily have a conventional label, but those that do are often labeled with the label for one of the poles, which then serves as the unmarked pole. The scale at issue in this discussion of #1 is the scale labeled hardness, with the unmarked pole labeled hard — asking How hard is it? doesn’t entail that it’s hard — and the marked pole labeled soft — asking How soft is it? entails that it’s soft.

Another significant fact about scales is that intermediate elements frequently lack conventional names. Often when there are names for intermediate elements, these don’t pick out the halfway, or neutral, points, but instead are located by reference to one of the poles: semisoft cheeses, half-hard erections. I’m much taken with half-hard for reference to an intermediate state in porn that’s close to the hard pole — as in #1.

A similar labeling scheme for the erection hardness scale is presented in my 8/4/20 posting “Towards the high end of the  hardness scale”, from the British tv show Cucumber, Banana, and Tofu — with Tofu labeling the soft pole, Cucumber the hard pole, and Banana an intermediate half-hard point.

Aradesque. From my 3/19/21 posting “Personas and poses”, about an earlier DJ ad featuring the model I’ve called Aradesque, focused on scales and on his dick-framing gesture:

(#4)

Aradesque’s presentation of self is far to the queer end on the queer-straight scale [the straightness scale, with the straight pole as the unmarked end], but (within the queer domain) also far to the butch end of the fem-butch scale [the butchness scale, with the butch pole as the unmarked end].

Meanwhile, he’s performing a dick-framing gesture with his left hand, outlining a highly visible (though covered) half-hard penis — well short of a crotch grab, but similar in spirit to that gesture. In any case, it’s a homoerotically charged pose; he could just have rested his left hand lightly on his thigh, as he’s doing with his right hand.

But #2 is something else. It has the muscular body and the dick-framing gesture (but here with briefs in a less faggy color), but lacks the supine pose with a pitsntits display and the very cruisy face, include what seems to be fairly heavy eye make-up. So: a much faggier presentation than #4. It is in fact an easily recognizable take-off on a classic (female) pinup pose (though in the pinups, the woman’s legs aren’t spread, but are drawn up (sometimes raised in the air).

A famous example of the pose: Jane Russell in the movie The Outlaw (1943), seen here in a poster for the movie (with a phallic gun for extra sexual interest; remember that this material is created for a male audience, so phallic symbols have the virtue of providing a place in the picture for the men in this audience):

(#5)

The pitsntits gesture is designed to push the breasts forward and so to display them as much as possible. For women as models, sexual display for a male audience focuses on two secondary sexual features, breasts and buttocks — that is, tits and ass (aka t&a). The pose in #5  is a tits display. (An ass display will come along shortly.)

#5 is softporn photography displaying tits. There is of course a parallel genre of softporn graphic art displaying tits, for example this drawing by pinup artist Gil Elvgren:

(#6)

So much for tits. On to ass. And back to …

Tail in the air (take 2). Now as a standard pinup pose. Here, just one example, a work on a Flickr site (with a gigantic phallic element as a bonus):

(#7) Mandy Galileo, Pinup Sonja_005a: “This is my sister Sonja who wanted to show she supports the war effort. At ’em boys, give her the gun!!! Shot at Naturally Naughty February 21, 2021.”

This takes us back to Freddy in the DJ ad in #1, which, in addition to its other associations, we can now see as a take-off on this pinup pose.

(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.

(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.

(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!

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.

(Men’s genitals, man-on-man sex, lots of street talk about them, entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest.)

The Merry Homomonth of May on my two male calendars for 2022: the Tom of Finland calendar (which is mostly free of naughty bits) in my living room, where visitors (I do have an occasional one) can see it; the Cocky Boys / CockyBoys / Cockyboys calendar (which is all about the naughty bits) stashed away in my bedroom, where it can be viewed from my bed and so can provide me with an inspirational penis boost as called for by the exigencies of the moment.

So, in order: the ToF, which turns out to be primarily (though not exclusively) about gay men’s nipples, or tits, as we usually call them (metonymically); and then three months of CockyBoy cocks (April through June).

Work my tits, man! The ToF page for May, plus the ToF illustration for February (which I haven’t posted about before), also about tits:

(#1) The mantit action: R is sucking L’s right tit, while L is grabbing R’s left pec; but then the drawing shows a moment in a larger story, in which a great deal more is happening (to start with, R appears to be en route to fucking L)

(#2) The mantit action: R (the subject of the drawing), his body arched back, is having his left tit tweaked and his right pec grabbed by M; but much else is going on at the very moment of the drawing (to start with, R is getting fucked by M)

Artistic notes 1. Some scratches on the surface; there’s aways a lot to say about ToF.

First, his drawings are formal compositions of bodies, carefully arranged, with echoes (sometimes very specific echoes) of paintings, drawings, and sculptures in the traditions of Western art since the Renaissance. On occasion, the elegance of composition can quickly overshadow the sexual acts being depicted; I responded at first to the May drawing as an artful arrangement of forms, quite satisfying in its planes and surfaces — so much so that I was startled back to carnal reality by the realization that, Jesus Christ, the men are working each other’s tits and pecs, that R is masturbating L, and that R’s proprietary hand on L’s ass signals that R is about to get fucked. They are getting down and dirty with one another, in public, outdoors.

Meanwhile, the raw materials of the compositions are male faces and male bodies, usually arranged so that each of these two components tells its own story; this is dramatically so in the February drawing (see below).

The bodies are composed of rounded forms, with the surface sensuousness of female nudes (where breasts and buttocks rule), except that these forms are rock-solid, outsized male muscles: in shoulders, upper arms, torsos, and, especially asses. These guys are fantasy muscle-hunks, and they look beautiful. Looking at them can get you flipping back and forth between seeing a gorgeous rolling landscape of rounded forms and seeing hugely powerful hyper-hunks. Well, both are there.

Second, his drawings also depict formal arrangements of emotions, of men’s relationships and their roles in them. These are usually complex and often surprising. Again, the double view.

Take the May drawing. At first, you say, R is in charge, dominant, and sexually the top (I mean, L doesn’t even have pants of any kind on, is going around essentially naked, he’s perched on R’s knee, and he’s about to get fucked by R.

Ah, but look again. R is sexually servicing one of L’s tits, he’s jacking L off. And the visual signals give L the upper hand across the board: his face is one of the foci of the drawing (while R’s face is obscured), his body makes the main axis of the drawing, he’s a whole head above R in the drawing. He’s the subject of this drawing, it’s about him (with R in a supporting role).

And then you understand that L is getting R to give him what he wants. He has a powerful desire to get fucked and is firmly directing R to provide that service, as a sequel to the tit-sucking and hand job R is already giving him.

But R is no subservient cream puff here. He is, in fact, a ToF-standard Top Man, the tough guy you don’t fuck with because he actually fucks you. He’s the embodiment of ToF’s real-life fantasies of powerful men dominating and using him.

The thing is, R is both things at once.

Meanwhile, L is going to get most satisfactorily fucked, and he will probably thank R for the wonderful fuck, for the great job R did for him.

(Those of you who know me will recognize that emotionally I’m L. Physically, nobody is quite as perfect as L, certainly not me.)

Also: we don’t get to see the men’s cocks here, but we know that since all this is taking place in ToF-Land, everybody has a cock of truly super-human dimensions; none of us will ever encounter men like L and R in this regard, and that’s surely a good thing. I note, however, that ToF’s choosing not to show dick in some of his more artfully composed drawings is an artistic decision, and a canny one: much as ToF himself and his target audience adored dick, super-cocks in these compositions would probably have diverted attention from the formal and emotional landscapes he wanted to depict. Those gigantic organs are just too insistent, too demanding of our attention, better to keep them out of sight for the moment.

Artistic notes 2. About the February drawing. And how the faces and the bodies tell two different but interlocking stories. Which I will now explore just a little bit by extracting those two portions of #2, with my commentary in the captions.

(#3) Three men, three facial types, three facial expressions, three angles of presentation; the ecstatic blond R (sexual ecstasy and blondness being conventional markers of femininity in men), with his extraordinarily powerful neck and prominent Adam’s apple both signals of high masculinity, is totally the focus of the composition (meanwhile, he’s having his tits and pecs manhandled, and he’s getting fucked by M, presumably having the time of his life) — compare L in #1

(#4) A landscape of rounded man-muscle, from which two foci emerge: L’s right tit and M’s beautifully muscular ass; here, R is just part of the setting for the other two bodies (also note the aesthetically satisfying fit of male pelvis to male buttocks in this position for ass-fucking; surely god must have made us that way on purpose, it’s so perfect (as one of my boyfriends wryly observed)

The nipple thing. Three previous postings on this blog with relevant material.

— from my 5/24/21 posting “The Ecstasy of St. Atlas:

In the case of nipple play, pleasurable stimulation can give way to (often pleasurable) pain. … The pleasurable stimulation can be autoerotic, stroking or otherwise playing with your nipples. So can pain; you can apply nipple clamps — even just clothespins — to your own nipples. Or, of course, the pain can be part of a sub + dom scene with a partner.

— from my 1/25/22 posting “I love you a nipple and a pec”, on papillary pleasures (among other things):

there are men who are into getting or giving nipple stimulation as a (minor-league) sexual act … Men who are into this sort of play are known as nipple pigs, nippigs, or (metonymically) titpigs … Nip play can also be a solitary pleasure (nipple self-play) — stroking and pinching — usually combined with masturbation. And of courshere are BDSM variants of all of this

— from my 4/11/22 “This is gonna hurt, bro”, with a section on tit torture and devices for providing it, in a subsection on one stage of nipple torture:

note that your tits have now been damaged to some degree; the damage is temporary, your tits will heal, but they have been damaged. (Some men embrace this damage, cultivate it, work to build up scar tissue that will give them thick, long, hard tits. Yes, yes, tits like little dicks, tits that other men can suck on like cocks, for mutual pleasure.)

CockyBoys cock. I start with the calendar photos for April, May, and June. The top sections, with the faces, are below, as #5-7; the bottom sections, with the cocks, are in an AZBlogX posting yesterday (“Dick Days at CockyBoys”, here) , as #1-3 there.

(#5) April: Sean Ford and Angel Rock. On the dicks: cut Ford and uncut Rock, both hanging down, long and sleek: classic pornstar dicks on two contrasting young men

(#6) May: Brock Banks. On the dick and the porn persona: Banks, thick, uncut, and notably veined: more mature model, more mature dick, lightly furred body

(#7) June: Blake Mitchell. On the dick and the porn persona: Mitchell, uncut, very thick and upstanding: earnest young man with kissable mouth seeks hot ass to fuck like a sledge hammer

(#8) On Lips Together (a sweet gay courtship drama, with very hot sex, also well acted; both Ford and Rock view their acting as a craft, and their performance of sexual acts as another craft), see my 6/4/21 posting “Fox and friends I” (Ford is the fox)

In any case, Ford and Rock are very good at what they do; not only do I truly enjoy the little romantic drama they play out in Lips Together,  the video has gotten me off quite a few times. I looked forward to an April in which the Ford-Rock team would help to bring me rapid ejaculational pleasure at (roughly) dawn and dusk, on a regular basis. This was not to be. I found the dicks in the photo — dicks I treasured in action in Lips Together — unarousing, and that was distressing. (Your mileage might vary, of course; I’m giving you a report, not advice.)

The dicks are even nicely paired: Ford’s about an inch shorter than Rock’s, cut to Rock’s uncut, slimmer and more elegant than Rock’s thicker dick. If you’re into size, Rock would be a good man for you; he’s short, so his 7ʺ pornstar-standard dick looks truly impressive. All of this is wonderful, I’m a dick-loving faggot, these guys have equipment that’s both fine and familiar and nicely contrasted too — but in the photo those dicks just looked — to me — like lifeless dangly bits somehow attached to Ford and Rock’s very attractive bodies. (In contrast, thank god, for this month Brock Banks was shot offering a pulsingly warm and tempting dick, with visible veining and a very long foreskin — a dick that has already worked for me, and this is only the third day of the month.)

You can see the calendar for May, in situ in an intimate corner of my bedroom, in this photo of mine:

(#9) The man of the CockyBoys homomonth is always there for me; as a further plus, Banks has been posed with slightly parted lips and somewhat narrowed eyes, giving some subtle cues of a sexual persona (I really really want to have readable faces, indeed faces that read as open, available, likable, and amiable)

One website selling calendars advertises the Cocky Boys calendars as “art-house erotica” that’s “perfect for the bedroom or den” — so I’ll want to have a few words here (well, in a bonus section at the end of this posting) about the term den as, in NOAD’s careful second definition,

informal a small, comfortable room in a house where a person can pursue an activity in private.

(in the calendar world, a room serving as a private place for private parts); and also note that “art-house erotica” refers here to professionally done photographs with a laser-like focus on dick, dick, dick (well, why are they called Cocky Boys?), to the point where the models are posed with neutral, mostly unreadable, facial expressions (not a one of the 2022 models is smiling), presumably so as not to detract from the lure of the fabulous phalluses. A presentational strategy that seems to have backfired for me: my well-documented peniphilia is totally overwhelmed by my fascination with people’s faces, so I pretty much disregard the dicks, in order to struggle to wrest some kind of content from the faces.

In fact, when I cropped some of the photos to isolate the cocks — they’re in yesterday’s AZBlogX posting — I discovered that the calendars provide a fine sampling of the variety in mostly Euro white-boy dicks with pornstar dimensions (this is a gigantic niche market). Some quite moving for a person with my genital tastes. (I note that it’s quite easy to pursue cock-lust as a pleasant diversion in the midst of a complex and busy life; I mean, it takes less time than doing the housework, and as a mental activity it can run in parallel with lots of other lines of thought.)

Bonus: den, living room, parlo(u)r. Three lexical items in the semantic domain of rooms in domestic housing: the term den is metaphorical, based on a similarity to the lairs of wild animals; the term parlo(u)r is metonymical, associating the room with the activity of talking (via the French verb); the term living room is a specialized N + N compound, with basic meaning ‘a room for living (in)’ (living as opposed to eating, sleeping, bathing, etc.). But that’s etymology; this is usage

My initial impression was that dens, under that name, were American things from the mid-20th century. Which was, of course, where I came across the word. So my impression was merely a reflection of my experience; in reporting it, I was acting like an ordinary person, not a lexicography-adjacent linguist.

Ordinary people go on their personal experiences — I mean, what else could they do? They have no panoptic view of usage at different times and places and in different communities (they do have hints in the variation they hear around them, but they have no systematic knowledge, nor any easy way to come by such a thing — nor much reason to seek it out).

But as a lexicography-adjacent linguist, I actually have ways to get something more like a panoptic view. And my sources tell me that room-den has been around a long time.

From NOAD:

noun den: [a] a wild animal’s lair or habitation. [b] informal a small, comfortable room in a house where a person can pursue an activity in private. [c] a place where people meet in secret, typically to engage in some illicit activity: an opium den | a den of iniquity.[d] mainly US a small subdivision of a Cub Scout pack.

OED2 under den:

3. c. colloquial. A small room or lodging in which a man can seclude himself for work or leisure; as, ‘a bachelor’s den’. [all the cites:]

1771 T. Smollett Humphry Clinker I. 238 So saying, he retreated into his den.

1816 W. Scott Let. 26 Nov. (1933) IV. 302 A little Boudoir..a good eating-room and a small den for myself in particular.

1882 Blackwood’s Edinb. Mag. Dec. 709 [He] went off in the direction of his own den, a little room in which he smoked and kept his treasures.

Then we look at the longer treatment in Wikipedia, we see, first of all, quite significant variation. In the details of the referents (in the association with men, as in OED2, for example), in the functions to which dens are put, and in way in which a conceptual distinction between kinds of activities for which we have the labels private and public enters into the matter:

A den is a small room in a house where people can pursue activities in private.

In North America, the type of rooms described by the term den varies considerably by region. It is used to describe many different kinds of bonus rooms, including family rooms, libraries, TV rooms, home cinemas, spare bedrooms, studies or retreats.

… In some places, particularly in parts of the British Isles, a small den may be known as a snug.

While living rooms tend to be used for entertaining company on formal occasions, dens, like other family rooms, tend to lean toward the more informal. In houses that do not have dedicated family rooms or recreation rooms, a den may fill that niche. Dens can also be private areas primarily used by adult members of the household, possibly restricting access to the room by their children. Dens with home theatre systems and large screen televisions may be referred to as media rooms instead.

Dens can serve the same purpose as cabinets in the past, becoming a modern man cave — a place for men to gather and entertain. In such cases, the design and decor may be distinctively masculine.

All of this is amplified enormously for parlo(u)r. The short take from NOAD:

noun parlor: 1 dated a sitting room in a private house: they had lunch in the parlor | [as modifier]:  she knocked on the parlor door. 2 [a] a room in a public building for receiving guests: the mayor’s parlor. [b] a room in a monastery or convent that is set aside for conversation. 3 [usually with modifier] a shop or business providing specified goods or services: a funeral parlor | an ice cream parlor. 4 (also milking parlor) a room or building equipped for milking cows.

But then we have a little essay from OED3 (June 2005) on the noun parlour / parlor (the history of usages suggesting a tension between places to talk in private and places for public talk):

A. I. 2. b. In a private house: a sitting room; esp.the main family living room, or the room reserved for entertaining guests (now somewhat archaic). …

Often, before c1700, applied to a bedroom, but thereafter most commonly used of a sitting room. N.E.D. (1904) noted that parlour was in that period (i.e. the late 19th and early 20th cent.) the name given to ‘the ordinary sitting-room of the family, which, when more spacious and handsomely furnished, is usually called the drawing-room.’  Cent. Dict. (1890) recorded that ‘In the United States, where the word drawing-room is little used, parlor is the general term for the room used for the reception of guests’. In English regional use the word was formerly applied spec. to the inner or more private room of a two-roomed house, cottage, or small farmhouse, which was variously used (according to locality, affluence of household, etc.) as the living room of the family (as distinct from the kitchen), or as the ‘best room’ (as distinct from the ordinary living room). [1st cite 1448]

Given all this, you should be very reluctant to ask what parlo(u)r really means.

Things don’t really get better for living room, except that OED3 lacks the essay. And that now instead of the private / public distinction, we get the general / specific and informal / formal distinctions (much unpacking of concepts needed in all three cases):

NOAD: noun living room: a room in a house for general and informal everyday use: the apartment has a comfy living room with sofas, chairs, TV, and dining table.

OED3 (Dec. 2016): 1. A room in a house for general and informal everyday use (as opposed to a bedroom, dining room, etc.). Also U.S.: a more formal room, used for receiving guests. …