(That’s AmE pants, roughly equivalent to BrE trousers. This posting is about men’s clothing and men’s bodies and gets fairly racy — it starts with a guy with his hands in his pants and sex on his mind — so some readers might want to exercise caution.)

So you’re a straight white guy, from North America or some place culturally similar. A photographer wants to take your picture. How do you pose your body? In particular, what do you do with your hands? More generally, what do you do with your hands when they’re not actually involved in your current activity? Then, what role do your lower garments — trousers, shorts, maybe underpants — play in the placement of your hands? And what, if anything, does your choice of placement signify?

So: adventures in hand-pants (or manual-bracal) kinesics.

Sexy hands. Let’s dive right into the image from yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad:

(#1) From the DJX Trough line [troughs are for pigs, in particular sexpigs]: harness and shorts in white, model with his hand in those shorts, inspecting his equipment

The extremely hunky model has recently appeared on this blog with his hand once again in his shorts — decidedly revealing black mesh shorts, and he’s visibly holding his penis (fuzzed out in the reproduction below) between thumb and forefinger — while flashing an intense cruise-face:

(#2) An underwear ad framed as a sexual advertisement (or vice versa), from my 10/1 posting “Up to the line, and sometimes over”

Before these two pants-hand ads, the same model, also in mesh harness and trunks (but in white this time), with his fists framing the pouch, and with that intense facial expression (now in a sidelong glare), which I read here as a challenge: fight or fuck:

(#3) Once again a significant conjunction of hands and pants, and a sexually freighted one, but now with the hands outside the pants

So far two sexual scenarios for hand-pant hanky-panky (handy-panty?): trolling for a partner or going solo (in either self-admiration or self-satisfaction). And, independently, with the manual gesture either outside the pants or in them, but in either case engaging with the pants via metonymy: the pants figure in it through their association with the man’s genitals.

Three more hands-in-pants shots, one playful, two intensely sexual:

(#4) A Valentine’s Day one-hand twink image, skirting “the line between covering the genitals and revealing them and also, independently, the line between protecting the genitals and fondling them” (text from my “Up to the line” posting); an image that offers a face and a (shirtless) torso as well as a crotch, for a three-faceted display of masculinity

(#5) A very steamy two-hand hunk image (whose ultimate source I haven’t traced), another three-faceted display, with a different body type from #4, and with the crotch figuring in the composition only by suggestion

(#6) A carefully composed photograph (a Getty image by Fuse): entirely crotch-focused, with one hand in the man’s jeans, apparently fist-stroking his (not visible) penis while the other hand holds his fly open

Negligent hands. Men put their hands in their pants with sexual intent, as above; but also, of course, to urinate, or to scratch an itchy crotch, or to adjust the position of their genitals or their underwear. And also without conscious purpose, negligently, usually for reasons they can’t clearly formulate. The gestures are often associated with particular social groups,  particular presentations of self, and particular contexts, in complex ways; to some degree, men (tacitly) pick up these gestures within their (sub)cultures, in much the same way they pick up phonetic gestures associated with dialects and personas.

There’s a certain amount of popular writing that aims to explain why men engage in displays like these two (from well-known actors):

(#7) Luke Perry in Teen Beat magazine some years ago: both hands

(#8) Zac Efron (photo by Gonzalo): one hand (with some bare torso)

And not just in such very public contexts: a fair number of men, relaxing at home in jeans or underwear, rest one hand (or sometimes both) in their pants, and some put their hands in their pants without thought on more public occasions. The popular-media explanations offered for this behavior — for instance, in a Men’s Health article of 9/4/15 — are that the men are protecting their genitals; that they are warming their hands; that they find the gesture comforting (but not sexual), soothing in much the same way as a light massage (grabbing their junk is an anxiety-relieving gesture for some men); or that they are performing a display of dominance over other men.

Hands in pockets. Searching on “hands in pants” pulls up a fair number of sources about hands in pockets, a state intermediate between being outside the pants and being fully inside. As here:

(#9) Scott Disick, actor and ex-boyfriend of Kourtney Kardashian, with his hands fully in his pockets

Very often, though, the hands in pockets have their thumbs out, so they’re only partway in the pockets, and also frame the crotch:

(#10) Actor Daniel Craig, hands in pockets, thumbs out

(11) Tennis player Novak Djkovic, hands in pockets, thumbs out (also shirtless)

Hooked hands. One step further, preserving the C-shaped framing of the crotch by the hands, but with no more than a thumb in a pocket. A progression of photos of gay pornstar Dirk Caber (all shirtless):

(12) Thumbs hooked on both pockets (of trousers)

(13) One thumb hooked on a pocket, one on a waistband (of jeans)

(14) Both thumbs hooked on a waistband (of a jock strap)

And, finally, actor Victor Webster, shirtless:

(15) Both thumbs hooked on a waistband (of briefs)

None of the hooked-hands poses actually have a hand inside pants, but they do mirror hands-in-pants action from the outside of the pants — displaced gestures related to crotch grabs. As in Calvin Klein’s celebrated underwear ads featuring Marky Mark / Mark Wahlberg:

(16) Crotch grab on the left; on the right, Marky’s package framed merely by his hands at his sides

Hands in pockets are sometimes said to indicate shyness, on what evidence I do not know. Certainly, the thumbs-out variants don’t look insecure or inhibited to me. And then the hooked-hands gestures look assertive or even aggressive to me.

(Underwear models performing displays of their bodies as sexual objects and, through their attire, stance, and facial expression, projecting personas. So: definitely carnal, but not down and dirty — mostly reflections on styles of masculiity and styles of male homosexuality — but not to everyone’s taste.)

The Daily Jocks ad from the 9th is another in a series of DJX Varsity mesh offers featuring a forbiddingly / seductively hyper-masculine character I’ll call the MeshMaster, from the tough-top persona the character projects. But this time the MeshMaster has accessorized with a bit of high-gay fashion, a neon pink harness under his black mesh crop top:

(#1) Macho on the outside; on the inside, behind the black mesh curtain, flamboyance — which he secretly treasures (his right hand, inside, pointing to the harness, is the visual center of the composition)

Yet another chapter in what I’ve called butch fagginess, sending  mixed messages: simultaneously high-macho and flagrantly gay.

The 10/9 display. The ad copy:

Channel your inner quarterback with the new Varsity Mesh crop top, featuring a slim athletic cut cropped just above the belly button showing off just enough to leave them wanting more. [On male crop tops, see my 8/2/18 posting with that title. Yes, athletic wear, but also designed to display a man’s abs, either young and vulnerable or muscular and solid.]

Pair with a Neon DJX harness to make your outfit pop. [Send a second, fashion, message.]

The crop top on its own (now with a more prominent pouch):

(#2)

And the harness on its own:

(#3)

A DJX contrast. The DJX line has been using another model in its ads, in the character I’ve called Mango Meshman in earlier postings, in particular in my 5/24/19 posting “The ballet of Mango Meshman”. A sample ad, with Mango Meshman showing off in a DJX Trough [suggesting pigs] ensemble in blue:

(#4)

Mango Meshman in perfectly color coordinated clothes (harness, jockstrap, shorts, and socks) — fetishwear with style, for fun. He’s a playful, amiably exhibitionistic, sex-sweaty hunk who often displays his ass — a sex toy on the hoof.

Contrast this with the Meshmaster, above and in my 10/5 posting “A man his hands, his pants”:

(#5)

Butch fagginess: the DJ history. It started with my 8/14/18 posting “Butch fagginess”:

(#6)

Some premium men’s underwear firms advertise to men in general (and women who buy clothes for men), though with a special pitch to gay men, but a few — among them, Barcode Berlin — aim themselves directly at a queer clientele. BB’s crop tees display attractive midriffs, and the models project muscular masculinity — solidly butch — but the tees also convey sociosexual messages in teasing and boastful ways that echo the open banter of queer men amongst themselves, acting faggy: faggy minus fem(me), butch fagginess).

… These garments scream “I’m queer! And butch! And that’s wonderful! You too?” They’re advertisements for one specifically gay style of masculinity. There are others: celebratorily fem(me)/sissy styles …; gender-fluid styles; “regular guy” homosexuality (attempting to adopt all the trappings of heteronormative masculinity except for the sex of one’s partner); MSM “just sex” configuration of male-male pairing (embracing mansex  as celebratory male bonding while rejecting gay as identity, community, or source of affectional partnership); and hypermasculine homosexuality (Berlin Barcode caters to this audience in many of its products).

And went on to a second chapter in my 8/14/19 posting “Il Leopardo di Sparta”, about the Italian brand Sparta’s Harness, offering premium harnesses as fetishwear for men:

(#7)

An item of classic leather gear, the harness (offered by a company named after the warlike and stoic Spartan state), pressed into service in the latex items as playful, fashion-conscious, kicky (recalling the delicious excesses of the Versace firm). Simultaneously conveying a high-macho identity and a flagrantly gay one: the message of what I’ve called, in a 8/14/18 posting, butch fagginess

And from there to the MeshMaster.

(Highly sexualized men’s underwear, leading to blunt talk of men’s bodies and mansex. Lots of other content, but this is enough to put it out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest.)

Today’s Daily Jocks ad, for a new line of underwear for the PUMP! company — the image is meant to be outrageous, fey, macho, and funny, all at once — with their ad copy:

(#1) The all new Space Candy Collection from PUMP! has launched. A new take on PUMP’s classic shape, available in Space Candy Pink & Purple. [available as a boxer (boxer brief), (low-rise) brief, and jock]

An image crammed with content — incuding those little candy-themed patches on the front (on the hip or pouch) and the back (on one cheek) of the garments.

Butch fagginess, take 4. All in all, an image that’s an exercise in butch fagginess, mostly gay-playful in pink and purple, but with big hard muscles and clearly defined dicks (especially on the man on the left, in the pink boxer brief, with the outlines of his dickhead clearly visible through the fabric of the boxers); all this further butched up by the addition of hardware, especially the phallic futuristic hand weapons. So combining phallic display with the offer of oral satisfaction — the underwear equivalent of sucking a lollipop symbolically.

The ad is then the fourth chapter in my adventures in butch-faggy undergarments. The previous chapter, with links to earlier postings, is my 10/12 posting “Butch fagginess, take 3”.

Two of the garments up close:

(#2) The (baby) pink jock and the (dark) purple brief; a pink jockstrap nicely combines max-macho in the underwear world with high-faggy in color symbolism

Pink jockstraps (which deserve a separate posting) generally take us off the end of the pier at the butch-faggy boardwalk: what we’ve got there is usually a stone-solid muscle queen, a guy with the best of male musculature, in a way-high homo presentation of self. (This is not mockery: I find such men entertaining to be around — they are certainly ornamental — and admirable — you have to be really sure of yourself to pull this off — and incredibly hot sexually.)

It would be hard to beat this incorporation of a pink jockstrap into a My Homo Pony presentation:

(#3) Beyond butch-faggy: from my 5/14/16 posting “Pretty in pink: my homo pony”

Firearms and the man. (The image in #1 might well be a take-off on a specific space epic from popular culture; but I didn’t recognize it as such.)

#1 is all about the underwear the three men are wearing, and it’s also all about the weapons, the firearms they are brandishing. Whose function in the ad is to serve as heavy phallic symbols: the men have dicks in their pants and dicks in their hands. But at a deeper level, the men in the ad are, metonymically, their weapons; and they also are, metonymically, their dicks. In the military triple equation, man = penis = weapon. From my 3/23/18 posting “What does a wooden penis mean?”, about Finnish camp cocks and their meanings for the military men who display them:

(#4) A Finnish camp cock being deployed

It’s not that men are being encouraged to see their penises as weapons, but the reverse: they’re being encouraged to see their rifles as extensions of their own bodies, to identify with their weapons, as in the Rifleman’s Creed, in which the soldier’s dependence on and reverence for his rifle — so great that it’s like a part a part of his body — is explicit. Soldiers are trained to identify with their weapons and care for them as they would parts of their own bodies, because that attitude is literally life-saving for them.

On the Rifleman’s Creed, from Wikipedia:

The Rifleman’s Creed (also known as My Rifle and The Creed of the United States Marine) is a part of basic United States Marine Corps doctrine. Major General William H. Rupertus wrote it during World War II, probably in late 1941 or early 1942. In the past, all enlisted Marines would learn the creed at recruit training. However, in recent years the creed has been relegated to the back pages of the standard recruit training guide book and its memorization is no longer considered doctrine for recruits.

From the text as it appears in the movie Full Metal Jacket (1987):

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me.

…  Before God, I swear this creed. My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

The Rifle/Gun Chant. This would have been a natural point for me to bring the underwear phallicity topic to a close, with only some footnotes on Space Candy to add, but a mention of Full Metal Jacket in connection with firearms and male genitals leads inescapably to a chant that became a bit of pop culture because of its appearance in the movie. It is, somewhat remarkably, about a point of linguistic usage: on the use of the nouns gun and rifle.

Now, in current everyday English usage, gun is the superordinate term for a large class of weapons that includes cannons, rifles, and handguns. From NOAD, showing some of the category structure:

noun gun: 1 a weapon incorporating a metal tube from which bullets, shells, or other missiles are propelled by explosive force, typically making a characteristic loud, sharp noise… [OED2 reports a specialized use for handguns in I.3.b.: A pistol or revolver. originally U.S. [1st cite 1744, then through 1971]]

– noun cannon: 1 [a] a large, heavy piece of artillery, typically mounted on wheels, formerly used in warfare. [b] an automatic heavy gun that fires shells from an aircraft or tank …

– noun firearm: a rifle, pistol, or other portable gun.

— noun rifle-1: a gun, especially one fired from shoulder level, having a long spirally grooved barrel intended to make a bullet spin and thereby have greater accuracy over a long distance.

— noun handgun: a gun designed for use by one hand, especially a pistol or revolver.

But in American military usage, rifle is in contrast with gun (meaning ‘handgun’), rather than subordinate to it. I don’t know the history of this usage, but in part it seems to have been motivated by a desire to deprecate handguns as street weapons and to elevate rifles as proper military weapons. In any event, as a consequence of this distinction in technical usage, it became necessary to indoctrinate newcomers to riflery, especially in the military, in this usage — specifically, to warn them off using gun to refer to a rifle. As a boy taking riflery classes in summer camp, I got the standard indoctrination, a brief memorable dirty rhyme for guys.

Instructor picks up rifle, shoulders it, recites “This is my rifle”. Then with his other hand he grabs his crotch and mimes masturbation, “And this is my gun”. Looks to the side at the rifle, “This is for fighting”. Glances down at his crotch, “And this is for fun”. You only have to do that once for boys, and they don’t have to rehearse it. They get it, and they appreciate the outrage of the instructor‘s telling a dirty joke. (There was, of course a gigantic subterranean camp trade in dirty jokes of all kinds.)

That was around 70 years ago, and for years after that a guy could get a quick laugh just by saying (in the right context) “This is my rifle”, as an allusion to the full formula.

From the evidence of Full Metal Jacket, it would appear that the Rifle / Gun Chant was incorporated at some point into the rigors of boot camp for Marine Corps recruits. From Wikipedia:

United States Marine Corps Recruit Training (commonly known as “boot camp”) is a 13-week program “including in & out-processing” of initial training that each recruit must successfully complete in order to serve in the United States Marine Corps.

A scene in FMJ (which you can watch here (#5)) in which recruits run through repeated recitations of the chant, guns on shoulders, hands grabbing crotches, in a still shot for memic purposes:

(#6)

Information about the use of the chant in actual Marine Corps boot camp isn’t easily available in on-line searches, but I assume that there’s plenty in reporting about and fictional representations of the Corps’s practices.

For what it’s worth, my postings on guns as phallic images on this blog and AZBlogX (inventoried in a Page on phallicity-general) have cannons and handguns, but no rifles. My postings that touch on military gay porn are, of course, dense with rifles and free of handguns.

Space Candy. Not just kicky PUMP! underwear, but also recreational plants and fun food.

First, from the Hytiva site (reporting with connoisseurship on cannabis offerings):

A mainstay of the Colorado cannabis market, Space Candy is a fairly even hybrid. When grown right, the flowers bear a light green hue, and the petals hold tons of orange pistils. Its buds exude a deliciously sweet-and-sour berry scent, and when smoked it leaves an aftertaste of burnt apple.

Deliciously sweet-and-sour berry scent, with an aftertaste of burnt apple. Swoon.

Then, from the Bakers Party Shop site:

(#7) Outer space candy sprinkles “for decorating Alien birthday party cakes, cookies, cupcakes and more!”

So a gay man of suitable sensibilities might hoist his junk in a cute pink Space Candy jock while offering guests at his jockstrap party some primo Space Candy weed, and then cupcakes topped with Space Candy sprinkles for when the munchies set in.

Note: jockstrap parties are very much a thing. Two ads from a great many — the first with the down and dirty right out in front, the second more decorous and Prideful:

(#8)

(#9)

I was never sure enough of the desirability of my body to show it off at a jockstrap party, but I did have a faggy pink jockstrap that was strictly for private display, for my man Jacques’s pleasure. He thought it was funny, and really hot.

(A lot about jockstraps and their contents, so not to everyone’s taste.)

Following on my postings about butch fagginess in men’s underwear, more intersections of styles of masculinity with styles of homosexuality, still with men’s underwear as signs of these styles.

The background, from my 10/14 posting “Space Candy”

(#1) A (candy) pink jock in PUMP!’s playful Space Candy line, with my note: “a pink jockstrap nicely combines max-macho in the underwear world with high-faggy in color symbolism”

Pink jockstraps (which deserve a separate posting [this is it]) generally take us off the end of the pier at the butch-faggy boardwalk: what we’ve got there is usually a stone-solid muscle queen, a guy with the best of male musculature, in a way-high homo presentation of self.

But not always: the ways of both gender identity and sexuality identity are complex (and I can offer the vision of me in nothing but a candy-pink jock — an actual historical event (from decades ago), but not available in a photograph — as but one evidence of their intricacies).

So here’s the thing about jockstraps: they are symbols of active masculinity by virtue of

(a) their association with men’s athletics and locker rooms; for some men, the sight of a jockstrap is enough to evoke the muscular exertions of men’s sports and even the smell of male sweat in a locker room; and

(b) the fact that they encase the male genitals in a pouch (so, metonymically,  they’re symbols of those genitals) and, as an unintended side effect, they thrust the package forward and display it

Meanwhile, from the rear view, they frame and display the male buttocks, which have characteristically masculine forms, but also serve (metonymically again, by the association of the buttocks with the anus) as symbols of receptive sexuality.

So there’s a lot in there for queer guys.

The color pink. The candy pink in #1 is a pale red of low saturation. The pink of this pink triangle is a bit darker, more saturated, and slightly more bluish in hue:

(#2) The pink triangle as gay symbol, from the Wikipedia article on the symbol

This shade of pink is in the middle between the light, pastel pinks and the darker, more saturated, neon shades of some pink jocks:

(#3) From the International Jock site, the Puma Pro-Tech Jockstrap in (neon) pink

Contrast #3 with this playful minimal jock (probably used mostly for display of the goods rather than sporting action):

(#4) Also from the International Jock site, the Gregg Homme Bubble G’Homme Jockstrap in (pastel bubble-gum) pink

On the color pink and its variants, from Wikipedia:

In optics, the word “pink” can refer to any of the pale shades of colors between bluish red to red in hue, of medium to high lightness, and of low to moderate saturation. Although pink is generally considered a tint of red, the hues of most shades of pink are slightly bluish, and lie between red and magenta. A few variations of pink, such as salmon color, lean toward orange.

Pink jocks tend to be fairly strongly differentiated in shade, either saturated and bright (interpretable as flaunty, aggressive, or macho) or pastel and light (interpretable as elegant, seductive, playful, or effeminate). These ranges of color interpretation come from the wider culture — so that it’s unikely that a straight guy would wear something like #4 in the locker room. In queer contexts, on jockstraps, they lend their color connotations to the complex high-masculine symbolism of the jockstrap itself, to yield an assortment of different homomasculine presentations of self — complexes of styles of masculinity with styles of homosexuality — which we can only hint at through labels like gay macho, butch faggy, jock fem, or sissy hunk.

And then of course, pink jockstraps (like much more mundane things) are what we make of them; they come with some built-in and easily available affordances, but there’s a lot you can do with those. Here I’ll just open the topic up a little bit further, given the three examples above as background.

Playing with your pink jockstrap. One pastel pink example and one saturated pink example (with a side excursion to a remarkable bikini brief related in spirit to the second of these).

First, from the Touch of Modern site, “Filthy jockstrap // pink cheeks”:

(#4) “The Filthy Collection uses a custom, dirty wash over a stretch fabric blend to create a grungy look. Made with C-IN2’s sustainable stretch cotton blend, it’s a lot of edge in body-hugging package.”

Basic butch faggy — the dick and balls displayed in the pouch of a jockstrap, but in feminine pink — overlaid with the high-macho message of filth: negligent masculine mess, deliberate sexual dirtiness. (Actually, if they han’t told me that the jock was supposedto be filthy, I would have taken it to be a delicate abstract pattern in pink and gray.)

Then, way flagrant, in saturated pink, with lace straps — their fagginess offset by a sturdy pouch (and waistband) of masculine black stretch microfiber: a Mensuas CandyMan jockstrap in pink (also available in black, blue, and green):

(#5) CandyMan, front view

(#6) CandyMan, rear view

A fun jock. It’s hard for me to imagine a situation in which you’d wear such a thing seriously, in any sense of seriously, but I’m willing to be illuminated. And then we have a more thoroughgoing adventure in pink lace (in a bikini brief rather than a jockstrap, but it’s the same basic idea): on amazon.com,

(#7) The aishani Sissy Pouch Panties: bikini briefs for men (“sexy panties for men”), in 10 colors

What a wonderful object: maximum display of the dick, plus all that lovely pink lace, and the name Sissy Pouch Panties. In this case I know someone who really would, seriously, wear this garment.

Some years ago I made the acquaintance of a young man — call him Todd — for whom this would have been the absolutely perfect piece of underwear. Todd was fond of wearing pink lace panties, but lamented not being able to find ones that allowed him to comfortably display his fairly sizable dick, of which he was both fond and proud. (He settled on women’s panties in large sizes, but they really weren’t the objects of his undergarment desire.)

Todd saw himself as a gay/queer man (that is, as a man and as a man whose sexual desires were directed at other men), but as a particular species or subtype of queer, namely a sissy, a homomasculine identity that for him meant not actual identification with women, but instead an identification with a particular ideal of fagginess; he recognized that there were a number of such ideals, but his personal one involved emotional submissiveness, frivolous playfulness in queer contexts, much affectionate behavior, great pleasure in secretly wearing certain items of female apparel (of which pink lace panties were the apotheosis), and a powerful oral-insertive, anal-receptive pattern of sexual desire, which he thought of as having a hot (literal) dick and a hot (figurative) cunt. (Who knows where such emotional configurations come from? Who cares? But there it was.)

He was quite clear that he didn’t want to be a woman; he wanted to be the best damn sissy in the world. (Meanwhile, he was stuck in a small Southern town, and I was a telephone call to the world of his dreams.)

This was many years ago, and we didn’t have the genderqueer label then, but I doubt that Todd would have accepted it. From NOAD:

adj. genderqueer: denoting or relating to a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders … noun: a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders …

The label has some utility if used fairly narrowly, but if it takes in any sort of departure from conventional gender associations, then it takes in far too much: just in the world of queer men, it would cover men who engage in mansex but reject affectionate relationships; men who are exclusively bottoms; men who are oriented only towards men and are affectionate with their partners but take only insertive roles in sex; and on and on. Todd envisioned a world of homomasculine identities that went beyond gender and sexual orientation, but that had a nameable place for him in it. Talking with him about his ideal of sissyhood (in interludes between episodes of telephone sex and friendly chat about our daily lives) connected to the sociolinguistic literature on personas and encouraged me to appreciate that larger world of homomasculine identities.

(Hunky young men with very little on, in a sexualized context, so not for everyone.)

The Daily Jocks ad for 11/13, with ad copy, plus a caption, and then further illustrations for the caption:

(#1) “Introducing the Covert collection by [fantasy homowear company] CellBlock13: This jockstrap features a snap off pouch made of luxuriously smooth coated PU [polyurethane] that showcases your goods just right, and extra-soft fleece w/ u-bulge on the inside will feel great against your package. Available in Red, Blue & Khaki.”

HardSoft

a gleaming carapace
black hardness
guarding

soft sweet pleasure
within

the stark metal gate is
both protector and
entryway for

sumptuous indolence
lavish indulgence
elegant depravity

langorous
carnality

The metal gate:

(#2) A metal door to the Lima Cathedral (constructed 1535-1649): the central gateway, called the Portada del Perdón ‘door of forgiveness’)

And the langorous carnality, on luxurious sheets:

(#3) From The Gay Side of Life blog, on the page “Colors of Nude Men”

On the underwear company. From my 7/23/17 posting “Codpieces on Cellblock 13”:

ad copy for the bodywear company, from Daily Jocks:

CellBlock13 is the raunchy big daddy to its founder Timoteo. Created with a unique style for the man that likes to get down and dirty in his underwear choices, you’ll love CellBlock13’s risqué and seductive designs.

A serendipitous note. While I was assembling the materials for this posting this morning — in fact, right after I found the iron door photo in #2 — Max Vasilatos arrived to go out for lunch with me, bearing a little present, a spiral-bound blank notebook, one created from a used book, with occasional pages from the actual book interpolated. Specifically, the 1923 novel The Mine with the Iron Door, set around Tucson AZ, by Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944), who churned out best-selling books that were poorly received by reviewers.

(#4) Cover of the 1923 novel

I take pleasure in reading the title as an alternative title for #1, understanding the snap-on / snap-off polyurethane pouch of the Covert jockstrap the model Duro (as I think of him) is wearing there as the figurative iron gate to Duro’s figurative mineral resources, his package.

The snippets of the novel in the notebook are hard to endure. Tons of thick Western-yokel dialect:

”I’m a-tellin’ ye that them thar Pardners an’ their gal — Marta her name is — are th’ beatenest outfit ye er ary other man ever seed. Ain’t nbody kin figger ’em out, nohow. They’ve been here nigh about five year, too. Me an’ paw an’ maw, we been here eight year ourselves — comin’ this fall. Yes, sir, they’re sure a queer actin’ lot.” (p. 7)

(On the plus side, “(They’re) Sure a Queer Actin’ Lot” could serve as a title for the photo in #3.)

With occasional exposition in archly elevated diction:

And no one could have failed to mark the eager viciousness of the Lizard’s expression as the loose-mouthed creature ruminated on the delectable gossip he was about to offer. (p. 7)

I am not moved to search out a copy of the whole book — though it sold vast numbers of copies and was made into film twice, as a silent in 1924 and as a talkie in 1936 (presumably on the basis of its setting and plot).

(Later in this posting there are a couple of raunchy men’s underwear ads, and some cautiously worded references to men’s bodies and mansex, so some readers might want to exercise caution.)

Ruthie and Joe in the One Big Happy from 10/9:

(#1)

Three senses of (ir)regular in just four panels. All traceable ultimately to the Latin noun regula ‘rule’, with rule understood as in NOAD:

noun rule: 1 [a] one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity or sphere: the rules of the game were understood. [b] a principle that operates within a particular sphere of knowledge, describing or prescribing what is possible or allowable: the rules of grammar. …

The range of senses of regular is impressively large, and illustrates a whole variety of mechanisms of semantic change; the three senses above are a microcosm of this greater world.

From NOAD:

adj. regular: 1 [a] arranged in or constituting a constant or definite pattern, especially with the same space between individual instances: place the flags at regular intervals | a regular arrangement. [b] (of a structure or arrangement) arranged in or constituting a symmetrical or harmonious pattern: beautifully regular, heart-shaped leaves. [c] Botany (of a flower) having radial symmetry. 2 [a] recurring at uniform intervals: a regular monthly check | her breathing became deeper, more regular. [b] done or happening frequently: regular border clashes | parties were a fairly regular occurrence. [c] (of a person) doing the same thing or going to the same place frequently or at uniform intervals: a regular visitor. [d] (of a person) defecating or menstruating at predictable times. 3 [a] conforming to or governed by an accepted standard of procedure or convention: policies carried on by his deputies through regular channels. [b] [attributive] of or belonging to the permanent professional armed forces of a country: a regular soldier. [c] (of a person) properly trained or qualified and pursuing a full-time occupation: a strong distrust of regular doctors. [d] Christian Church subject to or bound by religious rule; belonging to a religious or monastic order: the regular clergy. Contrasted with secular … [e] informal, dated rightly so called; complete; absolute (used for emphasis): this place is a regular fisherman’s paradise. 4 [a] used, done, or happening on a habitual basis; usual; customary: I couldn’t get an appointment with my regular barber | our regular suppliers. [b] chiefly North American of a normal or ordinary kind; not special: it’s richer than regular pasta. [c] North American (of a person) not pretentious or arrogant; ordinary and friendly: advertising agencies who try to portray their candidates as regular guys. [d] (chiefly in commercial use) denoting merchandise, especially food or clothing, of average, medium, or standard size: a shake and regular fries. [e] (in surfing and other board sports) with the left leg in front of the right on the board. 5 Grammar (of a word) following the normal pattern of inflection: a regular verb. 6 Geometry [a] (of a figure) having all sides and all angles equal: a regular polygon. [b] (of a solid) bounded by a number of equal figures.

The OBH strip is about regularity in sense 5 — very close to the etymological sense of rule, ‘a general principle about what is possible or allowable’, but specialized to the domain of grammar, in fact to inflectional morphology. The verb BRAKE (BSE brake – PST braked – PSP braked) is regular (in its inflectional morphology), while the verb BREAK (BSE break – PST broke – PSP broken) is irregular.

In the fourth panel, Joe introduces another sense, 2d, that’s a multiple specialization of sense 1 ‘arranged in a constant or definite pattern’, sense 1 being again close to the etymological sense of rule: arranged in a pattern of mathematically constant intervals, in fact such intervals of time (rather than space); and in fact such time intervals in the occurrence of bowel movements (which can be, um, regulated, according to conventional lore, by drinking prune juice). That’s sense 2d. Well, it’s half of sense NOAD‘s 2d, which, for the purpose of lexicographic economy, puts together the timing of bowel movements and menstrual periods, though on the basis of lexicopsychological reality the two things should certainly be treated as distinct senses.

Then in the second panel Joe gives us his version of sense 4c, which NOAD glosses as:

North American (of a person) not pretentious or arrogant; ordinary and friendly [which NOAD exemplifies with an occurrence of the conventional collocation, bordering on idiom, regular guy]

The general sense here is something like ‘behaving normatively’, which cashes out in different ways depending on the relevant reference class of people and the speaker’s experience of them. Not being pretentious or arrogant, being ordinary and friendly, are aspects of normative behavior in our culture. More specifically, for a kid like Joe in #1, a regular guy is one that’s cool and comes over to the house and plays video games and all that.

The semantic development of the senses in NOAD‘s group 4 from those in group 1 is a kind of metonymy, turning on the fact that something that occurs at regular intervals of time or space is likely to be perceived as frequent and as occurring by custom, hence as being the usual or normal thing. More generally, regularity is associated with frequency, custom, and normality, so regular comes to be used to convey ‘customary, normal’.

Further development: regular guy. An expression that evaluates someone according to their conformity to what are perceived to be the central and most salient characteristics of a guy, but someone who doesn’t stand out in any significant way.

Although regular guy has been attested in use for females, it’s mostly used for males and usually conveys normative masculinity (with all that comes with it: athleticism, competitiveness, emotional restraint, toughness, etc. though all in moderation, plus solid heterosexuality), along with openness, friendliness, fairness, and other likeable qualities, and also sociocultural averageness on a number of dimensions (celebrities, conspicuously rich people, artists and scholars, etc. will have a hard time counting as regular guys).

Closely related to, but sometimes held to be clearly distinct from, regular guy are, at least, the expressions:

ordinary guy, average guy, real guy, regular Joe

(A personal note: I am not, and have never been, a regular guy as described above, or anything close to it, though I do pretty well on the likeable qualities.)

regular guys as objects of desire. The Regular Guy is a stock character of advertising, where he is especially devoted to selling things directed to men, like tools, sports equipment, shaving accessories, and men’s clothing, in particular swim suits and underwear (both highly gendered). This last category is of special interest to me, because such apparel can be invested with not only gender content but also carnally sexual content: the display of the nearly naked male body is available as a source of pleasurable response from suitably minded viewers (of either gender), no matter how innocently it might be intended.

In brief: underwear ads are always available for service as soft porn (for straight women and gay men) — this is not even slightly a novel observation — and models presented as regular guys have figured in such advertising for a long time. (I intend to post separately on the hard (vs. soft) of hardcore porn, much as I reported on regular above, but for the moment I’ll just take the usage as given.)

From my 4/4/18 posting “More 1970s underwear”:

These [ads] were from the 1970s, when most underwear ads featured “regular guys” relating to each other as buddies (though these presentations sometimes went awry). Since then, premium men’s underwear firms have veered into porn territory, with models presenting themselves as sculpted lust objects, as in this Daily Jocks ad for Supawear from 10/27/17:

(#2)

Note the seductive facial expression and inviting open mouth.

The regular-guy underwear ads of older times composed this fictive persona out of a complex fabric of elements, among them:

— the presumed setting, characterizable roughly as warm family occasions (even if RG appears alone); RG is smiling, modestly or broadly; his gaze is directed not at us, the viewers, but off to the side, on other members of his family; he might appear with a baby (presumably his), with a boy (presumably his son), with a woman (presumably his wife, also in her underwear), or with a buddy (literally his brother, or the nice guy from next door), and they’re all smiling in a friendly way

— RG is good-looking, but not movie-star handsome; he is fit, but far from a muscle-hunk — admirable but in no way remarkable

— RG is in his appearance socially unremarkable: he is white; ideally of indeterminate ethnicity (excluding even men of conventionally attractive types, like Scandinavian and Italian); and of unremarkable class status (neither elegant nor attractively street-tough)

— RG is clean-shaven (older RGs sometimes have neatly trimmed beards, but RG is never scruffy) and he has a conservative, unremarkable haircut

— very often, though RG is hanging out in his underwear, he’s not bare-chested, not down to his underpants, but is wearing a top (also on sale); in general in these ads, even if he’s bare-chested, he’s not showing off his body, just happens to be modestly undressed

— RG’s hands are never on or near his crotch, nor is his crotch thrust forward or otherwise displayed; genital sex is downplayed as much as possible

— RG’s briefs are conservative in style, not low-cut or tight or with a framed pouch, and they are usually white, certainly not vividly colored; his boxers might be unobtrusively patterned; in any case, RG’s underpants should not call attention to themselves (because that would call attention to his crotch)

Despite all this effort to present the figure of a guy in his underpants as an object of commercial but not carnal desire — you were supposed to want to buy the underwear, not do the model — these ads had a long history of functioning as soft porn for gay boys and men; after all, they showed attractive men in their underpants, their desirable genitals just a thin layer of fabric away. All praise to brands like Fruit of the Loom and Munsingwear, to department stores and other stores that advertised them, and to newspapers that carried those ads.

Then came the time of the Underwear Gods, as Don DeLillo labeled the giant public-display figures advertising sex-drenched underwear, especially men’s premium briefs (a label easily extended to the models and to the genre of advertising); see my 10/19/10 posting “Underwear gods” and my 8/14/10 AZBlogX posting “Pits ‘n’ Tits: five underwear models”, with five flagrant illustrations (including Marky Mark for Calvin Klein).

In any case, the world shifted, as you can see by looking at my Page of links to underwear postings on this blog; in certain districts of the underwear universe, all the constraints on RG depictions have been thrown out the window, and we now have things like #2, and crotch-tease shots like this one from a 11/4 Daily Jocks ad:

(#3) I dreamed I cruised for blue-collar tricks in my hot-red Breedwell Cumdump jock

Yes, Breedwell is the brand name, “Dirty by Choice” (on the waistband) its motto, and Cumdump the model name; the intention behind the model name is that the wearer is advertising himself as an indiscriminate bottom — for barebacking, if the brand name is to be taken at face value. This is at the other end of the underwear-ad universe from this recent Macy’s ad:

(#4) “men’s underwear guide: boxers or briefs”

These are RGs for the 21st century, though Boxer Guy (on the right) would have been entirely at home in the mid-20th century. Briefs Guy (on the left) has been brought up-to-date a bit — he’s black, conspicuousy muscled, and wearing briefs in an eye-catching pattern. But his stance, gaze, and facial expression are those of an old-style RG, and the display of his briefs is not at all sexualized.

Both men are bare-chested and present themselves as amiable and approachable. So if there’s still a market for RG underwear models as lust objects, they should fill this function nicely.

But wait. There’s more.

regular guys as a homomasculine type. I’ll jump right in, with a quotation from former boy-band star Lance Bass, from Christopher Rice’s article “The Myth of ‘Straight-acting'” in the 10/10/06 Advocate (p.88):

Bass: I want people to take [from my coming-out] that being gay is a norm. That the stereotypes are out the window. . . . I’ve met so many people like me that it’s encouraged me. I call them the SAGs — the straight-acting gays. We’re just normal, typical guys. I love to watch football and drink beer.

And then a letter to the Advocate, 11/7/06, p. 12, from Joel A. Brown of Akron OH:

… All  Lance Bass was trying to say was that 80% to 90% of American gay males are just regular guys, and we don’t have to go out of our way to pretend to be flamboyant for others.  God loves us just the way we are — regular or flamboyant; either way is fine.  There is no need to read any negative connotations into one or the other.  God doesn’t, why should you?

(The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine.)

There’s a lot to unpack here, starting with the dichotomizing of the world of gay men; the implicit valuing of one pole over the other; the hidden assumption that some gay men’s presentations of self are just performances, pretenses. But my interest here is in the vocabulary used by Bass and the letter-writer — regular guy and straight-acting gay — both with some considerable history, not at all original to these guys, but conveniently packaged together in this Advocate material.

A fairly recent take of my own on the types of homomasculinity, from my 2/10/17 posting “Annals of adorable”, about the actors Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, an adorable married couple who are fools for kissing, in public or anywhere:

Presentations of self. In unstudied interactions, when they are not acting characters, NPH and DB present themselves rather differently. In these contexts, NPH is normatively masculine — not swaggeringly male, like his character Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, but just unremarkably masculine; you wouldn’t guess he’s gay (unless he talked about his life).

[The standard label for such a presentation is straight-acting, which I find deeply offensive. Some men who present this way refer to themselves as regular guys, which I still find problematic, because it seems to treat other men as deviant, abnormal. Here I’ll refer to such guys — bear in mind that I’m one of them — as NMGs, for ‘normatively masculine gays’, though you might want to treat that label as an orphan initialism, unmoored from its historical source, now just a label for a certain kind of person.]

DB, on the other hand, you’d peg almost immediately as gay, mostly from his facial expressions and a bit from his body language. It’s subtle, but to my eyes, unmistakable. He’s not nelly. He’s a type of gay man for which we have no standard label; I’ve come to refer to such men as pleasantly gay. (I have NMG friends, pleasantly gay friends, nelly friends, macho gay friends too; the world of gay men is diverse and complex.)

normatively masculine is a somewhat desperate label for men who get pegged as straight because they fail to give off signals that allow them easily to be identified as not straight; a great many of us NMGs are manifestly not literally normatively masculine, but we end up being taken for straight because of lingering effects of a belief in Natural Heterosexuality, the idea that everyone is by nature heterosexual and that homosexual desire and behavior are rare perversions of the natural order: aberrations, anomalies, disorders, malignities, whatever.

So lots of gay guys are taken for straight, are then said to be “passing for straight”, or to be “straight-acting” — because they give off no screaming alarm signals. These guys don’t form a coherent class;  some of them are poignantly conscious of being set apart from other men and having to forge a life that is assembled on the fly rather than following a familiar pattern; some believe they are entirely like normatively behaving straight men, differing from them only in the object of their sexual desires; and lots of things in between.

It’s hard to imagine what would be suitable label for this miscellany. In my 2017 posting I rejected regular guys and straight-acting gays, opting instead for an orphan initialism NMG — suggesting normatively masculine gay without committing  to the details.

Fortunately, this whole discussion is about categories and labels in a kind of technical analysis of the world of homomasculinity; I can get through a lot of daily life in ordinary English without needing to make these distinctions. But I do talk about my sexuality identity and for this I need everyday labels: at the basic level, homosexual, gay, queer, fag(got).

I’ve been working on reclaiming fag(got) for some years now. But increasingly I find myself up against some lexical matters that I hadn’t appreciated when I started the campaign.

Flying the fag. One manifestation: in conversation with an lgbtq friend, I’ll refer to myself as a fag, only to have them interrupt and say, in a tone of friendly correction, something like “But no one would know you’re gay”. So fag / faggot for them means something like ‘effeminate(ly) gay’ and so ‘obviously, identifiably gay’; it’s in the neighborhood of nelly, flamboyant, flaming / flamer, queen, sissy, and (especially) fem(me) (as opposed to butch).

I was then surprised to discover that this usage, specific to the lgbtq community, was not recorded in GDoS, which had only two subsenses: (orig. US) ‘a male homosexual’ (primarily used as an insult against such men, many of whom were assumed to be femme / nelly by nature, mincing and shrieking and offering their buttocks for intercourse); and (US campus/teen) ‘an offensive or unpopular person’.

Eventually I had a gay male acquaintance explain that fags / faggots were “the bad queers, the ones that give gay men a bad name” — it’s the fags and the freaks prancing around in revealing black leather. The visible ones.

Here I offer up a chant of praise for the New Yorker writer Hilton Als, who is, among many other things, the chronicler of his identity as a black femme gay man, a black faggot. I hope to post more on Als and on other admirable faggots (in this narrow sense), but for the moment I can cite my 9/11/19 posting “Giovanni in Ferragamo”.

From Tim Evanson on Facebook, this image of (literally) horny guys in nothing but pouch-thrusting underwear, sucking suggestively on spicy sticks for Christmas:

(#1)

From Tim, I learn that this entertaining photo — a still from a Xmas beefcake video — was created by the Sellers Dorsey Foundation in 2013 as part of a Full Frontal Freedom / Out2Enroll campaign encouraging gay men to enroll in Obamacare. The full video can be viewed on the OUT Magazine site.

Another still from the video, showing all four of the models dancing together playfully, to the sound of a parody version — “Get Enrolled” — of the seasonal song “Let It Snow”:

(#2)

On the song, from Wikipedia:

“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”, also known as “Let It Snow”, is a song written by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne in July 1945. It was written in Hollywood, California during a heat wave as Cahn and Styne imagined cooler conditions.

Despite the lyrics making no mention of any holiday, the song has come to be regarded as a Christmas song in North America due to its winter theme, being played on radio stations during the Christmas and holiday season and having often been covered by various artists on Christmas-themed albums. In the Southern Hemisphere, however, it can be played during the winter months of June, July, and August

The song is about watching the beautiful snow fall from inside, staying in the warmth to make love, and eventually, regretfully, parting:

When we finally kiss goodnight
How I hate going out in the storm
But if you really hold me tight
All the way home I’ll be warm

About the Sellers Dorsey Foundation. From their website, describing their earnest goals:

The Sellers Dorsey Foundation is a private foundation dedicated to improving the health of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. The Sellers Dorsey Foundation supports and leads efforts to improve health outcomes among the LGBT community through public education, collaboration, and grant giving.

Towards this end, the foundation partners with various other organizations to reach the audience of sexuality and gender minorities by an assortment of strategies, including (in this case, in 2013) through sexual playfulness. Sex and humor work in mainstream advertising, so the foundation quite naturally uses these hooks to reach their audience.

and Full Frontal Freeedom. From their Twitter account:

(#3)

Full Frontal is the anti-PAC. We are a coalition of independent artists and media folks – who want to use our talents to promote civic engagement

and are happy to advance these purposes by displaying their bodies.

The backlash. From the WND site [Wikipedia: “WorldNetDaily (WND) is an American news and opinion website and online news aggregator which has been described as “fringe” and far right as well as politically conservative. The website is known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories.”], “Obamacare jumps the shark with ‘gay’ Christmas: Stereotypes abound in effort to enroll key demographic” by Jerome R. Corsi on 12/19/13:

In an effort to woo a demographic the White House considers key to the success of Obamacare, a campaign called Out2Enroll has produced a video commercial that will test the sensibilities of many Americans who might otherwise be tolerant of the homosexual-rights movement.

While the Christmas-themed ad sponsored by major left-wing groups may be “gay” in every sense of the word, its aim is serious, as the White House is aware that a disproportionate number of homosexual Americans are uninsured and qualify for premium subsidies under Obamacare.

Out2Enroll launched Sept. 12 with a Washington-issued statement and a briefing at the White House that featured remarks from senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and various LGBT health experts from around the country.

The Out2Enroll video, “Get Enrolled,” tagged as a “Full Frontal Freedom Production,” features semi-nude, muscled young men adorned in Santa Claus hats and reindeer antlers sucking peppermint sticks while prancing about and embracing one another as they decorate a Christmas tree and set out holiday stockings.

(Sucking and prancing and bears, oh my!)

The ad was similarly slammed by Log Cabin Republicans as “promoting harmful stereotypes that gay men are nothing more than sex-crazed lechers”. As if we can’t flagrantly revere dicks and butts and chew gum at the same time. And as if social life and popular culture weren’t thoroughly drenched in straight sex.

Since we’re doing Xmas songs, let me exhibit one of my favorites, the delightful tongue-in-cheek (and Santa-in-chimney) hymn to straight sex traded for valuables, “Santa Baby”, as originally performed by Eartha Kitt (understated, but nevertheless silky and dripping with seasonal sex), which you can listen to here (#4).

From Wikipedia:

“Santa Baby” is a 1953 Christmas song written by Joan Javits (the niece of Senator Jacob K. Javits) and Philip Springer, sung originally by Eartha Kitt. The song is a tongue-in-cheek look at a Christmas list addressed to Santa Claus by a woman who wants extravagant gifts such as sables, yachts, and decorations from Tiffany’s.

Well, let’s be frank: this is about  a woman angling for Santa to be her sugar daddy, offering her sexual favors in exchange for expensive gifts:

Santa baby, slip a sable under the tree for me
Been an awful good girl
Santa baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight

(A chimney is customarily viewed from the outside, in which case it can serve as a phallic symbol. Here it’s seen from the inside and so serves as a vaginal symbol. Oh Santa baby, get down my chimney, all the way!)

Straight people, a bunch of sex-crazed sluts and lechers — shame, shame! (With people like this in charge, it’s no wonder the world is so fucked up.)

Meanwhile, have a playful and pleasurable Xmas.

… is you in your homowear. I just want you for my own / More than you could ever know.

From Daily Jocks ads of the season: Boy offers himself, in his Cellblock 13 Covert jock and harness, to serve his Master; and SeksiMatti lowers his Helsinki Athletica shorts to make his jockstrap-framed pygian orbs available for use.

(A dip into gay male fetish-land, with bdsm, and puppy play as well; and then into the sexual display of the male body, especially the buttocks — so not for kids or the sexually modest, though there will be an entirely innocent digression into the self-deprecating Finnish cartoon character Matti.)

(Apologies to Mariah Carey.)

Boy on the 11th. This Daily Jocks ad, notable for several reasons:

(#1)

chain mail ringing his
vulnerable neck, black
leather strapped on his wrist,
hard shell encasing the
sweet treasures of his
maleness, Boy stands
ready to serve

DJ’s copy on the jock, from my 11/18/19 posting “HardSoft”:

Introducing the Covert collection by [fantasy homowear company] CellBlock13: This jockstrap features a snap off pouch made of luxuriously smooth coated PU [polyurethane] that showcases your goods just right, and extra-soft fleece w/ u-bulge on the inside will feel great against your package. Available in Red, Blue & Khaki.

On the model, known here only as Boy: he’s lean and fit, pleasant to view, but — in contrast to virtually all the other nCellblock 13 models — he has unremarkable biceps, pecs, and abs. Sweet rather than imposing or fierce.

And on the accessories he’s wearing, which code him as a submissive or slave in bdsm play: the chainmail necklace, a common alternative to a straightforward slave collar (and therefore wearable in public without exciting the notice of people outside the scene); and black leather wristbands / bracelets worn on the right (the receptive or submissive) side. Neither of these accessories is available for sale on the DJ site or the Cellblock 13 site, nor do they seem to appear in other Cellblock 13 ads, so they’re quite striking.

Boy in harness. Boy, however, has appeared in at least one other Cellblock 13 promotion — in a different submissive role, as a (figurative) servile dog. (Come, Boy, come!) From the Men and Underwear site on 10/7/19, in “Kennel Club jocks and harnesses by Cellblock13 launch at jockstraps.com”:

(#2)

… The Cellblock 13 Kennel line is yet another collection of fetish wear meets athletic. This collection gets inspired and appeals to fans of Pup Play or those who want to try it.

… The waistband [of the Cellblock 13 Kennel Jockstrap] is elasticated featuring a raised silicone puppy patch front and centre. The brand name appears only on the leg straps, leaving all the rest of the design free from logos and letters. The jocks come in four colour options: black with white, black with green, black with red and black with blue. You can match these jocks with the Cellblock 13 Kennel Harness, sold separately.

The fetish wear in #2 is a symbolic allusion to puppy play, but without most of the trappings of the scene. From my 10/7/13 posting “Puppy play”:

(#3) Master and his dog at the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco

there’s a broad range of puppy play, all involving submission, but ranging from affectionate and playful relationships between dog and master, to frank abuse and humiliation (gratefully accepted).

The gear involved is minimally a collar and harness, and usually a leash, but there can be other restraints, knee pads, fist mitts, hoods, cages, and dog bowls.

SeksiMatti on the 16th. Yesterday’s DJ ad is for Helsinki Athletica, which does indeed offer (well-designed) sportswear for men, but with a decidedly homo tilt, as here:

(#4)

sex canyon of
Helsinki, Matti:
available on
guesthouse landing
daily, noon to 2

his warm welcome, deep blue
jockstrap, and rock-hard
buttocks are famed
Finnish treasures

DJ’s copy on the company:

Helsinki Athletica focuses on bold European styling, quality fabric and sexy design, emphasising the male physique.

The company’s ads tend to focus on the phallic rather than the pygian endowments of their models, but then we have a Matti — an instance of the type SeksiMatti, embodying Finnish male hunkiness — with his amazingly muscular glutes (as well as impressive back muscles). Unsurprisingly, SeksiMattis are muscular all over; here’s one modeling Helsinki Athletica’s Kasper Jogger, displaying biceps, pecs, and abs — plus of course the bulge:

(#5)

Names. From Wikipedia:

Matti is a given name, originated from the Hebrew Mattityahu, meaning “gift of God”. It is a popular Finnish version of Matthew

So popular that it can be used as a name for EveryFinn, as in the charming Finnish Nightmares comics and books:

(#6) One of the books; webcomic here

(#7) Book synopsis

(#8) Matti himself; among other things, he very much doesn’t want to stand out

Then there’s SeksiMatti, who is flagrantly not the stereotypical Finn.

Seksi Matti is a N + N compound in Finnish (which I came up with on my own, knowing the Finnish noun seksi ‘sexual activity, sexual intercourse’, but which has been adopted independently as a handle by several Finns on the net). seksi is based on English sexy, but it’s a noun; and like borrowings into Finnish from other languages in general, it’s spelled according to the values of letters in Finnish orthography, not according to the spelling in the donor language (so Greek/Latin philosophia ‘philosophy’ is borrowed into Finnish as filosofia).

(Note: I don’t actually speak any Finnish; I just have a linguist’s knowledge about assorted bits of the language.)

On the first day of Christmas, in a Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, Jesus seeks therapy for a life that has gotten out of his control. On the second day of Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day, Daily Jocks enlists a hugely overstuffed musclehunk to memorialize St. Stephen of the Sacred Box.

(Note: a certain amount of male flesh, crude wordplay on package and box, and lots of sacrilege. Use your judgment.)

The Bizarro.

(#1) Jesus in an instance of the Psychiatrist cartoon meme (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page)

Upstaged by Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And, meanwhile, transformed by the writings of others into a different sort of fictional character, one with a written life story related in some very complex way to the life of a historical person. (Compare, say, the fictional title character in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth (first published in 1623), a creation based on a fictionalized account in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) of the life of the actual Macbeth, King of Scotland from 1040 to 1057).

For me, a reference to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny evokes a conference paper Ellen Prince gave many years ago, a stunning, important paper on the referential statuses of NPs in discourse. Partway through the question period, someone (inevitably, I suppose) asked about fictitious characters. “Oh,” Ellen said, with a small confident smile, “Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are in footnote 37” (well, some high number) — and went on to summarize the complex footnote essay briefly and succinctly.

There was laughter, and gasps of delight, and a sense that applause was on the verge of breaking out. (But the time pressure of the question period intervened, and Ellen went on to another question.)

It was just wonderful.

The Daily Jocks ad. And now for something much less elevated. Today from Daily Jocks:

(#2) Ad copy: “BOXING DAY SALE –  20% OFF STOREWIDE! – Shop 600+ products from over 20 brands, in all your favorite styles. From Jockstraps to Wrestling Suits you will be sure to find something you love.”

The model does seem to be wearing a thong. Otherwise it’s all about his remarkably overdeveloped muscles and his St. Stephen’s Day box.

St. Stephen was stoned to death, on what substance we do not know. He was celebrated for his package — said to be of great size and beauty, also available to all who would use it — and his box as well, ditto.

Previously on this blog:

— on 12/29/15 in “boxboys and transitive bottoming”

(#3)

… six naked guys in Santa caps (ohhh, Santa baby!), their genitals covered by the (Christmas) packages and boxes they’re carrying. They’re presented as hot gay men cruising and admiring one another’s endowments — and in the case of one man, Gay 1, reaching into his neighbor’s box to handle its contents.

— on 12/30/15, in “Dick in a Box”, on a Saturday Night Live sketch with that title (and theme)

So we get plays on package and box, with double entendres involving figurative package ‘male genitalia, basket’ and box ‘female genitalia, pussy’, also ‘male anus viewed as a sexual organ; male buttocks’. These associations make St. Stephen’s Day — Boxing Day in the UK and other areas in the British culture zone — an easy source of raunchy humor.

Bonus boxes. There is of course the sporting verb box as well as the uses above. This appears to have nothing to do with the container noun box.  From NOAD:

verb box-2: [no object] fight an opponent using one’s fists; compete in the sport of boxing: he boxed for England | [with object]:  he had to box Bennett for the title. noun box: [in singular] a slap with the hand on the side of a person’s head given as a punishment or in anger: she gave him a box on the ear. ORIGIN late Middle English (in the general sense ‘a blow’): of unknown origin.

The obscure origin of the verb has left room for playful speculation, as in the Bizarro cartoon in my 3/23/11 posting “Cartoon etymology”

(#4)

In any case, from this verb, we get the nouns boxing (referring to the sport) and boxer (referring to a competitor in the sport). So the way is open for jokes about boxing on Boxing Day.

Then there’s the clothing appropriate for boxers engaged in boxing. From NOAD:

pl. noun boxer shorts (also boxers): men’s loose underpants similar in shape to the shorts worn by boxers.

Also, because wrestling and boxing are (sweaty) contact sports done by muscular men in minimal clothing, the sports have high homoerotic potential; there are, in fact, extensive genres of gay porn videos with these sports as themes, and their characteristic clothing items — wrestling singlets and boxing shorts — pick up considerable homoerotic punch on their own as a result. The porn and the boxing shorts together in this vibrantly gold cover for a 1995 video Boxer Shorts (originally from All Worlds Video):

(#5)

Meanwhile, plenty of premium men’s underwear companies sell excellent athletic shorts of the boxer type, and of course boxer shorts, and boxer briefs as well, and the models are often posed in boxing gyms, for high-masculine authenticity. But one company, Pump!, is particularly devoted to presenting its package-displaying boxer briefs in boxing-gym setttings. Two examples from earlier postings on this blog:

— from 11/9/15 in “Pump boys and Trojans”, several Pump! models as boxers, including:

(#6)

— and from 3/17/16 in “Boxing”, the Pump! Cruise Boxer, with a model posing as a boxer:

(#7)

Packages for Boxing Day.

(Plenty of raunchy sex and crude street talk — totally not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Continuing the Yo! theme for today, following “OY/YO at Stanford”.

… with today’s Daily Jocks ads, on the harness and jockstrap beat:  DJX “back for 2020 with their brand new Circuit collection”, charged up with two raunchy shots of (my) verse inspired by the ads: the supremely unsubtle “Yo, Faggot!” and “Yo, Fucker!”

From the ad copy:

Following up the best selling Trough collection [the name suggesting sex pigs gorging themselves], Circuit takes inspiration from the dance parties we all know & love, so get ready to step up your party look with matching Harness, Jockstrap, Shorts & Socks.

Two displays of the goods, framed in red from the front (take my dick), in black from the rear (take my ass):

(#1)

Yo! Faggot!

flash!
my side-eye
on you

snap!
my jock in
yer cock
suckin face

’cause

dude needs
dick

(#2)

Yo! Fucker!

this stud
swings both ways

breed!
my butt,
buddy

Background. From my 12/9/16 posting “The eyes reject”, on

side-eye / side eye ‘a sidelong glance conveying disapproval, contempt, criticism, animosity, scorn; shock, surprise; distrust, disbelief’ (all negative in affect, but in different ways)

(#3) The side-eye emoji

And then, in my 6/22/10 posting “Rivers of Babylon”, see the section on gay circuit parties: giant dance parties, tending to evolve into giant sex (and, often, drug) parties .

You can slip a lot into an underwear ad, yo.

(On appallingly bad taste in menswear, also about men’s underwear and its contents, but without dwelling on the anatomy and without any mansex at all — so tasteless, but not over-the-line raunchy.)

From the bottomless annals of preposterous men’s underwear: transparent polyester beach shorts. To add to see-through mesh underwear and many much more outrageous garments chronicled in my postings over the years (see my Page on underwear postings).

An illustration:

(#1) MaverickSwim brand “Berlin Transparent Waterproof Shorts” ($26.99) with neon orange trim (also available in neon lime trim), shown here worn over  minibriefs for modesty (but in matching orange, as a fashion statement)

They look hugely uncomfortable, whatever their value as crotch display cases. As Ellen Evans advised on Facebook:

plastic clothes: just say no

(Hat tip to Aric Olnes, who pointed me towards this fresh vein of outrageous homowear.)

Ad copy from the MaverickSwim site (reproduced here without editing):

The next generation of transparent beach shorts is here! Berlin waterproof transparent shorts are completely see-through and leave it totally up to you if you wanna wear a colorful statement speedo underneath or just go bare for fun! The polyester shorts come with neon lining that makes you pop out of the crowds! Exclusive limited edition – get yours now!
*the briefs inside are not included! 

Another variant, in white, with pockets:

(#2) More from MaverickSwim: “Ibiza Swim Shorts” ($19.99)

The ad copy (editorial note as above):

Caution alert! These Swim Shorts in sheer material in white are not for the shy fellas! They are completely see through, and it is totally up to you if you wanna wear them just by themselves with the included white lining, which keeps you more private. Optionally you can customise the shorts to your liking, by taking out the inner lining and wear it with a colorful tanga [type of thong underwear] instead, or just bare!

Aric’s alert led me to a New York Post piece “Clear shorts leave absolutely nothing to the imagination” by Zachary Kussin on 8/9/19, who observed that

nothing for sale on the MaverickSwim site — whose styles appear to be marketed toward gay men — is for the modest. Think leopard-print thongs ($9.94) and lace-up mesh trunks ($16.99).

Their offerings are indeed entertaining. Think of it as performance art.

MaverickSwim is far from the only transparent-homowear game in town. The International Jock site (which I’ve written about a number of times), for instance, offers McKillop Ice transparent plastic shorts (in polyester for $38) and Rufskin Nuage translucent pocket shorts (in nylon for $72). Hey, high-end beach bare doesn’t come cheap.

(Uncompromisingly raunchy references to male bodyparts and mansex, so absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day lies in the cleft between Lincoln Darwin Day, February 12th, and Valentine’s Day, February 14th. It is a day of unbridled mansexual excess, coming as it does between the high seriousness of the day that honors two towering figures — two Great Men — of the 19th century and the romantic heterosexual excesses of Valentine’s Day. It’s Carnal Carnival without reference to the religious calendar (actual Mardi Gras can fall any time between February 3rd and March 9th).

The symbol of LDVDay is a red or pink rose bud on its stem, standing simultaneously for a fat erect penis, flamingly engorged — alluding to cocksucking — and for a quivering anal rosette, wet with sexlube — alluding to assfucking.

(#1) In LDV rites, pornstar Angel Rock offers Aaron Shepard his famously big and fat pornstar cock (listed as 8.5″ on men.com, 9″ elsewhere) — his meat  is off-camera in this shot, though the full image can be viewed as #3 on yesterday’s AZBlogX posting “Big dicks, sex roses, and Angel Rock” — and also a red rose, serving as a reinforcing symbol of that big dick (from the DominicFord video “Valentine’s Day Fuck”, from 2/14/13)

The two practices are celebrated, especially in public displays, in the rites of the day, which are at once solemn and weighty, and also ecstatic and transcendent.

The litany for the occasion is enormous and deeply moving. For instance, Psalm 45, “Full of grace are thy lips”:  (free paraphrase) Suck my dick, faggot! Eat it, cocksucker! Or Psalm 54, “An offering of a free heart will I give thee”: (free paraphrase) Oh fuck me fuck me fuck me, oh shit fuck me harder!, whispered, moaned, or shouted, as it moves the pedicant.

More on the Rock and the Shepard. (If you’re keeping track of the LDV roshambo game, in it Shepard sucks Rock and Rock fucks Shepard, so everybody wins. This is not a zero-sum game.)

(#2) Shepard treasures the rose, meanwhile performing a cocktease for us

Consummation, in two parts, with illustrations for the relevant text of the InvoLogue (“the Pervert’s Bible”):

(#3) “He is my Rock and salivation” (InvoPsalm 62, the Shepard’s Paean); full photo on AZBlogX

(#4) “Shepard, the fuck for all of you, serving willingly” (1 InvoPeter 5, the Proclamation of the Rock); unaltered photo, reproduced here because no penises are shown (Rock could just be standing behind Shepard, admiring the view, so I’m trusting that this will squeak through on WordPress — though it would not, of course, on Facebook)

[Sidenote: the anal rosette. From my 1/31/20 posting “Revisiting 41: roses for remembrance”:

Then in my 6/3/18 posting “The rose and the flames”, there’s a section on rose windows and their Christian symbolism; but also a section on the rose as a carnal symbol, quoting my posting from 8/29/13, “Kissing the rose”:

The rose — in particular, in the form of a rosette — appears frequently as a carnal symbol in pornographic writing, sometimes standing for the vagina but very frequently for the anus

(with examples, including a striking anal rosette from gay porn, in an AZBlogX posting). ]

[Sidenote: the photographer’s craft in porn. The DominicFord stills from “Valentine’s Day Fuck” are skillfully composed. The fitting together of the men’s bodies is beautifully represented (especially in the full shot in #3), and the models themselves are attractively posed, in ways that suggest something of their characters’ personas in the story, or perhaps the models’ more enduring porn personas (see below). From snippets of the film that I’ve viewed, it looks like the action is equally well done.

These are products of a complex collaboration between photographer, director, models, and various engineers, and when they’re well done, they’re quality works in a genre of popular functional art. There are admirable tv commercials, sitcoms, cartoons, film noir, horror movies, background music, comic routines, devotional songs, items of everyday clothing, household furnishings, and much much more, including several kinds of pornography. Things can be done crudely, or routinely, or with style. I do like to encourage people to look for style and craft in gay porn.

I intend to say a bit more along these lines when Angel Rock comes around again on this blog, in connection with big-dick flicks. And I hope to write at greater length on a set of fine Raging Stallion porn flicks centrally involving the models Damien Crosse and Steve Cruz (separately and together), with a view to their visual style, their narrative structure, and indeed their moral universe (all stories are moral stories, after all).]

[Sidenote: porn personas, and acting personas more generally. I’m just beginning to get a sense of Angel Rock. Here he is in the (dick-free) top half of the cover of his Big Fucking Dick DVD (one in a long series, featuring a parade of big-dicked pornstars):

(#5) From the AZBlogX posting: A Falcon compilation DVD, with Rock exhibiting a sweet little smile on the cover; he also smiles broadly, fairly often, and that’s quite charming. He’s nicely (but not extravagantly) muscled, and lightly furry: a dreamy Cubano. Meanwhile, there’s that bizarrely long and fat uncut dick, looming at us (to my mind, it’s astounding, but not especially beautiful — I have an aesthetic for such things — though it is nicely veined)

He’s billed as a versatile top, and he’s short, just 5´5″, but very nicely proportioned, all of which makes him one of my types, except for that alarming cock (in real life; though I can always fantasize having a heroically capacious pussy to match that dick thrust for thrust). So I need to investigate. (A writer’s work is never done.)

Meanwhile, from my 3/8/17 posting “In the West Wing”:

On acting personas. This is an idea that I have often blogged about in connection with porn flicks, as in these comments on pornstar Kevin Wiles and his

more enduring persona, his “porn persona”, if you will, that cuts across different roles and indeed, helps to determine which roles he’s offered and which ones he’s willing to accept and how he will realize any particular role

(A porn persona is just a special case of an acting persona, of course.)

[Mark] Feuerstein has already gotten a posting of his own here (on 7/21/15), mostly about his role on the tv series Royal Pains … His acting persona embraces an enormous amount of charm and a significant identity as a Jew. (For [Jimmy] Smits, it’s passionate intensity and a significant Hispanic identity. For [Marg] Helgenbarger, it’s unflappable toughness.)

LDVDay Lite. There are also light-hearted and playful approaches to the day’s celebration of the male body. As in my 2/13/19 posting “Captain of our fairy band”, with a Daily Jocks sale ad for Marco Marco Valentine’s Day homowear:

(#6) A heart-pattern brief with peek-a-boo cutouts, making it a half moon brief

Lincoln Darwin Valentine
Is a cutup friend of mine
Loves the boys with all his heart
Loves them hard in every part

And in this Daily Jocks ad for VDay this year, for a His & His Sale:

(#7) ad copy: VALENTINES SALE: BUY 2 ITEMS & GET 14% OFF. It’s time to treat that special person in your life.

That’s a DJX Trough jock, harness, and socks, all in red — trough as in for pigs. Little piggies. Crawling in the dirt.

Lincoln Darwin Day. Yesterday’s holiday, which turns on the fact that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born on February 12th, 1809. This had led to attempts to explicitly compare and/or contrast the two great men, as in this book (from Wikipedia):

(#8)

Lincoln and Darwin: Shared Visions of Race, Science, and Religion is a 2010 book by James Lander about the lives and views of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809. Both lost their mother at a young age and, despite their differences in upbringing, both men saw themselves as autodidacts. Lander argues that they also shared an interest in science and a skeptical approach to religion. Darwin closely followed the events of the American Civil War and wanted Lincoln and the Union to prevail, but it is unlikely that Lincoln read Darwin’s work.

Lincoln and Darwin is structured as a series of alternating narratives concerning each man’s interactions with the events and discoveries of the mid-19th century. Lander explores similarities in the intellectual development, concerns, and impacts of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, focusing in particular on the issue of slavery in the United States, which both men influentially opposed.

The effort looks a bit strained, but intriguing. If only to make you think about Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin in more detail.

(This will go, almost immediately, into the weeds of male genitals and mansex in street talk, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

Daily Jocks ad on the 10th (with somewhat rocky non-native English):

Limited Edition DJX Party Pocket Sock are here. A Crew length cotton sock with a hidden pocket to keep your goodies! Pick from 7 different styles – Buy any 3 get 1 free:

(#1) TOP, BOTTOM, VERS (sex position, well specifically, fuck position); DADDY, BEAR, TWINK (gay type)

Your goodies are probably your condoms — whatever small thing that, if you’re are a queer, you need to have immediately available when you are at a sociosexual occasion wearing only footgear, and maybe some minimal, decorative undergarment, like a fashion-forward jockstrap.(Queer buddies: this might not be your world, but don’t tell me you haven’t imagined strolling through it; you and I are, after all, the Daily Jocks target audience. A role I happily embrace, by the way.)

Otherwise, these socks are sexual advertisements: this is how I fuck, this is what kind of queer I am. Some guys put this stuff on t-shirts, some who have dispensed with t-shirts proclaim their preferences on the waistbands of their underwear

And then, for the more politically conscious among us, the Pride Party Socks, equally pocketed:

(#2)

I must admit that I covet these socks. But at $13 a pair, they’re very hard to justify (and, alas, I’m decades away from needing the little pockets, though I have some warm recollections).

Preferencewear and pocketwear. Both easily available in separate lines of apparel. From earlier postings on this blog:

— on 2/27/15 in “Color and advertising your preferences”, on the Curbwear Identity line, with preference labels on singlets and on underwear waistbands

— on 1/31/16 in “Cruise Jogger”, on the Pump! Cruise Jogger with pockets

Of course, t-shirts provide plenty of space for text, including preference labels, and they are generally available with pockets. But you might be bent on going out shirtless and pantsless, and then you’re down to your skivvies and your socks as bulletin boards and storage nooks

T-shirts. Now I’ll move to t-shirts with sexual messages, just taking a small sample of types. First, tees for fucking, mostly those advertising a preference for getting fucked and those more directly advertising a desire to get fucked. Then, tees  focused on cock size, mostly the wearer’s proclaiming his own size.

The fuck theme follows on a “Valentine’s Day Fuck” video treated in two of my postings:

— on 2/12/20 in “Big dicks, sex roses, and Angel Rock” (AZBlogX)

— on 2/13/20 in “Lincoln Darwin Valentine Day” (this blog, AZBlog)

and looks forward to a posting, to come, on pussy as self-identification and as taunt.

The big-dick theme gets some working out in the “Valentine’s Day Fuck” postings, especially the first, where Angel Rock, Tate Ryder, and their big rolls of pornstar meat are featured. And that segues into the big-dick section of this posting.

Getting fucked: advertising a preference, advertising an offer. The standard label for advertising a preference for getting fucked is BOTTOM, and it appears on socks (as above), waistbands, and in big bold letters on t-shirts. Ordinarily, a man would wear a BOTTOM t-shirt only in contexts where preferred sex positions are socially relevant — on the streets of gayborhoods, in bars and clubs of the right sort, at Pride events, in cruisy parks, and so on. But I have seen the shirt on guys out on ordinary streets — maybe because they were in transit to or from one of these sex locales, or maybe because they were boldly asserting their brand of sexual identity (like the brassy QUEER, a shirt I have myself worn out in the everday world, when I was much younger, or the even more confrontational FAG or FAGGOT).

One step back from BOTTOM would be the medical / social-services terms RECEPTIVE ANAL or ANAL RECEPTIVE or RAI (for Receptive Anal Intercourse), but I don’t find any tees that far distanced from carnal connection. Though they could be conversation-starters.

But in the other direction, more or less parallel to FAG(GOT), there is the shameless effrontery of CERTIFIED PUSSY BOY, which I truly admire. From an offering on Etsy (available in a range of colors, of which this is my favorite):

(#3)

Now we move from advertising a preference — roughly the message, “When fucking is on the menu, I want to be the fuckhole” — to advertising an offer — roughly the message, “I’m available for fucking, and looking for a guy to fuck me”, that is, FUCK ME.

I would have thought that a message apparently  advertising unconditional willingness to take dick up the ass would be risky, in a world where there are in fact some creepy and scary fuckers out there. But the offer isn’t entirely unconditional. You and your prospective fucker still have to close the deal, by verbal negotiation or exchanging gestures. The t-shirt isn’t enough on its own.

So in fact there are tons of FUCK ME shirts, in all sorts of fonts and colors.

In a separate development, the slogan Kiss me, I’m Irish has been elaborated into the formula V me, I’m Irish (including Fuck me, I’m Irish) and on into V me, I’m Adj (Fuck me, I’m Mexican and the like), all moving FUCK ME into the realm of playfulness and pleasure. From my 3/17/19 posting “V me, I’m Irish”:

(#4) The generic logo, suitable for both anal and vaginal intercourse — but for pleasure

(#5) Banner ad for a story: the specifically gay variant, again featuring pleasure, with smiles (and sharply differentiating the b/t roles for the men: a hole and his adored fucker)

Moving on to flat-out fuckhole offers on t-shirts, here in two inventive variants:

(#6) It’s the please that sets this one apart. Plus the playfully colorful font (from the society6 site)

(#7) I especially admire this one: in effect, a growly boast, “I’m a hell of a whore!” (from the spreadshirt site, available in many colors; the purple is my favorite) — the polar opposite of slut-shaming (slut-flaming?)

The big preference. Cock size. So bound to power, dominance, progenitivity, significance, energy, and of course raw masculinity that it’s hard to know which is metaphor and which is the ground for that metaphor. No man is free of its pull and push.

From my 1/12/13 posting “A matter of size”, on the facts:

the average erect penis is between 5 (on the low side) and 6 (on the high side) inches long, and almost all hard dicks are between 4.2 (on the low side) and 7.5 (on the high side) inches long.

These facts about the real world don’t translate well into perceptions and practices: a 5″ dick is seen (in real life and in porn) as *small* (this is my size range, and I can attest to the fact that men who really care about size find it unacceptably small), and in porn a 6″ dick isn’t notable enough for mention; write-ups of pornstars almost never mention a dick size below 7″, though 7″ is fairly common in these write-ups. Note that 7″ is only a half-inch short of truly extraordinary.

In Gayland [the fantasy world of gay porn], dicks start at this level (7″) and go on up from there, gaining in value with every half-inch. More is better, and much much more is best. Monumentally more is the stuff of dreams. Jack-off dreams.

Put somewhat more fancifully:

the Porn Standard Dick (PSD) is 7″; roughly 5-7 % of American men have cocks at least this big

the Porn World-Class Dick (PWD) is 9″; roughly 1% of American men have cocks at least this big

more than 9 inches is a joke, or a Ripley (Believe It or Not!) Marvel (RM)

Men are willing to advertise themselves on t-shirts as having 7, 8, or 9 inches:

(#8) On the Redbubble site: 7″  t-shirt (using the 7-Up logo turned into a phallic symbol)

(#9) On the Cafe Press site: 8″ t-shirt, just the fact, man

(#10) On the TeePublic site: 9″ t-shirt, an artful offer

Then, at 10″, the jokes appear. Two of them:

(#11) From the tee shirt palace site: Mine is 10-inches! (“10″ chef’s knife”)

(#12) Amazon ad copy for this shirt: “Do you love smoking meats like BBQ, burger, hot dogs, bacon, ribs? Grill master men and women can wear this while cooking barbecue. Grab a beer pint or wine and feel the hot summer on this top! Sausage Barbecue Grill Camping Shirt.”

(Actual big — long and fat — dicks can famously be problematic to manage, in mouth or asshole. Latest bulletin on this front in my 2/16/20 AZBlogX posting “News for big penises: well, it seemed like a good idea at the time”, on an ad for the studio Bareback Cum Pigs’s That Secret We Kept, with big fat dicks and the facial expressions of their recipients. Not remotely reproducible on a WordPress blog.)

RMs. So much for the jokes. On to the RMs, the Ripley Marvels (see the Page on this blog on postings about penis size). A few RM porn actors, arranged by reputed dick length:

10″: Lee Ryder, Rocco Steele, Rick Donovan

11″: Chad Douglas, Ken Ryker

14″: Brazilian phallic monument Caio Amaral (posted about several times on this blog)

Then we come to a 2/8 mailing from Falcon Studios, exhibited in my 2/12/20 AZBlogX posting “Big dicks, sex roses, and Angel Rock”. The dickless half of the mailer, with ad copy:

(#12) BIG DICK: humongous hunks with 9+″: start the year right with these movies featuring massive manhood – over 350 titles with huge meat [showing Australian-born pornstar Tate Ryder, who’s listed on the site as a PWD, with 9″; at this level, I wouldn’t quibble over fractions of an inch]

Here’s more Ryder, in his p.r. shot from Lucas Entertainment (another full-frontal display), again the top half of the photo (with some critique, from AZBlogX, of the images as photography):

(#13) “The photo work on this one is much inferior to [#12]: the pose is stiff and awkward, the facial expression hard to read ([#12] shows a dominant topman), the lighting too bright, the dick way too shiny; just shooting a naked guy with a really long hard cock isn’t really enough, there’s a craft to these things”

Ryder is a man of average height — 5´10″ — so a 9+″ dick seems out of scale (my forearms are just a bit over 9″ long): remarkable, but not necessarily attractive. His length-to-girth ratio strikes me as just about right, so his dick doesn’t appear to be either notably thin or notably fat. His dick is straight, not curved; even in girth, not flanged; and stands forward, rather than angling to one side or the other. All these characteristics make his dick satisfying for many men to look at; there’s an aesthetic for everything.

On the minus side for me is his veining. He has a couple of very prominent veins that (to my eye) look more like growths on his dick than like the bluish tracery of veins that embellish a beautiful cock.

His dickhead is well-formed, but he seems to lack a significant penile raphe, that fleshy ridge on the underside of a dick that (to me) serves as the visible and palpable sign of the cock as sex bone.

Then, in the AZBlogX posting, Angel Rock and his big fucking dick, which Falcon lists as 9″ and men.com as 8.5″, but stands out as more than your standard PWD because Rock is short (5´5″) and his dick is fat. Here’s the upper half of his Big Fucking Dick cover:

(#14) El Gran Cubano. From the AZBlogX posting: “A Falcon compilation DVD, with Rock exhibiting a sweet little smile on the cover; he also smiles broadly, fairly often, and that’s quite charming. He’s nicely (but not extravagantly) muscled, and lightly furry: a dreamy Cubano. Meanwhile, there’s that bizarrely long and fat uncut dick, looming at us (to my mind, it’s astounding, but not especially beautiful — I have an aesthetic for such things — though it is nicely veined)”

Again the top half, Rock offering a red rose in the “Valentine’s Day Fuck” video:

(#15) The dick is an intriguing object, but this is the part that makes the dick pic work, because it infuses the dick with a persona (in this case, one I find powerfully attractive)

I say this as an avowed peniphiliac, but dick pics are static images of disembodied bodyparts, and that’s just not enough to arouse me. A torso provides a bit more context, but it’s the face that gives the dick its character and personality. Just still photos, but now representing a person, an imaginable sexual partner.

And then of course you can add motion and audio. And the dick becomes the embodiment of a man, in all his complexity.

But still available only through two of the senses. But in real life, a gay man experiences, confronts, engages with another man’s dick with his hands and mouth, through the act of cocksucking, either as a focal sexual act or as foreplay to fucking. Cocksucking adds the other senses: it provides mouthfeel, taste, smell, and warmth; in fact, if you hold the cock gently in your mouth for a moment, you can feel the blood coursing through those delicate veins. The cock is a living thing, in your mouth, an intensely male thing (no matter how faggy the bearer’s demeanor) — and a stand-in for a man whose nature you intuit from the way he moves under your hands and in your mouth. Your presumed lover. In the end he can even provide you with a shot of warm, sweet,  sea-salty essence of man.

Real world notes. All this is wonderful, but in real life, genuinely big dicks present a problem, but one that most of us rarely if ever come up against; genuinely big dicks are, in fact, quite rare. Pornstars, however, often need to practice taking big dicks into their bodies and to learn ways to open up for them without pain or injury.

An alternative is to use your hands only, or what I call tipwork (licking and sucking the dickhead and dickshaft), but many men find that utterly inadequate as a substitute for the engulfing of their dick in another man’s body in a blowjob or assfuck.

Personal notes. As it happens, my oral cavity is unusually shallow, so I’m no damn good at engulfing dicks, but back when I whored around, I did just fine with tipwork on almost all my partners. As with most gay men, cocksucking was everyday sex for Jacques and me, and tipwork was what we did for each other. (Jacques was extraordinarily adept at jacking me off — he studied my jacking myself off intently until he could reproduce beautifully what I did for myself, which was way more satisfying than my actually doing it for myself, because it was a physical and emotional connection with another man, in fact the man I loved. I was pretty good at jacking him off, but had some trouble gauging the sensitivity of his uncut dick.)

Jacques’s dick was noticeably longer than mine — I’d guess a bit over 6″ (neither of us ever saw any reason to measure) and proportional in thickness, so it was perfectly easy to handle (and, oh, his crotch, from dicktip on down, smelled and tasted just wonderful — oh dear, I am undone by poignant memories). My own 5″ (which I have measured, in order to write pieces like this one) was once described, by a satisfied t-room partner, as “a perfect mouthful” — big enough to do the job, but in no way challenging — which was meant, and taken, as praise. (Oh yes, I had a strongly musky scent and taste, sort of like distilled lockerroom, which some men — fortunately, J was one — found powerfully attractive.)

Meanwhile, in line with my Germanic heritage on both sides, I am in fact fond of big meaty sausages (see #12 above), but I literally eat them.

(Some totally raunchy text, not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

From Daily Jocks, with mailings on 2/17 and 2/19:

DJX TROUGH PRIDE

The best selling DJX Trough collection is back with a Limited Edition Pride collection. Get ready for Sydney Mardi Gras [2/14/ – 3/1/20] or show your pride wherever you are in the world.

The two shots of the model, with my text, swiped from the Beatles (mostly George Harrison) and degraded into jingly raunch (my apologies to George Martin and everyone else associated with the original):

On the 17th, a front shot, with the model in shorts; he’s apparently trying to look slutty:

(#1) Have you seen the bigger piggies in their starched white shorts?
You will find the bigger piggies fucking around for sport
Always have clean shorts to play around in

On the 19th, today, a rear shot, with his muscular ass exposed and apparently on offer:

(#2) Have you seen the little piggies posing in their jocks?
And for all the little piggies, their aim is getting cock
Always having dick to play around with

It seems that the first appearance on this blog of the DJX Trough collection (harness, jockstrap, shorts, socks) was in my 5/24/19 posting “The ballet of Mango Meshman”, where I wrote:

The trough in the ad will suggest pigs feeding, and gay sexual excess.

— that is, sex pigs. It’s all about sexpiggishness.

And sex pig on ths blog goes at least back to my 9/30/13 posting “Up your alley”, where I wrote about:

the snowclonelet X pig, denoting someone who’s seriously into X (sex pig, involving sex in general or specifically “dirty sex” of various kinds; dick pig; piss pig)

(Meanwhile, if I were into harnesses, I would definitely consider that rainbow number.)

(Male body parts, vividly evoked though not pictured. Not for kids or the sexually modest.)

The spectre of the Daily Jocks Mystery Crotch, which materializes every so often, by commercial magic, to offer DJ’s bargain Mystery Underwear:

(#1)

Around this enigmatically seductive figure there has grown up a rich folk tradition of poetry, song, and visual art, the seminal work being the text Magical Mystery Crotch Rocketman, created by the appropriately mysterious queer cooperative Darts of Desire.

MagMystCroRo

Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side,
Where the colored grrlz go:

Roll up
He’s got everything you need
Roll up for the Mystery Crotch
Roll up
Satisfaction guaranteed
Roll up for the Mystery Crotch

(#2) Eyes on the stars, thoughts on the crotch

And Little Joe goes:

I think it’s gonna be a long long time
‘Till a morning brings me round to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m Crotch Rocketman

Crotch Rocketman burning out his fuse in here alone

This is the tradition of the Mystery of Fire. Then, necessarily, there’s a contrary tradition of the Mystery of Darkness. In which the central ritual is

The Unmanning

(#3) Desire and Dread

I slip into
Mystery Underwear and
all the furniture of my
crotch turns indistinct,
unknowable

my handsome ass and its
musty rose of sex
dissolve in mist

my curly dark pubic hair
messenger of male sweat
crumbles to dust

my weighty balls
contract, shrivel, vanish

my sturdy cock
softens and
melts away

I am unmanned

 Notes on the texts and images. #1 is a Daily Jocks image used for their Mystery Underwear sale offers — most recenty, just yesterday.

#2 is today’s DJ image advertising their Mystery Underwear, with the price list replaced by ghostly echoes of the main image. The model appears to be gazing dreamily off into space, or maybe he’s just flouncing seductively. His crotch is notably large — it looks decidedly padded — but it shows no outlines of his cock and balls, crotch features that are usually entertainingly obtrusive in DJ’s underwear ads.

#3 is the image from the TitanMen 2020 Valentine’s Day sale on gay porn, presumably showing male lovers, but I found their facial expressions complex and subject to alternative understandings.

Then the texts. The framing text is somewhat transformed bits — “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side, / Where the colored grrlz go:” and “And Little Joe goes:” — from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”. On the song, from Wikipedia:

“Walk on the Wild Side” is a song by Lou Reed from his second solo album, Transformer (1972). It was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and released as a double A-side with “Perfect Day”. The song received wide radio coverage, despite its touching on taboo topics such as transsexual people, drugs, male prostitution, and oral sex.

… The lyrics, describing a series of individuals and their journeys to New York City, refer to several of the regular “superstars” at Andy Warhol’s New York studio, the Factory, namely Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro [Little Joe], Jackie Curtis and Joe Campbell (referred to in the song by his nickname Sugar Plum Fairy).

You can listen to the original recording here (#4). The relevant bits of the song:

… Candy came from out on the island,
In the backroom she was everybody’s darling,
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She said, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the colored girls go,
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo …

… Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City is the place where they said:
Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
I said hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side

Inside the framing bits are two transformed pieces of rock songs and an allusion to a gay pornstar (and his motorcycle).

The first rock song (transformed in MagMystCroRo) is the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”. From Wikipedia:

Magical Mystery Tour is an English surreal comedy television film directed by and starring the Beatles. It is the third film that starred the band and depicts a group of people on a coach tour who experience strange happenings caused by magicians. The premise was inspired by Ken Kesey’s Further adventures with the Merry Pranksters and the then-popular coach trips from Liverpool to see the Blackpool Lights. Paul McCartney is credited with conceptualising and leading the project.

… The film originally aired on BBC1, in black-and-white, on Boxing Day, 26 December 1967. A colour transmission followed on BBC2 on 5 January 1968. It was poorly received by critics and audiences, although its accompanying soundtrack was a commercial and critical success. The film received an American theatrical release in 1974 by New Line Cinema, and in select theatres worldwide in 2012 by Apple Films.

… The songs in order of their use in the movie, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney unless otherwise indicated:

“Magical Mystery Tour”

“The Fool on the Hill”

“She Loves You” (played on a fairground organ as part of the general medley of background music during the impromptu race)

“Flying” (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr)

“All My Loving” (orchestrated, as background music, in the style of the “Pas de deux” section from The Nutcracker ballet by Tchaikovsky)

“I Am the Walrus”

“Jessie’s Dream” (instrumental piece, not released on any audio recording)

“Blue Jay Way” (George Harrison)

“Death Cab for Cutie” performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (Vivian Stanshall / Neil Innes)

“Your Mother Should Know”

“Magical Mystery Tour (Reprise)” (credited as “part of the full Magical Mystery Tour”, but this is not the case)

“Hello, Goodbye” (part, finale played over end credits)

You can listen to the 2009 remastered version of the original here (#5). Some relevant bits of the original:

Roll up roll up for the Mystery Tour
Roll up roll up for the Mystery Tour

… The Magical Mystery Tour
Is waiting to take you away
Waiting to take you away

… Roll up
They’ve got everything you need
Roll up for the Mystery Tour
Roll up
Satisfaction guaranteed
Roll up for the Mystery Tour

The second rock song (transformed in MagMystCroRo) is Elton John’s “Rocket Man”. From Wikipedia:

“Rocket Man” (officially titled “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time)”) is a song composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin and originally performed by Elton John. The song first appeared on Elton John’s 1972 album Honky Château

… The song was inspired by the short story “The Rocket Man” in The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, and echoes the theme of David Bowie’s 1969 song “Space Oddity” … But according to an account in Elizabeth Rosenthal’s book His Song: The Musical Journey of Elton John, the song was inspired by Taupin’s sighting of either a shooting star or a distant aeroplane.

The song describes a Mars-bound astronaut’s mixed feelings at leaving his family in order to do his job. Rosenthal’s account goes on to relate that the notion of astronauts no longer being perceived as heroes, but in fact as an “everyday occupation”, led Taupin to the song’s opening lines: “She packed my bags last night, pre-flight. Zero hour: 9 a.m. And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then.”

You can watch the official music video here (#6). The relevant part of the original:

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
‘Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Stringing it all together. The Beattles give us magical mastery. Daily Jocks then provides mystery crotch. Elton John supplies rocketman. The last link we need is crotch rocket, especially where rocket is a metaphor for the penis, and that’s easily supplied.

First, crotch rocket is well-attested in the (metaphorical) sense ‘a motorbike, esp. a dirt bike’ (GDoS, cites from 1975 on): a noisy, explosively propelled device (similar to a rocket) ridden under your crotch. (Phonologically, there’s also a satisfying half-rhyme in the /ač/ of crotch vs. the /ak/ of rocket.) But then the expression is also used sexually, with rocket referring to the phallic symbol, producing the playful penis synonym crotch rocket, referring to the kind of rocket a man carries in his crotch. Not in GDoS, but in many lists of entertaining synonyms for penis.

Gay porn has not been deaf to the attractions of crotch rocket as a way to refer to dicks. In particular, as I noted in my 2/16/13 posting “Crotch Rocket”, it’s

the title of a Titan Men “best of” compendium of scenes with pornstar Trenton Ducati (posted about on AZBlogX, with photos of Ducati in action):

(#7) (Rocket cropped for WordPress; it’s a substantial pornstar dick, a fine exemplar of its kind, but its specific characterstics aren’t actually relevant to this posting, while Ducati the actor is — and the dick is on dsplay in the AZBlogX posting)

The actor chose Ducati as his family name for porn work because he’s a serious motorcycle enthusiast with a special interest in the Ducati make. Put that together with his pornstar dick and you’ve got a title for a Ducati DVD. Also a nice link between mystery crotch and rocketman that exploits the implied (though unseen) penis in the Daily Jocks  mystery crotch.

And now we have MagMystCroRo, with a big dick in the middle of the picture, where it belongs:

(#8)

All this is wonderful, but then it turns out that Mystery Underwear can be the vehicle for two different kinds of magic, of fire (the heat of urgent desire and explosive ejaculation) or of darkness (desire turned to dread, despair, and decay — Cupid’s arrowheads dipped in poison). Choose fire if you can.

A gestural handnote. Actors and models have problems with their hands — where to put them, if they’re not actually engaged in an activity. So portraitists, photographers, and acting directors inherit the problem. On this blog, I’ve looked into one special case, involving men, their hands, and their pants (on 10/5/19). The image in #1 illustrates another special case: the male underwear model, putting (almost all of) his body on display for an ad image. What to do with the hands?

The guy in #1 has been posed performing a hand gesture I don’t recall having seen before: one closed fist on top of the other closed fist. Isolated for your inspection:

(#10)

I could speculate on what the gesture might be conveying — a “cram it, buddy!” gesture, with the top fist pushing down on the bottom one, a gesture aimed aggressively at someone else? — but that’s a foolish enterprise, because gestures are so often conventionalized, and any one gesture could come to convey almost anything, given a long enough history. The question is whether this particular gesture has a conventional interpretation in some sociocultural context — or whether the model just put his hands together that way because he had to do something with them that would keep them out of the fuzzed-over mystery-crotch area.

There are several conventions that involve this hand configuration for two different people — a variant of the usual fist bump, a joining-together on a team gesture, and probably more — but #10 has the two hands of one person. The only thing I found in an admittedly cursory web search was an ASL (American Sign Language) sign, for ‘make, create’.

From the Lifeprint site about this sign:

In one version you put the fists one on top of the other and use a twisting movement.  Do the movement twice. The hands stay in contact with each other.

There is another version of the sign for “make.” In this version, the hands come apart:

(#11)

All the illustrations I’ve seen have the right fist on top, while the guy in #10 has his left fist on top. This might be a handedess thing — also, photos are often reproduced reversed — but I just don’t know. And maybe ASL, or any sign language, has nothing to do with #10.

(Men’s bodies and references to mansexual orgies. So not for everybody.)

Yesterday’s offering from Daily Jocks, for a Helsinki Athletica sale. With a bit of AZ free verse interpreting the image:

(#1)

(#2)

The image. Other than the model’s remarkable physique, functioning as a sales come-on, there are two especially salient aspects of the image: his facial expression and the gesture with his clothing.

The face. He’s searching intently (but otherwise without emotion) to his left, into the middle distance. Not gazing at us, the consumers of his display, or at his own body or clothes. He’s fixed on others, and they’re important to him.

The bare facts. I’ve enriched this interpretation by giving the model’s character a name, Stan, and putting Stan onto the sidelines of an orgy of mansex, where he’s looking to find a place for himself.

Orgies are often complex, sometimes apparently chaotic (it’s hard for an observer to keep focused), and they’re organized on several different principles; from my Page on group sex for men, see especially my 7/13/13 posting “More group sex” (focused on gay porn), on simple orgies (separate clusters of men having sex with one another in the same space), fluid (smorgasbord-style) orgies, and many-on-one sex (gangbangs and the like). I note that in real life (and also sometimes in porn), orgies very often involve sexual free agents roaming the space: men stroking their hard dicks and looking for partners to hook up with.

So there’s a lot for Stan to search through on the sidelines, as the orgy unfolds in front of him. No wonder he’s so intent. (More on the orgy scene below.)

The clothing. Stan has already pushed his grey Kasper Joggers down below his hips, and now he has his left hand hooked into the waistband of his bold Finnish-blue jockstrap, getting ready to pull that down, to make hs cock and balls available to the orgiasts. At the ready!

The DJ ad copy that accompanies #1 (as an ad for a 25% off FLASH SALE) focuses on its sexiness:

You’ve worked hard for your body – why not show it off in Helsinki Athletica? With an unmistakable focus on bold Euro styles and quality fabrics that emphasise your physique, the Helsinki Athletica collection is the sexy design you’ve been waiting for.

(The company is genuinely oriented towards athletic equipment, but they’re not unmindful of their big queer appeal.)

At the orgy. We have Stan on the verge of joining into the orgy, presenting himself as a top, looking for ass. There will surely be enthusiastic takers. The event might in fact be catering especially to his tastes; there is, after all, a Love to Get Fucked Blogspot site (with the obvious address: lovetogetfucked.blogspot.com) where you can find images of manpussy orgies (I had one such image, with that name, edited for use here — it shows an event with three slots available for Stan to fill — but decided that it was too crude for this relatively light-hearted posting).

As it happens, on the light-hearted side, I’ve been sitting for some time on a link, provided to me by my long-time reader RJP, to an Imgur gallery on “Men’s Fashion from the 70’s” by janetspots: a gigantic trove of absurd apparel from the period (such as I have occasionally posted on here). Many of the men appear to be, like Barbie’s Ken, desexed, with vacant crotches, but others are laughably oversexed, with obtrusive packages. From the latter set I’ve selected two examples of men — pre-orgiastic, but clearly revved up for the occasion — that Stan might be appraising as targets for his sexual attentions:

(#3) A bottom advertising his ass (also displaying a gumball machine, what could he be trying to say?); two amiable tops, dicks at the ready — but are they willing to share?

(#4) Glitter Boys in Heat: should Stan go for the gold?

(Extraordinarily steamy ad, Mr. Fetish Spain in nothing but a pageant banner, and raunchy mansexual talk, so dubious for kids and the sexually modest.)

Today’s Daily Jocks ad re-uses an earlier flagrantly NSFW image in an offer of “Spanish fetish brand Locker Gear” underwear. Well, besides the hot guys in the ad, there’s the parsing of the nominal expression Spanish fetish brand (as a modifier of the brand name Locker Gear).

And the text of the ad, with another significant bit boldfaced:

The DailyJocks Backroom hand picks the best fetish-wear brands from around the world & brings them directly to your inbox. [directly to your inbox was probably carefully chosen, but let that pass]

Check out our hottest new addition, Spanish fetish brand Locker Gear. Featuring a rugged, classic look on all of their products.

From jockstraps with an open pouch to chest harnesses or unlock your addiction with the zipper pouch jockstrap.

Then these two expressions triggered a chain of associations that led ultimately to the romantic comedy movie All Over the Guy.

From my 10/1/19 posting “Up to the line, and sometimes over”:

(#1) From my 9/24 posting “In the cowboys’ locker room”: a DJ Locker Gear ad, labeled NSFW, with one (naked) model plunging his hand into another model’s open-front jockstrap and fondling his (not visible) genitals

(The Locker Gear guys, in Spain, seem to be willing to push the limits of advertising, even in the high homowear genre, as far as they can go.)

An ambiguous moment. For Spanish fetish brand. Two parsings, with rather different meanings:

A: [ Spanish [ fetish brand ] ]  ‘fetish brand from Spain’

B: [ [ Spanish fetish ] brand ] ‘brand for fetishes associated with Spain’

For whatever reason having to do with the way my mind works, I got reading B first, and was reflecting on what kinds of fetishes associated with Spain might be at issue — bull-and-toreador sex? — when I realized that the Locker Gear people were in fact supplying vanilla fetishwear: harnesses, bottomless briefs, open-front jocks, and the like.

Alex in Associationland. (Alex is my sex name, and Alex is my sexy alter ego. He writes my colorfully queer stuff.) By then the damage was done, and I saw Alex doggedly pursuing unlock your addiction with the zipper pouch jockstrap and Spanish fetish down the rabbit hole of association:

(#2)

unlock leads to unzip, and out of the Locker Gear Zipper Jock (they think of it as a Zippered Jockstrap, but Zipper Jock is just so much better metrically) —

(#3)

— spills Alex’s fetish dick, it comes in Spanish, ¡hola!, his Spanish fetish uncontrollably aroused by the blue-bannered Mr. Fetish Spain:

(#4)

Spanish fetish chimes with Fish Mellish, name of a tough Nazi-hating Jew who dies on Omaha Beach —

(#5)

— who’s played by the usually adorable and quirky Adam Goldberg, who shines as the also adorable Dan Bucatinsky’s best buddy in All Over the Guy —

(#6)

— and we’re back in gay fantasyland, but now in a romantic comedy. Hey, stick your hand down your trick’s flagrant jockstrap to grab his dick and end up palling around with Adam Goldberg (who you might remember as Chandler Bing’s crazy roommate Eddie in Friends).

Meanwhile, Alex fucked his trick and came all over the guy — and then, the sonofabitch, he was all over the guy, done with him, no longer gave a shit about him.

Notes. Of course there have to be some notes. Alex is a sexy fuck, but I am an academic and a writer.

— #3, the Locker Gear Zipper Jock, in deep blue. The Alex there is Mr. Anonymous, never shows his face, just his handsome and impetuous dick.

— #4,  Mr. Fetish Spain 2019, who sometimes poses in Locker Gear jocks of various styles, but often in more fetishcore gear, and sometimes (as here) in nothing but his blue banner.

— Spanish fetish called up Fish Mellish for me, taking things in a dark direction. From the Saving Private Ryan wiki:

Private Stanley “Fish” Mellish [in #5] was a supporting character in the film, Saving Private Ryan. He was a Jewish-American soldier, and a member of Miller’s Squad during the later stages of World War Two. He had a strong dislike for the Nazis due to their public persecution and slaughter of his fellow Jews.

And he dies in hand-to-hand combat on Omaha Beach.

— Mellish played by Adam Goldberg. From Wikipedia:

Adam Charles Goldberg (born October 25, 1970) is an American actor, director, producer, and musician. Known for his supporting roles in film and television, Goldberg has appeared in films such as Dazed and Confused, Saving Private Ryan, A Beautiful Mind, and Zodiac. He has also played leading roles in independent films such as The Hebrew Hammer and 2 Days in Paris.

Goldberg tends towards quirky, highly strung, but charming characters. Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, but he also played an adorable character in the gay romantic comedy in #6 — he’s straight, but then nobody’s perfect — with a fine cast:

— from Wikipedia:

All Over the Guy is a 2001 American gay-themed romantic comedy film directed by Julie Davis and written by Dan Bucatinsky.

All Over the Guy is about Eli (Dan Bucatinsky) and Tom (Richard Ruccolo). The film is told mostly in flashback, with Eli recounting his side to Esther (Doris Roberts), an HIV clinic worker as he waits for test results and Tom to a guy he meets at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Tom is the son of emotionally distant alcoholic WASP parents who never quite accepted his sexual orientation and as a result is a heavy drinker himself and has a penchant for random hookups with different men. Eli’s parents are both Jewish psychiatrists who raised him to be emotionally open but ended up making him neurotic.

… Tom and Eli are set up on a blind date by their best friends, Jackie (Sasha Alexander) and Brett (Adam Goldberg), who think they would be a perfect match. [Tom and Eli are] both looking for ‘The One’, but don’t recognize it when they find it.

Two of the cast, on this blog

— from 4/20/15, “Doris Roberts”

— from 9/3/18, in “Goldenrods and Boston cops”, a section on Sasha Alexander

And then Dan Bucatinsky. From Wikipedia:

Daniel Bucatinsky (born September 22, 1965) is an American actor, writer and producer, best known for his role as James Novak in the Shonda Rhimes drama series Scandal... In 2014, Bucatinsky starred on NBC’s Marry Me, as well as the newly revived HBO series The Comeback, which he also executive produces.

Bucatinsky is openly gay; he’s married to screenwriter Don Roos.

— finally, the ambiguity in all over the guy: Alex came all over the guy — and then he was all over the guy. From NOAD:

prep. over: … 4 expressing passage or trajectory across: she trudged over the lawn.

phrase be over: no longer be affected by: we were over the worst.

(Well, it’s crudely jokey men’s underwear, so not to everyone’s taste.)

As advertised on the cheap-shopping site Wish recently, these remarkable boxer briefs with a pattern showing a black bear peering out from an open fly, surmounted by a belt:

(#1) He comes in colors / You can tell him from the clothes he wears

(Hat tip to a net friend who came upon this item among pages of teaser offers on the Wish site. I spent an hour or two trying to find the listing on the site, hoping to see how it was described, but without success.)

I was moved to break out boldly in anapests:

Bearfly boy with cheek of orange

The belt is as faux as the fly
And the bear is a trickstery dick;
The buckle can’t prong any hole
And the bearfly is minus a prick

And then I discovered that there was an entire genre of cheap men’s underwear with simulated belts or joke pouches or (very often) both, in lots of colors.

Two further items in the genre:

(#2) From AliExpress, belt-print low-rise briefs in various colors — here, in pink

(#3) From the DressLily site, faux belt and faux button fly, advertised as “funny belt printed button design boxer briefs” (also available in many colors)

Say “Hi!” to the pouchbear; you can’t always see him, but there’s one nestled in every package.

(Intended as an entertainment in tough times. There will, however, be male bodyparts and mansex, in sometimes very plain language, so in general not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

It starts with a regular feature of this blog: advertisements for premium men’s underwear that treat men’s bodies simultaneously as the engines of vigorous athletic pursuits and as the loci of hot sex between men. And, correspondingly, that view the underwear — especially the quintessentially masculine undergarment, the jockstrap — as simultaneously a piece of sports gear and a vehicle for sexual advertisement, displaying a man’s package prominently in front and his bare buttocks behind.

Exhibit #1 is a Daily Jocks ad from 3/31 for a jockstraps sale, featuring a muscular model with a remarkable bubble butt, who is sporting a handsome deep red jockstrap with matching harness and socks, while poised midway between the position for doing pushups and one offering his ass for sex.

The accompanying jockstrap sale catalogue then takes us on a jaunt from Surry Hills, near Sydney NSW in Australia (where the Supawear company has its headquarters) through Hawaii and northern California (Berkeley and Sunnyvale) to San Pedro Town in northern Belize. And then back by plane from San Pedro to Sydney.

But first, below the fold, the world-class bubble butt on display, with a fanciful caption of my own devising:

(#1)

Sporking

from Buttpush,
Versatilio can
pivot in seconds to
Pushup or to
Humped Up in Heat

responding to the
exigencies of the
occasion

The point is that what Versatilio is doing is neither a good pushup nor a good humping up to get fucked, though he can move from the position in #1 to either of these pretty easily. Well, he’s a jock; he’s good with his body.

For comparison, first, an illustration of good form for pushups:

(#2) From the site of POWER: Chiropractic Health Center in Longmont CO (I note, but will not comment on, “maintain a perfectly flat position when going down”)

When doing a pushup, it’s no butt in the air.  If you’re humping up to get fucked, that’s pretty much the whole point.

So, from my 12/30/18 posting “Sexual displays > offers: prone, supine, lateral”, in a section on prone displays of the naked male body, focused on the model’s buttocks (this is a version of a more explicit AZBlogX piece):

Many gay men, responding to their predilections and desires, would look upon these butts and find them arousing, would be inclined to view them as implicit offers; but they’re just posed bodies. Sometimes, however, the offer is explicit: the subject spreads his legs and humps up his ass, making his asshole available (and his cock and balls visible), as here:

(#3) Richard Vytniorgu, spread and humped up…

Spread and humped up, … in a variant of the prone position, but now offering his body. He could be easily fucked in this position, or he could raise himself up on his knees, offering himself for a doggie fuck

That’s all about exhibit #1. Intrigued by the jockstrap there, I went to the Daily Jocks sale page to see what other jocks they had on offer. And found some wonderful stuff.

The Jockstrap Trail. The DJ ad copy:

Don’t hide your best assets – feel sexy and confident in our designer range of men’s jockstraps underwear … guaranteed to turn heads and enhance all of your best features.

(Note that no athletic functions of the jockstrap are touted here. It’s confidence, fashion, and attractiveness to other men.)

The first station on the trail: Sydney. Just one row of jocks from the Supawear company (headquartered near Sydney), in two different lines:

(#4) Two jocks from the Galaxy line, featuring intense bright colors; and two from the POW line, with fancifully patterned pouches — notably the Fruit Punch jock, with a variety of colorful fruits (you can see a strawberry and part of a pineapple)

The Galaxy jocks look like they would actually work as athletic supporters, albeit dramatic and fashion-conscious ones. The POW jocks have thinner bands and straps and strike me entirely as items of a costume rather than as functional jocks to sweat in. That’s not a complaint — I get a big kick out of the POW line — just an observation that they’re symbolic, not actual, gymwear. Their function is as homowear, to provide an entertaining wrapper for a guy’s dick and balls, one that an audience can appreciate, while making his ass available.

[Late-breaking addendum: a 4/2 mailing from DJ, with this ad featuring a Supawear POW Dessert pouch (you’re so sweet I could just eat you up):

(#5) A pouch of sweets (note to model: no teeth on that sucker, sucker! lick it and mouthe it, don’t bite!)

End of addendum.]

Surely fruit punch was chosen intentionally as a pattern and a name, evoking the slur fruit (now defiantly reclaimed by many of us fruits), and combining faggy fruit with aggressive punch — butch fagginess is all over the place. (Imagined dialogue: “Hey, dude, cute jock; can I fondle your fruit?”)

The second station on the trail: Hawaii. The power of associative thinking then kicked in and fruit punch led me to the commercial powerhouse of fruit punches: Hawaiian Punch:

(#6) (from the Hawaiian Punch company site)

Note that Hawaiian Punch is symbolically, not actually, Hawaiian; it incorporates some ingredients from Hawaii to create a southern California product that evokes Hawaii. Some official company history:

In 1934, A.W. Leo, Tom Yates, and Ralph Harrison developed the first Hawaiian Punch recipe in a converted garage in Fullerton, California [in Orange County]. They wanted a tropical-tasting syrup to add to their line of ice cream toppings sold under the trade name Pacific Citrus Products Company. “Leo’s Hawaiian Punch,” as the brand was called at the time, was sold to area restaurants, soda fountains, and ice cream manufacturers. The “Leo’s” was dropped from Hawaiian Punch several years later. The main ingredients of the first Hawaiian Punch recipe were shipped from the Hawaiian Islands, thus the origin of the name.

The graphic in #5 shows the company mascot, Punchy, who was the central figure in a famous ad campaign of the 1960s and 70s, exploiting a simple pun on punch:

From the Cartoons Plus site:

In 1962, the Atherton-Privett ad agency created a 20-second commercial to advertise Hawaiian Punch drink.

You can see the 1962 commercial here (#7).

The commercial was produced by John Urie and Associates in Hollywood. Jean Guy Jacques was the director; Bob Guidi and John Urie designed the two characters, Punchy and Oaf. Ross Martin did Punchy’s voice, “Hey! How ’bout a nice Hawaiian Punch?” and John Urie did Oaf’s line, “Sure”. Rod Scribner animated the commercials. Sam Cornell also worked on the later versions. Oaf never learned to say “No” and he was always punched. The commercial ended with Punchy leaning on a can of Hawaiian Punch, saying, “Wasn’t that a refreshing commercial?” The commercial won many awards.

The third station on the trail: northern California. The Hawaiian Punch ads turn on a pun on the punch of fruit punch. But then there’s a whole world of word play that turns on a pun on the fruit of fruit punch — employing the anti-gay slur fruit, now wielded, defiantly and also playfully, as an affirmation of queerness in a hostile world.

Two notable examples from northern California: gay radio in Berkeley, gay comedy in Sunnyvale.

From Wikipedia on the slang term fruit:

Fruit Punch was the first gay radio show in the United States, and possibly the world, which aired weekly from 1982–1987 from Berkeley radio station KPFA, the first listener-supported radio broadcaster in the United States.

(My first resonse was surprise that this came so late, given that Stonewall happened in 1969, and energized a series of defiant gay activist groups virtually immediately. But of course the commercial media were generally as least as hostile to lgbt folk as the wider culture.)

Meanwhile, KPFA 94.1 endures.

Then, south and on the peninsula, there was comedy. From the site of the Rooster T. Feathers comedy club in Sunnyvale CA, the show for 6/6/12:

FRUIT PUNCH! An Evening of Gay and Gay Friendly Comedy is back at Rooster T. Feathers Comedy Club. It’s a diverse evening of stand up comedy featuring gay and gay friendly comics from the Bay Area and beyond! All are welcome- Whether you’re Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Bi, Questioning or just like to get drunk and make out with everybody you see. San Francisco’s favorite fierce comedic tranny tart Pippi Lovestocking hosts with appearances by Natasha Muse, Beth Schumann, Jennie McNulty, Ronn Vigh and headliner Scott Silverman!

Rooster T. Feathers also endures.

The fourth station on the trail: San Pedro in Belize. Go back to #4 and look at the first two jocks in it — with SPRSYD on the waistband. Mystery initialism, not explained anywhere on the Supawear site, so far as I could see.

Was it a secret slogan — Show Prodigious Rear, Show Your Dick? SPRay SYDney? — or what?

Ah, SYD isn’t just an abbreviation for Sydney, it’s specifically the code for Sydney airport. Could SPR be an airport too?

Astonishingly, yes: San Pedro, in Belize (yes, Belize, the country on the Caribbean coast of Central America, in between Mexico and Guatemala). So a flight between SPR and SYD, halfway around the world (ca. 8,650 mis.) would be a SPRSYD flight. There don’t seem to be any actual flights, so we have to treat this as a flight of the imagination, merely evoking exotic Caribbean shores.

San Pedro, originally a small fishing village settled mostly by Mexicans, is now a very popular tourist destination, especially for scuba diving. Most San Pedrans speak both Spanish and English fluently, so it’s congenial to English speakers.

Besides the diving, San Pedro is famous for its annual Gran Carnaval, celebrated a week before Ash Wednesday. This turns out to be a festival of transgressive sex and gender, with a bonus of face and body painting. From Wikipedia on El Gran Carnaval de San Pedro:

It is meant for people to indulge in bodily pleasures that they will avoid during Lent. Men dress as women, and perform dances for money in the street, with a competition to see who performs the most outlandish dance. On the last day of the carnival people flood the streets to paint one another.

Well, you could do all of this at Mardi Gras in Sydney. Or you could do it in a more intimate and exotic location, and get the plus that you’re taking part in a genuine folk festival.

When you’re done, exhausted but refreshed (as one hopes to be after a ritual of sexual excess), you can take a SPRSYD flight of the mind back to Oz, completing the loop of the trail.

The second of two entertaining Easter egg postings on material that came in my mail today. Ee2020.1 (“Mussorgsky chicken with crocuses”) was sweet and playful; this one is raunchy and homoerotic (NOTE: warning for kids and the sexually modest). There’s a lot you can do with eggs.

The centerpiece is this remarkably homo-heavy ad for a Daily Jocks sale (involving extra price savings if you find an Easter egg in the catalogue for the sale); I’ve cropped details about the sale (but nothing crucial about the model):

(#1) Cruise face, body stretched out in display for the viewer, cock tease using an item of underwear or sportswear (its actual identity isn’t important in the context)

The placement of his hand and the word EGG lead, inescapably I think, to the use of eggs in English to refer to testicles. See my 7/24/19 posting “Conventional and creative metaphors”, with its discussion of the English creative metaphor eggs ‘testicles’, compared to the Spanish conventional metaphor huevos and the German Eier; the English conventional metaphors are nuts and balls.

From the rear. In #1 we get the front view. In the DJ catalogue, we get this flagrant rear view, which is billed as an ad for sportswear:

(#2) The butt offer: it’s all yours, buddy!

Apparently, HomoEaster ths year is taking place on stairs:

On the stairs, on the stairs,
Where nobody cares what he wears