BijouBlog

Oh, one of my brain candy shows has started another season on TLC aka “Sideshow America.”

There seems to be the usual people eating strange supposedly inedible objects (many of these people suffer from a disease called pica), but one guy, who lives not far from Chicago, shared an addiction which for many in the BDSM community is not that highly unusual a fetish.

Kevin from suburban Lombard, Illinois is a straight guy (who from what I saw would be very popular in the gay bear community) who is addicted to casts. Yes, casts, what gets put on a limb if you break a bone.
 

Now, from what I saw, it's not like he is always putting on a plaster cast (remember how exciting it was when you are a kid, at least I remember, that you got to sign someone's cast or get yours signed); some that he wears seem to be made of some cloth-like material.

And it's not clear, I gather, from the show, if he is getting off sexually from putting himself into this form of restrictive bondage. Perhaps he is, but it's not something he seems to be able to integrate into his intimate relationships.

He is straight and has had girlfriends, and the one on the show who basically told him shrilly to choose between her and all the casts broke up with him soon afterward, but I wasn't getting the sense that the sex involved doing something with the casts.

He seemed to be more of an exhibitionist, perhaps, and the episode showed an obviously staged, scripted incident involving Kevin and his too-too embarrassed sidekick (who always gets roped into putting his buddy into his more elaborate casts, hello, Ethel) parading down Michigan Avenue. Kevin was in some kind of cast that basically covered his torso and pinned his arms to his sides. It's the type of cast someone would wear if he or she, for example, got hit by a truck.

Now, the usual end of this show is some meeting with a medical professional, in this case, a psychologist. The doctor proclaims, sadly, that Kevin will always be alone. His addiction (I guess fetish, but as I said above, I just can't tell how sexual it is for him), according to the doctor, isn't something he can or even will manage to overcome, much less integrate into the rest of his life.

I've seen plenty of guys get into all types of restrictive bondage (I've even seen a plaster cast scene at one event), but the elaborate bondage was part of a large dominance/submission dynamic. Plus it was clear the guys got off on the activity (not that I could see evidence if the cock was covered by plaster!). Plus they were playing with like-minded people in a sexual setting. In Kevin's case, how he approaches his addiction to casts doesn't really fit into this play party context.

Now I've seen (and known) plenty of guys with sexual fetishes become so addicted to the fetish that they lose sight of actually relating to a person. I think specifically of guys who post multiple times a week on craigslist. (I am thinking in Chicago of Mr. I want to lick the mud off the boots of a UPS driver or Mr. karate kick me in the balls.) I guess they are reaching out and don't want to jack off alone, but the person they play with is a means, not an end.

I do sincerely hope that Kevin will find a castmate (pun intended) because of the show's publicity.

Check out our website for some of classic BDSM videos, and don't forget to check out all our fetish books and magazines too.

I thought this week it might be fun to do a more interactive blog (jacking off is fun, but your best friend isn't always yourself).

We're going to put out (maybe in more ways than one) some of our favorite Bijou gay porn scenes.

Then, you can share yours, and we'll even link to some of those clips on our websites on our Twitter page.

I'm into dominance and submission big time (the big is more mental that physical, but I do appreciate size, especially muscles!).

There's a scene from Al Parker's movie Turned On! that always gets me going. Now Al, for me, and I might claim many others, is a total top man (and I just don't mean fucking): he exudes a dominant, but not so much in your face (but then, who wouldn't want his glorious cock in your face) masculinity, but one that doesn't need much overcooked “on your knees, boy” proclamations.

But what makes this scene so fascinating for me is Al submitting, and submitting, endlessly... a hunger that is never satisfied, but is satisfied in its own hunger. Kind of the effect Al creates when he wields his mighty cock...

What is Al doing? In a locker room with male body parts behind every locker door, Parker and Sky Dawson (the man of Al's dreams in this movie) service rows (a sort of chorus line) of humpy, athletic men in jockstraps. It's a fantasy, but what it makes it even more enticing for me is the jockstraps. They conceal but also show.

Now, another movie, from Roger Earl's Dungeons of Europe trilogy, Pictures from the Black Dance, contains a scene which really gets me going. What's interesting is not so much the leathersex itself, but the overall dominance/submission dynamic I find erotic:

In the last scene, Dick Johnson is leading a hooded guy in a bondage/body suit. This is Tony Starr, who had previously been a dominant in the movie! The last dance, the climactic one. The slapping sound is its rhythmic accompaniment. They are still in the dungeon, but the wall looks like fall foliage. After what looks like a whiff of poppers, Johnson powerfully creates total submission; by pulling bottom up by hook on bondage suit. He barks one command that seems to pull most of the action together: SIT!

Johnson then attaches Starr to the board, and one hears a stomping and slamming sound with his powerful boots. He then, with amazing confidence, picks up the guy and then places him on the floor.

This lying down position, especially when contrasted with a standing position, is one of stripping away of conventional social norms, which often occurs in BDSM role playing. Johnson now has his bottom in this position of total submission in order for him to wield his power, by pulling the cock and balls on triangle attached to his cock and balls; this tension shows that Johnson himself actually reciprocating once he has shown his power.

I'm particularly interested in porn directors who use sexual explicitness as a vehicle for artistic expression. I also find emotionally raw states (such as love, sadness, or fear) to be intriguing mental spaces in which to tap into eroticism, the heightened emotional state acting as a potential sexual enhancer. The two scenes I'm featuring play with these approaches.

The entirety of Tom DeSimone's The Idol is a well-crafted build from sexual isolation and frustration to sexual freedom and open expression, each successive sex scene progressing the main character, Gary, along in his sexual journey.

The final erotic encounter in The Idol is a romantic and bittersweet one. We know from the beginning that college track star Gary will die at a young age. The film is structured around his funeral, and this final flashback to a moment in his life shows him in bed with his lover (who has been longing for him from afar in the flashbacks until this point). The lighting is soft and blue, with the soundtrack pared down to simply the thunderstorm outdoors accompanied by their murmurings and moans, and the camera pans lingeringly over their entwined bodies. They take their time kissing and fucking to the sounds of rumbling thunder, rain, and wind. DeSimone's strong sense of erotic pacing is highlighted here, creating a potent crescendo of sexual tension. The scene ends as the two collapse into each other in exhaustion after climax and the soundtrack kicks in with a song echoing the claim, "I could never leave you." We know that this statement is untrue. The story has finally brought these men together and has brought Gary to terms with his own sexuality, but these journeys are about to end.

This scene is visually gorgeous, atmospheric, and emotionally effective. Even the sentimentality of some of the devices (the slow-mo at the end, the romantic dialogue) doesn't interfere, but, rather, feels perfectly earned and adds to the ambiance. This is a brilliant example of scene that is, at once, melancholic, romantic, and erotic.

Peter de Rome's The Destroying Angel is easily one of the most unusual films in the Bijou catalog. It tells a Poe-inspired story of a priest on sabbatical who engages in mushroom trips and sex, which hauntingly meld together.

The film uses sexual explicitness to evoke as much horror as eroticism, playing with themes of repression/compulsion and revulsion/attracton. The scene where Caswell (the priest) fucks a young man he meets at a party is deeply unsettling and captivating. The two men eat mushrooms and Caswell observes his doppelganger entering into the action. "How many of us do you see?" he asks his partner. "Just you and me," is the calm reply. But we see the friend jerking off two Caswells at once, as the camera pans over to his double in an eerie moment of trick photography. Caswell seemingly watches himself from both positions. Both Caswells are alternately terrified, confused, maniacal, and sexually ravenous. Horrible yowls and laughs echo on the soundtrack and Caswell comes on his double's face, but won't stop trying to have sex even after his partner is clearly spent. His appetite is insatiable. It takes a sudden cut to achieve an end to the scene, which could have continued interminably in a wild hallucinatory state of unending erotic hunger.

This scene is a nightmarish distortion of sex, frenzied and made of pure compulsion, with Caswell watching himself in horror as if in shock at what he is doing. He can't reconcile himself with his sexuality and it bursts forth from him as if another him has been created, one made of his own repressed sexual side, his shadow self a creature of erotic monstrosity that can only be fed by being given more, more, until eventual destruction must occur.

Bijou owner Steven Toushin's selections are from two additional Steve Scott films (Turned On! also being by Scott): Wanted and Inches.

In Wanted, the scene shows brutal, sadistic warden Jack Wrangler as he makes an inmate suck his cock, rifle in hand, then fucks him, while he's supposed to be guarding a chain gang. This scene is especially notable in its depiction of an erotic prison fantasy between warden and prisoner that is not as typically found between men in films.

In Inches, its the cruisey barroom scene near the end of the film. This scene is relatable to those who were present in the era or who have experienced bar backroom action, capturing a sense of realism in the small details of the scene which make it feel like an actual '70s-era bar backroom, with anonymous sex going on everywhere.

 

Now, this guy was one superstud, but also, from what I have read, multitalented. Born in Germany as Wolfgang Praegert in 1957, of an artist father, and the young Wolfgang apparently exhibited acrylic paintings at exhibitions in both France and Germany. He lived in Paris (to which all artists gravitate at some point), and then emigrated to New York City. He studied opera there briefly. (I am impressed. I wonder if he was a tenor, a baritone, or a bass.)

He then got into gay porn, making his first appearance in Chain Reactions after moving to Los Angeles. Now, why would he get into porn? He was one studly macho guy (uncut, hairy chest, but also the Marlon Brandoesque lips, woof!), of course, but maybe the art and the opera didn't quite work out as well for him.

He worked with Al Parker for Surge Studios, making appearances in Head Trips and Strange Places, Strange Things.

The circle jerk. Supposedly boys have done it (regardless of orientation) since time immemorial as a ritual of initiation. (I never experienced it, but I do remember pissing contests outside with this one kid I was later forbidden to play with. How did my mother find out?) 

This underground jack off culture was immortalized in the “Four in Hand” quartet, a playlet from the controversial Oh! Calcutta!, an evening of short humorous playlets about sex that opened off Broadway in 1969. The “four in hand” (also the title of a classic Nova porn film) is a knot sometimes used in men's neckties and ends up being a pun for a collective jerk off. It's interesting that the guys doing it in the playlet are all ostensibly straight (women's breasts appear on the screen at one point, because whatever the guys think of shows up via a “telepathic transmitter”). But the guy running the scene is clear that it's a competition to see who cums first. Men will always be at heart (and in their groins) boys.

When gay men began to enjoy the fruits of their sexual liberation, they began to organize formal and informal jack off clubs. Some even became “respectable” and took on the trappings of not for protfit social clubs, with newsletters, weekend retreats, fundraisers, and websites. I would also think they would have become more popular as safe sex became a life and death matter during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The New York Jacks, founded in 1980, are still around. Seems like they've made the transition to the Internet Age (there's a message board and a Twitter account). Though, of course, the point is live cock play … (But given gay gym culture, one can go to the locker room for a jack off and then report about it on craigstlist missed connections!) 
 

The New York Jacks are still bucking these trends, as they still seem to follow the practices of “patch” or leather clubs. There's a membership application one can download, for example (they seem to be up and running in person with vax cards), and an emphasis on both etiquette as well as alleviating anxieties about what to expect at such a function. I guess when all one needs to do is turn on a phone to enjoy a cybersex jack off these days, perhaps social anxiety is more of an issue. I mean, you don't want to be the one who gets the booby prize because he doesn't shoot.

When I was younger, not that much younger, but still, youthful, I remember being invited to the Chicago Jacks (defunct, as far as I know). No, I am not going to divulge what happened to me (and it didn't involve jerking off), but I did return regularly, not so much for the action (interestingly enough, this group, which met informally, allowed oral and anal sex; many groups do not). I enjoyed the company of some hot gay macho-looking guys and also what sometimes happened to me at my place after the meetings if I met a special someone. 

But the air of competition was there, everyone cheering on as the president of the group (God rest his soul) after much jiggling and wiggling finally emitted that gooey string of white stuff. Was it worth it? I feel exhausted remembering the scene. (And I remember that I had smoked a certain substance before attending; I usually did. Not necessarily an aphrodisiac.) 

I also remember they they used to hold meetings at a supposedly secret location. The night of their party, a police raid took place. So much for secrecy. Who told on them? 

I'm going to tell! I caught you! Is there still something of the shame and secrecy surrounding that sin of Onan going on here? Even if one doesn't subscribe to the conventional religious view that is sinful, it's still essentially a private, solo act. Perhaps that's the taboo here: what is private becomes a public competition. But in the midst of the public gaze, the eyes of the masturbator are closed. The private fantasy (maybe even that first image you discovered could make you hard) is still going on, but unlike in the Four in Hand playlet, the images are locked in the imagination and memory. The circle is unbroken. 

Source for some information here: Cornog, Martha. The Big Book of Masturbation. San Francisco: Down There Press, 2003.