Once this man told me
Over a course of one day and one night
How his world had fallen apart
And so he went to the underground
Under the Earth he looked for home
Turned around and turned again
Gave his body to women and men
As he’d always wanted
Always wanted
After the upperworld
Had forsaken him
After the baptismal name had lost
Its salt
He sought out
New waters in Lethe
I too descended
With torch in hand
To the underland
To the kingdoms of flesh
And longing
To open the book of the violence
Of skin
Untwist from within
From the seed
From the blood
The longing of men
And weeping of men
And the map of fire
A man—he said he was straight, and who am I to say he wasn’t, wrote on a public blog network about his desperate sexual journey. His wife had left him. He has a son. He was thirty-one, blond, six feet tall, athletic and handsome and tired of doing things the right way. He began first by having as much illicit straight sex as possible, and then began to have sex with men in showers at hotels, experiencing receiving anal sex. He didn’t write it the way I am writing it now. He wrote it like he was bragging, extremely proud of himself.
Another blogger wrote that he should tone it down because kids were on this network, something that this probably wasn’t true. A few minutes later the blogger, he called himself Giggity, removed his pornographic post. I wrote to him. We talked that night. Really he said he was desperate and his whole life had gone to pot and now he was at a place where he was doing everything and wasn’t going to let any desire go unexplored. Most of those desires, of late, were homosexual.
I wonder if its like that for a lot of the men in gay porn. I wonder if their need to do it may be greater than my need to see it.
Yesterday I watched one waiting for my assumption to be contradicted. My assumption? That there is an element of compassion and need fulfillment in gay porn or even in the solo, duo and group sex acts it imitates that does not exist in their straight counterparts. This video was and elaborate scene, part of a movie about a young boy's sexual exploration, and opened onto a seen where three naked frat boys were masturbating and championing a fourth who, in a slightly uncomfortable position was fucking a last.
“Fuck him!” “Fuck him!” they were saying in hard voices, and in turn the three were ejaculating on the two involved in the fuck. They kept chanting: “Fuck him!” “Oh yeah!” and the one being fucked came with relief and happiness after a great shout. Then there remained only the original fucker and he came up, took off his condom and began stroking himself. He was reaching orgasm, but not there yet. Finally the others began to stroke him; some masturbated him, others just gently kissed him or caressed him and, when at last he came with relief and happiness, they all hugged him and kissed him and he kissed them all, they leaned down to kiss the one who had begun on his back being fucked. And all through the video there was this kissing, this hugging and championing of the others, each one helping the other to his orgasm. This was representative of the orgy videos. The fantasy in gay porn isn’t just sex; it’s the mutual support and vital encouragement, the brotherhood men don’t really very often receive in the real world.
This is important because porn, like all entertainment either well done or badly, speaks to our fantasies. We who have a hard time distinguishing truth from fiction seem to believe in the myth of porn sex, the hope that somewhere out there is the three way or the two way for that matter, where even though I am told "it's just sex" it will be wonderful and compassionate and give me everything I need. The fact that in this society no one really feels comfortable talking about any kind of sex, let alone gay sex, has a lot to do with the cynicism, fear and anger that many men feel after sexual encounters with each other. You can't believe what you see on TV, or on the computer screen. But everybody wants to.
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