Pavel FlegontovDecember 13

bendmeover:

I spend a lot of time preoccupied with notions of community—how to foster, improve and sustain them.

I was raised in an insular, religious cultish community. It was neither the best nor the worst situation; it was just another thing that happened to me.

Somehow, I managed to survive it.

It’s now just shy of two decades since I cut ties with that life. It has been for the best, without question.

But I would be lying if I denied frequently feeling rootless—a tumbleweed tossed wherever the fuck the wind blows.

It’s not the group sex that gets me—although I am not opposed to that by any means; it’s witnessing the shame and stigma my former community directed toward any expression of sexuality transmuted into a sublime collective experience.

captio:

(via snusk)

Largely, pornography is produced as a single-serving ‘experience’. One watches it, masturbates to it, gets off and then shuts it off.

On occasion there’s an image or video returned to over and over—something about the chemistry between the performers, the scenario, etc.—because nothing else reaches the itch it scratches quite like it.

For me, this is such an image. Although it is not without problems—namely, the woman is displayed like a trophy while the men remain hidden. Still, it manages—probably accidentally—to upend these troubling facets in interesting ways.

This is ostensibly a group sex scene: a woman and three men—the woman holds the photographer’s member. (The head of which is just visible in the frame.) Another man covers the woman’s genitals with his left hand, fingers glistening with her wetness. You can see another male foot in the upper right corner of the frame. Splotches of semen appear on the the sheets.

The woman—face flushed, eyes closed, the edge of her lip pinched between her white teeth—is enjoying herself.

What makes this image stand out is its subversion—at least in my reading— of porn’s tendency to encourage voyeurs to imagine themselves as part of the scene. While seeing this makes me wish I had been a party to this event, I never for a second get the impression that I would be welcome were I suddenly to appear en media res.

That is not really a problem, though. It is enough to know there are really people out there having and further enjoying the type of sex I dream often of having.