Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(Pretty much solidly about man-man sex, in particular anal sex in various entertaining positions, described in street language and plainly depicted in images from gay porn, so this posting is off-limits for kids and the sexually modest. It’s also an act of loving remembrance, but there’s no getting around that it’s dense with coupling, penetration, and ecstatic faces.)

Originally intended for posting on 6/5, right after I got ads for gay porn featuring HOT ASIAN COWBOY — which I at first took to be a hybrid of two subgenres of such porn, Asian guys and cowboys. On 6/5, my man Jacques’s death day, an occasion for reminiscence, in this case of our sexual lives together; our sexual lives evaporated about 25 years ago (a long time for memory), and though during and after our time together I wrote quite a lot about sex between men, a substantial amount of it about my own experiences (viewed analytically), I neglected to say much about the specifics of our everyday sex in a similar way. I took it for granted.

I’m working on recovering memories, but so much is gone. What I do have, easily available, is the stuff that plugged into HOT ASIAN COWBOY back on June 5th, and that’s what I’m writing up today.

The general drift of everyday sex wasn’t complicated: affectionate dick-handling, shading into focused hand jobs, culminating in devoted cocksucking, the two of us in turn (often with an interval in the middle for talking low, wrapped up in each other’s arms). There are lots of ways to ride this path, but the way is clear and easy: no need for much preparation or clean-up, and in fact the acts can be performed practically anywhere and in a variety of positions.

But sucking cock in a more or less public place — well, just the kitchen or living room with the curtains open — is especially potent emotionally, and so are positions where the cocksucker is submissive, in particular the classic cock-worshiping position, with the cocksucker on his knees in front of his standing partner (emotionally powerful for both guys, but in different ways). Doing either of these things makes ordinary sex into a Special Event; metaphorical fireworks and cheering might be involved.

That was pretty much the way fucking worked for J and me. We did fuck in the ordinary course of things, but mostly as a consequence of sleeping spooned up: the guy in back would get a hard-on in sleep, which turned into sex urgency as he woke up, and then the guy in front would literally feel his buddy’s need and catch the urgency — sexual need can ripple like a sonic echo through a group of gay men — and either lean into his buddy so he can rub off on his asscrack, or (if possible, with some judicious application of lube, or at least spit) move his top leg forward to make his asshole, now his fuckhole, easily available for his buddy to slide his cock into and, oh, fill him up with that, oh jesus, fuck me, please, big cock (all cocks, whatever their actual size, are satisfyingly big when you need, achingly, to get fucked).

That was wonderful, but kind of surprising, as if the two of you had suddenly become possessed. Otherwise, an everyday gesture of affection can ignite one or both of you (one will do: the other guy will quickly catch the heat from the one on fire).

Living room fucks. J and I would then move to the living room sofa (in a bright, airy space, with a good view of the little front garden). Strip each other’s clothes off, dropping them aimlessly on the floor, the way people do in the movies when they’re having sudden sex. Play with each other’s cocks until they’re way hard, dripping with precum. Maybe exchange cock kisses. J then sits down on the sofa, with his legs together and his cock jutting up from his crotch.

And I straddle his legs, kneeling — bear that in mind: kneeling turns out to be important — on the sofa facing him. (There’s a lubing moment somewhere in here) We kiss as I lower my ass on his cock, relaxing my fuckhole to get, first, his cock massaging my hole as it slides in — here, we are smiling broadly, maybe laughing happily — then the, omigod, fantastic feeling of Jacques filling me up, becoming part of my body (he’s getting the sensation of having his cock completely encased in a warm sleeve, becoming part of my body, also part of one powerful man-machine of sex) — here we both slide into sex-ecstasy, in my case noisily — and finally he hits my button, massaging it with the tip of his cock, and I’m totally an animal in heat, riding his cock while he thrusts his crotch up as much as he can, but I’m running this show, he’s stroking my cock with his fist, hoping to get me off so that I’ll come on him (maybe on his face if he’s lucky) and though I’m now milking his dick with my asshole, also hoping that he can hold off long enough that when I come, the spasms of my hole on his cock will get him off. But, whatever, we each come at some point, with a heartfelt shout of “Oh FUCK”.

Afterwards, we sit like this as long as we can, with his cock happily lodged in my fuckhole, providing both of us with quiet pleasures, while we kiss and pant and lick one another’s bodies and grin at one another and congratulate one another and revel in the cloud of intense sex smell that surrounds us. We will go on to wash up, in a loving ritual with soap, warm water, and wash cloths: he carefully washes my ass, paying special but gentle attention to my asshole (which we have just shared); and I do the same for his crotch, paying special but gentle attention to his sensitive cock (which we have just shared).

The sex smell hangs in the air for some time. Anyone in the know could walk in, sniff, and declare, “Wow, guys have been fucking in here!”

[Digression on consciousness.] One feature of such encounters is the extent to which people are able to juggle several states of consciousness. In my account above, both J and I were apparently out of the ordinary world for most of it, in sexual ecstasy. Indeed, one of the pleasures of sex for both of us, and for many people, is this passing into an altered state, this giving up of control; ecstasy is fantastic. (For a certain number of people, though, abandoning control isn’t fantastic, it’s terrifying.)

On the other hand, what we were doing was a skilled performance of sexual practices that required that our bodies be engaged with one another in certain specific alignments over the course of time. Even while I was apparently crazed and gibbering ecstatically, I was milking Jacques’s dick in a way to maximize his pleasure and get him off; meanwhile, he was jacking me off skillfully; we interpolated kisses in the event; and we were jointly adjusting the angle of his penetration into me in ensure the greatest pleasure for both of us. (If it’s to be fully satisfying, ass-fucking requires delicate adjustment of this angle, an adjustment that has to be specific to the details of the two men’s bodies: the fucker shouldn’t have to have his dick bent uncomfortably on insertion, and the fuckhole shouldn’t have his man’s dick poking uncomfortably at the walls of his rectum, rather than fitting smoothly into the passage.) In fact, a great advantage of sit-fucks is that they facilitate mutual adjustments of this sort.)

In addition, we were both, in effect, observing our performances, recording information about them, and judging them. The reason I know this is that afterwards we talked together about what had happened. We were both there, not (entirely) off in the Land of Ecstasy. We both could recall things I’d called out when I was reciting the litany of sexual ecstasy (which J found simultaneously funny, sweet, powerfully dirty, and hot); on his part, ecstasy robbed him of the power of speech, reduced him to wordless moans and grunts, a fact that I noticed). And we could both notice things outside of our sex bubble: I could observe (out of the front windows) cars passing on the street, and Jacques could register similar traffic at the back of our condo, in the parking lot.

So: three kinds of consciousness working together.]

Here ends the story of living room fucks. This story is the act of loving remembrance I promised you at the top.

Cowboy. Not the mythic American frontiersman, nor the genre figure of gay porn (a particularly rich genre, well mined by several directors), but a position for ass-fucking (with an analogous position for pussy-fucking, though that’s not my topic here; but see the note*). A position for a species of sit-fuck — a class of sex positions that are conducive to mutuality in sex; allow for relatively easy adjustment of the angle of penetration in fucking; and accord the receptive partner (the catcher, the bottom) considerable control over the proceedings, becoming in a sense the active rather than passive partner — all this vis-a-vis the insertive partner (the pitcher, the top, and in other sex positions, the controlling and active partner, so that sit-fucks provide a nice reversal of roles).

[*Annoyed linguistic note (long): googling on “cowboy sex position” (that is, “Cowboy sex position”, but google search is case-insensitive) gets you tons of Cowgirl examples (so labeled); to get male fucks, you have to specify “cowboy gay sex position”. Apparently, cowboy has been bleached of gender reference and takes in female cowhands — cowgirls — as well as male ones. This change does seem to have happened for some people, to judge by a respectable number of ghits for She’s a cowboy (in the relevant sense). But many of these might be deliberately playful, and in any case the usage has not yet reached the dictionaries: NOAD has

noun cowboy: 1 a man, typically one on horseback, who herds and tends cattle, especially in the western US and as represented in westerns and novels …

AHD5 is similar, and I’d expect other dictionaries to say the same. (So: not yet, but probably on its way.)

But as I noted above, what we’re talking about here isn’t cowboy the common noun, but a proper noun Cowboy referring to a specific sex position. And that does seem to have picked up a gender-neutral use.

An explanation. In the ranch world, male cowhands vastly outnumber female ones, but in the world of people who engage in getting fucked by men, women substantially outnumber men, probably by at least 9 to 1. So if you want to talk metaphorically about a sex position for getting fucked by men the way cowhands (who are almost all cowboys) ride their horses, the proper noun Cowboy is a natural name, even though the people who employ this sex position are very largely women. That gets us to a gender-neutral position name Cowboy.

Then if you want to refer to this sex position specifically as it is employed by men who are gay, what you want is (with square brackets indicating the parsing):

[ Cowboy [ gay [ sex position ] ] ]  ‘the sex position for gay men that is called Cowboy’

(or [gay [ Cowboy [ sex position ] ] ] ‘the sex position that’s called Cowboy, which is for gay men’, but that will inevitably be misunderstood as referring to gay cowboys).

Then Google messes things up by disregarding case.]

In Classic (Kneeling) Cowboy (often: just Cowboy), the hole (facing his fucker and kneeling astride his legs) rides the fucker’s cock (as I did with Jacques in the living room), thus providing the advantages of face-to-face fucking in general: the opportunity for the two men to monitor each other’s facial expressions and to kiss; for the fucker to monitor the state of his partner’s dick and to handle it, including to climax, if he wishes; and for the hole to handle the front plane of his partner’s body (stroking his chest and belly, tweaking his tits, stroking his hair and face, giving him fingers to suck, etc.). Classic Cowboy is both easy and intimate.

On to my first illustration (from the on-line Gay Sex Positions Guide, which gets its photos and video clips from gay porn — typically, very nicely posed and composed shots, from which I’ve been able to fuzz out the occasional visible cock or balls), of Classic Cowboy:

(#1) A Daddy-Boy scene, with contrasting body types and personas / presentations of self: insertive muscular-hunk Daddy lying on his back (rather than sitting up, as Jacques did for me), but with his head raised; receptive twink Boy kneeling and straddling Daddy’s legs; Daddy’s cock concealed here because it’s embedded to the root in his Boy’s pussy; intense absorption and pleasure all around

Then: Reverse (Kneeling) Cowboy (receptive on top, but out-facing; and again, kneeling astride his fucker’s legs) has the advantages of Classic Cowboy (in-facing) but a quite different emotional tone. First, the illustration, with brief comments; then, broader comments on emotional tones, though I’ll note here that some gay men would be inclined to say that (even with its Daddy-Boy role contrast) #1 is a picture of two guys having sex, or of two guys fucking, while #2 is a picture of a guy getting fucked.

(#2) The insertive partner is leaner, the receptive more muscular, but they are of roughly similar body types and presentations of self; the fucker’s head is propped up with pillows so that he can view the fuckhole’s body; the hole’s eyes are closed as he focuses on the sensation of being filled by his man’s cock, and he’s jacking himself off

In #1, what the fucker views is his hole’s face, body, and dick, an entire man who can be appreciated in a variety of ways; in #2, he’s entirely concentrated on the receptive’s ass as an object of desire; he might be aware that the other guy is using him for anal pleasure, the way you might wield an anal probe or a dildo, but maybe he doesn’t care — and he doesn’t have to: for him, the receptive can just be a warm wet hole for him to come in (to paraphrase an angry critique by a woman friend of mine about a man who was having sex with her). The fucker doesn’t have to give a shit about his hole’s dick or any desires his hole might have beyond taking his fucker’s cock up his ass.

Of course, he can be keenly attentive to his partner’s needs and desires, — his body can listen to the voice of his partner’s body, just as his partner’s body listens to his — but he doesn’t have to. He could just plow on, enjoying the view of his dick pistoning in and out of man-pussy. Just a warm wet hole for him to come in.

Guys can be such selfish shits.

Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Different bottoms want different things, and pretty much everybody, bottoms too, wants different things on different occasions. Sometimes you do just want to be a warm wet hole for a guy to come in, while you lose yourself in the feeling of having him within your body, pounding your pussy. If you’re a guy taking it up your ass (or in your mouth), you might not want the distraction of attending to your dick; save that for later, or ask for it before.

In fact, my preferred practice with fuckers, Jacques included, was to have them suck me off first, because that relaxes my asshole and helps me open up for their cocks. I note that bottoming, like topping, like cocksucking, is a skill, one that can be improved through practice and learning. I also note that not many fuckers are willing, as Jacques was, to suck your cock beforehand — the urgency of their desire to fuck is just too great — though many will accommodate you afterwards: suck you off, jack you off, or at least hold you in their arms, cheering you on, while you jack off for them.

Now, I’ve done my bit about the attitudes and practices of man-man sex as (in part) a reinscription of those of straight sex: one partner brings a dick to the occasion, and the other serves, or services, that dick. And my bit about how man-man sex (often) works quite differently: not only do both guys bring a dick (with all of its needs) to the occasion, both bring a desire for dick (and maybe for male ass as well) to it.

And, with that, to more Cowboys, with the hole adopting a posture other than kneeling.

In Standing Cowboy, the insertive partner is sitting in a chair and the receptive partner straddles him standing on his feet (with knees bent, so that he can lever himself up and down on his fucker’s cock):

(#3) Compare to #1 (here, the two men are much closer in body type and presentation); in the actual photo, the hole’s ass is at the top of his ride, so that the fucker’s cock is almost fully visible — for the pleasure of the viewer (in any case, this is a fine composition of bodies, with accompanying facial expressions; the hole’s beautiful buttocks are the central focus of the picture, with the pair of faces as the other focus, the axis of their gazes matched by the angles of their arms, one beside the other)

A wonderfully intimate photo, in my opinion.

By now, you’ve realized that if there’s a Standing Cowboy, there’s bound to be a Reverse Standing Cowboy:

(#4) The fucker is lying with his ass at the end of a bench, with his legs spread; the hole is standing between the fucker’s legs, fully impaled on the fucker’s cock, at the bottom of his ride; the fucker isn’t focused on anything: his O-face / come-face indicates that he’s at or very close to the point of shooting his load in the hole’s ass

Not at all parallel to #2, but it’s easy to imagine a counterpart to #2 with the fuckhole turned around, so that the photo would become narrowly about his getting fucked, with the fucker focused on nothing but the hole’s pussy-ass.

Now, finally, the mysteriously oriental Asian (Squatting) Cowboy, which I first encountered just as a name. Asian Cowboy is in fact Squatting Cowboy, otherwise just like Kneeling Cowboy in #1 and #2. An illustration:

(#5) Again, an especially intimate photo — the men, similar in body types and presentations, though contrasting in race, are about to kiss — and very nicely composed; the fuckhole appears to be floating on his fucker’s cock

Why Asian? It’s about cultural practices throughout several large areas of Asia. From Wikipedia on “Squatting position”:

Young children often instinctively squat. Among Chinese, Southeast Asian and Eastern European adults, squatting often takes the place of sitting or standing.

This time, I’ll go jump right to the Reverse Asian (Squatting) Cowboy:

(#6) Fuckhole High Fade (HF) and his older fucker Beard (B): young man, young man HF bouncing on B’s cock, grasping B’s legs for balance while he raises and lowers his buttocks, both men intently absorbed in their joint project, to get B off in HF’s asshole

In principle, HF is using B’s dick as a dildo for his own anal pleasure, while B is using HF’s asshole as a masturbation sleeve — even-handed exploitation of their carnal resources — and in principle HF, able to move his lower body freely from the hips, is in charge of things, while B, flat on his back under HF’s weight, is constrained to be an observer. But B is directing the action, through his hands on HF’s hips, to get himself off. B doesn’t have to care whether HF is getting exquisite pleasure from B’s cock in his ass or finds the whole business uncomfortable and humiliating — the point, HF might be thinking, is just to satisfy B — or doesn’t care about this encounter one way or the other, he’s a bottom so he does whatever his top has him do.

(Remember that HF might be thoroughly enjoying being used as a warm wet hole for B to get off in.)

These possibilities don’t occur to you when you look at #5. But they’re easy readings for #6 — maybe not accurate readings, pictures don’t tell you what they really mean, but easy ones.

Body positions. Not sex positions, but bodily postures or stances: kneeling and squatting, to start. From the Me and My Body site, “What are the correct positions for stooping, squatting and kneeling?”, this (awkward) illustration, plus NOAD definitions:

(#7)

verb kneel: [no object] be in or assume a position in which the body is supported by a knee or the knees, as when praying or showing submission

verb squat: [no object] crouch or sit with one’s knees bent and one’s heels close to or touching one’s buttocks or the back of one’s thighs

Not only are kneeling and squatting excellent positions for getting fucked in, some research has suggested they might be good for you. From USC [Univ. of So. Calif.] News, “Squatting and kneeling may be better for your health than sitting” by Emily Gersema on 3/9/20, beginning:

(#8) “take a break by squatting”

A USC-led study shows that squatting and kneeling may be important resting positions in human evolution — and even for modern human health.

Then, the verbs squat and hunker, and the higher-level verb crouch. From my 8/11/13 posting “crouch, squat, hunker”, on these stance verbs, with illustrations, including a squat toilet and a photo of a twink squatting, by male photographer Howard “The Twinkmeister” Roffman:

(#9) Roffman’s boy here is squatting but not hunkering.

To summarize: crouch is the neutral verb in this set; squat refers to a deep crouch; and hunker refers to squatting on the balls of the feet (that is, hunkering is the deepest possible squatting).

Then a further possibility, sometimes called squeeling.  In my 4/27/19 posting “A standout in his shorts”, a section on squatting-kneeling, the squat/kneel, or squeel, posture: first, a note on the social meanings of kneeling; then:

What we see in

(#10)

is one variant of a posture combining kneeling (with one leg) and squatting or crouching (with the other). A posture noted on this blog in my 4/21/19 posting “Let’s have a kiki … in me”:

(#11)

…  Squeeling is the position for, at least:

(a) genuflection, as part of Christian religious practice
(b) kneeling in honor of a fallen comrade on the battlefield
(c) getting knighted
(d) “taking a/the knee” in protest of injustice
(e)  shooting a rifle, as one of the standard positions
(f) fellating a standing man, as an alternative to a two-knee kneel [that is, “the classic cock-worshiping position”, in earlier discussion in this posting]
[(g) proposing marriage]

So a Cowboy fuck in which the receptive partner adopts the squeeling position might be called Knighted (Squeeling) Cowboy. Not that anyone seems to feel a need to discriminate between kneeling and squeeling for the purpose of describing sit-fucks; guys just use their knees as the exigencies of the moment require.

On this blog, more sex-position background for this posting.

— from 2/12/16, in “Liam Riley, power bottom twink”, on sit-fucks, in-facing (#6) and out-facing (#7); Cowboy and Reverse Cowboy as names for these

— from 2/12/16, in “Sex positions for gay men”, on 7 families of sex positions, based on the position of the body for the bottom, with Latin-derived names; the position Cowboy (aka sit-fuck or sessile fucking) [notes from this posting below]

— from 2/13/16, in “Brandon Lewis”: Flying Cowboy, Cowboy, and Reverse Cowboy in pornstar Lewis’s porn work

— from 2/8/19, in “Fucking cowboys, spitroasting, and Eiffel Towers”: spitroasting, sit-fucks (Cowboy and Reverse Cowboy), Eiffel Towers

Notes from “Sex positions” (from the point of view of the bottom)  (terminology: Rear ‘out-facing, dorsal’ vs. Front ‘in-facing, ventral’)

This entry was posted on August 25, 2021 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Facial expression, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, My life. 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.