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.)
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