(Even choosing my words carefully, a fair amount of this posting is going to be inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest; you’ll see why in a couple of seconds)
Two themes for today: tools, and their masculinity; and male-male frottage, especially one variant of the Princeton rub. Somewhat astoundingly, these two themes intersect in what I think of as the Princeton rub tool: a dual masturbation sleeve, a device to facilitate two guys getting off together face to face.
Theme 1, the masculinity of tools. As Fathers Day approaches in my country, ads for tools ratchet up. The normative American guy apparently believes viscerally that tools are cool — far better than doing things by hand, if doing things by hand is even a possibility — so that having lots of tools, a whole workshop of them, is way cool; and that multifunctional tools are even cooler; and that power tools (vroom vroom) are coolest of all, expressing (along with taking deep pleasure in blowing things up and smashing stuff) the raw essence of masculinity (which is sadly lacking in metrosexuals and queers).
These things are complicated. I’m queer as fuck, but view hardware stores as bazaars of delight (though I suppose that everyone shares this pleasure) and celebrate the good design of tools (though again I suppose that everyone does), many of which I depend on for getting through my disabled days, others of which I simply admire for the beauty with which they perform their function. And yes, I get boyish satisfaction from the vroom vroom of power tools (and from explosions). I have my brand of homomasculinity, which puts me well out in left field from guy-guyness, but I’m also my father’s loving and admiring son, and my dad (like his father before him) was a builder of things, a wielder of many tools, astoundingly handy; and then I grew up in the company of other boys and so was, willy-nilly, in part socialized there, even though I was pegged as a marginal kid. Identities are complex and multiple.
Meanwhile, just one strand of the Fathers Day ads: multi-function tools, like the Swiss Army knife, the Leatherman tool, and a multi-tool pen set advertised (in uncertain English) on Amazon as an inexpensive Fathers Day present:
This multi tool pen has 9 useful functions, including ballpoint pen / flat head screwdriver / Phillips screwdriver / stylus / bottle opener (can also be a phone holder) / bubble level / ruler / LED light. It is a very cool tool for men dad husband to daily use, especially suitable for Fathers Day [or for] Christmas stocking stuffers for men adults as an unique gift.
(One of about 10 such pens, from various companies, sold by Amazon; I assume they’re all shipped from China.)
Theme 2, rubbing one another off. From my 8/25/14 posting “Cowboy rub”, initially about the substance noun rub ‘a mixture of spices and other seasonings that is applied to the surface of meat or fish before cooking’ (NOAD):
The noun rub. The verb rub has been nouned many times in a variety of senses; two families of these are relevant here: an act sense and a substance sense.
The act sense: OED3 (March 2011) gives ‘an act or spell of rubbing’ as its fifth main entry, with a 1618 first cite, and with the specialized sub-sense ‘a massage; a rub-down’ (first cite 1879).
Not in the OED are sexual senses of the noun, though it has some sexual uses of the verb, in particular the slang intransitive rub ‘to masturbate’ (Farmer & Henley’s slang dictionary in 1903) and phrasal rub up transitive ‘to touch or caress (a person, a part of the body) in order to excite sexually (from 1656) and transitive ‘to masturbate; (also) to rub oneself on a person or thing in a sexually arousing manner’ (Farmer & Henley).
But there’s more, not in the OED. There’s also the transitive verb in rub someone off ‘masturbate someone’ and the plain verb rub (transitive or intransitive) referring to masturbation or frottage. And then the related noun rub ‘act of masturbation or frottage’, notably in the compound Princeton rub (in various slang dictionaries), referring to male-male frottage, especially genital-genital rubbing or intercrural frottage (between the legs) (from lore about sex at Princeton before the days of coeducation).
And (from Urban Dictionary), various uses of dry rub for sex without lubrication, including the Youngstown dry rub ‘intergluteal frottage’ (between the buttocks) (a claimed allusion to practices at Youngstown State Penitentiary in Ohio) and the Alabama dry rub ‘anal sex without lubrication’ (source unclear).
For the record, let me say that though I went to Princeton back in its all-male days, moreover during the gay-repressive 50s and 60s (scary times sexually), and though I had heard the expression Princeton rub, I had no experience of any kind with the practice and assumed the name was just a piece of folklore. (30 years later, during the HIV plague, my man Jacques and I became proficient in the full variety of frottage acts, as safe sex practices; cock-on-cock rubbing (which allows for easy kissing and nuzzling) was a favorite, and J. always insisted I was so enthusiastic in the act because I was a Princeton man.)
Intersection, part a, tools for rubbing off. From my 4/30/16 posting“The masturbation sleeve”:
Male masturbation devices. The basic masturbation device used by a man (on himslf or another person) is the human hand, perhaps with some lubrication (saliva or a longer-lasting natural or commercial substance).
One step away from this direct contact is the masturbation sleeve, which can take many forms, all involving a soft tube of some kind that can slide over the penis to approximate a partner’s sexual orifice: mouth, anus, or vagina. One best best-seller in this department is the Fleshjack (also marketed as Flesh-Jack), which I wrote about here on 1/26/10 in “What’s P your N?” (taking off on the ad slogan “What’s in YOUR wallet?”):
… The electrical device. The final step is to give up stroking your penis with a hand (directly or on a masturbation sleeve), and cede control to a device that will do the stroking for you, through the miracle of electricity, with a masturbation sleeve connected to an electrically operated sucking pump.
(Personal note: most masturbation sleeves don’t appeal to me, and the Fleshjack strikes me as really silly, as well as absurdly expensive, but the attractions of an automated penis milking machine are completely beyond me.)
The first penis milking device on the market was apparently the one … Prince referred to in [his song] “Sexuality”, marketed under the name Accujac — a name that seems to be a portmanteau of accurate (alluding to control) and the jack of jack off.
Intersection, part b, a tool for rubbing one another off. Finale: the Princeton rub tool: a dual masturbation sleeve, the Cock Block ‘a block for cocks’. On the Cock Block Toys website:
(#1) The company logo: two highly stylized penises, crossed (as in sexual swordplay), plus equally stylized testicles[ad copy:] A new sex toy for two bros: CockBlock® is a hot new way to have sex. Made for two cocks. Do it in the moment. Easy to use and clean. … [a dual masturbation sleeve] designed to combine penetration and frot … enables face-to-face sex right in the moment
What can I say, beyond giving a sigh of relief that the device has (not yet) been automated; the frotboys have to thrust their dicks in the (soft plastic) block. Commercials show guys enthusiastically hooking up to rub one another off in the sexual heat of the moment, but they don’t show bodies in the act. They do have a neon visual, though:
(#2) Cocks in the block
The actual object:
(#3) Le rouge et le noir
Guy-think alert: everything, including intimacy, is better with a tool in it.
(A side — in a recent usage, which I haven’t traced — is a gay man who doesn’t engage in anal sex (as bottom, top, or versatile), but instead enjoys other forms of sexual connection: kissing, fellatio, masturbation, and/or frottage.)
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