(Though the X-rated images are elsewhere, this posting is about men’s bodies and mansex, in very plain language; it’s entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest.)

Two new small gay porn sites offering high-quality videos for specialized audiences. The images here are cropped for modesty; the hard-core stuff, with uncensored dicks, is on my X blog, in yesterday’s posting “PeterFever and the GrowlBoys”.

(By and large, commercial gay porn for specialized audiences — black on black? bdsm? watersports? glory holes? whatever — is offered in specialized (and frankly labeled) subsites of the big studios. But there are smaller commercial sites that try for quality videos that they have control over. But it’s a tough business.)

A lightly edited version of the text from my AZBlogX posting…

PeterFever. In heat for Asian dick? The PeterFever company will cater to your desires. Their recent ad (#1 on AZBlogX), in a cropped version:

(#1) “Home of the rock hard Asian men and the men who love them — featuring quality videos of muscular Asian men jocks and twinks”

Covering the territory from muscle twinks through bodybuilder types. The cocks seem to be in proportion to the men’s bodies, so this isn’t the place to go if you’re a deeply committed size queen. And the actors are of mixed nationalties, in several senses of mixed, so if you specifically have to have Korean men, or Filipinos, or whatever, this company probably won’t work for you. But the videos look well made, and the company has a sense of humor: their videos include

Sexy Rich Gaysians; Gayvengers: The Domination of Phallos; The Black Panda: A Gay Porn Parody

An ad for the second of these: #2 in the AZBlogX posting, cropped here:

(#2) Note the inclusion of some Euro and African guys along with the primarily Asian ones, to speak to a wide variety of tastes

GrowlBoys. A more ambitious enterprise. A recent ad is #3 in the AZBlogX posting, severely cropped here:

(#3) Beast-on-beast gay sex, presented as a daddy-son fantasy: daddy pictured above; the knees belong to his furry son, who’s riding daddy’s dick cowboy-style

Ad copy:

FAIR WARNING: GrowlBoys.com is not just another porn site — it is YOUR fantasies come to life. Ever wondered where werewolves come from? Why humans have been obsessed with stories of half man half animal gods throughout history? Fully illustrated stories with art by award-winning comic artists, including live action video, all featuring well-developed characters. Growl boys are not only the boys of your dreams but the anthropomorphic gay furry fantasy stories of werewolves and mythological creatures that have fascinated us and turned us on for millenia, and found nowhere else.

Specifically: “Boys are fucked raw and filled with the cum of the gods, and transform to become The Growl Boys!”

That is, some of the fantasies turn on cum as the magical fluid of masculinity, so that by taking it into your body (in your mouth or in your asshole) you absorb the power of your lover and become like him; when he breeds and seeds you, he transforms you. There also appears to be a good bit of plain bestial fooling around, as in this mutual dick-stroking encounter between the furry boy of #3 and an apparently mundane buddy (#4 in the AZBlogX posting, cropped here):

(#4)

Stewart Matzek’s Amateur Hour Comics for Groundhog Day:

On this blog:

on 2/2/15, “Back-to-back American holidays”: the groundhog; the American holiday (coming up on February 2nd); the movie Groundhog Day

on 2/5/15, “Groundhog consequences”: a Groundhog Day texty; Punxatawney Phil

The 1/17 Wayno-Piraro collab on a Bizarro:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)

There’s a lot in this; I’ll start with the purely linguistic question: What does the N + N compound party linguist refer to? Then turn to the question of what’s happening in the cartoon, in particular how the notions of minority and diversity figure in it.

parties. From NOAD:

noun party: 1 a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment: an engagement party. 2 [a] a formally constituted political group, typically operating on a national basis, that contests elections and attempts to form or take part in a government: the party’s conservative mainstream. [b] a group of people taking part in a particular activity or trip, especially one for which they have been chosen: the fishing party. 3 [a] a person or people forming one side in an agreement or dispute: a contract between two parties. [b] informal a person, especially one with specified characteristics: will you help the party on line 2? ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a body of people united in opposition to others … (sense 2)): from Old French partie, based on Latin partiri ‘divide into parts’. … sense 1 … dates from the early 18th century.

The sense developments here are complex and fascinating, but two senses stand out as by far the most frequent ones in current usage: sense 1, referring to a social event; and sense 2a, referring to a political faction.

Then, each of these as the first, modifying, N in an N + N compound. Such compounds notoriously have many interpretations available to them, even if we restrict ourselves to subsective compounds (in which party linguist refers to a linguist) with an O-type (“ordinary”) semantic relationship between the two Ns (chosen from a relatively small set of such relationships: location, use, resemblance, agent/subject, patient/object, ec.).

party-social linguist. A linguist at a party, a linguist who hosts a party, a linguist who’s the guest of honor at a party, a linguist who studies (social) parties, and so on. The sociolinguistics of party conversations is an especially interesting (though challenging) field of study.

party-political linguist. A linguist who represents a party, a linguist employed (or otherwise used) by a party, a linguist who follows a party line, a linguist who studies political parties, and so on. The sense of the party linguist in the cartoon is pretty clearly that of the (sole) linguist employed by a party to serve its ends — in particular, to provide language (in speeches, press releases, advertisements, etc.) advancing the ends of the party. To put it nicely, to provide public relations for the party. To put it bluntly, to provide propaganda for the party and spin news reports in its favor.

According to the speaker in the cartoon, the party’s record on women and minorities is flatly, unapologetically, appalling, so he’s directing the party linguist to create the illusion of some progress in supporting diversity (while changing nothing at all).

Minorities and diversity. So of course the party linguist, chosen to shore up the party’s regrettable stance, is both female and black: the perfect diversity person.

As an out gay person, I have served my time as an organizational diversity officer — mostly never able to decide whether these positions reflected genuine attempts to foster diversity or were merely pro forma obedience to administrative directives from Washington requiring that certain sorts of university activities had to have a diversity officer attached to them. Women, blacks, and out lgbt people were routinely tapped to fill these roles — adding an administrative responsibility to the stresses of personally coping with systemic prejudice.

The strategy in the cartoon takes a big step past that, by callously exploiting a minority person as a pawn in a public relations campaign. How could anyone object to what the party linguist writes about the treatment of women and minorities, when the party linguist is both female and black?

Another chapter in the Lives of the Gay Pornstars, this time the story of Greg Patton (with his sometime boyfriend Bobby Pyron), who performed in porn in the 1980s under the name Rod Phillips (while Pyron performed under the name Lee Ryder). This posting is not particularly lubricious, but it is about male sex workers and does refer to anal sex between men, so it won’t be to everyone’s taste.

My interest is in how these men managed their lives in the porn business (separately and together), how they balanced their everyday lives — Pyron had a passion for flower arranging, Patton for jewelry design (how queer is that?) — with their careers in porn, and (insofar as this can be determined) how they coped with growing up in a largely hostile straight world and managed relationships with their families. The central question — one that has dogged me all my life, from early childhood on — is:

How, in these circumstances, does an anomaly like me fashion a life that is both decent and bearable?

A previous posting here about Pyron/Ryder, on 12/1/18, “Bobby Pyron”, referred to “Rod Phillips, Pyron’s one-time boyfriend Greg Patton”, but didn’t develop Patton/Phillips further. (The porn name Rod Phillips combines the phallic Rod with the probably phallic Phillips of Phillips screwdrivers.)

(I should add that friends of mine knew these men back in the day and describe them both as sweet and charming, and also sexually hot, but with no interest in flaunting their porn fame.)

Now, from the site Being But Men, We Walked Into the Trees (“A blog about Cleveland, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.; history; photography; cinema; literature; cooking and food; and lots more”) on 3/1/17:

Rod Phillips (born Gregory Leslie Patton, August 23, 1960, in El Centro, California – died May 24, 1993, in West Hollywood, California) was an American pornographic actor who appeared in gay pornographic films from 1982 to 1993.

His neighbors while growing up owned a jewelry business, and Phillips was fascinated by jewelry at a young age. He learned basic gem polishing, and was knotting pearl necklaces by the age of 12. He graduated from Santa Barbara High School in 1978. After graduation, he moved to Paris, Texas, where he studied jewelry making and gemology at Paris Junior College. He left school and moved to Midland, Texas, but returned to Santa Barbara in 1980.

Lee Ryder (born Darras Robert Pyron on August 3, 1959, in Norco, California – died July 10, 1991, in Los Angeles, California) was an adult film star who began doing gay adult film in 1983 at the age of 24. He was an overnight star. He was tall, lean, dark-skinned, and had a nine inch endowment [in a real-life sexual partner, this is far from an advantage]. Ryder grew up in Laguna and graduated from Esperanza High School in Anaheim. Like many young gay men at the time, he discovered that the only place that would hire an openly gay man was a florist shop. He found work with Crosley’s Flowers in Los Angeles, an upscale florist which handled arrangements for the VIP rooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel and on various television series. After a while, he quit his job, and traveled. He followed this pattern throughout his life, working for a florist and then quitting to visit Germany or Hawaii or Jamaica, or Panama or Switzerland.

Ryder had met a man named Glenn, who was from Massachusetts but living in Dallas. They were deeply in love. Then Glenn left him. Ryder wanted to open his own flower shop, so beginning in 1982 he began nude modelling. Within a year, he’d done several layouts and had been on the covers of three national gay porn magazines.

In late 1982 or early 1983, Ryder met Rod Phillips at the Boom-Boom Room, a popular gay bar in Laguna Beach [I note that such gay bars were cruising grounds, but they were also locales of sociability for gay men]. Ryder was 24, and Phillips 21. They were deeply attracted to one another, and spent a few months commute-dating before Phillips moved to Los Angeles. At Ryder’s urging, Phillips began performing in gay porn films. The two appeared in several of the same films, with Ryder even fucking Phillips in Biggest One I Ever Saw and Winner Takes All. But problems set in. They became jealous of one another when one got paid more, and sometimes accused one another of “enjoying” the sex with a co-worker more than the sex at home…

By 1985 or so, Phillips and Ryder separated. Phillips kept working in adult film, however. In 1986, Phillips moved to Philadelphia, and then to Wayne, New Jersey (just outside New York City). But by 1988 he was back in Los Angeles, and in 1990 was back doing adult film again. He did two films that year, the first of which was Guess Who’s Coming? Phillips dated gay adult film star Joey Stefano for a few months in 1990 [Stefano was a fabulously hot performer but also famously, drastically, out of control of his life], and fucked Joey in the 1990 film Hard Steal. Phillips got out of adult film again, but returned in 1993 for Hologram.

It was the last thing he ever did. Phillips was struggling with HIV-related lymphatic prostate cancer, with which he’d been diagnosed in 1992, and undergoing extensive chemotherapy. It was taking a huge toll on him, physically. He could no longer ride his motorcycle to work, Diamonds on Rodeo Drive. He had to take a freelance position at The Gauntlet, which was two blocks from his apartment in West Hollywood. This enabled him to walk to work.

Phillips died on May 24, 1993, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He had been in good shape until early 1993, filming his last adult video in February and continuing to go to the gym every day. Rumors that he committed suicide are only rumor. His health had rapidly declined in the three weeks prior to his death, and while his passing was sudden it was not due to suicide by an overdose of drugs [as several on-line sites assert].

The Phillips filmography:

Winner Takes All: High Voltage (1983); Spokes (1983); Boys Town: Going West Hollywood (1984); Windows (1984); The Biggest One I Ever Saw! (1984); Kink: Hot Shots 6 (1986); Bare Tales (1988); Too Big for His Britches (1988); Plunge (1990); Hard Steal (1990); Hologram (1993)

I have no information about Patton’s relationship with his family. About Pyron’s, we know a little bit more:

Pyron was buried in the family plot, in Montecito Memorial Park, in Colton, San Bernardino Co. His father was buried there after him: Darras Roosevelt Pyron, 1935–2004. His mother, Dorothy Phyllis Dexter Pyron (later Lima), 1937–2015, was apparently not buried in this site.

Now the photos, all of Phillips rather than Patton (I wish we had some of Patton with his jewelry designs):

(#1) Phillips in a full-body display, from the side, emphasizing his beautiful butt

(#2) Phillips doing a pitsntits display

(#3) Phillips as a hot property on the cover of Advocate Men magazine

(#4) Phillips and Ryder together on film

(There will eventually be reproductions of religious artwork incorporating images of naked boys, genitals and all — the boys represent the disciples of Christ, and the artwork is a giant fresco in a (Lutheran) cathedral. Ok, the images are from Scandinavia, where attitudes about such things tend to be much more relaxed than they are in Anglo-American settings, and the artist almost surely chose prepubescent boys to represent the twelve apostles because he viewed such boys as innocents, free from sin. (In my experience, this is not even remotely an accurate view of the emotional and imaginative world of prepubescent boys, but I think we have to grant the artist a right to his idealizations.) I’ve chosen not to relegate these images to AZBlogX, in the hope that on WordPress they fall under the Fine Art Exemption for genital nudity, while understanding that they would almost surely be unacceptable on Facebook. In any case, if such images distress you, read on about Hugo Simberg’s gloomy artworks and then bail out when I get to The Garland Bearers.)

Thanks to Bernadette Lambotte and Joelle Stepien Bailard on Facebook, I was made aware of the Finnish artist Hugo Simberg and one of his most famous works, the deeply enigmatic The Wounded Angel (1903):

(#1)

From the website The Other World of Hugo Simberg:

Two sullen boys carry a stretcher, bearing an angel dressed in white. The angel’s wing has been wounded and her eyes are covered with a bandage. The painting does not tell us what has happened. One of the most beloved works in Finnish art speaks to us in many ways – there are as many interpretations as there are viewers. Perhaps this is how Hugo Simberg meant it to be. When he first displayed the work in the annual exhibition of the Finnish Art Society, there was simply a dash where there should have been a title. This was the artist’s way of saying that no single, correct interpretation exists. Each viewer creates the meaning of the work for him/herself, interpreting it in a personal way.

Hugo Simberg spent many years preparing The Wounded Angel. His sketches and photographs tell us about its progress – in the early stages, the angel was pushed in a wagon by small devils. The central figure throughout the process was a wounded angel, however, and the setting a real place, Eläintarha Park in Helsinki. The pathway along Töölönlahti Bay remains there to this day.

On the artist, from Wikipedia:

Hugo Gerhard Simberg (24 June 1873 – 12 July 1917) was a Finnish symbolist painter and graphic artist.

… Simberg’s paintings emphasize mainly macabre and supernatural topics. A good example is Kuolema kuuntelee (Death Listens), which depicts Death, personified as a skeleton wearing a black coat, listening with a bowed head as a young man plays the violin. In the background is an old woman lying on a bed, pale and apparently sickly. There is a suggestion that Death is there for the old woman, but that he is pausing so the young man, possibly the dying woman’s son, can have time to finish his violin playing.

Simberg’s famous painting The Wounded Angel, too, is somewhat gloomy, its titular character appearing in the shape of a winged angel with a bandaged head, borne on a stretcher by two somberly dressed boys, one of whom looks toward the viewer with a serious expression. The painting is the best known of the artist’s works and is especially famous in Finland. The Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish released on 11 August 2007 a music video based on this painting, “Amaranth”.

Another theme in Simberg’s work is prepubescent boys. Naked boys carrying wreaths are a motif of his frescoes in the Tampere Cathedral, and one of his early photographs, named Guido, Fish Boy, shows a boy sitting on a rock, looking out to sea.

The music video “Amaranth”:

(#2) Wikipedia on the music video:

The video alternates between the band playing underground and scenes of a story of two boys who find a fallen angel. It begins with the boys playing by a stream, having a good time, but when one of them looks up from his toy boat, he sees an angel lying on the other side, unconscious and bleeding from her eyes. The boy points out the angel to his brother, and they run to her aid. Subsequently, they are seen carrying the now blindfolded angel on a makeshift stretcher. They travel to a nearby village in order to treat her. Residents of the village are confused and some look upon her with contempt, possibly seeing her not as an angel, but as an object of evil. This may be a reference to Satan, who fell from Heaven during the great battle. Because of Lucifer’s treachery, a fallen angel is often viewed as evil.

The boys reach their house and set the angel down on a bed. One of them touches the angel’s wings, and she regains consciousness. The boy tilts her chin up, and a drop of blood falls from her eyes into his open hand, which closes. A mob of men, made up of some of the villagers who saw the boys bring in the angel, barge into the house and drag the boys out, away from the angel, who has begun to thrash helplessly. A man outside sets the house on fire with a torch. The mob outside rejoice as the house burns down, but the angel escapes back to Heaven.

OED2 on the noun amarant(h):

[etymology < French < Latin < Greek ἀμάραντ-ος, used as name of a flower, but properly adj. ‘everlasting,’ <  ἀ not + *-μαραντ-ος fading, corruptible] 1. An imaginary flower reputed never to fade; a fadeless flower (as a poetic conception). [1st cite 1623] 2. A genus of ornamental plants (Amarantus, family Amarantaceæ) with coloured foliage, of which the Prince’s Feather and Love-lies-bleeding are species. [1st cite 1551] 3. A purple colour, being that of the foliage of Amarantus. [1st cite 1690]

The sense relevant to the music video is presumably 1, the ‘fadeless flower’ sense.

On to Simberg’s prepubescent boys, especially in the fresco The Garland Bearers (1905-06). From the Curiator site on the work:

Sometimes titled “Garland of Life.” “… a continuous fresco, The Garland Bearers, depicts 12 young boys carrying a garland of roses, representing the disciples of Christ carrying the vine of life. Simberg also painted a red-winged serpent of Paradise on the ceiling, sparking off considerable protest, and as late as 1946, the bishop of Tampere Diocese proposed that it be removed.” (https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-photographs-of-hugo-simberg/)

Note that the objection was to the over-vivid serpent, not to the naked boys.

Each of the Garland Bearers panels started out as a photograph. Here, for example, is the last of the panels, and the photo it was based on:

(#3)

(#4)

Some earlier panels:

(#5)

(#6)

(#7)

(#8)

It seems clear to me that Simberg identified strongly with these (rather awkward but unself-conscious) boys, and probably found their bodies aesthetically pleasing. And, possibly, viewed them with homoerotic pleasure (while treating his models with circumspection and respect) — much as the English painter and photographer Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929) did. Tuke, best known for his paintings of nude boys and young men, as here:

(#9) Tuke’s August Blue (1893-4)

was homosexual (but of course closeted), and treated his young models with avuncular regard throughout their lives. From his work, I would have pegged Simberg as a similarly closeted homosexual (also respectful towards his models), but I’ve found no evidence in the matter.

On artistic focus on the bodies of boys and young men, see my 7/13/16 posting “Bodily alignment”, with its section on painters: Tuke especially, but also Georges Paul Le Roux and Thomas Eakins. (John Singer Sargent belongs here tool, but isn’t treated in that posting; instead, see my 3/12/18 posting “Shirtlessness and more: Bouguereau and Sargent”.)

On photographers, see my 3/6/12 posting “The twinkmeister”:

In the world of male photography, there have been several specialists in young (especially boyish-looking) males, viewed homoerotically: Mel Roberts (here) and Bob Mizer [section on Mizer in this posting], with posed but artless-seeming shots, and most especially Howard Roffman, who’s still flourishing at his craft. I think of Roffman as the twinkmeister, for his focus on the type of young man known in gay slang as twinks.

An artists’s homoerotic gaze is not, of course, incompatible with other responses to the male body: identification with it, aesthetic appreciation of its form, celebration of its power and its beauty in action, and so on.

Meanwhile, not all homo-inclined artists have distanced themselves physically from their models, the way Tuke seems to have done. Straight male artists sometimes get involved sexually with certain of their female models, or with a great many of them; and gay artists sometimes act similarly. Roberts and Mizer, in particular, seem to have engaged sexually with many of the young men who modeled for them.

(This posting ends up knee-deep in gay porn, so there will be references to men’s bodies and to mansex, though the X-rated visuals are off in my AZBlogX posting today “Manly Beach”. This material might not suit all readers.)

A Facebook exchange this morning:

Michael Newman [posting a photo on an antipodal vacation]: Notorious [venomous] funnel web spiders? — in Manly, New South Wales, Australia.

Arnold Zwicky: I long ago got used to the place-name Manly, but every so often I see it afresh and giggle.

Michael Newman: I couldn’t help thinking about it the whole time.

The history of the placename Manly is both straightforward and surprising. Manly and nearby Manly Beach then led me to the 1991 Kristen Bjorn gay porn flick Manly Beach (manly mansex among the manly lifesavers of Manly Beach) and to brief notes on facial expressions in gay porn.

Manly Beach NSW. From Wikipedia:

Manly Beach is a beach situated among the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia in Manly, New South Wales. From north to south, the three main sections are Queenscliff, North Steyne, and South Steyne.

(#1) On Manly Beach

The beach was named by Capt. Arthur Philip for the indigenous people living there. Philip wrote [in 1788] that “[the indigenous people’s] confidence and manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place”.

Surprise! The manly of Manly Beach isn’t someone’s name, and it isn’t a mangling of some native name, or a misunderstanding of some other English expression (mainly, marinely, whatever), but is just ordinary English manly with its relatively routine etymology–

adj. manly: having or denoting those good qualities traditionally associated with men, such as courage and strength: looking manly and capable in his tennis whites. (NOAD)

Even more astonishingly, it’s manly applied to Australian aboriginals, people routinely viewed with contempt by the European settlers of Australia, as animals rather than human beings.

[Wikipedia again] Within walking distance of Manly Beach along the oceanway is Fairy Bower [beach] and Shelley Beach. There are shops, restaurants, night clubs, and bars in town.

Oh my, just a short walk from Manly Beach to Fairy Bower.A rapid and precipitous drop in butchness.

And yes, there’s a Manly as well as a Manly Beach. From Wikipedia:

(#2) Manly and Manly Beach within greater Sydney

Manly is a beach-side suburb of southern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 17 kilometres (11 mi) north-east of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre of the local government area of Northern Beaches Council, in the Northern Beaches region.

Porn days on Manly Beach. The gay porn filmmaker Kristen Bjorn specializes in porn set in locales that are from a mainstream American viewpoint geographically or socially exotic  (Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Hungary, Australia, Montreal, Hispanic Manhattan). His Manly Beach is the third and last film in his Australian Trilogy, preceded by A Sailor in Sydney and Jackaroos: An Australian Outback Adventure. The film is a loose assortment of sex scenes involving beach lifesavers.

(#3) The DVD cover, with three pornstars doing various versions of come-hither cruising; Root Calahan’s coy approach, on the left, is especially notable (the pun on down under was probably inevitable)

A cropped still from scene 1 (full image in #2 on AZBlogX), with Sean Davis and Dex Brown in a swoon state:

(#4) Done in by beach sex

And a cropped still from scene 2 (full image in #3 on AZBlogX):

(#5) More come-hither cruising from Dex Brown, Root Calahan, and Ian Layman

(Overheated ad copy for these two scenes on AZBlogX.)

Given the facial expressions, the film could easily have been called Faggy Beach (and that wouldn’t be at all a bad thing). Not a lot of sturdy courage and power on display here, but then if you’re trolling for sex on the beach and not in need of lifesaving services, open willingness and frank desire are probably just what you’re looking for.

The Hi and Lois cartoon from 2/7/16:

(#1)

Super Bowl Sunday — today, this year — joins Thanksgiving and Christmas as a holiday that serves as an occasion for gatherings of family and friends plus a spread of characteristic food. A family food holiday, for short.

The SBS holiday crucially involves the Super Bowl football game, for the NFL championship: this year, SB LIII  (El Ay Ay Ay!), New England Patriots vs. Los Angeles Rams at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta GA (6:30 ET).

While much of the US population gathers around tv sets for the game, its half-time show, and its ads — virtually emptying out many public spaces —  others seek out alternatives. (I myself have an unbroken record of studied inattention to the game, from SB I in 1967 on.) Alternatives that are cultural, recreational, commercial, and even sexual. (This posting will devolve into tales of SBS mansex, but I’m putting that material at the end, so kids and the sexually modest can enjoy the rest of this material and then bail out when the gay guys strip and go at it with one another like weasels in heat.)

SBS food. In line with the occasion of SB-watching, SBS food is mostly finger food. Often messy finger food, but not table-sitting knife-and-fork food.

In line with American football as a supremely macho working-class team sport framed as warfare in uniform (close kin to ice hockey and some forms of rugby), the food is also manfood, free of cultural associations with femininity or homosexuality: pizza is manfood, quiche is not; tortilla chips are manfood, carrot sticks are not; chili is manfood, beef bourguignon is not. (These are brute cultural facts.)

Classic SBS food comes in three categories: meat-centered (beef, pork, or chicken), chip-centered (salty fried tortilla or potato chips), and pizza:

meat-centered: (ground beef) chili (with beans); baby back ribs (of pork); buffalo (chicken) wings with hot sauce, blue cheese dip, or ranch dressing

chips (tortilla or potato), alone or with dip (esp. guacamole, but also spinach dip or chile con queso); nachos (see my 11/16/13  posting “macho nachos” ); pretzels or peanuts (but not fancy nuts like cashews, Brazil nuts, or macadamias) might be allowable as alternatives to unadorned chips

pizza by the slice (so long as it’s not too foofy), esp. pepperoni pizza; sections of submarine (or hero, Italian, grinder,… ) sandwich might be an allowable alternative

Since SBS comes during American winter, its characteristic food is also indoor food, or at least food easily prepared indoors — in contrast to the characteristic foods of the Fourth of July, hamburgers and hot dogs barbecued on an outdoor grill.

This year’s SB, #53. The logo:

(#2)

(The SB logos are almost always clunky and awkward; I imagine that anything with style would be viewed as too girly-faggy.)

I choose to read the Roman numerals as a sequence of letter names L I I I el ay ay ay, as if it were Spanish ‘the ay ay ay‘, with the “Mexican Spanish exclamation ay ay ay, conveying ‘dismay, confusion, or frustration'” (from the Mental Floss posting “Where Did the Phrase “Ay Yai Yai” Come From?” by Will McGough  on 11/14/13). So this is the SBS of Dismay.

Then there’s the spelling of the SB name, as two separated words (Super Bowl), rather than one solid word (Superbowl). The NFL presumably chose this spelling on the model of existing college bowl game names (the Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, etc.), all of which were N + N compounds. But Super Bowl doesn’t look like a N + N compound; instead, it looks like a composite of the Adj super ‘very good or pleasant; excellent’ + head N bowl, as in a super cook. But then it should have the accent pattern of an Adj + N composite (afterstress, as in a super cook), rather than the accent pattern of a N + N compound (forestress, as in Superman). The solid spelling of Superman (Supergirl, Superglue, superbug, superclass, etc.) signals forestress, so you’d expect the name of the NFL bowl game to be spelled Superbowl. But the analogy to Rose Bowl etc. won out in the spelling.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention these delicate matters of spelling, but as it happens, in my writing about sex at the gay baths on SBS in 1996 (coming up in a little while) I chose the solid spelling Superbowl — defensible, but from the point of view of the NFL, just wrong, and the NFL is the authority here.

Alternatives to the SB. Cultural, recreational, commercial, and even sexual.

Cultural. On a Sunday afternoon in the middle of winter there are likely to be all sorts of culltural events — concerts, exhibitions, performances, movies — you could go to. Lively Arts at Stanford happens to have no afternoon event today, but they often schedule concerts on the afternoon of SBS. (Cellphones are prohibited during concerts, but one of the musicians, or someone from the management, comes out during intermissions to report on the SB game score.)

Today, for me, it’s the National Theatre Ensemble’s performance of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, screened at the Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto.

Usually, parking is easy.

Recreational. Fitness centers and the like typically have few users on SBS. Parks and amusement parks ditto, though the weather might be a problem.

Commercial. Many stores — especially those with high percentages of male customers (like hardware stores and sporting goods stores) — are nearly empty, so this would be a good time to do that in-store shopping you’ve been thinking about.

Sexual. You might consider getting off with some porn, or a willing partner, on this generally quiet day. If you’re into mansex, you should know that a fair number of gay men and also MSMs (men who have sex with men, while not identfying as gay or bisexual) like to celebrate SBS by getting off in the morning or early afternoon, before going on to SB events, and that non-sports-oriented queer guys are likely to find the gay baths and sex clubs humming with similarly disposed horny men who are avoiding SB events.

Now comes the mansex. If that doesn’t suit you — the gay baths material is quite explicit — you should leave this posting.

SBS mansex I: gay porn for the occasion. From my 2/6/16 posting “The Super Bowl looms”, about a C1R gay gangbang film advertised on Super Bowl Sunday:

The flick, advertised as Gridiron Gang Bang or Gridiron GangBang or Gridiron Gangbang (with the subtitle Penetration in the Backfield), was the subject of an AZBlogX posting “In the locker room, half-hard” of 10/21/15, featuring a locker room scene showing two men with half-hard cocks. Men’s locker rooms are, of course, prime territory for homoerotic photography and gay porn.)

It’s the high-macho world of football that makes that particular locker room so attractive to C1R’s audience of gay men. So of course the company offered Gridiron Gang Bang for sale on SBS.

SBS mansex II: Superbowl Sunday, San Jose, 1996. Three pieces of ficto(auto)biography on a day at the gay baths in San Jose CA:

on 10/3/10, “Superbowl Sunday (Part I): San Jose, 1996”

on 10/3/10, “Superbowl Sunday (Part II)”

on 10/3/10, “Superbowl Sunday: notes”

From the first, a visit to one of the byways of mansex:

…..

Football fan.  At the gay baths, there is a noticeable outflow of patrons as the magic hour of 3 (Pacific Time) approaches: fags hurrying on to their Superbowl parties.

I know what some of you are saying to yourselves: they aren’t real fags, they are mostly-straight bisexuals, in the closet, getting a little dick on the side. And that is probably the case for the first guy I play with – a guy with hugely broad shoulders and big chest who reels me in in the porn-TV lounge by stroking his proportionally big hard-on under his towel and staring fixedly at me. I follow him back to his room, where it turns out that what he wants is to suck my cock for a little while, an experience that gets him so excited he comes almost immediately (in a spray that goes over two feet – it splashes on his face – something I’ve never seen before and find entertaining, in a Believe It or Not sort of way).

 Football Fan has a wedding ring on. In the over 40 years since my first carnal experience with another man, I’ve had maybe a dozen guys ask to suck my cock and then shoot within seconds of taking it (always appreciatively, but then as far as they were concerned we were done). Every one of them was a married man, to judge from their wedding rings or their explicit testimonies.

I got into gay sex when i was a married man myself, but I was never one of these hair-trigger guys. Ok, I was into connecting, they were into getting off.

After a while, I stopped being surprised. Like I said, men are such thoughtless selfish shits.

As soon as Football Fan catches his breath he’s ready to get out of the baths and get to his Superbowl event. So I say bye and see-ya, give him a slap on one of those big shoulders, and tell him I hope the Steelers win.  (They lose, 27-17.  I just looked it up.) By then I know about as much about his sports enthusiasms as I do about his sexual interests.  An excellent moment for someone like me to say goodbye.

 I doubt that he thinks of himself as a fag, and I wonder if he even thinks of himself as some kind of gay. I don’t actually care – for a first encounter of an afternoon, this one’s been just fine, a nice little appetizer (some emotion beyond lust would have been nice, though, not to mention some affection), it’s a way back into sex with men after a while away, I don’t really want to shoot my load right away, and it’s always pleasing to give someone what turns out to be exactly what they want – but I can’t help musing on how people see themselves and how they think about others.  Writer’s curse.

The baths do have a non-porn TV tuned to the game, and there are plenty of watchers, including at least one guy, someone who no one’s gaydar could miss, who describes himself (in my hearing) as a football queen, which I would take to be evidence that you can keep all the Kinsey points you want and still be a football fan, so long as you do it in style.

…..

Most of the rest of the 1996 story is a tale of a long and deeply satisfying sexual encounter between my character and Mark, his main trick of the day. Moving and complex, but only accidentally connected to SBS.

On Pinterest this morning, this Crock Pot Cowboy Casserole:

(#1) Two stages in preparation and the final product

Ah, the N + N compound cowboy casserole. Clearly not an Ingredient compound (‘casserole made from cowboys’), but instead a Use compound, roughly ‘casserole for cowboys (to use)’, or — most likely — an Object compound, roughly ‘casserole of the sort that cowboys (like to) eat’.

A parallel to cowboy casserole. From my 8/25/14 posting “Cowboy Rub”, a survey of possible semantic relationships between the two Ns in the compound cowboy rub:

Object of the rubbing. The supermarket shot shows Chicken Rub and Pork Rub, and (1) has Steak Rub as well — all N+N compounds in which the first element refers to the food on which the spices are rubbed. This is a canonical sort of N + N compound, parallel (except for the semantic complexity of rub) to compounds like linguistics book ‘book on linguistics’.

Ingredient in the rub. Another canonical sort of N + N compound, seen in examples like cherry pie. In (1) we see it, in a very complex form, in Applewood Rub[with applewood smoke flavor as an ingredient]

… commenters on Facebook entertained the ingredient interpretation for Cowboy Rub, with amusement…

Characteristic location/source of the rub. Roughly paraphrasable as ‘a rub in the manner / fashion of this location / source’. This analysis applies to some of the act nouns, notably Princeton rub, but also to complex cases … alluding to [hand jobs performed in the manner of] Memphis, Texas, and Tennessee. You need to supply some considerable cultural knowledge to make full sense of these cases.

Cowboy Rub is somewhat similar to these, with its (intended) interpretation as something like ‘a rub of the sort that cowboys use on meat’ [I would now classify this as a Use compound]

… Of course, cowboy rub could also be a (sexual) act noun, referring to masturbation or frottage the way cowboys do it, or the way it’s done on cowboys.

All sorts of cowboy casseroles. As it turns out, ideas about cowboys and their tastes in casseroles vary quite a bit, in part because the cowboys in question are not actual human beings but mythic characters embodying legends of the American West (on the range) and also cultural ideals of working-class masculinity. Some contributions from these sources: meat (especially beef) as manfood and also range food; beans and corn as characteristic range food; chili (in one manifestation, a stew of chili peppers, ground beef, tomatoes, and beans) as the quintessential manfood; and potatoes and bread as manfood accompaniments to main dishes. “I’m a meat-and-potatoes man”, as they say.

Then there’s the casserole as culinary type. From Wikipedia, with the central ingredients boldfaced:

A casserole (French: diminutive of casse, from Provençal cassa “pan”) is a large, deep pan used both in the oven and as a serving vessel. The word is also used for the food cooked and served in such a vessel, with the cookware itself called a casserole dish or casserole pan.

… In the United States and continental Europe casseroles usually consist of pieces of meat (such as chicken) or fish (such as tuna), various chopped vegetables, a starchy binder such as flour, rice, potato or pasta, and often a crunchy or cheesy topping. Liquids are released from the meat and vegetables during cooking, and further liquid in the form of stock, wine, beer (for example lapin à la Gueuze), gin, cider, or vegetable juice may be added when the dish is assembled. Casseroles are usually cooked slowly in the oven, often uncovered. They may be served as a main course or a side dish, and may be served in the vessel in which they were cooked.

Putting the schema for cowboy food together with the schema for casseroles allows for a wide spectrum of things that might count as a cowboy casserole, and actual recipes seem to come from all over this spectrum. Three examples here, starting with the one from Pinterest.

Crock Pot Cowboy Casserole. #1 above. From the Chasing Saturdays website (“sharing food, family, & farm life”) on 12/11/16:

Crock Pot Cowboy Casserole is a hearty meal and combines all of our favorite ingredients into one dish. I knew this snowy weekend would be a perfect time to create a Crock Pot meal the whole family would love.

Ingredients: 1 onion, chopped; 1 clove garlic, minced; 2 pounds ground pork [pork sausage]; 6 medium potatoes, cut into small cubes; 1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed; 1 can diced tomatoes w. green chilis (or homemade stewed tomatoes); ¼ cup water; salt and pepper to taste; 4 oz shredded cheddar cheese

Crock pot instructions:
1. Chop onion and mince garlic.
2. Brown sausage, add salt and pepper to taste, and drain
3. Layer potatoes on bottom of 6 quart crock pot, add chopped onion and garlic
4. Add sausage, beans, and tomatoes
5. Pour water in crock
6. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours
7. Sprinkle shredded cheese in last 15 minutes, cover crock, and serve after cheese [is] melted

Taste of Home Cowboy Casserole. From the Taste of Home site:

(#2)

Ingredients: 1/2 pound lean ground beef (90% lean); 1 can (8-3/4 ounces) whole kernel corn, drained; 2/3 cup condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted; 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese, divided; 1/3 cup 2% milk; 2 tablespoons sour cream; 3/4 teaspoon onion powder; 1/4 teaspoon pepper; 2 cups frozen Tater Tots

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375°. In a large skillet, cook beef over medium heat until no longer pink. Stir in the corn, soup, 1/4 cup cheese, milk, sour cream, onion powder and pepper.
Place 1 cup Tater Tots in a greased 3-cup baking dish. Layer with beef mixture and remaining Tater Tots; sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake, uncovered, 20-25 minutes or until bubbly.

Allrecipes Cowboy Casserole. From the Allrecipes site:

(#3)

This combination of hamburger, beans, and bacon over biscuits will bring out the cowboy in anyone. It has become a family favorite. It is so easy to make, and we love to make it when we’re camping.

Ingredients: 1/2 pound bacon; 1 pound ground beef; 1 small onion, chopped; white onion, large; 2 (15 ounce) cans baked beans with pork; 1/3 cup barbeque sauce; 1 (7.5 ounce) package refrigerated biscuit dough

Instructions:
Cook bacon in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat until evenly browned. Drain, and cut into bite size pieces. Set aside. Add hamburger and onion to the skillet, and cook until no longer pink, and the onion is tender. Drain.
Stir bacon, baked beans and barbeque sauce into the ground beef, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low, and place biscuits in a single layer over the top of the mixture. Cover, and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the biscuits are done. Place two biscuits on each plate, and spoon beans over.

It’s unclear to me how the family manages to bring refrigerated biscuit dough on their camping trips.

Today is the lunar New Year, celebrated as the beginning of the Year of the Pig in China, Vietnam, and a number of other places. From Wikipedia:

The Pig (豬) is the twelfth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. In the continuous sexagenary cycle of sixty years, every twelfth year corresponds to hai, 亥 [’12th earthly branch’ (in astrology)]

And in this PinMart enameled Chinese zodiac pin ( 1″w x 3/4″h):

Text: Pigs are hardworking, kind, and liberal. With their intense concentration and calm demeanor when facing trouble, Pigs will dedicate full energy into reaching their goals.

Not how most Western people would characterize pigs.

Instead we get, as in this Wikipedia article on pigs in (Western) popular culture, stereotypes of gluttony and dirtiness predominating:

Pigs, widely present in world cultures, have taken on many meanings and been used for many purposes in traditional arts, popular culture, and media. As one scholar puts it, people all over the world have made swine stand for “extremes of human joy or fear, celebration, ridicule, and repulsion.”  They have become synonymous with negative attributes, especially greed, gluttony, and uncleanliness, and these ascribed attributes have often led to critical comparisons between pigs and humans.

But In many other cultures (Chinese, Meso-American, and more) pigs are domestic animals valued as a source of food and companionship, and are associated with stereotypes of amiability, intelligence, and hard work.

The porcine English lexicon. The Western stereotypes show up very clearly in the English lexicon, in uses of pig, piggish, piggy, pig out (on), pig it, make a pig of oneself, swine, swinish, pork out (on), and more. And in two snowclonelet composites X pig: a sexual one and a food-enthusiast one. Postings on this blog on the first of these, with a segue into the second (WARNING: references in plain language to sexual practices that some may find distasteful or disturbing: this section is not for kids or the sexually modest):

– on 9/30/13, in “Up Your Alley”: about the Dore Alley BDSM fair in San Francisco, offically named Up Your Alley®:

 Note that the Saturday night dance party is called Bay of Pigs — a play on the geographical name, involving pig as a sexual term, in 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) and in the compounds pig play and pig sex, referring to “dirty” sex.

– on 9/23/15, in “Mark Mason, Matt Bauer, and Gay Porn Minus Gay Sex”: X pig example tit pig

– on 10/19/15, in “Rafe on display”: X pig example fuck pig

– on 2/25/17, in “Displaying your nipples”: nipple pig, nippig, titpig; other examples of the sexual X pig snowclonelet

– on 9/19/17, in “I like pig butts and I cannot lie”, about sexual X pig:

It starts with figurative uses of pig, which depend on stereotypes about the nature of pigs. From NOAD2, this sense:

informal derogatory  a greedy, dirty, or unpleasant person

From this radiate an assortment of senses of pig, noun and verb, having to do with greed, dirtiness, or unpleasantness. The food-enthusiast snowclonelet food pig develops from the greed theme in the stereotype.

Then specifically on food enthusiasms:

– on 2/26/17, in “More piggery”: the food-enthusiast snowclone X pig (ice cream pig and the like) and the bases for it

Prompted by Michael Palmer on Facebook, this Bizarro pun from 9/9/12:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 7 in the strip from which this panel is extracted — see this Page.)

This cartoon was the third, and by far the best, of the set of Sunday Punnies for that day:

(#2)

#1 has two extraordinarily famous figures from Western art — Thomas Gainsborough’s portrayal of Blue Boy (1779) and Leonardo da Vinci’s portrayal of the Mona Lisa / La Gioconda (c. 1503-06) — somehow cast adrift in a modern city not unlike New York. No longer on canvas, but now on the streets of a metropolis

Then the pun: canvas / Kansas, alluding to a well-known quotation from the movie of The Wizard of Oz (1939). From the tv tropes site on “Not in Kansas Anymore”:

A Stock Phrase referencing The Wizard of Oz, used to express the realization that the character is in a completely unfamiliar (or indeed otherwordly) place.

The original quote was “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” But it is sometimes misquoted as “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

Superman, no longer in Kansas (he grew up as Clark Kent in Smallville KS):

(#3)

Though there was surely no gay subtext intended in #1, someone with an eye attuned to these things can find one: in Blue Boy and in the allusion to the Wizard of Oz.

Gay Blue Boy. From my 4/28/17 posting “Faces follow-up 1: Master Beckford” (about the flamboyant William Beckford), a recognition that soon after Gainsborough painted Blue Boy, it happened that the adjective blue developed a sexual sense, adding a possible sexual tinge to Blue Boy.

 Then, in a separate development, in the U.S. in the 20th century, it seems primarily through clothing marketers, pastel pink came to be associated with girl babies, pastel blue with boys, and then pink came to be seen generally as a feminine color and blue as masculine, which meant that pink things for men came to connote effeminacy (and therefore homosexuality — as a result, some men are still wary about dressing in anything pink) and blue things assertive masculinity — which in combination with blue connoting sex makes blue available as a color for gay macho.

Put that together with Gainsborough’s Blue Boy as a well-known figure of confident young manhood, and I suppose it was inevitable that in an age of increasing sexual freedom, there would appear a [pornographic] magazine for gay men called Blue Boy (or Blueboy) [1974-2007].

(#4) From Master Beckford to Most Hung Studs Ever…

Not in Kansas anymore. From the jacket copy for Dee Michel’s Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love “The Wizard of Oz” (2018)

(#5)

No it’s not just Judy! Gay men love not only the MGM film but other stories set in Oz — the original books, more recent books with Oz themes and settings, and stage and screen productions like The Wiz. In Friends of Dorothy, based on interviews with more than one hundred gay Oz fans, Dee Michel explains the enduring appeal of Oz for gay men and boys. Interviewees include Gregory Maguire (Wicked), Robert Sabuda (the pop-up Wizard of Oz), and William Mann (Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn). The book also tackles the long-taboo topic of gay boys, examining their feelings about escaping to Oz, the characters they identify with, and the psychological and spiritual uses they make of stories set in Oz. The many voices in Friends of Dorothy, along with extensive research and analysis, provide a richly layered look at the allure of Oz, with insights into gay culture, gay psychology, and gay folklore.

Dee’s note d, p. 27:

Two pieces of the movie in particular also appear often in gay contexs. “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” is a favorite camp line [citations from Lisa Keen 2008 and Leigh Rutledge 1989] … And “Over the Rainbow” is often considered a theme song for the gay community.

Bonus from the book: a print on p. 175, repeated on the back cover, Once in a Lullaby by Michael Breyette (2010):

(#6) On Breyette’s website: Art of Michael Breyette: Pastel artist of the male figure, nudes and gay themes. Romantic. Lustful. Whimsical. Thoughtful.

The artist’s story about #6:

As they left the theater they felt moved not only by the spectacle and songs, but also by the underlying theme of the film. Throwing caution to the wind they kissed on the street in public. Something very taboo for 1939. They closed their eyes and wished, perhaps one day they would not have to hide their lives in the shadows, but simply live and love freely in a land that they heard of once in a lullaby.

With this added comment:

I find it fascinating that The Wizard of Oz came out (no pun intended) over 70 years ago, and yet remains such a big part of gay culture today. I can’t fathom what it must have been like to be gay in 1939.

Back to Dee’s book, from last year. From his blog on 6/11/18 “Gay Men and the Wizard of Oz”:

(#7) The author outside a gift shop in Toronto’s gay neighborhood

I am the author of a new book, “Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love The Wizard of Oz.”

Researching, writing and getting this book out there has been a long process (twenty years!), but things have accelerated in the last few weeks. As a first time author, I thought readers might be interested in the process of writing, publishing and marketing my first book. As well as reflecting on the past, I will be talking about what is happening currently with the book: readings and other special events.

So, what is the story with Oz and gay men? It’s not simply a matter, as many people assume, of gay men being into Judy Garland. I have interviewed over 100 gay Oz fans and it turns out gay men are also fans of the Oz books, as well as Wicked and The Wiz. Also my respondents became fans when they were as young as 3 or 4 or 5 years old. Even if their first exposure to Oz was the MGM film with Judy Garland, they were not signing on to fandom because they gave heard that Judy is a gay icon, or that they themselves were aware of being gay. Something is going on at a much deeper level. Themes of all sorts in stories set in Oz resonate with young gay boys.

“Friends of Dorothy” details the existence of the Oz-gay connection, presents responses of individual fans to Oz stories, and then puts the phenomenon of gay love of Oz into a broader social and cultural context.

So much for friends, what about enemies? From Randy McDonald on Facebook on 7/10/18, posting about “It’s Tough Being Queer in America, So Enemies of Dorothy Want You to Laugh Until You Cry” by Daniel Villarreal on 7/2/18:

There’s something funny about being gay. We’re told not to be gay so we can go to heaven with the homophobes. We mock our enemies by saying they’re secretly one of us. We’re proud of our inclusivity but dislike old people and bisexuals. We’re a wealth of contradictions, and it’s there that queer comedy troupe Enemies of Dorothy mine their humor.

The name is a play on the term “Friends of Dorothy” (an old-timey euphemism for gay men), and they’re building up a catalog of hilarious sketches on their YouTube page, tackling everything from dating conservatives to banning straight people from Pride. They’re also attracting the likes of other talented queer comedians like Michael Henry, and this month their work will be showcased at Outfest, L.A.‘s renowned LGBTQ film festival.

The troupe was founded in 2016 when Christopher Smith Bryant and Ryan Leslie Fisher, boyfriends of three years, wanted to voice their feelings following the election of U.S. President [REDACTED].

… One of their earliest sketches (below) advertises a non-existent LEGO playset for U.S. Vice President [REDACTED]’s ex-gay conversion therapy camp, a jab at [his] support for programs that “change people’s sexual behavior.” The LEGO playset has a campfire, a pool slide, a treehouse with a tire swing and an electrocution chamber where gay boys can be zapped straight. And it’s brought to you by the Westboro Baptist Church (y’know, the “God hates fags” people).

(The Daily Jocks e-mail of 2/11/19 with a homowear offer from the Varsity company came with the header “NSFW: Boys in mesh”, so this posting will clearly not be for everyone. Seductively exposed buttocks, offered sexually, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)

With a brief caption of mine:

(#1) Mesh Man: Always Open for Business®

Ever at the ready, a
Marvel of receptivity
Mesh Man, always there for you,

Mind reader and lightning
Provider of sexual
Emergency service

The ad copy. Introducing the all-new Varsity Mesh Collection!

Both sexy and preppy, Varsity prides itself on a great range of basics and statement pieces designed for every guy’s wardrobe. The stylish brand is influenced by American University sportswear and Frat parties, combining a mix of sporty elements and details that won’t leave you unnoticed. Totally versatile, Varsity will always have you covered for parties, the gym and everyday wear.

Jockstrap, Jock-Thong, Mesh Shorts, Mesh Singlet. All available now in Black & White.

I’m struggling to imagine Mesh Man at a frat party. Well, maybe Sigma Epsilon Chi:

(#2)

The facial expression. Mesh Man looks heroically into the far distance, scanning the sky for signals from men calling to him. He will come to you instantly if you need him.

Mesh Man’s kin. In the Marvel universe: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Iceman. In the D.C. universe: Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Catman, and especially his cousin in shmattes, Ragman.

From the Comic Vine site:

(#3)

Ragman: Wearing a suit of rags made from the souls of evildoers, Rory Regan patrols the streets of Gotham City dispensing vigilante justice. He is one of the few Jewish superheroes in the DC universe

(noun schmatte (also shmatte): US informal a rag; a ragged or shabby garment. (NOAD))

This is not generally known, but Mesh Man is also Jewish. Originally, he was Meshuga Man, projecting craziness within a sphere 20 feet around his body, but then after an especially satisfying sexual liaison with Iron Man, he discovered his true calling as a Receptive.

(adj. meshuga (also meshugga or meshugah): North American informal (of a person) crazy; idiotic (NOAD))

A mailing today about the March-April 2019 issue of G&LR (The Gay & Lesbian Review):

The proposal is LGBT+. Just LGBT+.

A question I took up at some length back in 2011, first in a 1/23/11 posting on this blog, “The alphabet soup of sexuality and gender”, then in a 3/11/11 paper at the Stanford SemFest: see the handout for this talk, “Categories and Labels: LGBPPTQQQEIOAAAF2/SGL …”, on labels in the SIP domain — of sexuality / sexual orientation, gender / sexual identity, and sexual practices —  as used to construct an initialism for the entire domain.

The proliferation of letters in the name of this domain results from a well-meaning attempt to be inclusive, but there’s virtually no end there, and the whole enterprise is based on a misapprehension about the nature of names. As I hammer out relentlessly on this blog every few months (there is in fact a Page for this):

Labels Are Not Definitions

and they cannot be expected to be. A good name is short enough to be memorable, but a good definition is often expansive and complex, and always refers to an intricate web of concepts and their labels.

So the G&LR‘s naming instincts are good, and their current decision reflects the fact that LGBT now has very wide currency in talk about the SIP domain, so it makes sense to build on existing practice.

A regular topic on this blog and AZBlogX, combining a semi-professional interest in facial expression with one in the creation and presentation of personas (using gay porn as an arena of study). And there’s holiday — Valentine’s Day — interest as well. Despite the topic, this posting is nowhere near as raunchy as you might have imagined — no street language —  but there’s no denying that there’s a whole lot here about men’s bodies and mansex, so it’s probably not for kids or the sexually modest.

This posting is a version of a posting today on AZBlog X (“Sweetly Blissful VDay Muscle Daddy”), with naughty bits cropped from the images; they’re central to the gay porn, but not particularly relevant to my interests here.

New Year’s. Background: for New Year’s Day, smiling Dirk Caber and Dakota Rivers in Titan’s New Rules (in a 1/17/19 posting “Happy New Year’s Muscle Daddies”):

(#1)

Rivers resting on Caber’s broad chest — both men are heavily muscled — being held by him. (The shot is actually about Caber’s substantial erect penis , in the center of the orginal image. But in fact most people will be inclined to scan the faces first; human beings are deeply face-oriented creatures.)

Caber is smiling with his whole face; if you look just at his eyes (crinkled up) you can see that he’s smiling. Rivers, on the other hand, is flashing a camera smile, all done with his mouth; if you look just at his eyes, you can’t tell that he’s smiling. See my 2/14/17 posting “Sex and smiles for VDay”, with a section on smiling with the eyes.

(I noted in that earlier posting that Caber smiles a lot — with his whole face.)

#1 is a display shot. A pose for the viewer, embodying a relationship between the subject(s) and the viewer, intended to provide the viewer with pleasure, arousal, and eventually ejaculation. When the subject(s) and viewer lock gazes, you might think of it as a kind of cruise of the viewer, suggesting the possibility of a hook-up, maybe to climax. That is, a sexual display easily morphs into a sexual offer; see my 12/30/18 posting“Sexual displays > offers: prone, supine, lateral”.

Valentine’s Day. That was New Year’s. For Valentine’s Day, Titan has rolled out Dirk Caber from New Rules (again), this time with Daymin Voss, so we’ve got a sex shot, where the relationship lies in the sex acts two or more men are performing with each other, and the viewer is just an on-looker (gaining pleasure, and getting off, as an observer or, most often, by identification with one or more of the participants). Caber and Voss:

(#2)

The facial expressions. Voss has his eyes closed as he expertly plies his craft as a fellator. (Again, Caber’s penis, and Voss’s engagement with it, are central to the image, but viewers are likely to scan Caber’s face first, before they look down to the main business.) Man at Work.

Caber might have adopted a similar stance of full absorption in his task, or he might have become an Ecstatic (out of control in pleasure bordering on agony), or possibly performed amiably as a Good Buddy, with a full smile. (There’s a Page on this blog on facial expressions during mansex.) Instead, we get a Sweetly Blissful Caber, eyes dreamily closed, with a relaxed half-smile on his lips. If he opens he eyes, he’ll be gazing down affectionately at the beautiful man serving him.

You don’t get a lot of Sweetly Blissful. (Previously on this blog, in #4 in a 11/24/18 posting “November facework”, a Blissful face in a Swinginballs ad.)

It’s all pleasingly intimate — a particularly good choice of a porn shot for Valentine’s Day. (And the bodies are nicely aligned in the photo.)

(Note. There are non-standard display shots, in which the subject looks off into the middle distance, or down towards the ground — or faces full away from the camera, thus providing access to his shoulders, back, and buttocks, but not his face (presenting the subject as a receptive partner in anal intercourse). And non-standard sex shots, in which one or more of the participants gazes (perhaps self-promotingly) into the camera instead of at one of his sex partners. But most display shots and sex shots seem to be as characterized above.)

Yesterday’s Wayno & Piraro Bizarro:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

A play on desserts (on the menu) vs. the deserts of just deserts. Plus a small cascade of idioms on oral humiliations. With a nod to the nasty rough edges of the verb eat (and, while we’re on the subject, suck). (Eventually, this will lead to some very plain-language talk — not for kids or the sexually modest — about some social and sexual practices among gay men. I’ll warn you when the topic is imminent.)

The ambiguity that drives the joke. From NOAD:

noun dessert:  the sweet course eaten at the end of a meal: a dessert of chocolate mousse.

pl. noun deserts: a person’s worthiness or entitlement to reward or punishment: the penal system fails to punish offenders in accordance with their deserts. PHRASES get (or receive) one’s just desertsreceive the appropriate reward or (more usually) punishment for one’s actions: those who caused great torment to others rarely got their just deserts. ORIGIN Middle English: via Old French desert, from deservir ‘serve well’ (see deserve).

You’ll get what you deserve, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings, … you vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert! (Stupid git.) (from Monty Python’s Argument Sketch)

The idioms of humiliating eating. Again, from NOAD:

phrase eat crow: North American informal be humiliated by having to admit one’s defeats or mistakes.

phrase eat humble pie: make a humble apology and accept humiliation. [humble pie is from a pun based on umbles ‘offal’, considered inferior food.]

phrase eat one’s words: retract what one has said, especially in a humiliated way: they will eat their words when I win.

The routes from mere eating to humiliation are variously severe: the embarrassment of retraction in the case of eat one’s words (understood figuratively); the indignity of eating inferior food in eat humble pie; the deep shame of eating disgusting stuff in eat crow.

The nasty penumbra of the verb eat. (This is where things take a turn to the dirty, and they wil get more intense in a little while. If this doesn’t suit you, bail out now, or at the end of this section.) While eat is a perfectly everyday verb referring to the consumption of food, it has (at least) two uses that hover in the background, potentially contaminating its neutral uses:

— sexual eat. From GDoS:

verb eat: … 4 to perform hetero- or homosexual fellatio or, more usu. cunnilingus [1st cite 1888-94 in My Secret Life] [The usage is metaphorical, oral sex involving taking material into the mouth, as in eating — but not food, and not chewing and swallowing it.]

From which we get locutions like these (again, from GDoS):

verb eat it: 1 to perform oral sex [1st cite 1963, which strikes me as way late] 2 to suffer humiliation, esp. in attaining a desired goal [1st cite from Studs Lonigan in 1934] [The development from 1 to 2 depends on the social attitude that performing oral sex, especially fellatio, especially by a man, is disgusting, hence demeaning. That view of sex between men is common among straight men, but alien, even incomprehensible, to most gay men, for whom sucking cock is easy, everyday, default sex. Eat it? Hell, yes!]

excl. eat it!: (… it is the penis) a general term of dismissal, disdain [1st cite 1904; all cites US]

[Digression on the dismissive exclamation eat it!  The penis as object seems never to be far away in this idiom, which made the idiom grist for “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody mill — in the music video “Eat It”, a take-off on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”:

(#2)

From Wikipedia:

Alfred Matthew “Weird Al” Yankovic (born October 23, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, satirist, film producer, and author. He is known for his humorous songs that make light of popular culture and often parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts, original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts, and polka medleys of several popular songs, featuring his favored instrument, the accordion.

… Yankovic released his second album “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D in 1984. The first single “Eat It”, a parody of the Michael Jackson song “Beat It”, became popular, thanks in part to the music video, a shot-for-shot parody of Jackson’s “Beat It” music video, and what Yankovic described as his “uncanny resemblance” to Jackson

Jackson’s song has beat it as in NOAD:

verb beat: 7 (beat it) informal leave: [in imperative]: now beat it, will you! 

but it too has a sexual penumbra, with beat it ‘beat off, masturbate’ in it.

End of digression.]

— fecal eat. Green asserts confidently that the it of eat it is the penis, and that might indeed have been its historical source, but speakers don’t know etymologies, nor should they be expected to, and some speakers report that they think the it refers to feces — in which case the eating is literal, not metaphorical, though the idiom does involve a specialization in the interpretation of the object of eat — and many report that they think the it refers to the penis, but also calls feces to mind. As in this figurative idiom (whose force depends on the belief that eating feces is deeply disgusting, hence demeaning), from GDoS:

verb eat shit: 1 to humble oneself, usu. to attain a desired goal. [1st cite 1972 from Charles Bukowski]  2 to be utterly contemptible [one cite from 2001]  3 to suffer and accept humiliation [1st cite 1941-5 from military usage]

A note on intransitive suck. As with humiliation uses of eat it, denigrating uses of suck are easily contaminated by sexual uses. The sense in question is this one, from NOAD:

verb suck: 3 [no object] North American informal be very bad, disagreeable, or disgusting: I love your country, but the weather sucks.

This usage is very widespread, and most speakers make no conscious association with cocksucking — but some do, and find the usage offensive; and many seem to feel that the usage gets some of its punch from fellatial associations.

A note on objectless eat in special contexts. In the world of coprophagy — scat, in local parlance — eat (and feed as well) are used without an object, but are understood transitively (with understood direct object shit): I feed, but I don’t eat. An unsurprising usage in the context, and it extends to agentive nouns: Are you a feeder or an eater?

These usages seem not to have reached the world of lexicography, but maybe I haven’t looked in the right places.

Delicious humiliation: the paradoxical pleasures of SHAC: . From a little-known fetish world to a much more widely known one, usually referred to by the initialistic label BDSM, but here I’ll use the acronym SHAC: submission, humiliation, abuse, constraint.

With some detail from the world of gay men:

submission — to a better, more powerful, more masculine, man; absorbing the power of a better man, becoming more like him, by obeying him, serving him, and especially by sex magic, by taking him into your body

humiliation — losing face, especially in public, by engaging in embarrassing practices, like going naked, or in disgusting practices, like drinking piss or eating shit

abuse — verbal, but especially physical (enduring pain)

constraint — bondage, confinement, sensory blocking

Of these experiences, the greatest is humiliation; the others are supplementary: submission, accepting abuse, and enduring constraint are all routes to humiliation.

I’ve posted about much of this world on this blog — see the page on fetishes and paraphilias — with some attention to the psychological values of such experiences for the participants. Here’s a bit about dominance and submission, from my 7/19/10 posting “The truly huge”:

When gay men who fancy the sub role in humiliation scenes, and the men who relish taking the dom role in these scenes, talk about the experiences, the emotions they describe range over quite a bit of territory, but for many, on both sides, humiliation as an ordeal or test is a major, or even the paramount, the defining, aspect of the dom-sub encounter: the sub proves himself as a man by successfully undergoing the humiliation, by “taking it like a man” (just getting fucked by another man has this resonance for many men at least some of the time, even if they don’t explicitly configure getting fucked this way, and of course subs in b&d and s&m feel this way, proud of what they can endure).

And afterwards the sub’s inner fears about his own worth have been, paradoxically some would think, allayed. Indeed the sub has become “a better man”: not only does he get a shot of masculinity-by-association, he also becomes comfortable with, indeed proud of, his identity (not merely his role in a short-lived encounter) as a faggot. (Not to mention his ability to get another guy to give him what he wants, what he needs.)

On the dom’s part, he gets not only masculinity-by-contrast and a power rush, but also the satisfaction of a job — as a kind of therapist, or spiritual guide even  — well done (giving the sub what he needs).

And of course, both guys get themselves off.

As furors break out here and there over same-sex kisses in the media (especially in ads) and also in real life (in public places) — disgusting! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! get that out of my sight! — I move to celebrate them. Especially men kissing men, an act that enrages a fair number of people, apparently because they have been conditioned to view it as the functional equivalent of two sweaty naked men fucking. I view it as the functional equivalent of a man and woman kissing: an act of romantic connection with a spicy tang of sexual attraction (but no more)

And so I come to two recent British films viewed on Netflix: The Pass (Russell Tovey and Arinzé Kene as footballers) and God’s Own Country (Josh O’Connor and Alec Secăreanu as Yorkshire sheep farmers). Both are fraught love stories set in intensely masculine working-class social worlds. With wonderful performances. And man-on-man kissing, both touching and moving.

The Pass. From Wikipedia:

(#1) A poster for the movie (Tovey on left, Kene on right), showing the incipient first kiss

The Pass is a 2016 film starring Russell Tovey and Arinzé Kene. It was directed by Ben A. Williams, based on a play by John Donnelly. The film deals with the issue of a homosexual relationship between two English football players, and how their lives unfold over the course of a decade.

Nineteen-year-olds Jason and Ade have been in the Academy of a famous London football club since they were eight years old. It’s the night before their first-ever game for the first team — a Champions League match — and they’re in a hotel room in Romania. They should be sleeping, but they’re over-excited. They skip, fight, mock each other, prepare their kit, watch a teammate’s sex tape. And then, out of nowhere, one of them kisses the other. The impact of this ‘pass’ reverberates through the next ten years of their lives — a decade of fame and failure, secrets and lies, in a sporting world where image is everything

Kene and Tovey at the premiere:

:

(#2) Note Tovey’s ears; ears are a theme in this posting

Tovey (born in 1981) is an old acquaintance on this blog; my 8/21/17 posting “Angels in Palo Alto” has a section on him. He played Joe Pitt in the National Theatre Ensemble production of Angels in America I wrote about there. Of the four men in this posting, he’s the gay one.

His performance as Jason in The Pass is extraordinary: intensely physical, always in action, one emotion after another flickering across his face, showing off his body (NSFW warning!) —

(#3) Jason in the middle of a monologue

keeping up a rain of talk, challenging Ade, ragging him, reminiscing (both players reel off tiny details of matches from years ago), bragging about his working-class toughness and his top-footballer status, putting down faggots, (in the later scenes) popping pills and pouring down drink. Fending off repose, connection, affection. Until the end, when they embrace and kiss again and he falls asleep wrapped around Ade in bed.

Ade is the steady one, long ago resigned to a simple life outside of football and (now) comfortable with his homosexuality.

Kene’s Wikipedia page is essentially a long list of the roles he’s played and the plays he’s had produced, but from a 2/25/13 Guardian interview by Maddy Costa, we learn that he was born in Laos, Nigeria, in 1987; his parents emigrated to London [Hackney, in inner London] in 1991. From the interview:

Like many first-generation Londoners, he experienced a divided sense of nationality. “At home, I’m very Nigerian. You’ll hear Nigerian music, my parents speak in Igbo, my mum’s got her wrap on and cooks Nigerian food. Then I leave the house and I’m Arinze, the British kid.” It’s a division that is embedded in his plays: the dialogue is very London, but the storytelling, he explains, is more influenced by the structure of African folk stories, particularly the way a narrative isn’t resolved but remains open-ended.

He is also much inspired by the writing of Langston Hughes, a key figure in the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. “You can tell he loves black people. He understands that there is a lot out there saying you shouldn’t like yourself – and he writes because he wants us to love ourselves.”

Kene in character in his own play Misty in 2018:

(#4) In principle SFW, but undeniably hot

God’s Own Country. The Pass is an entirely indoor drama, set in hotel rooms; much of God’s Own Country takes place in farm buildings or out on the stark Yorkshire landscape. From Wikipedia:

(#5) O’Connor (left) and Secăreanu (right)

God’s Own Country is a 2017 British drama film written and directed by Francis Lee in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Josh O’Connor and Alec Secăreanu. The plot follows a young sheep farmer [Johnny Saxby] in Yorkshire [trying to hold the farm together after his father has a stroke] whose life is transformed by a Romanian migrant worker [Gheorghe Ionescu, who helps him rescue the farm and also becomes his secret lover].

… The Sundance Film Festival’s listing for God’s Own Country says that “you can smell the mud in this movie” [and the muck and the blood and more beyond that] while also describing Francis Lee as a major new talent and the film as “one not to be missed.” Peter Bradshaw, writing in The Guardian, gave the film four stars out of five. Bradshaw described the film as “an almost, but not quite a Dales Brokeback,” and also as a “very British love story, bursting at the seams with unspoken emotions, unvoiced fears about the future, and a readiness to displace every emotion into hard physical work”.

Here are the men, Gheorghe on top, in their incipient kiss:

(#6) The match to #1

And then the match to #2:

(#7) O’Connor and Secăreanu; now it’s O’Connor’s ears

From Wikipedia:

Josh O’Connor (born 20 May 1990) is a British actor. He is known for his portrayal of Johnny Saxby in the 2017 film God’s Own Country, directed by Francis Lee, for which he won a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor, and for his portrayal of Lawrence Durrell in the ITV TV series The Durrells. He is also appearing as Marius in BBC One’s miniseries of Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Misérables.

O’Connor was born in Southampton, United Kingdom. He is a grandson of the British sculptor, John Bunting, and a descendant of the Bunting Tea dynasty.  He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

And then his next role, which (among other things) takes advantage of his ears, as reported in W Magazine‘s  “The Crown Very Flatteringly Casts Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles” by Marissa G. Muller on 7/16/18:

(#8) Well, the young Prince Charles

And then, from Wikipedia:

Alexandru “Alec” Secăreanu (born 4 December 1984 in Bucharest) is a Romanian actor.

… After appearing in a number of Romanian films, 2017 brought Secăreanu his first English-language role in director Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country. [Secăreanu lives, and mostly acts, in Bucharest.]

(A note on ages. The four men above are distributed over 10 years, at 3-year intervals: Tovey born in 1981, Secăreanu in 1984, Kene in 1987, and O’Connor in 1990. So the men in each kissing couple are 6 years apart: Tovey 6 years older than Kene, Secăreanu 6 years older than O’Connor. Though the characters in each couple are supposed to be very nearly the same age.)

It was 1971 when Peter Finch and Murray Head brought us the first man-on-man kiss to catch serious attention in an English-language film (in Sunday Bloody Sunday), and that was a Very Big Thing. Things have moved, but slowly, since then, and even now, films like The Pass and God’s Own Country are marketed primarily to gay audiences. Still, there’s been Brokeback Mountain and some other films, and Glee and some other tv shows (though it took forever for Will & Grace to get around to letting Will kiss another man). But same-sex kisses are still edgy things, far from the everyday, probably needing to be shielded from children. Maybe in another 48 years that will no longer be so.

(This posting will go lots of places, some of which — a Greek military re-enactors’ group in Melbourne — you’ll find astonishing, but there’s no denying that, as the title suggests, it’s penis-dense. Without actually depicting them — those images are in my posting this morning on AZBlogX, “Gay Heart Throbs” — but still. However, without penises strewn along the road every few feet, there’s no getting to the fun stuff (like allusions to Miss Anne Elk and to Sonnets from the Portuguese). So use your judgment.)

Phallophilia I: self-regard. A recent Daily Jocks ad (for Kasper Military shorts from the Helsinki Athletica company) showing a hunky model gazing fixedly down at his bulging crotch, with a title and a caption supplied by me:

(#1) On contemplating his penis

Could I just say here for one moment that
I have a new theory about the penis?
Yes, well you may well ask, what is my theory.
And well you may. Yes my word you may well
Ask what it is, this theory of mine.

Well, this theory that I have — which is mine —
This theory which belongs to me is as follows.
Ahem. Ahem. This is how it goes.
Ahem. The next thing that I am about to say
Is my theory. Ahem. Ready?

My theory is along the following lines.
All penises are round at one end,
Tubular in the middle, and then
Anchored in hair at the far end.

That is the theory that I have
And which is mine, and
What it is too.

— excerpts from an interview with noted penis scholar Gay H. Throbs, DPhS. (Doctor of Phallological Science)

On the nose, GHT!

Notes on #1.

First note. The DJ / Helsinki Athletica image came with this (extremely restrained) ad copy:

The Kasper sportswear range is designed for maximum performance whilst bringing sleek European aesthetic to your workout. Featuring figure-hugging trackpants & performance running shorts.

In the world of premium men’s underwear ads, you come to expect hysterical hyperbole, along with Lots of Caps, exclamation points!!, and heavy-handed allusions to genitals and sex. This copy touches the two essential bases — performance, embracing comfort and support, and aesthetics, looking real good in your skivvies — but no more. Maybe it’s Finnish reserve.

Second note. The gesture in #1, which I’ve posted about (on 11/8/10) on AZBlogX as “The Gaze Downward”:

Several times I’ve posted photos of guys — underwear or porn models — staring fixedly down at their own hard cocks, apparently with no regard for the viewer. The Gaze Downward, seen here in a 10percent ad (with the cock in the model’s pants, but hard enough for everyone to see) and in a Pits ‘n’ Tits display in the locker room…

(#2) The 10percent ad, with moose-knuckles

… the Gaze Downward isn’t all that common, probably because it doesn’t engage the viewer directly [instead, voyeurstically]. On the other hand, it does guide the viewer’s attention to the model’s dick [out in the open, or in his bulge / pouch / package]. You start by looking at his face, then you travel down his model-perfect body, appreciating it, until you end up on his cock.

From this blog, in a 3/16/11 posting “Underwear puns”:

(#3) Undergear Greek-design (wink, wink) briefs (ok, so called because of the Greek key design on the waistband); in the same posting, an example of the even more indirect Gaze Sideward, in which the model’s eyes engage neither with the viewer nor with his crotch

Two more examples from my files:

(#4)

(#5)

Not a lot of variation. The model in #3 is bearing his weight on his right leg, with his left hip slightly uptilted, while the others are standing with equal weight on both feet. His head is also not as far tilted down as the others’. All five express little or no emotion on their faces; I have yet to see an underwear model or porn actor smile during a Gaze Downward, or come even close; it’s serious stuff, contemplating your penis.

Third note. The source of the caption. A cheap steal from Monty Python’s sketch “Interview with Anne Elk” (Miss A. Elk, who had a similar theory about the brontosaurus), with some editing down, plus alterations to make it fit a phallophilic context.

Fourth note. the degree DPhS, Doctor of Phallological Science. Based on DDS, Doctor of Dental Surgery, with a bow to PhD, Doctor of Philosophy.

Fifth note. The name of the phallologist, Gay H. Throbs. This borrowed from e-mail that came in while I was studying the image in #1, e-mail from my friend Ken Rudolph, who had come into possession of a vintage gay (porn) comic book Gay Heart Throbs No. 2 (1979), more on which below, because its cover is a festival of phallophilic signifiers. (And Gay can be a male personal name. As for the family name Throbs, well, if Hurt, why not Throbs?)

Sixth note. This would be as good a time as any to announce that this blog now has a Page inventorying  postings about gay comics and cartoons (on AZBlog and AZBlogX). Everything from the wry humor in urban upper middle class gay male life as depicted by William Haefeli in the New Yorker to the intensely raunchy excesses of the Hun’s prison diaries.

Phallophilia II: penis-dense images. A summary of today’s Gay Heart Throbs posting on AZBlogX, with 5 images, plus discussion of settings and themes in gay porn:

(#1) the cover of No. 2 (1979), a festival of phallophilic signifiers

(#2) the contents page for No. 2, featuring a really big fat dick on a guy with an anatomical-model body and a stylized Gay Clone head pasted on top

(#3) from No. 2, a historical frontier fantasy of enthusiastic manly gaysex: the rancher, the soldier, and the Injun — with, in the last panel, gallons of spurting cum and a variety of cum faces

(#4) the cover for No. 1 (1976): gay boys in fairyland, with pan flute, nymph, butterflies, and Bambi — plus a fashionable Ascot-knot scarf and a crotch loosely wrapped in fabric

(#5) the cover for No. 3 (1981), in which a flamingly camp country boy is approached with amorous intent by a biker: not a Knight in White Satin, but a  Biker in Green Leather; his boots are fabulous, and so is country-boy Dwayne’s off-the-shoulder scarf (not to mention the tiny denim scrap around his waist)

From here on out, it’s all about GHT No. 2:

(#6) Issue created by M. Kuchar / Michael J. Kuchar (and other contributors with suggestive pseudonyms)

The central elements in this composition: the man-on-man kiss and the purple pouch thong (matched by the smaller sex-red pouch on the warrior’s lover)

The accessory phallic elements, littering the landscape: spears, arrows, daggers; shields with roosters / cocks on them; stylized Spartan helmets that look like dickheads

Notes on #6.

First note. On the name Kuchar. From GDoS:

noun cooch (also cootch, cutchie [and coochie, cootchie]: (abbr./euph. for cunt; [etymology unclear, possibly involving Welsh]) 1 (US) a ‘hootchy-kootchy’ dance, i.e. belly-dancing; thus cooch dancer, coocher, a belly dancer … [1st cite 1910] … 3 (US) the vagina; thus, by metonymy, a woman. [1st cite 1966] … 4 (US gay) an effeminate homosexual male. [only cite 1972, from Rodgers’s Queens’ Vernacular] … [also, I should add, from personal experience, the male anus viewed as a sexual organ. See Urban Dictionary entry for anal cooch ‘a gay man’s vagina’ (Man 1: Hun, something is wrong with my anal cooch – from contributor “that_just_happened” 6/22/07)]

Second note. The excellent, poetically satisfying, phrase purple pouch thong, which passed by without comment above.

An actual garment:

(#7) The Daniel Alexander Protrude pouch thong in purple

And a hymn to its kind:

The Song of the Thong

Purple pouch thong
How I love thee
To thy depth and breadth
And height

I love thee to
Every day’s
Most urgent need,
Freely, with the
Passion of a lifetime

Third note. Acute readers will recognize this affirmation of love as a total travesty of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”.

Fourth note. On Spartan helmets, that dickhead gear that’s all over #6. Up close:

(#8) Mask World edition of the Frank Miller Spartan helmet from his 300 comics

Frank Miller’s blockbuster movie “300” held as steadily in the upper rank of the movie charts as the 300 Spartans did at Thermopylae. But if you were picking out the historical inaccuracies while watching this visually compelling, epic battle with the Persians, you didn’t understand the movie’s concept. “300” is not a historical documentation – it’s a masterful adaptation of a comic book.

… Our “300” Spartan Helmet, which is based on Frank Miller’s comic of the same name, is a replica of the one used by the Spartan hoplites when they battled the Persian army in the film – despite being hopelessly outnumbered. This solid head protector is made of steel with a bronze alloy coating and fastens with a chin strap. The genuine leather lining make this Spartan Helmet comfortable to wear, and it comes with a helmet stand so you can proudly display your helmet when you’re not wearing it.

In chronological order:

The 1962 CinemaScope epic:

(#9) Helmets with crests, without the facial shielding in #7

The 300 Spartans is a 1962 CinemaScope epic film depicting the Battle of Thermopylae. Made with the cooperation of the Greek government, it was shot in the village of Perachora in the Peloponnese. … It stars Richard Egan as the Spartan king Leonidas, Sir Ralph Richardson as Themistocles of Athens and David Farrar as Persian king Xerxes, with Diane Baker as Ellas and Barry Coe as Phylon providing the requisite romantic element in the film. Greek warriors, led by 300 Spartans, fight against a Persian army of almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans will not flee or surrender, even if it means their deaths

The 1998 comic books:

300 is a historically inspired 1998 comic book limited series [of 5 issues] written and illustrated by Frank Miller with painted colors by Lynn Varley.

The comic is a fictional retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae and the events leading up to it from the perspective of Leonidas of Sparta. 300 was particularly inspired by the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, a film Miller watched as a young boy. The [1998] work was adapted in 2006 to a film of the same name [300]

The 2006 movie:

300 is a 2006 American period action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. Both are fictionalized retellings of the Battle of Thermopylae within the Persian Wars. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book.

As for the many varieties of helmet, I’m uncertain as to both their history in ancient Sparta and to their traditions in (fictionalized) popular culture, but #8 is what filtered into the Gay Heart Throb comic of 1979.

Fifth note. On cock shields (battle shields with fighting cocks — the poultry — on them, not protective shields for penises). Notable in #6, where they look a bit silly. But they were real things, which can be reconstucted from historical records, as in this remarkable photo:

(#10) The cock shield device of Idomeneus (other shield devices from the same source: bull’s head, lambda, drinking chalice of Dionysus, serpent, hawk, dolphins, crouching lion, hibiscus flower, stars, the flesh-eating Sphinx, the Gorgon, horse, centaur, club of Herakles)

The source is The Ancient Hoplitikon of Melbourne AU:

All proud members of the Australasian Living History Federation (ALHF)

… [comprising people who] specialise in Ancient Classical and Hellenistic Greek re-enactment. The group’s focus is to study, replicate and perform with military and civilian equipment from the period of 600-100 BC.

… A major aim is to make aware to the general public that Greek culture not only lead the ancient world in philosophy, democracy, art and citizenship but also the genius of military prowess, arms technology and application on the ancient battlefield. This ability and determination to repel invaders over the centuries earned great respect and enabled Greek culture to flourish and spread through the Mediterranean world, inspiring the emerging Roman Republic.

The Greek Hoplite Warrior seems to have international appeal and encapsulates the beginnings of early European cultural determination and sense of galvanizing order out of chaos. School children or adults who may or may not have been exposed to literature of the Illiad [their spelling], Odysseus or Alexander the Great can easily identify with this imagery and instantly recognize the symbolism of Greek struggle for independence and freedom

As for the shields, about the Ancient Hoplitikon’s Shield Registry (edited):

Shield iconography had personal, family and tribal klan significance. The shield devices in our register are faithfully reconstructed based on research, rather than artistic license.

You don’t have to be Greek to participate in the association, but it does make sense that the group should be located in Melbourne VIC. From Wikipedia:

Greeks are the seventh-largest ethnic group in Australia. Moreover, Melbourne is home to one of the largest Greek diaspora communities in the world as well as being the city with the largest Greek-speaking population outside Greece.

According to the 2001 Australian census, Melbourne has the largest Greek Australian population in Australia … and the largest Greek population of any city in the [world] outside of Greece.

I told you we’d end up in Melbourne, brandishing shields (and swords and daggers).

A few days ago, this full-page magazine display made the rounds of Facebook:

(#1) Deriding the “Libtard Agenda” while imitating the Johnson Smith Co.’s ads for novelty items in the back pages of comic books and other publications aimed at children

The first copies I saw didn’t identify the creator or the publication the page came from, and there was some question whether it was (as George V. Reilly, invoking Poe’s Law, put it) “a right-wing parody of progressive views, or a left-wing parody of right-wing opinions of progressive views”. Parody, certainly, but from what viewpoint?

So in its form it’s a parody of a genre of advertising hucksterism. And then in its specific content it’s a parody of a style of political talk (either mocking what’s framed as a preoccuption with kale, gun control, facts, and the like, or mocking those who engage in such mockery(.

Much has now become clear. To start with, the copy of the page in #1 identifies the creator as Mary Trainor, and that provides enough context to eventually sort things out.

Background 1. Johnson Smith and its kin.From Wikipedia:

(#2) A Johnson Smith ad from 1980

The Johnson Smith Company (Johnson Smith & Co.) is a mail-order company established in 1914 by Alfred Johnson Smith in Chicago, Illinois, USA that sells novelty and gag gift items such as x-ray goggles, whoopee cushions, fake vomit, and joy buzzers. The company moved from Chicago to Racine, Wisconsin in 1926, to Detroit in the 1930s, and from the Detroit area to Bradenton, Florida in 1986.

The company would put ads in magazines devoted to children and young adults such as Boys’ Life, Popular Mechanics and Science Digest. Their ads appeared on the back cover of many historically significant comic books, including Action Comics #1, June 1938 (first appearance of the character Superman) and Detective Comics #27, May 1939 (first appearance of character Batman).

In 1970, humorist Jean Shepherd wrote the introduction for the reprint of The 1929 Johnson Smith & Co. Catalogue.

Johnson Smith is just the biggest of these back-of-the-magazine companies. Other, smaller companies offer(ed) more specialized fare. For example, there are the sea-monkeys, the wonderful sea-monkeys. See my 4/22/16 posting “Joe Orlando: a cartoonist and his sea-monkeys” — with this 1960s ad for them:

(#3)

Background 2. On libtard and contempt for libtards.

noun libtard: US informal, offensive a person with left-wing political views. ORIGIN early 21st century: blend of liberal and retard. [In fact, some time ago, the –tard of retard took on a life of its own as a formative in word formation, and it’s now a textbook example of a libfix. See my 1/23/10 posting “Libfixes”.]

Both parts come with a sting. From NOAD on one part:

noun retard: informal, offensive a mentally handicapped person (often used as a general term of abuse).[a clipping of retarded; GDoS1st cite 1967-8 in a survey of US undergraduate slang]

The Adj/N liberal has an extremely complex history as a political label. In the current usage of US conservatives, it’s a term of contempt and abuse, mocked from the liberal or progressive side by Geoff Nunberg in the wonderful title of his 2006 book:

Talking right: How conservatives turned liberalism into a tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show

The right-wing critique mocked here proceeds by enumerating the life styles, the opinions, and the political goals of liberals in a way that treats them as frivolous, impractical, or dowright dangerous. The critique (as mocked by Nunberg and by Trainor in #1) tends to mix the trivial and the weighty in a way that’s familiar from other outpourings of grievance or annoyance combined with calls for action — as in the 1960s/70s campus radical manifestos that I once saw derided as demanding withdrawal from Vietnam, an end to racist policies on campus, and more bicycle racks in front of the library.

Poe’s law and its resolution. From Wikipedia:

Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views. The original statement, by Nathan Poe, read:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.

In the case of #1, context supplies a resolution. Trainor’s career has been centered in two places: the Bongo Comics Group (associated with Matt Groening and The Simpsons) and the new incarnation of MAD Magazine. That’s solid-lefty territory: so #1 is making fun of rightwingers’ sourness about the left.

On Bongo Comics, from Wikipedia:

Bongo Comics Group was a comic book publishing company founded in 1993 by Matt Groening along with Steve & Cindy Vance and Bill Morrison. It published comics related to the animated television series The Simpsons and Futurama, as well as the SpongeBob SquarePants comic; along with original material. It was named after Bongo, a rabbit character in Groening’s comic strip Life in Hell.

Bongo has, at some time in its history, printed Simpsons Comics, Simpsons Comics and Stories, Futurama Comics, Krusty Comics, Lisa Comics, Bart Simpson, Bartman, Itchy & Scratchy Comics and Radioactive Man.

Lisa Comics #1 by Trainor:

(#4) From Alice’s Wonderland: A Visual Journey through Lewis Carroll’s Mad, Mad World by Catherine Nichols (2014), about how Wonderland has been imagined by artists, filmmakers, writers, and others

Then to MAD Magazine, which is where #1 comes from. The thing is, it’s from the April 2019 issue, which isn’t on the stands yet. The cover:

(#5) From Richmond Illustration Inc. (“Caricature and cartoon art studios”) on 2/18/19, “On the Stands: MAD #6” (April 2019)

And the table of contents:

(#6) (Cartoons in there by P.C. Vey and Lars Kenseth, cartoonists I’ve written about on this blog)

A note about MAD, from Wikipedia:

Mad (stylized as MAD) is an American humor magazine founded in 1952 by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, launched as a comic book before it became a magazine

… From 1952 until 2018, Mad published 550 regular issues … The magazine’s numbering reverted to 1 with its June 2018 issue, coinciding with the magazine’s headquarters move to the West Coast.

From Trainor’s bottom row: gay penguins, kneeling, science, Canada!. Science, dismissed as mumbo-jumbo here, is the weightiest matter; Canada, mocked here as merely the home of Bullwinkle J. Moose, is politically consequential; kneeling in protest, derided as self-advertisement here, is a matter of both political and moral significance; and attention to gay penguins, presumably too ridiculous to merit further attention here, is a stand-in for respect for lgbt people and their rights.

Just can’t let Canada and gay penguins go by without comment.

— Oh Canada! Trainor offers us a maple leaf on a t-shirt on Bullwinkle: a leaf shirt moose ‘moose in a shirt with a leaf on it’. Multi-part compounds are fun.

The resources of the net provide us also with:

(#7) A moose leaf shirt ‘shirt with a leaf with a moose on it on it’

(#8) A leaf moose shirt ‘shirt with a moose with a leaf on it on it’

(I saved the images, then had to do other things, then when I returned, couldn’t find the sources any more. My apologies.)

— Gay penguins. Since I’m a gay man with a penguin totem, obviously of great interest to me. Trainor’s drawing looks like a version of this image:

(#9) A mirror image photo, offered as a representation of the penguin couple Stan and Olli at the Berlin Zoo

Then there’s this more elaborate creation:

(#10) From Danielle Ackerman’s micmackerman site

Bonus play. On FB, I identified the artist and writer of #1 as Mary Trainor. Then this exchange:

BH: And doesn’t she also do those greeting cards depicting 50s women with snarky speech balloons?

AZ: Betsy Herrington That’s Anne Taintor. Are we starting one of those name [association] chains? [If so, then:] Next up: Nell (Irvin) Painter.

The allusion is to my 3/15/18 posting “Name association chains”:

On this blog on the 13th, some examples of a type of phrasal overlap portmanteau sometimes known as name chains: Billy Zane Grey, Billy Joel Grey, Fletcher Christian Grey. On reading this, Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky pointed me to a different way in which names can be chained, in a series of associations that’s sometimes used as a comedy routine. Elizabeth then sent me a wonderful example from Neil Gaiman’s Tumblr account.

With a chain of comic misidentifications, from various hands, following on Caroline Palmer’s suggestion that Neil Gaiman is the Sandman guy: Nah, I’m pretty sure he’s the dude that sings “Sweet Caroline” — leading to descriptions of:

Neil Diamond, Neil Armstrong, Neil Patrick Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neil Stevenson, Neil Young, Neil Hannon, Niels Bohr, Niles Crane, Nile Delta, Na’il Diggs, …

(Simulacrum of a hunky mostly naked, though not actually X-rated, charioteer. Loud gay undertones, and overtones too, but nothing direct about sex. Still, possibly not to your taste.)

Symbological notes on the occasion of a gift from Vadim Temkin: a 2019 calendar using his Gay Tarot of Eons materials, in particular the page for this month, February, with his Chariot card:

(#1) Most obvious phallicity: the spear. Auxiliary phallic symbol: the column. Subtler symbolism: the two horses (testicular symbols, perhaps) rushing onwards, barely controllable (as in an erection — the charioteer as erect penis — rushing towards ejaculation). Crowning symbolism: the Spartan helmet, in an open-faced variant.

(Note: Vadim’s materials use computer-generated images. No human beings or animals were exploited in their creation.)

Spartan helmets. In my 2/20 posting “News for penises: notes on phallophilia”:

#6, comic cover including “stylized Spartan helmets that look like dickheads”:

(#2) Cropped to focus on the helmets (which have no crest)

#8, one such mask, developed from Frank Miller’s 300 comics:

(#3)

#9, crested helmets from the 1962 CinemaScope epic The 300 Spartans:

(#4) With partially open face and also with crest

Tarot. From Wikipedia:

The tarot (first known as trionfi and later as tarocchi or tarock) is a pack of playing cards, used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play games such as Italian tarocchini, French tarot and Austrian Königrufen. Many of these tarot card games are still played today. In the late 18th century, some Tarot packs began to be used in parallel for divination in the form of tarotology and cartomancy and, later, specialist packs were developed for such occult purposes.

Like common playing cards, the tarot has four suits … Each suit has 14 cards, ten pip cards numbering from one (or Ace) to ten and four face cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Jack/Knave). In addition, the tarot has a separate 21-card trump suit and a single card known as the Fool.

… The 78-card tarot deck used by esotericists has two distinct parts:

— The Major Arcana (greater secrets), or trump cards, consists of 22 cards without suits: The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool. Cards from The Magician to The World are numbered in Roman numerals from I to XXI, while The Fool is the only unnumbered card, sometimes placed at the beginning of the deck as 0, or at the end as XXII.

— The Minor Arcana (lesser secrets) consists of 56 cards, divided into four suits of 14 cards each; ten numbered cards and four court cards

The Chariot card specifically:

The Chariot (VII) is the seventh trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks.

(#5) The Chariot card in the Rider-Waite Tarot® deck

A powerful, princely figure sits in a swift chariot, pulled usually by two sphinxes or horses. There is often a black and white motif, for example one of the steeds may be black and the other white. These symbolise balance or as some say positive and negative working in tandem. The figure may be crowned or helmeted, and is winged in some representations. The figure may hold a sword or wand, or other masculine symbol

In other decks, a variety of other creatures (or symbols) take the place of the sphinxes or horses, and some decks have a powerful female figure as charioteer.

The Chariot card is paired with the astrological sign Cancer (the Crab), the 4th sign in the zodiac, covering 6/21 – 7/23:

(#6) On the sign, see my 3/16/18 posting “Extended 69”

Vadim’s deck. From his site on the project:

Tarot of Eons: A new 3D-modeled tarot deck by Vadim Temkin (a work in progress)

VII – The Chariot The rider is Ares – the Greek god of war. The Alpha and the vulture, are symbols of Ares, as well as symbols of the beginning and the end. The pillar connects him to temple, and the castle to earthly power. He represents the Victory, but don’t forget – he fathered Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror).

Meaning: Triumph, victory, success, trouble. Reversed: Dispute, litigation, failure.

In a YouTube video:

(#7) “Tarot of Eons: complete flip-through with anaglyph. This is the complete deck of Tarot of Eons. The actual card images are on the left side. As the deck was created with 3D modeling software, all the images are inherently three-dimensional. You can see 3D images on the right side with red/cyan glasses.”

What someone doesn’t say can be as significant as what they do say; more generally, a topic that someone doesn’t talk about can be as significant as the topics that they do.

So I don’t know quite what to make of a passage from a NYT op-ed column by Thomas T. Cullen (U.S. attormey for the Western District of Virginia), on-line yesterday under the title “The Grave Threats of White Supremacy and Far-Right Extremism: Hate crimes are on the rise. Police and prosecutors need better tools to fight back.” and in print today under the title “Rising Far-Right Extremism in America: Police and prosecutors need better tools to fight back”, about the case of Coast Guard Lt. Christopher Hasson, arrested last week and accused of plotting to assassinate Democratic members of Congress, prominent television journalists, and others. The passage:

In 2009, Congress took an important step in arming federal investigators to deal with hate crimes by passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This law makes it possible to prosecute as hate crimes violent acts committed against victims because of their race, color, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity or disability. The law provides stringent maximum penalties, including life imprisonment, if someone is killed during a hate crime.

The omission in the bold-faced clause is sexual orientation, which is specifically listed in the Shepard/Byrd law — as a result of the savage murder of Shepard in 1998 because of his sexual orientation.

Neither sexuality nor sexual orientation occurs in Cullen’s text. In fact, Shepard/Byrd is the only relevant federal legislation that mentions this status; otherwise, hate crimes laws in the domain of  sexuality are a state (or local) matter. So its omission in a paragraph on Shepard/Byrd is startling.

That could be an inadvertent error on the part of Cullen, his staff, and the relevant NYT staff; somehow, it got past all of them. The things that are new in Shepard/Byrd are the qualifiers actual or perceived on gender, plus sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability; somehow, gender identity survived in the NYT text, but sexual orientation did not.

But it could be that sexual orientation was omitted from the NYT text on purpose, to draw attention away from homosexuality, which might be seen as a red flag for many and a distraction from the main topic of Cullen’s piece. That wouldn’t be entirely astonishing: after all, it looks like Byrd was included in the name of the Shepard/Byrd act to gain support for the act, support unlikely to be extended to a piece of legislation framed primarily in terms of sexual orientation — even though Byrd, as a black man (also savagely murdered in 1998) was already covered under the race and color categories in earlier federal hate crimes legislation (specifically, the 1968 Civil Rights Act).

(Cullen’s stance in the matter of hate crimes categories is unclear. For what it’s worth, he was put forward for his current position by Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both Democrats) and then appointed by President [REDACTED].)

The victims. Lest we forget.

(Warning: I find these brief descriptions and images painful to take, and you might not want to subject yourself to them.)

From the Wikipedia entry on Shepard, a young gay man:

On the night of October 6, 1998, Shepard was approached by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie [Wyoming]; all three men were in their early 20s. McKinney and Henderson decided to give Shepard a ride home.

They subsequently drove to a remote, rural area, and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and torture Shepard, tie him to a fence, set him afire and left him to die.

Shephard hanging on the fence, in Richard Taddei’s “Morning in America – The death of Matthew Shepard”, gouache on paper, 1998:

(#1)

And a capsule account of the incomprehensibly vicious murder of James Byrd, Jr.:

(#2)

(References in later sections to men’s bodies and mansex, sometimes in plain terms; that material is not suitable for kids or the sexually modest. First, though, some pressure music and some stuff about blood pressure.)

Two things that happened to come together: my blood pressure readings of 97/59 on Wednesday, 105/57 yesterday; and an Out magazine story “Lucille Ball Did Poppers to Ease Chest Pains, Says New Show” by Mathew Rodriguez yesterday. The connection being that poppers trigger a (temporary) signficant drop in blood pressure.

If you don’t know what the poppers in question are (maybe you’re thinking of fried stuffed jalapeño peppers), don’t be alarmed; it will eventually become clear.

Pressure music. Pressure released, pressure dropping.

Basic lexical background, from NOAD:

noun pressure: 1 continuous physical force exerted on or against an object by something in contact with it … 2 [a] the use of persuasion, influence, or intimidation to make someone do something … [b] the influence or effect of someone or something … [c] the feeling of stressful urgency caused by the necessity of doing or achieving something, especially with limited time …

Then there are some specialized senses, in particular these two (also from NOAD):

noun atmospheric pressure: the pressure exerted by the weight of the atmosphere, which at sea level has a mean value of 101,325 pascals (roughly 14.6959 pounds per square inch). Also called barometric pressure [or in non-technical vocabulary, air pressure].

noun blood pressure: the pressure of the blood in the circulatory system, often measured for diagnosis since it is closely related to the force and rate of the heartbeat and the diameter and elasticity of the arterial walls.

I’ll start with Queen’s “Under Pressure”, at one level about psychological pressure (“Pressure on people / People on streets … / Why can’t we give love that one more chance?”), but accompanied by images of pressure being released — a rocket launch, imploding buildings — visual metaphors of a mounting erection (arousal accompanied by substantial increases in pulse rate and blood pressure) followed by the release of ejaculation and a pressure drop (arousal drops to zero, pulse rate and blood pressure drop dramatically). More lyrics:

(#1)

And then Queen’s original recording, from the album Hot Space in 1982:

(#2)

(#3)

And then Davd Bowie & Queen in the “Classic Queen Mix” (remastered in 2011 from footage from several sources):

(#4)

Then another kind of pressure drop, in the 1969 reggae song by Toots and the Maytals:

(#5)

From Wikipedia:

“Pressure Drop” is a song recorded in 1969 by the Maytals for producer Leslie Kong. The song appears on their 1970 album Monkey Man(released in Jamaica by Beverley’s Records) and From the Roots(released in the UK by Trojan Records). “Pressure Drop” helped launch the band’s career outside Jamaica when the song was featured in the soundtrack to the 1972 film The Harder They Come, which introduced reggae to much of the world.

… “Pressure Drop” refers to the barometric pressure. This song predates modern weather forecasting, and at that time in the context of this song, island populations relied on the simple but reliable instrument (barometer) to predict adverse weather. The liquid barometer displays pressure as a measure of the fluid in a glass tube, and when the air pressure drops the fluid level “drops” accordingly. A rapid drop in air pressure indicates the severity of the approaching storm (hurricane), and is sometimes referred to as “the bottom dropping out”. Attention to pressure changes could spell the difference between life and death for an island dweller. “Pressure drop” is used as a clever poetic device in this song, and is the artists way of saying *a storm is coming for you*. [“I said a pressure drop, / Oh pressure, oh yeah / Pressure’s gonna drop on you”]

Low air pressure affects some people — I am one — both physiologically and psychologically. Physiologically, by aggravating the pains of arthritis, bunions, and some other afflictions (ouch ouch ouch). Psychologically, in the form of a mild but still distressing depression (I inexplicably burst into tears over some tiny thing, then think to check the air pressure).

Blood pressure: measuring it, interpreting it, treating it. From Wikipedia:

Traditionally, blood pressure was measured non-invasively using ausculation with a mercury-tube sphygmomanometer [sphygmanometers below].

[NOAD: noun auscultation: the action of listening to sounds from the heart, lungs, or other organs, typically with a stethoscope, as a part of medical diagnosis. ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Latin auscultatio(n-), from auscultare ‘listen to’.]

… Blood pressure fluctuates from minute to minute and normally shows a circadian rhythm over a 24-hour period, with highest readings in the early morning and evenings and lowest readings at night … Blood pressure also changes in response to temperature, noise, emotional stress, consumption of food or liquid, dietary factors, physical activity, changes in posture, such as standing-up, drugs, and disease.

The amount of variability is considerable. The mild anxiety of being in a doctor’s office is enough to raise blood pressure readings by 20 points for many people. Passionate engagement in a conversation can trigger a rise. And aerobic exercise will cause a rise in blood pressure along with the (intended) rises in depth of breathing and pulse rate. (In the other direction, achieving a meditative state can bring down both pulse rate and blood pressure considerably. I recently discovered that the techniques I learned to manage pain through meditation, after my 2003 surgeries for necrotizing fasciitis, can also bring down my pulse rate and brood pressure temporarily. It’s a sort of parlor trick, which I have promised not to use when medical staff are measuring my blood pressure; their aim is to find my “true” blood pressure, whatever that means.)

Now, the measuring devices. From Wikipedia, with some ruthless editing to simplify things:

A sphygmomanometer, also known as a blood pressure meter, blood pressure monitor, or blood pressure gauge, is a device used to measure blood pressure, composed of an inflatable cuff [usually placed around an upper arm] to collapse and then release the artery under the cuff in a controlled manner, and a mercury or mechanical manometer to measure the pressure. It is always used in conjunction with a means to determine at what pressure blood flow is just starting, and at what pressure it is unimpeded. Manual sphygmomanometers are used in conjunction with a stethoscope:

(#6) The (digital) meter I use at home

… Digital meters employ oscillometric measurements [measuring oscillations of the arterial pulse] and electronic calculations rather than auscultation [with a cuff designed to be placed around an upper arm or a wrist].

Assuming you’re able to even out the variability in readings to get a good estimate of someone’s “true” blood pressure, there’s then the question of what should count as a normal range, not indicative of any sort of pathology requiring treatment to bring the readings into a safe range. A simple version of the WHO recommendations:

(#7)

Now, my own history with these things. For most of my life, my blood pressure was on the low side, low enoughthat I’d learned not to stand up too fast, otherwise I’d be light-headed for a moment — not enough to cause me to faint,  just feel woozy. (Bear this effect in mind for discussion to come below.)

As I aged, my blood pressure rose, eventually to alarming levels, and I was put on two medications for the condition (there’s quite a range of different classes of medications for this purpose): the diuretic hydrochlorothiazide (with the wonderful trochaic name), and the calcium channel blocker amlodopine besylate (trade name Norvasc). A while back one of my doctors switched the HCTZ to furosemide (trade name Lasix), and then recently, another doctor switched the furosemide prescription to spironolactone + hydrochlorothiazide (trade name Aldactazide). Much improvement.

This last doctor asked me to keep a daily record of my blood pressure, and it shows the changes:

first 3  days: 2/11 – 137/84; 2/12 – 140/83; 2/13 – 141/95. In the borderland, at the high end (but these readings were taken immediately on awakening, when I’m almost always sexually aroused — morning wood ‘erection upon awakening’, as in this 1/4/11  posting — with the accompanying elevated blood pressure)

next 7 days: 2/14 – 124/77 … 2/20 – 132/82. In the borderland, at the low end (now taking readings a few hours later in the day)

next 7 days: 2/21 – 113/60 … 2/27 – 117/66. In the ideal range, at the high end

next 7 days: 3/1 – 104/62 … 3/6 – 97/59; 3/7 – 105/57. In the ideal range, at the low end

And today, 107/64, continuing the pattern.

It’s a wrap! A further complication in all of this is major-league edema and its treatment. I’ve had a modest but persistent amount of edema (aka dropsy in non-technical language, and no connection to the wonderful Japanese beans edamame) in my lower legs for years, managed via the diuretics and a limitation on my liquid intake. But in the Great January Health Disaster, everything ballooned up grotesquely. From my 1/24/19 posting “Being cardioverted”:

I’ve had a cascade of dreadful medical events that started (early in the new year) with the world’s worst sinus infection: oceans of gross mucus, endless hacking, exhaustion, splitting sinus headache, and anosmia (loss of my sense of smell, hence most of my sense of taste). This was followed by sudden lightning strikes of osteoartrithis pain all over my body — paralyzing pain in my left knee, then in many other joints (“pseudogout”, caused by spiky crystals in the joints) — and by the potentially life-threatening skin infection cellulitis in my lower left leg and by edema in both legs and feet. All except the last have passed away under treatment, and I’ve had an ultrasound that showed no blood clots in my legs; more doctoring to come next week.

That doctoring was with a vascuar surgeon, who coped equably with my grotesquely ornate medical history, speculated that the edema was a nasty side effect of all the other insults in the Great January Health Disaster, warned that for a fair number of patients the condition was simply chronic, but optimistically prescribed a system of compression wraps that might reduce or eliminate the swelling:

(#8)

From the company site (which is fond of lowercasing):

circaid juxtalite is an instantly adjustable [via the miracle of Velcro] compression device suitable for all venous disorders during ulcer healing and after wound closure to prevent recurrence. circaid juxtalite is best suited for patients with mild to moderate edema. juxtalite is a compression alternative to compression stockings or bandages, intended for patients who cannot tolerate or apply traditional compression garments. [tutorial on applying them here]

I need to have someone else put them on, take them off, and adjust them, which is a tremendous nuisance. But (along with Ace bandages on my puffy feet) they’ve worked! The January edema is gone, and most of the previous edema as well. Slim ankles and svelte feet. Whee. (Meanwhile I’m walking 4 to 10 blocks a day. Very slowly, but doing it.)

Here end the musical and medical portions of today’s lesson. On to the mansex, so this is where some of you will want to bail out. (There will be a little more music, but it’s a snarky hymn to alkyl nitrates in mansex.)

Mr. Penguin’s Poppers. From Wikipedia:

Popper is a slang term given broadly to the chemical class called alkyl nitrites, that are inhaled for recreational drug purposes, typically for the “high” or “rush” that the drug can create. Poppers have also been historically used for sexual encounters, initially within the gay community.

(#9) A hit of poppers makes it all better

If you trace the bottle of amyl (a type of alkyl nitrite) through late 20th century history, you trace the legacies of gay culture on popular culture in the 20th century.

Poppers were part of club culture from the mid-1970s disco scene and returned to popularity in the 1980s and 1990s rave scene.

Popper use has a relaxation effect on involuntary smooth muscles, such as those in the throat and anus.

[That relaxation effect makes poppers a valuable adjunct to receptive oral and anal sex, especially when you’re dealing with a particularly thick or long cock. Better relaxation through chemistry! (Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”: “Relax, don’t do it / When you want to go to it / Relax, don’t do it / When you want to come”. See my 10/11/15 posting “From the 80s”, with its section on “Relax”). Or, in the words of the popper parody (source unknown), “Just a quick sniff of poppers helps the penis slide right in … / In the most delightful way” — taking off on “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down … / In a most delightful way” from Mary Poppins.]

Most widely sold products include the original amyl nitrite (isoamyl nitrite, isopentyl nitrite), but also variants such as isobutyl nitrite, isopropyl nitrite (2-propyl nitrite, increasingly, after EU ban of the isobutyl form). In some countries, to evade anti-drug laws, poppers are labelled or packaged as room deodorizers, leather polish, or tape head cleaner. [Poppers have a powerful smell, sometimes derided as a reek.]

The French chemist Antoine Jérôme Balard synthesized amyl nitrite in 1844. Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton, a Scottish physician born in the year of amyl nitrite’s first synthesis, famously pioneered its use to treat angina pectoris. Brunton was inspired by earlier work with the same agent, performed by Arthur Gamgee and Benjamin Ward Richardson. Brunton reasoned that the angina sufferer’s pain and discomfort could be reduced by administering amyl nitrite — to dilate the coronary arteries of patients, thus improving blood flow to the heart muscle.

[This is where Lucille Ball comes into it: with amyl nitrite as an angina treatment, in “Lucille Ball Did Poppers to Ease Chest Pains, Says New Show”, from Out magazine of 3/7/19 by Mathew Rodriguez.]

Although amyl nitrite is known to have been used recreationally as early as the 1960s, the poppers “craze” began around 1975. It was packaged and sold pharmaceutically in fragile glass ampoules wrapped in cloth sleeves which, when crushed or “popped” in the fingers, released the amyl nitrite for inhalation. Hence the colloquialism poppers. The term extended to the drug in any form as well as to other drugs with similar effects, e.g. butyl nitrite which is packaged under a variety of trade names in small bottles.

(#10) Three brands of poppers

… Inhaling nitrites relaxes smooth muscles throughout the body, including the sphincter muscles of the anus and the vagina. Smooth muscle surrounds the body’s blood vessels and when relaxed causes these vessels to dilate resulting in an immediate increase in heart rate and blood flow throughout the body, producing a sensation of heat and excitement that usually lasts for a couple of minutes. When these vessels dilate, a further result is an immediate decrease in blood pressure.

[Digression. The title of this section is a (Spooneristic) play on the title Mr. Popper’s Penguins. From Wikipedia:

(#11)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a children’s book written by Richard and Florence Atwater, with illustrations by Robert Lawson, originally published in 1938. It tells the story of a poor house painter named Mr. Popper and his family, who live in the small town of Stillwater in the 1930s. The Poppers unexpectedly come into possession of a penguin, Captain Cook. The Poppers then receive a female penguin from the zoo, who mates with Captain Cook to have 10 baby penguins. Before long, something must be done lest the penguins eat the Poppers out of house and home.

… A 20th Century Fox film based loosely on the book was released on June 17, 2011 and starred Jim Carrey as Mr. Popper.]

One further note on poppers in a gay social milieu, from my 11/23/15 posting “Penises, poppers, and piercings, oh my!”:

Yes, a posting about men’s bodies and gay sex, but without pictures (those are on AZBlogX, in a posting entitled “The news for penises, Thanksgiving edition”) …

Photo #2 on AZBlogX shows a guy with a huge hard-on, an industrial-strength metal cock ring, and some kind of penile piercing — improving the experience even more by inhaling poppers. Popper Man is a compendium of clichés of sex in the gay male world. (Cock rings [see my 1/30/12 posting “erection enhancer”], poppers, and piercings are of course not restricted to gay men, but they are especially prevalent in the gay world and are stereotypical there.)

(For the record, I’ve used cock rings, but not poppers [for good reason, though in a long-ago sexual life I was often offered them], and I have no piercings, and no tattoos either.)

Now back to the effects of poppers. There’s the relaxation effect of vasodilation. And then there’s the rush of warm sensations and dizziness (lasting maybe a couple of minutes), from the sudden drop in blood pressure. That was the problem for me. Though I was able to relax my muscles to take cock, I wouldn’t have turned down pharmaceutical assistance in that department — but the blood-pressure rush, not a good idea.

Back in those days, I had a gay family doctor in Columbus. At the very first physical exam he gave me, he flagged my low blood pressure and asked me if I used poppers. No, I said, cause I’d heard the rush came from a sudden drop in blood pressure, and I figured that if I had to think about standing up too fast I probably shouldn’t be huffing amyl. Yeah, he said, that’s right; you’d probably just pass out, and where’s the fun in that? So I kept on keeping away from poppers.

(Still, amyl had the smell of sex, as if it had sex sweat in it.)

The footnote. From my 2/5/17 posting “Pop food edifice”, with a section on Jalapeño Poppers,

jalapeño peppers that have been hollowed out, stuffed with a mixture of cheese, spices, and sometimes ground meat, breaded and deep fried

Probably by association with amyl, Jalapeño Poppers have always seemed sexy to me. Well, they are stuffed with meat.