threesome – Page 4 – Acetylene Eyes

Ivan Alifan – The three graces (2016)

This does several things very well.

Although much of oil painting art historically centers on mythology (Greek and Roman or Xtian), most renowned oil painters were decidedly secular humanist in nature.

The tropes of mythology and religion were widely legible, there was built in interest (due to the universality of public familiarity) and generally if someone had money to hire an up and coming painter, depending upon their particular bent–mythology or religion could be counted on as a source of inspiration.

There was also certain visual coding associated with either. Whether it was the saints or a bible story or an incident from the Illiad, there were interesting technical considerations about staging, technique, etc.

But there was also the way many artist filtered the making of their work through their sexuality. I’m thinking here mainly of Leonardo and Michelangelo, but I’m pretty sure you can follow the trajectory of painting while illuminating this tendency.

What I find clever about this is the way that it–instead of making the myth/religion its pretext, it places its interest in the sexual front and center.

However, in doing this, it’s accomplishing a clever sleight of hand. Because if you know, The Graces were Aglaea (Beauty), Euthymia (Grace) & Thalia (Good Cheer/Festivity).

The first bit about this is to note that all three were Zeus’ daughters and therefore this isn’t just a lesbian menage a trois–it’s incestuous to boot–something you aren’t going to know unless you understand the mythological context.

It’s interesting to play attribute the correct name to the correct figure. My best guess is right-to-left: Aglaea (beauty is inherently untouchable), Euthymia is straddling Aglaea having her clitoris sucked on by Thalia–grace being a singular experience and good cheer requiring both being merry and making merry.

But what I think I like the most is that this is staged to titillate the voyeuristic viewer, but the angle is such as to thwart any sort of expectation that this scene was staged specifically for the so-called male gaze.

Source: ivanalifan

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

From a technical standpoint this image is garbage. There’s seemingly not logic for the composition, the way the guy in the background is decapitated, the guy being fellated’s left arm stretching awkwardly out of frame and then the bend of the elbow of the boy in the foreground could’ve been used to frame the sex act if he’d shifted his arms back and to frame right ever so slightly while sliding maybe a half inch toward frame right at the same time.

It is not, however, an uninteresting image. I really want the camera moved back and two the left about two feet; along with a shallower depth of field that instead of focusing on the boy sucking dick, the focus is instead on the way the guy in the mid-ground is looking back at the person whose hand he’s holding.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

Another thing I don’t like about most porn is that even when they don’t cut to extreme close-ups of what’s going on at the site of various erogenous zones, they position the camera in such a way as to maximize the unobstructed view. It always feels annoyingly gratuitous. (I’m probably an anomaly but I am far FAR more likely to masturbate along to something like say this than this.)

Although I’m really not into the down tilt in this and how it renders the verticals diagonal instead of straight up and down. I don’t feel the angle was chosen to provide a titillating view of the one participants genitals and anus. Instead the view seems chosen to convey the most coherent information about both the space and what is happening within the space. The explicit nudity just happens to be a bonus.

Source: refer.ccbill.com

Source unknown – Title Unknown (201X)

There is no end to the way the marketing of pornography as if it’s an a la carte menu alienates me.

It’s like there’s the default menu–straight, heterosexual and cisgendered. Solo, oral, anal, gonzo, creampie, teen, milf.

The gay porn that I’ve seen benefits from it seeming as if the dudes really, super actually want to be fucking each other. Sorry not sorry; thirst is hot, y’all.

Lesbian porn that is of a for us by us sort of bent is unquestionably my preference.

But I just don’t understand the segregation of menus. Like, can we get porn where one scene is your typical Vivid-esque cis-het, blowjob, vaginal penetration, rough anal sex followed by facial money shot and the next scene is army guys hazing the new recruits in the barrack’s showers. You don’t have to watch it if that’s not your thing. But I think being confronted with things that aren’t particularly what get you hot and bothered serves to normalize them as valid expressions of human sexuality.

I don’t know where these images are from. My guess is that their probably from one of those cliche reluctant bi- productions–where there’s an element of forcing someone to do something they don’t especially want to do.

I’m super put off by that for many of the reasons most mainstream porn makes me feel like I need to take a dozen scalding showers. Like where are all FFM threesomes depicted so that the ladies get it on with each other and the stud but almost all FMM porn involves the studs high fiving over the woman they are penetrating from either side. Like seriously, if there was a possibility that every now and then the woman in an FMM would say to the dudes, you don’t get to touch me until I see you suck each others’ cocks, I’d watch a hell of a lot more porn.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (19XX)

I could comment on this isn’t necessarily a good picture but at least the depth of field softejs in both the foreground and background.But mostly I have been sleeping like shit for the last week and am not exactly in a frame of mind conducive to critical/analytical writing. So I’m just leaving this here because I think it’s hot as fuck.

Source unknown – Title Unknown (20XX)

Despite this being a terrible image–what exactly are those bars behind them and is that a curtain in the background?–I’m into it.

A good part of the reason I’m into it has to do with it avoiding both the usual MMF cliches of dude bros frat studs high-fiving over a coed they’re having their way with as well as the default tender sentimentality of more bi-curious tuned fare.

There’s something more primal to it.

Admittedly the image doesn’t read as clearly as it could but if you look closely you’ll notice that the woman has semen on her neck. It’s very likely that he started to come and is now finishing in the other guy’s mouth.

The way heteronormative porn handles ejaculation pisses me off and I think we should treat male ejaculation closer to female ejaculation in that… oh, that was cool but we’re just getting started here. (I don’t know about you but the best sex I’ve had has always happened after I’m sure I can’t physically handle further stimulation and then my partner(s) demonstrate to me that I most unequivocally can handle a great deal more than I think I can.

Also, I really love that everyone is so into what’s going on. The guy having intercourse with the woman is clearly into sucking cock and the woman appears to be enjoying herself. (I also really like that her braid is coming unraveled on the wood floor.)

Seeing this makes me feel like maybe there are people out there in the world who fuck the way I think people ought to fuck.

Erika Lust – I Wish I Was A Lesbian (2014)

In theory, Erika Lust’s approach to making pornography–outlined in her oft referenced TEDxVienna speech–appeals to me: an emphasis on context (characters are more than the performance of their respective sexualities) and diversity of modes of sexual expression are all v. on-point.

And it’s totally counter-productive but… the traditional trappings of porn are low-production values, improbably scenarios and exaggerated sexual performances. Thus, when you preempt the traditional with a more thoughtful diversion into the who, where and why instead of rushing into the what and how, you raise audience expectations with regard to ultimate quality whether you intend to or not.

That’s the great failing of Lust’s promise: by setting out to make better porn she sets her sights too low. She’d do better to expend her efforts trying to make art that just so happens to be pornographic.

Which is not to say that the above scene is without certain moments. Placing equal emphasis on graphic depictions of sexual expression and the physical response to those depictions is unquestionably inspired. However, those moments are ultimately diminished when they are spliced together in such a rough-shod, pretentious fashion.

And it’s entirely possible that I am putting too much emphasis on the fact that this scene was shot handheld. The current preponderance of handheld camera work in motion pictures is an enormous pet peeve of mine since with the exception of Lars von Trier (who is preoccupied with using a subjective cinema-verite approach in combination with editing to stylize ellipses of perception by a fly-on-the-wall observer) or the Dardenne Brothers (who have pushed subjective handheld cinematography to something perhaps not objective–framing necessarily precluding questions of inclusion/exclusion–but unblinking and entirely unselfconscious), there is a total obliviousness to the history and functionality of handheld camera work.

Granted, I haven’t seen the full scene but the excerpted clips suggest that the handheld nature of the shots is intrusive–it is supposed to be noticed. The audience exercises some sense of active voyeurism, a passive co-authorship. And while, yes, this arrangement allows for scenes like the young woman’s face in the third frame from the top and the lubing up of the strap-on in the sixth frame from the top, my response is that any narrative motion picture instructs the viewer how it is supposed to be seen in the first third of the first act. The expectations that this film establishes are cribbed from art-house/international cinema but it can’t follow through in execution once it arrives at the place where it’s always intended to be.

Source: ferroso01

X-Art – My Best Friend’s Boyfriend feat. Katka and Mikah (2011)

There are like a fucking million and half things I don’t like about this scene. Let’s start with the fact that it typifies the heteronormative porn trope that all women are bisexual and the cisgender male gets to reap the benefits. (And that’s not to shame any sort of bisexual women who have negotiated consensual best girlfriend sharing with their boyfriend arrangements–I say more power to y’all.)

I don’t like the implicit assumption and the subsequent straight cismale entitlement is particularly intolerable.

Honestly, those more social justice oriented objections get the volume turned way the fuck down on them–at least in this gif, less so in the full scene–because I’m so fucking captivated by the reverence with which Katka watches Mikah and her open and unselfconscious masturbatory response. (I think that’s part of the attraction I have to group sex scenarios, the notion of being in a safe space where you are invited to contribute your own individual sexual expression in a fully consensual and accepting environment is a big part of why I bother with this blog–as it allows me to express thoughts and facets of my identity for which there is no outlet in my life AFK.)

I know it’s staged in such a way that she’s splayed out for the benefit of the stud and the traditional male gaze but her authenticity subverts all that–at least for me.

Source: Unknown

While I object to the sepia tinge, strobe vignetting and canted frame, the pervert in my is intrigued by this image.

I have certain reservations about imagery depicting threesomes; therefore, I appreciate how the above eschews the typically stultifying heteronormative script.

I read something about fluid sexual orientation. Namely, I don’t stop to ask is that boy gay or bi. (Although I admit that with the way his head is being forced into the woman’s pubis, I could understand that reading.)

Does it really matter? Everyone here is clearly enthusiastically engaged/invested in the proceedings.

‘Straight’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘genderqueer’ are words, labels. Increasingly, treated as if it were a discrete street addresses: 123 Main Street, Podunkville, ID.

I don’t think it’s that simple. At best, ‘bisexual’ is comparable to one New Yorker telling another she lives in Brooklyn–as opposed to Manhattan, Queens or the Bronx. (As far as I’m concerned there are only four boroughs.)

Saying I am a bisexual woman who prefers women to men is analogous to mentioning that she lives off the Lorimer L stop.

If she really trusts the person with whom she is talking, she might say: I’m on Ainslie between Leonard and Manhattan.

Even that falls short. Each of us manifests a singular sexual persona; labels are broad, vague and ambiguous, they will always fail to summarize the intricacies of our desires. Words merely facilitate communication by nudge us toward a better heading, towards the truth.

Source: st8guy4mf

Source Unknown (There’s an awful bleached version floating around with more recent origin.)

I’d have posted this solely based upon how pink her cheeks are, honestly. (I’m a sucker for actually physiological discernible cues of sexual arousal.)

But there’s also her mouth hanging slack, half-open–I can almost here her rapid, shallow, slightly raspy breathing.

And despite not really being a fan of close-ups or selfies, this somehow works as an image–if for no other reason than the boy on top seems to be the one taking snapping the picture (therefore justifying participant proximity to the action).

Also, the image implies the explicit without revealing much more than would a skimpy swimsuit. For me that serves to narrow the focus sharply to the passion and immediacy acting in the moment. To me, that’s always haute as fuck.