Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(A posting that dwells analytically, but also lovingly and in detail, on men’s bodies and man-man sex, so it’s thoroughly unsuited for kids and the sexually modest.)

Sweetly earnest and pleasantly gay, also, a superhunky muscle bottom (descriptors the man himself laughingly accepts as compliments); a “voracious bottom” (or eager receptive, to put it in more distanced technical terms), as an interviewer put it a while back; and something of a queen (a descriptor he occasionally uses of himself as well as the other “queens in recovery” in his alcoholism support group). This is gay pornstar Beau Butler, who appeared earlier on this blog in my 5/3/21 posting “With knitted brows”, because brow-knitting is one of his Serious Faces, frequently displayed during sex with other men, in particular while he’s being pronged by a Raging Stallion co-worker on a mensroom sink in the porn flick Show Hard. I write co-worker because though Butler is indeed an eager receptive, both personally and professionally, he also views his sex work as a job — requiring specialized skills, attention to the tasks at hand, and teamwork, and following demanding routines and schedules — a job that he approaches with a serious work ethic.

Butler gets another blog posting because of the way he looks — amiably faggy — in a Raging Stallion e-mail ad (for the flick The Territory) that came to me on 8/27 (without identification of the actors in it). And that opens the way for more musing on gay male identities and personas; and more musing on the way personal and social lives are structured in the making of gay porn.

(#1) Touches of fagginess, in the form of bits of symbolic girliness: the big sign is his bodily position, with his back somewhat arched and his butt pushed out (in what’s known as the pinup push — see my 9/28/19 “Gender notes: the pinup push”); girly ax-wielding (I’m not quite sure what makes this unconvincing as butch ax-wielding, but it’s actually what I noticed about the pose first); and, most subtly, his facial expression, not the usual porn-ad cruise of death, but instead conveying alert receptiveness

Despite his gigantic upper body — achieved through a year’s labors, maintained by a carefully plotted 6-day-a-week, hour-a-day workout regimen ever since, plus a strict healthful diet before porn shoots — a body type that’s normally a turn-off for me in real life, I found this presentation, well, cute. And then I realized the model was in fact Beau Butler, last seen on that mensroom sink, transcendently happy with the pleasure of getting fucked (meanwhile, incidentally, knitting his brows in concentration)

From that 5/3 posting:

(#2)

Bonus: Beau Butler displays himself. A just barely WordPressable performance showing off his muscle-hunk body right down to the base of his 8ʺ [well, realistically, probably 7ʺ] cock (clearly outlined in his pants)

Butler seems to be generally labeled as versatile, but on the evidence of the films of his that I’ve seen discussed that should probably be versatile bottom (specifically, a bottom who does flip-fuck scenes). The man does love to be fucked.

Well, really, bottom. But even if you’re by inclination a  full-bore bottom (as BB seems to be), if you’re also someone who follows the injunction that, other things being equal, you should be nice to people (as BB explicitly, earnestly, tries to be), and if you’re entirely capable of fucking other men (it just doesn’t spontaneously occur to you), then of course if the other guy wants to be fucked (out of his own pointed desire) or needs to be fucked (because you’re at work and it’s in the script), then of course you fuck him, with vigor and probably a smile.

But here’s BB in his natural element (photo cropped for WordPress modesty):

(#3) In the woods, in The Territory, on his knees for getting fucked, thoughtfully observing Romeo Davis’s big porn dick plunging into his asshole, concentrating with knitted eyebrows: “Hey, nice job, buddy!” [not actual quote]

A tribute in AMZ verse:

Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah!
— Beau Butler’s character in Show Hard, while being fucked on a mensroom sink

Cute and hunky guy
craves hot men
knits his brows
does the deeds
–> per manum
–> per os
–> per anum
like superslut

Two interviews. My discussion above was based, first of all, on the visible evidence of BB the porn actor’s work: his performances and his publicity photos. These show BB’s porn persona as he portrays various characters in different productions and can be expected to provide some insight into the actor’s own sense of self and identity and the way he presents himself; more than most movie actors, porn actors (necessarily) inject quite a lot of themselves into their roles and supply considerable unscripted action and dialogue on their own.

(Remember, though, that professional porn movies are movies, made with all the elaborate tricks of the industry: shooting done in small takes, usually out of sequence, with stand-ins, with actors sometimes called upon to act in scenes with people they’ve never rehearsed with and might never even have seen before, and more — all of this done on a stage set, with hot stage lighting and other equipment all over the place and a  considerable audience of movie-making staff in the way. Sets are cluttered.

In the case of porn movies, the fact that an actor looks like he’s enjoying getting fucked might just be a display of the craft of acting. Actually, there are a fair number of g4p actors who take the bottom role not because they get any particular pleasure out of getting fucked, but because they have trouble maintaining a hard-on themselves in the circumstances, but have learned the somewhat less demanding skills of making the act of fucking easy for other men, of “giving them a good ride”, skills of which they are justifiably proud. In any case, almost anyone can learn to feign ecstasy.

Nevertheless, in all of this, BB does seem to be unusually transparent in his on-screen pleasure.)

In many cases, though, porn actors have been willing to talk about their lives, their feelings, and their craft in interviews. This evidence is still indirect — it’s introspective and subject to all sorts of distorting effects —  but often quite telling.

For BB, I’ve used two interviews, one short one in print, the other, longer, one in a podcast (so it comes with rich auditory and visual information); I incorporated some material from these interviews in my discussion above.

— Fleshbotinterview of 5/5/21,”20 Questions With New Falcon / NakedSword Exclusive Beau Butler!” (in print)

— “Beau Butler Has Been in Porn for 6 Months and Is Already a Star”, YouTube interview on Mark Peikert’s podcast The Gay Goods of 5/24/21

Fleshbot. From which, two topics: BB’s advice about the angle of penetration in fucking (echoing remarks I’ve made on this blog a number of times); and a bit of his earlier sexual history.

— on the fuck angle:

Q You’re a very voracious bottom. What is one thing you would teach a top who wanted to be a better sexual partner?
A I’m so glad someone finally asked: find the right angle. If you feel your bottom shift just go with it because they are most likely angling their hole so you hit the spot. At least that’s what I do!
Q What about someone who wanted to bottom better?
A Arch that back baby.[Make that angle better, baby. See #1 above and discussions on this blog of humping up to get fucked.]

— on BB’s teen sexuality:

Q What kind of guy were you in high school? What kind of guys/girls did you go after?
A I went to a performing arts high school! The population was roughly 80% women, 15% gay men and 5% straight men. I dated a lot of boys in high school and came out at age 13. [Well, he was largely in a safe environment, but still wow. Other remarks suggest that he was aware he was different from an early age, but had no clear sense about what the difference was for a while, then became focused on his sexuality at puberty. The impression he gives is that was open, unapologetic, indeed matter-of-factly satisfied about his sexuality from an early age. Somewhere along the line he picked up his admirable work ethic. And his apparently crush-proof amiability — the sweetness that pretty much everyone remarks on.]

Gay Goods. I went to this one to see what degree of gay voice BB has. The answer is, in my opinion, enough that he reads as gay on listening to him, but it’s subtle, so subtle that I think few people would peg him as f-gay (faggy, femme, fem, etc. — basically, too gay for their taste). So long as they were going on his voice alone. If you get to see the gestural stuff, then I think a lot of straight guys would label him as a fag, meant as an insult; gay guys might just find this presentation charming, as I do.

(I’m uncomfortable drawing these lines; in fact, I deplore them. But they’re not my invention; I’ve just given labels to distinctions made by various groups in modern American society, which (among other things) reflect a hostility towards anything smacking of femininity in men: homosexuality in men, no matter how conventionally butch they might be, is a failure of masculinity; detectable homosexuality is a worse failure; flagrant homosexuality is a total failure, and very threatening.)

BB had a largely safe environment in high school, and has now chosen, or fallen into, life in another safe environment, in the gay porn industry. It feels like a family to him, and though the work is often difficult, tiring, and tedious, it’s something he knows how to do well and has been quite successful at; in his judgment, it’s a really good job. (He does remark at one point to Peikert that he needs to think about his future — a job that involves having sex frequently and publicly with other men is a young man’s job (and I’m sure he’s aware that once you’ve had a career in sex work, you’re profoundly stigmatized and will have trouble finding any other kind of work), so he’s looking for other things to do in the business. (Plan when you can.)

Meanwhile, he’s neither ashamed nor defiant, but presents himself as just matter-of-factly and pleasantly really really queer. Great fun to watch. I smiled a lot, with him.

Odds and ends. Nature’s gifts to BB included a model’s face and body (including a porn-ready dick); gayness (and an awareness of that, at some level, from childhood on); plenty of physical stamina; and a high sex drive. Then, coming from who knows where, his amiability; his earnestness; his work ethic; and his resilience. Much of this came together when some years ago he’d fallen into heavy drinking (“I was a hot mess”, he confides), realized that he was in trouble, quit, and gamely stuck with rehab and recovery from alcoholism, finding in the process yet another (gay) family, the queens in recovery. (Isolation during the pandemic was then very very hard.)

In the Peikert interview, he tells a story that starts out with a recitation of a tedious upon tedious day at work (for the Falcon label itself, I think): 4 unbroken hours of filming two separate gangbang scenes (Falcon is a hard driver, always has been), getting fucked again and again and again, a marathon he had prepared for through a period of ramped-up exercises and strict dieting (and then, I assume, having himself douched and lubed and repeatedly washed up). At the end, he went home to his sister, mother, and grandmother, and they all took part in an old family tradition of celebration that involves gorging on cheesecake and watching Gone With the Wind from beginning to end. (Yes, the Butler comes from Rhett Butler.) Now that was a fucking long day.

This entry was posted on August 29, 2021 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body. 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.