(About gay porn, but not wildly racy. Edgy for kids and the sexually modest.)
On the 26th, about the Lucas gay porn sale for Memorial Day 2018: “Memorial mansex” on AZBlogX; and “Porn for the holidays, with narrowed eyes” on this blog, about offering gay porn for various holidays (for Memorial Day as a cultural celebration of summer, in particular), and about interpreting narrowed eyes and drooping eyes.
Now, in “More Memorial mansex” on AZBlogX today, two more gay porn ads for the holiday: one from TitanMen featuring Liam Knox; and one from Dirk Yates featuring Rod Peterson. Here I’ll pick up some themes from those ads: from the Titan, Knox’s tats, and what tats convey; from the DY, a note on palming off pros as amateurs, plus reality vs. fiction and the playful invention new cummer.
The TitanMen has no rationale beyond celebrating summer, while the DY exploits the military origins of the holiday to offer what’s billed as gay sex performed by straight Marines who are amateurs at porn (and so taps into audiences for straight guys as sex objects, for military men as sex objects, and for amateur, real-life sex, as opposed to fantasies crafted by pros).
Cropped versions focusing on some key points:
(#1) Liam Knox in the midst of being pronged by Julian Knowles in Beef
(#2) Rod Peterson playing a Marine kid who is (just out of sight) inhaling a buddy from the base; caption at the bottom: Starring new cummer Rod Peterson
Liam Knox. A major muscle hunk (while Rod Peterson, also a body-builder, is of a very different, leaner, body type). Studying the full image, I put myself in the position of Knox’s top for the occasion, Julian Knowles (in the ad, we experience Knowles only as a tool penetrating Knox), and was struck by the fact that as I was sliding inside the man, I’d be studying the slogan “Serenity of the heart and mind”. In script. On his right pec. A massive, furry, sweat-scented pec. That’s sending me a message from the Buddha:
(#3)
Could I maintain an erection through that? (Actually, I laughed when I saw the ad for the first time, but then I took the earnest slogan seriously.)
Who, I then wondered, is the intended audience for Knox’s expression, on his naked body, of his striving for the serenity of Oneness? (I assume that the tattoo comes with the actor’s body and was not just a temporary display on the part of his character in <em>Beef</em>.)
Many tats are works of body art, period, intended to be pleasing or striking or disturbing or whatever, but not to convey anything like a specific message; think of them as public art you carry around with you wherever you go. Many others are abstract designs serving as symbols, and these will be intended to convey something, to some intended audience; but the interpretation of abstract symbols in context is fraught with complexities. And still others are linguistic expressions, for which the range of understandings in context is more constrained, but we’re scarcely home free.
If there’s a message in the tat, what does the sender intend it to be, who is it intended for, why is displayed where it is, and what will recipients make of it? We could think of message tats as a lot like signage (some of it with abstract symbols, some with words) — signage gives rise to all of these questions — but, again, signage you carry around with you wherever you go.
Or you can think of tats as like t-shirts, which can display artistic designs or abstract symbols or slogans — except that a t-shirt is a temporary display (while a tat is permanent) and when you’re wearing it it’s generally visible (while a tat can be placed so as to be visible only to certain audiences on certain occasions).
I assume that the man who acts in porn under the name Liam Knox got the tat, that particular tat, in that place, for personal reasons (which I can only guess at), but after that it just comes with his body, willy-nilly, as a feature of whatever character Liam Knox the pornstar portrays.
Rod Peterson. From the AZBlogX posting on the guy in #2 :
Who could imagine this was an awkward kid just out of boot camp?
… He’s a man of several names — Alec Hudson, Rod Peterson, Elder Miller (in only one flick), (just) Alec, (just) Brannon, (just) Neill, Rod Pederson, at least — and has been making gay porn since 2013, working for at least 9 different studios. So not an amateur, and not a newcomer either (and was probably never in the military).
Typical for Dirk Yates, as I’ve pointed out on other occasions. He mixes experienced pornstars with young men who have the awkward raw appearance of actual young military guys and hawks the product to customers who are into straights, military men, and/or real-life (rather than professionally crafted) sexual action. (I note that even the crudest amateur sex videos have makers who at least chose what to shoot, from what point of view, and so on.)
There seems to be a huge market for amateur porn, “reality porn”, vs. crafted porn, “fiction porn” — which is not not just fiction, but in particular, fantasy fiction, and in further particular, utilitarian fantasy, fantasy with a extra-fictive purpose, in this case to facilitate sexual pleasure (other utilitarian fantasies function as political propaganda, moral teaching, and the like).
It might just be that the main attraction of amateur porn on the net is that it’s free. But it’s also true that amateurs in artistic forms can be accomplished in the way they craft their work; in fact, amateur porn on the net varies hugely in its artfulness. And of course it does depict people having sex, and that’s enough to carry some people through the longueurs.
Then there’s the playful invention new cummer (for newcomer) in the caption to #2 (which got cropped out on this blog). Urban Dictionary entries have newcummer as referring to a guy who has not engaged in insertive intercourse but is anxious to do so, and as a guy who’s masturbated for the first time; presumably it’s also been used to refer to a guy who’s engaged in insertive intercourse for the first time. All these uses are plays on the verb come ‘ejaculate’, spelled cum to highlight the connection with semen .
But newcummer is also a term of art in the gay porn world, where it’s used (a) to refer to a porn actor who’s recently (in the last 6 months, roughly) gotten into the business — a man who’s new to coming, ejaculating, on-screen — and whose star is rising (he’s a comer ‘a person likely to succeed’ (N.Amer. informal)); and also (b) to refer to a character (not a pornstar, but a character played by a pornstar) engaging in insertive intercourse with another guy for the first time. The ad in #2 is using sense (a), but as I pointed out above, the porn actor Rod Peterson isn’t remotely a newcummer: he’s been in the business 6 years, an occupational lifetime for most men in gay porn.
He is new to AZBlogX (but then I merely sample the occasional porn flick), and I haven’t seen him in action, but he has an arresting face and an attractive body, and he gives good photo. If I wanted to see him at work, I think I’d go for Falcon’s Urban Spokes (2017), about a sex club of San Francisco cyclists, rather than anything from DY :
(#4) Peterson is the fourth cyclist from the left
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