Can a Cock Shot be Submissive?

Friday, November 21, 2008

In case you haven’t heard yet, Maymay and I have recently launched Male Submission Art, a new blog focused upon showcasing and crowdsourcing images of beautiful male submission. Thus far, the project has been not only successful, but a whole lot of fun. I open my email account to find massive files and link-fests, my favorite people sending their favorite porn? Amazing.

One of our first contributors sent us a range of very eclectic, very sexy photos, many of which were immediately re-blogged. Among them, ze sent a photograph of a bound, erect penis: essentially, a cock shot. Exactly as ze described it in hir email, the bondage is beautifully done. The man’s penis strains, his stomach muscles are tensed, his skin flushed with trapped blood. It is, undoubtedly, a beautiful cock in bondage.

When May and I sat down and opened the email to look through the images, the cock caught our attention.

“Should we post that?” I asked.

May shrugged. “My instinct is yes.”

“Hmm,” I said. “My instinct is no.”

We have yet to resolve this between the two of us, so I thought I’d throw it open to a bit of discussion here, and find out what you, the audience of the blog, think.

Can a cock shot be submissive?

I can explain, to some degree, why my initial instinct was to say no. The reasoning is threefold.

Firstly, because I do have a personal wariness around cocks that should be acknowledged. I am not a big fan of the penis, in general. I find the entire contraption a little off-putting, and wont to spit acrid goo at me. And where erotica is concerned, they’re just not to my taste. I have thousands of images in my porn collection, and not a cock shot to be found.

Secondly, because I do see a tricky distinction here between masochism and submission. I have often identified scenes that focused intensely upon the weapons and gear of kink as sadomasochistic, but not as D/s. This is another instance of the nuances between top/bottom and dom/sub, many of which are fluidly defined from person to person. A person in pain is not submissive. A person in bondage is not necessarily submissive either. But how to convey that distinction, merely a matter of attitude, in a photo?

Following from that point, the third: I’ve realized that I make a connection between character and submission. That is, for me to feel that a photo portrays an instance of beautiful submission, it must first convey a person who will enact that submission. An amputated body part is not, to me, enough.

In my gut, this is a matter of emotional connection. I have no emotional connection to this particular body part. As such, while I find the photo evocative and masochistic, nothing about it says submission to me. The cock has no eyes to cry with, no lip to quiver, no knees to kneel upon, no body to hunch, to protect, to evoke my dominant instincts. I do not care about it, beautifully bound though it is.

But perhaps this is an unfair bias I’m inflicting upon the Male Submission Art audience, to shy away from cock shots and their ilk. In all honesty, I don’t know. I know my personal tastes run deep, and are often counter-culture. We don’t have enough suggestions yet to get a truly fair sampling of what people are interested in.

So tell me. Can a cock shot be submissive? What do you think?

Labels: Filed in Announcements, Body, Dominance, Male Submission Art, Penises, Sadism, Submissives, Weird Wiring | Comments (15)

Sans Weapons, Sans Gear

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Maymay reviews for Eden Fantasies, and last time around he and I sat down and picked out something resembling a cock case. It’s a strap-on with a hollow center that he can wear over his own penis during sex to essentially give himself an eternal, non-stimlating erection. Sounds delicious, no?

But when it arrived, all shrouded in bubble wrap and cardboard, I laughed aloud. I had failed to realize the essential flaw in this sexy plan: the thing is fucking huge. It is the size of my forearm; I feel vaguely as though it could be used to skewer a donkey.

Needless to say, at this point in time I have no intention of having sex with it.

So it’s sitting on our dresser now, alongside its case, my library books, and glasses cleaner. Every once and a while I pick it up and wave it at my boy. I’d attach it to the strap-on harness, but we don’t have a ring big enough to hold the monster.

Eventually I’ll find a place for it, somewhere in our teak box between the nylon and the hemp. The box is overflowing these days, as the weapons and gear of our sexuality gather to us.

I like that we still work without the toys, that we are still kinky naked, with nothing but our hands and mouths and tongues. Last night I wrapped my arm around May’s shoulders and held his wrists in my hand. With my other hand I cupped his cock, and stroked the tip of my thumb up and down the length of him over and over, until he had tears in his eyes and he whimpered like an angry child. He still had his t-shirt on, a soft cotton thing that smells like Old Spice. When I stopped he was angry, although I saw him try to hide it. His frustration was very sharp, and he thrashed on the bed and whined.

I rested a little while, while he struggled and pouted at me, his hands writhing inside mine. I closed my eyes and drifted toward the very edge of sleep. But I could feel the scene still in the air, like ending a concerto on an open tone.

“I like you like this, when you feel owned,” I said to him. I like him when every breath on his skin thrills him. I kissed his ear, his neck, pulled down his collar and licked his collarbone, pulled up his shirt and dragged my teeth against the barbell through his nipple. I kissed down his stomach and when I put my lips to the head of his cock he shrieked, almost sobbed into the pillow.

When he came, arching his ribs so that he stood off the bed like a bridge of flesh through the air, he shot so far he hit his own neck and shoulder, white streaks all over the thin cotton. And as he came I couldn’t help but think of water guns.

“Ah ga buh,” he said, when he could say things again.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I smiled.

“Buz ugu ma.” He slurred the sounds, closed his eyes, long fingers sprawled across his sticky belly.

“I think I have broken you. Have you forgotten how to speak?”

He nodded. We giggled a little, and when I pushed him off the bed to shower he walked in zigzags, holding one hand to the wall to keep himself upright, all fluid, heavy limbs.

Labels: Filed in Anecdotes, Contentment, Dominance, Eroticism, Maymay, Orgasm Control, Power, Reaction Top, Strap-Ons, Tenderness | Comments (5)

NaNoWriMo: The First Few Words

Sunday, November 2, 2008

It’s National Novel Writing Month! Have some shiny pseudo-fiction, on me.

1. He is like direction

This is him, my boy. 

He has legs round and firm as rubber balls, with monkey toes, long, grasping, narrow. He has little frog fingers that are skinny, the knuckles pressed together in strange places, and when I call him my frog-fingered boy he puts them to his face and covers his eyes. The pads of his fingers are thick and white, like silver coins. He makes me pulverized and strange.

He stands in our kitchen washing the dishes with his belly pushed out against the sink. He scuffs his feet, turns his toes pigeon-angled in. I come up behind him as he washes, and run my fingertips from the hard knobs of his collarbone to the backs of his thin hands. I do it to see the goose-bumps. I put my arms around his waist and press my face into his back, my feet flat and strong and bare on the tile floor.

He has, like a pufferfish, found a crack and puffed himself up to fit my life. He is wrapped around my lazy days with all the grace and wriggling charm of an octopus. He has the sleek softness of little harbor seals and the dry tenacity of a pit bull puppy dog.

He has a big hooked nose like a mountain, like his father. It is a family nose.

He has skin like vanilla ice cream. I tell him this over and over, while I tongue my way down the dinner rolls of his ribs, the mound of his ass where it swells from his legs. He has chili pepper lips and hair and ears and secret places. I like to split him in two with my tongue. 

My boy is like direction, my east, my sunrise, my north, my compass. He has the push and pull of magnetic insistence.

This is me.

I have a body like circles with a bird’s neck. I swing low when I walk. I walk like a boy, sit like a boy, cock my head and wear my hair like a boy. I like things that cling, cotton that sticks to my curving trajectories.

I leave trinkets in my wake, books, drawing pencils, a sock, a bit of yarn, a leather coin purse, a pearl earring, a knife. I put them down and he cleans them up, and then I come back and can’t find them again.

I think in layers and he thinks in lines. I speak with subtext and he speaks without. I feel things hard and short, he feels things hard and long. I float and he swings.

Some nights, when it is hard to focus, I open the window to the fire escape. I sit on the bed and thread temporary needles through the skin of my arm. I know how to do it so it won’t leave marks; I have practiced many times, on many people. Sometimes when I have a job the next day, or the day after that, I will be careful. Other times I pull the needles out hard and at a slant, so they make double bruises like twin purple grapes. I like them. They make me laugh. I like to leave marks to show where I’ve been.

I was in a plane crash when I was five. I tell people this, and I tell them I remember the bumps, metal, the green sparks. But I don’t know if I do remember those things, or if I painted them into the gaps later on. This is what I do; I tell lies like they’re true. I don’t know which of my stories are real any more.

This is me. And this is him. This story is about the things he does to me, and the things I do to him.

Labels: Filed in Romance, Writing | Comments (9)