(Warning: this posting starts out being about food, but quickly shifts into man-on-man sex, in very plain anatomical and interactional language, so it’s not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
The morning name from 6/7: spatchcock. From NOAD on spatchcock:
noun: a chicken or game bird split open and grilled. verb [with object] [a] split open (a poultry or game bird) to prepare it for grilling: these small spring chickens can be bought already spatchcocked. [b] informal, mainly British add (a phrase, sentence, clause, etc.) in a context where it is inappropriate: a new clause has been spatchcocked into the Bill. ORIGIN late 18th century (originally an Irish usage). [but in any case, the cock in question refers to poultry and not to penises]
Illustrated on the Fifteen Spatulas site, in “Spatchcock Chicken” by Joanne Ozug on 12/7/18:
(#1) [from the site:] Spatchcock Chicken roasts in half the time of a whole trussed chicken, and also cooks more evenly. … Once you spatchcock, you don’t go back to roasting whole chickens.
I had two visceral responses to the photo: one, as an umami-loving carnivore, my mouth watered in pleasurable anticipation of consuming that spatchcocked chicken; and two, as a hookup-loving pedicant, my sexual parts all tingled in pleasurable recollection of past encounters in which I was that spatchcocked chicken. On my belly, legs apart, buttocks in the air. Or, more briskly: prone, splayed, humped up. (You have to make some allowances for the anatomical differences between your typical roasted chicken and me in heat, so that drumsticks ≈ buttocks.)
The three components of the posture / position for a mansexual spatchcocking: (body) prone, (legs) splayed, (buttocks) humped up. Each occurs on its own; together, they’re a display that serves as an offer of sexual connection.
Prone. In the prone position, your body is lying flat on a horizontal surface, on its front plane. (Often described as “face down”, though of course your head could be lifted to look forward or turned to one side or the other, as well as literally faced down.) The position is opposed to the supine (lying on the back) position. (And both of these lying-flat positions to the lateral, lying on one side, position.) Many people sleep prone, with the head turned to one side. The prone position (with the head and shoulders lifted) is a standard one in riflery; it provides stability for the shooter’s body in aiming the rifle. Sunbathing on the sand is largely done in either the prone or the supine position. And so on.
Now, a linguistic complexity. From OED3 (June 2007) on the adj. prone
II. Senses relating to physical position or aspect. 5. b. Of (the posture or attitude of) a person or animal: such that the belly is next to the ground, or lies beneath the body; lying face downwards or on one’s belly; bending forward and downward; facing downwards… In strict use opposed to supine. In later use frequently more generally with reference to lying horizontal, or on the ground, without specific implication as to bodily posture.
The history seems to be that prone came to be viewed as an ordinary vocabulary item, while supine remained a technical term that wasn’t widely known. So that prone was extended to cover all sorts of lying flat.
Splayed. From NOAD on the verb splay:
[a] [with object] thrust or spread (things, especially limbs or fingers) out and apart: her hands were splayed across his broad shoulders | he stood with his legs and arms splayed out. [b] [no object] (especially of limbs or fingers) be thrust or spread out and apart: his legs splayed out in front of him. …
I’d intended to illustrate the non-sexual splaying of fingers, arms, and legs here, but all of the good images I found required a fee for use. Though I’ll note that we’re all familiar with men splaying their legs while sitting — the body position that’s come to be known as manspreading. In any case, I’ll now jump right to the mansexual stuff.
When a naked man splays his legs, he displays his sexual parts, front or rear, makes his body open, offers it, as in this rear view:
(#2) The title for this image in my photo files is “Seductive Man Pussy”; it’s the splayed legs (plus that facial expression) that turns it from a garden-variety butt shot (pleasing though such views are) to a sexual offer
The verb splay verges on the formal or technical; the sexual slang verb is spread. From GDoS on the verb spread:
1 ‘to have sexual intercourse’ 2 (U.S. gay) (also spread apart) ‘to sodomize or be sodomized’ [in both cases, the insertive partner spreads — transitive verb, with direct object — the receptive, while the receptive spreads for — intransitive verb, with oblique (prepositional) object — the insertive, or simply spreads (with spread ‘spread for men’) — intransitive verb, with no object, but understood transitively]
Cites for each of the argument structures:
1948 in Ed Cray The Erotic Muse: A lady came in for some covers one day. / ‘What will you have?’ said I. / ‘Spread,’ she said, and spread her I did. [transitive V + DO]
1963 Malcolm Braly Shake Him Till He Rattles: I know this is old sad hat, but I had to spread for anyone who wanted me […] Do you think it damages a girl to sleep around? [intransitive V + OO]
1953 Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March: There’s still another sister who’s a tramp and spreads on the stairs. [intransitive V understood transitively]
Humped up. More generally, with the buttocks pushed out or up (from various positions). This is the position of “Assume the position!” in fraternity and military hazing; in spanking or paddling as punishment; and in spanking or paddling as a B&D practice. (An American police order to “assume the position” calls for a very different body position.) Fraternity hazing in the movies:
(#3) Kevin Bacon’s fraternity paddle initiation from Animal House (1978): “Assume the position!”
Buttocks pushed out is also the position for mooning as an insult gesture (see my 11/7/18 posting “Arousing the beast”, with its section on mooning); for lordosis in various female animals in heat, as an offer of the genitals for sex (see the lordosis section below); for the conventional titillating gesture of cheesecake (and beefcake) the pinup push (a standing pose with the buttocks pushed out; see my 9/28/19 “Gender notes: the pinup push”); and in various forms of buttocks-out dancing (see my 10/25/16 posting “tail in the air”, with a section on such dances). No doubt in other cultural practices as well.
The whole package. From my 12/30/18 posting “Sexual displays > offers: prone, supine, lateral”, about:
horizontal body shots, with the model lying either in a supine display (face up, presenting the front surface of his body), or in a prone display (face down, presenting the rear surface of his body), or in a lateral display (lying on one side), with either the front or the rear surface of his body facing the camera.
These are just displays, depictions, which can serve many functions — as works of (male) art, as illustrations in clothing advertisements, as porn or advertisements for porn, as sexual advertisements.
But displays can be amped up from mere depictions, realizing their potential as offers of the body (and so as incitements to (sexual) action).
Prone display > prone offer. [three illustrations, with this comment:]
Many gay men, responding to their predilections and desires, would look upon these butts and find them arousing, would be inclined to view them as implicit offers; but they’re just posed bodies. Sometimes, however, the offer is explicit: the subject spreads his legs and humps up his ass, making his asshole available (and his cock and balls visible), as here:
(#4)
[Richard Vytniorgu, from an earlier display photo:] Spread and humped up, still in a variant of the prone position, but now offering his body. He could be easily fucked in this position, or he could raise himself up on his knees, offering himself for a doggie fuck
Also in this Daily Jocks ad from 8/28/20:
(#5) [AZ caption:] A beautifully (but not extravagantly) muscled male body, lying prone on the silky sheets of a bed — simultaneously tough and high-masculine and also sumptuously queer — with his knees drawn up to offer his very muscular male buttocks for sex
The prone body position in the offers in #4 and #5 provides the name I used for one of the 8 positions for man-on-man fucking (from the point of view of the bottom / the receptive) in my 2/12/16 posting “Sex positions for gay men” — but the splaying and humping up are what work to make it into a sexual offer and not just a way of lying on a flat surface.
In real life, some support — a small pillow, for instance — under the receptive’s waist allows him to keep his ass effortlessly raised at a good angle for getting fucked (pro tip from the guy who gave me my first fuck) — an adjustment that can be further facilitated by providing some freedom of movement for the receptive, who can then become a more active partner in the fucking: by bringing his knees up so that his lower body is resting on them (a genicular fuck, in anatomical terminology), can lever his lower body from the hips, and has his ass up in the air for getting fucked like a bitch (a doggie- / doggy-fuck, in street talk); and by also sliding his elbows back so that his upper body is resting on them (this would be a cubital ornament on a genicular fuck, in anatomical terminology) and he can lever his whole body from his knees and elbows.
As in this one-elbow variant in a Daily Jocks ad from 3/28/21, which also has the receptive performing a cruise face for the viewer and (like Richard Vytniorgu in #4) has his head at the edge of the bed, available for sucking the cock of a second man while getting fucked by his main man:
(#6) [AZ caption:] … tail in the air, offering his ass; stroking his dick, apparently, out of our view; displaying his muscular shoulders and back (his traps and lats); fixing us with a knowing cruise face; and playing with his gorgeous springy hair
From my 10/25/16 posting “tail in the air”:
[the Fuck Me Please (FMP) interpretation of tail in the air] manages to combine the root sense of tail with its metonymic extension to the rump of an animal (including the buttocks of a human being) and the further metonymic extension from ‘rump, buttocks’ to ‘vagina’ (and to suggest a further metaphorical extension, in gay usage, from ‘vagina’ to ‘anus’) — so that it hits all the sexualized senses of tail except the metaphorical (shape-based) extension to ‘penis’. The larger point is that FMP connotes receptivity and submission.
The crucial element in FMP is raising the hips, putting the rump up in the air. From Wikipedia:
Lordosis behavior, also known as mammalian lordosis (Greek lordōsis, from lordos “bent backward”) or presenting, is a body posture adopted by some mammals including humans, elephants, rodents, felines and others, usually associated with female receptivity to copulation. The primary characteristics of the behavior are a lowering of the forelimbs but with the rear limbs extended and hips raised, ventral arching of the spine and a raising, or sideward displacement, of the tail.
Or, as in “Sex positions for gay men”, the 4th position, bottom kneeling: a genicular fuck, aka doggie-fuck, or, crudely, taking it like a bitch. Great stuff; in a long-ago life, I was a fine fuck-bitch — or, as I could now say, a fine spatchcock. Just get me hot and sprinkle me with herbs.
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