(a dip into the rhetorical organization of texts and into figurative language, but getting its raw material from gay porn and so it’s going to be entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)
In the opening of Raging Stallion’s 2024 porn flick Tourist Attractions (scenes from the stream of visitors to Beau Butler’s (fantasy) rental house in Barcelona), BB explains the pleasures of the city:
I like to take in everything Barcelona has to offer: art, culture, food, cock — you know, the basics.
Thus launching this seaside D&A S&F circus with a stroke of comic bathos. From the high level of art and culture, dropping to the artful and cultivated satisfaction of an animal need and then plunging to what we think of as raw vulgar pleasure.
BB starts a sentence with a glancing allusion to La Sagrada Familia and ends with a tribute to taking dick. To which we offer a round of gratified cries of appreciation — as, indeed, would be occasioned by Gaudí’s astounding church, by a spread of Catalonian cuisine, and (for men of my inclinations) by the intense satisfaction of taking cock into your body and getting sweetly or roughly fucked, in your mouth or up your ass, all according to your desire.
And that’s bathos, comic bathos. With as a bonus, crude sweaty faggot sex fashioned, in the sentence immediately preceding this one, into a piece of free verse, in four phrases:
(#1) Surprise! Nobody expects the dickverse intervention (though, by this point, we have all gotten used to Monty Python allusions at every whipstitch)
Here you see me in the midst of an anti-bathetic move, working to elevate — to jack up — the trivial, ridiculous, or vulgar in the direction of serious commentary and thoughtful reflection. Maybe not rewarding you with a silk purse, but at least offering you a serviceable and sturdy wallet made from discarded scraps of material, from everyday cheap and somewhat dirty stuff, of greater value than might at first appear.
Well, I can dance on this figurative high wire for only so long, so I’ll downshift now for some basic discussion. First, about bathos, and its use for comic purposes. And then about Beau Butler, who so far has appeared only as the host introducing the scenes of Raging Stallion’s Tourist Attractions, the principal carnal attractions being D&A (dick and ass), S&F (sucking the former and fucking the latter). Who now appears as a flip-fuck partner of the handsome Venezuelan Gus Torres in a seriously hot scene — well, hot if guys fucking guys is to your taste, as it is, deeply, to mine — from the flick; there will be (carefully cropped) photos, showing two different tonalities for ass-fucking, With some notes on the admirable Beau Butler, so this posting will end on the plane of reflective analysis, in the middle field, between the gutter and the stars.
Bathos. From NOAD:
noun bathos: (especially in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by [a lapse] in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous [AZ: by an unexpected drop from the elevated to the pedestrian, the silly, or the vulgar]
Alongside literary discussions of bathos, there’s a rich vein of of folk, pop-cultural, and comedic examples from both American and British sources. A.J. Liebling and Ring Lardner deployed it skillfully in their comic writing, and the Monty Python troupe reveled in it. A different sort of example, from my 9/15/23 posting “The long hello”, in which the personals-ads’ conventional pleasure in long walks on the beach is jokingly mocked in e-cards that drop surprisingly into bathos, as here:
(#2) Well, yes, this one’s a fuck joke too; nobody expects e-card penetration (with apologies to Tom Lehrer: don’t procrastinate — penetrate!)
Butler and Torres take turns. Enjoying one of the basics offered by Barcelona (the (anti)climax of art, culture, food, and cock). First, Butler in Torres:
(#3) Torres (left, on the kitchen table) taking cock from Butler, right hand on Torres’s right hip); smiles of pleasure all around
Then, Torres in Butler:
(#4) Torres (left, standing, his left hand on Butler’s right hip) giving cock to Butler (bending over); Torres with a workman’s seriousness, Butler grunting ecstatically from Torres’s thrusting; both having a fabulous time
The players.
— Gus Torres data: Venezuelan, born Leonar Andrés Chourio Martínez, age about 24; 5′ 8″; swimmer bodytype; uncut 7″ penis; versatile, bisexual
— Beau Butler data: born 5/8/1990 in Orange County CA; 5′ 9″; beefy bodytype; 6.5″ uncut penis; versatile bottom (famously insatiable)
My 10/27/24 posting “Beau Burler’s shirt” has a list of my BB postings up to that point. From my 8/28/21 posting “Sweetly earnest and pleasantly gay”:
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.
In interviews he comes across as enthusiastic, thoughtful, self-reflective, and charming. He’s a recovering alcoholic, good at talking about this part of his life. And he has used the extravagant pleasure he takes in getting fucked to guide him in giving other men the kind of satisfaction he gets from taking cock himself. So we end with bathos inverted, in a moral stance that elevates having a dick rammed up a guy’s asshole — I’m trying to put this as crudely as possible — to an act of generosity, even grace.
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