Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(Obviously heavy on taboo language, some of it about man-man sex, but no images. Use with caution.)

In mail today from TitanMen (the gay porn studio), an ad for the new video Cluster Fucked, about orgy scenes (and gangbangs). Samples on the TitanMen site for three group sex scenes, involving (for those of you who follow these things) pornstars:

Francois Sagat, Dean Flynn, Diesel Washington, CJ Madison, Brody Newport

Jason Branch, Jon Galt, Lance Gear, Nick Nicaste

Jessy Ares, Marco Wilson, Junior Stellano, Wilfried Knight

There are two senses for the noun clusterfuck or cluster fuck. From Urban Dictionary, in addition to the ‘orgy’ sense:

Military term for an operation in which multiple things have gone wrong. Related to “SNAFU” (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up”) and “FUBAR” (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair).

In radio communication or polite conversation ([e.g.,] with a very senior officer with whom you have no prior experience) the term “clusterfuck” will often be replaced by the NATO phonetic acronym “Charlie Foxtrot.”

And from the scholarly Jesse Sheidlower (3rd ed. of The F-Word), who doesn’t have Charlie Foxtrot:

1. an orgy [from 1965 on]
2. Military. a bungled or confused undertaking or situation; mess; (also) a disorganized group of individuals. [from 1969 on]

Both senses have the occasional variant Mongolian clusterfuck / cluster fuck.

The connection between the two senses? One clue is that a similar ambiguity arises for circle jerk ‘group masturbation scene’, ‘mess’ and some other items. From a posting of mine on 1/3/11:

Having just posted, on my X blog, on group sex in gay porn, I’ve returned to some material on circle jerk that I started collecting in 2004

… Tom Dalzell pointed out on ADS-L that HDAS (the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) has circle jerk ‘mess’ since 1973, and the compound seemed to him to be fairly common in that sense. And Doug Wilson noted a possible parallel to cluster fuck, goat fuck, pooch screw, etc. (especially in military contexts), in which “Instead of getting their job done, the participants are engaged in undisciplined,  undignified, useless activity: e.g., metaphorically, group sex or sex with animals.

This entry was posted on April 24, 2015 at 5:47 am and is filed under Ambiguity, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Metaphor, Taboo language and slurs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.