After the GMSMA Novices Special Interest Group yesterday (topics covered were shaving and hot wax), I had dinner with Past President. Past President raised an interesting objection to the whipping scene I'm doing on New Years' Eve at the Lure. "I'm not sure that I like the idea of doing a scene as entertainment," he said.

I'm not sure how I feel about doing a scene as entertainment, either. It's a profound and intimate experience, and sort of weird to put it on display. But this hadn't occurred to me, and I had to ask myself why it hadn't. I sort of came to the realization that I hadn't been thinking of it as 'entertainment' in the sense that I'll be sitting at the piano and playing one of Chopin's Mazurkas. I've been thinking of it as sort of live pornography. The genesis of this is probably the fact that the guys who asked that I do it are basically pornographers, albeit in a sort of post-modern way. (They are the creators of the website www.allamericankink.com.)

Pornography is something I have no problem with. Mostly. And, I've always wanted to do pornography, so that pushes my erotic buttons as well. At it's core, porn is of course providing the viewer with titillating images so that he (or she) can get off. But, I think that porn is so much more beyond that. In a way, it's instructional. A lot of gay porn seems to be made for men who for whatever reason are not having a lot of sex with other men, whether because of inexperience or some other liability. And it basically annswers the question: So what do two men do together? It becomes really obvious when you're having sex with someone who repertoire is solely informed by their viewing of porn.

Most of the porn I see doesn't hold my attention, as the focus is on dicks shooting cum. (I have one of those, and it does that, too.) On rare occasions, I'll see S/M porn that's interesting, but only because I see it as a very creative (i.e., 'that never occurred to me!') answer to the question, "What do two men do together?"

I was mulling this last night at the Eagle. On all the video monitors throughout the bar, they were showing "Fallen Angel: Initiation." The prolog was wonderful. Hot guy is driving along in his big rig smoking a cigar. There in the middle of the highway is this blond guy with black-feathered wings on his back. Trucker-guy pulls to a stop in front of him, dismounts, and approaches winged guy. Winged guy gets down on his knees in front of trucker guy, and is treated to a few puffs from trucker guy's cigar. Then, winged guy, now de-winged (it's not explained how this awkward bit of business transpired, sadly) gets into the truck. Briefly, we see a few black feathers on the ground. Then, we're in a sort of warehouse space. A guy is suspended from the ceiling in one of those full-body-suspension-harness things that I've loved since I first saw it in the Mr. S catalog years ago.

I didn't pay enough attention to suspended guy to see if he was trucker guy, but I decided that it would increase my enjoyment of the film to believe that he was.

Anyway, suspended guy is basically immobile. Three other guys start to work him over, putting clamps on his nipples and the like. Two move away, and it's sort of one on one. Then, suspended guy gets off ("the money shot! now he gets paid!"). But then came the really cool thing: suspended guy is let out of the harness, and enjoys a tender moment with the Top that was working him.

I loved that. (After that, it was just muscley guys ploughing each other. Ho-hum.) So, here was what I thought was the narrative: trucker guy is seduced into the world of kinky-homo-sex by the angel guy. He finds himself powerless and blind-folded, at the mercy of tormenting Tops. After he gets off, the tender moment is sort of a welcoming into the fold, and trucker guy assimilates this novel experience. The experience becomes not aberrant, but who he is.

I thought this segment was good porn in that it was hot, but it was also instructional on a number of levels. To the inexperienced novice viewer was delivered the message: 'come on in, the water's fine! you'll have a blast! accept who you are and join your brothers.' But to the viewer with some S/M experience under his belt was the message: this is what it's all about, it's not just getting off, it's what comes afterwards, the connection and the intimacy and the being a Shaman for one another.

Beautiful.

And, that's what I hope to be a part of tomorrow night. For one thing, I'll have sort of a captive audience. It's unlikely given that it's New Years Eve that people are going to wander in in the middle or at the end. They'll have paid their $15 and be there for the whole thing. I don't know how the three other Tops are going to work their scenes, but folks watching me will see me basically seducing my bottom into his restraints, and then the prolonged dance of seduction that is a whipping scene. Every stroke could very well be the last. But the Top continues to seduce consent from the bottom, and the bottom continues to honor the Top with his submission. With every stroke, the intensity and tension builds, as when a juggler keeps on adding balls to those that he's keeping in motion: first three, now four, then five... six! seven! now eight! can he keep going? yes! nine!

And then, there's the part that I think must have stunned onlookers when ARt and I did our scene at El Mirage. Imagine coming into a sex club and seeing one man holding another, then noticing that the guy who's being held has a bloody back.

It's instructional. See? Look at the face of the man that just got whipped. Note the look of ecstasy and transport that lights him up like a Christmas tree. Loook how the man who whipped him there with him. There's a look of wonder on his face: what have I done? what's in me and who am I that this brave and strong and wonderful man gave himself over to me?

This is how it can be for two men together.

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