In celebration of slash men's orgasms

[lobelia321]

Further to this and this (earlier bathtub and orgasm musings), I have had yet more thoughteroonies.



I was pondering both orgasms and tops vs bottoms, and it occurred to me that I hadn't quite got to the heart of what I love about slash. It's the sex, yes. But it's not so much the fucking and the penetrating -- although I love that, no doubt at all. But what I really, really get off on is orgasm. The man's orgasm. And not because of the spurting but because of the abandon.

I was remembering the orgasm scene in UK 'Queer as Folk', episode 3, where Stuart's in bed in a threesome. (Stuart, btw, is the man pictured below.)



(I couldn't find a threesome pic: if anyone knows where a screencap is, I'd love to see it.)

Anyway, what I loved about that scene and what I frozeframed is Stuart's face when he comes. I don't need to see his dick. The cumshot is not seen on television, anyway. It is a thing of porn and the reason porn movies will never do it for me is because they do not employ good actors. Porn is too real: it's all about the real fucking and the real coming. Acting transports me into the land of fic, the truth below the real. And what I want to see is the face. Only an actor can convey that expression of abandon and losing control that I cherish on the orgasming face. A two-bit porn actor simply isn't up to the job.

So it's the loss of control. It's the abandon. It's the giving yourself up. It's the baring of the throat. It's the half-opened mouth and the helpless moans.

In short, it's the supreme moment of bottoming.

So it occurred to me that this is what bottoming is all about. The orgasm is a bottomian moment. And that's what I love about the top-dynamic as well: what's wonderful in fic is when the top (if there be such a one; there often is in fics) abandons all his top-ness, and nowhere is it sweeter than when he does it in orgasm.

You can't remain a top while you're coming. For those seconds, you are bottoming. The orgasm is the top's moment of bottoming.

And because men, I guess, in our culture are always the "top" when represented in a het relationship, I just adore the male orgasm. A student in my Film Form class showed a clip from Amelie last week, a clip he obviously really liked, and a number of other students, female too, expressed their love for the clip and the film as well. The clip showed fifteen couples having an orgasm. Here's what annoyed the shit out of me about that clip:

- All the couples were male/female. (Only het couples have orgasms, it seems.)

- All the orgasming people were in a couple. (Nobody ever comes while masturbating, it seems.)

- All the people coming were women. (Men don't seem to have orgasms. It seems.)

Don't you all know that all-too-familiar and all-too-bloody-tedious close-up bed-shot of man/woman in movies? Man seen from the back, shoulders and hair; woman seen across his shoulder, mewling in ecstasy? I hate that shot! And it appears in art pictures as much as it does in Hollywood. *vomits on that shot*

Well, slash to me is everything that shot is not. It is the very opposite of that shot. It is outside of that ideologically loaded and fucking tedious myth of het coupledom in mainstream representation: woman comes, man is taciturn. In slash, the men always end up losing control -- and especially if they come.

So that's what it is. I think I'm onto it now. I love the slash because both partners in a pairing (or three or four) lose it. Or there is the promise at the fic's outset that they may lose it and come in glorious abandon. Individual fics may, of course, play this out in various ways, but that's at the heart of it for me.

Next I may post something on the love for I feel a love musing coming on. The question is: Is the loss of control and delicious abandon of orgasm a metaphor for love? Or is the love that slash men succumb to a metaphor for orgasm?

Comments

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

The orgasm is a bottomian moment.

i totally misread that as:

The orgasm is a bohemian moment.

...which i found rather an intriguing concept!

n.x ;)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

Yes! So it is! *waves bohemian neckscarf*

Hah!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i think that's where my fascination with bdsm comes in...not that i like the pain..in fact, while i often don't mind it, i rarely find it particularly arousing...it's the exchange of power, the power the bottom may hold and the top may giveup...but then again, that's what i find most stimulating in terms of emotions as well...i absolutely hate curtain fic...the one squick that i have...b/c i always thought, i have enough doimesticity in rl..but maybe it's also, b/c to hae the domestic one must presume a lot of the roles to have been set (whether equal or unequal) while i like the negotiations...

and look, yet again we're using sex as a metaphor for relations :D

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

What's curtain fic? (God, you wouldn't think I'd be around in fandom for 2 1/2 years the way I keep acting clueless around you...)

Oh yes, bdsm. Well, there's a button of mine to push. :-)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

sorry..it's just different fandom terminology, i think...somehow i think both lotrips and hp had a lot of first timers so that the passed on terminology (and behavior??? :-) are not there...

curtainfic is kind of a derogatory expression for domesticicity; in other words, guy a and guy b go shopping for curtains together (thus implying, as far as i can tell, their cohabitating, interst in house decorating and the fact that someone will minutely describe such everydfay boringness...) then again, some have taken that cliche and run with it...i know anna s. has a wonderful anti-curtain curtainfic, and cesperanza, for example, has written domestic in a way that just works for me (esp.in with 6 you get eggroll).

i think there's a difference between seeing guys going curtain shopping and still have a story (tension, plot, psychological turmoil, some kind of narrative underneath the shopping) or the description of shopping where the shopping *is* the central point [does that make sense???]

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is funny. It's true that lotrps is just full to bursting of the type of fic you call curtainfic; I've just never ever heard it categorised as such before. badgermonkey had a hilarious post about it; I'll dig it up for you. I don't even mind it; lotrps had the 'we-drink-only-beer-and-burp' blokes and the 'what-wine-would-you-like-with-your-artichokes' gents and both were fine by me. I remember that what I learned from quiseyes's Craig/Orli fic when I first read it was how you could take a domestic fact and run with it. There are lengthy descriptions of Craig buying a built-in kitchen (ack! That's totally curtain, according to your description!) and it was all new to me and I thought it was great: such detail and realism in slash, omg liek 111. (Do they have that in other fandoms, btw? Do they have tigging and omg liek he's so kewl?)

On the other hand, there was also the infamous beagle fic that sparked a zillion tigs and insider jokes. Remember the one? Where the teenie!slasher and bad!ficcer-extraordinaire wrote about the boys eating beagles with cream for breakfast.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

no...i've never been in lotrips..in fact, so far i've avoided it like the plague (though i do remember some badfic about someone eating his jism as pasta sauce or sth equally gross???)

i've come to the point where i'd argue *anything* can be written well and written badly...in fact, i have a total weakness for clichefic when a concept that we love to hate gets taken and reinvogorated. there needs to be a certain love for the cliche at the same time as good writerly abilities..

building kitchens? LOL there's a great popslash fic where one buys the other one a house with all the decorations to boot...someone (ces? marythefan?) at some point argued about the way we live out commercialism by having our guys consume above their means (y'know, cops in gourmet restaurants kind of things...) i wish i knew whether that was an email or a post or a comment...argh!

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

So it's the loss of control. It's the abandon. It's the giving yourself up. It's the baring of the throat. It's the half-opened mouth and the helpless moans.

a thousand yeses. that right there is m/m slash for me - the entire thing. it's the only explanation i have for what took me from completely-not-interested-in-men to obssessing-over-male/male-relationships-and-sex. and now that i've been here long enough that i don't care why i'm here anymore, there is room for more subtlety. but initially, i think, it was about the extra distance men have to go to have that loss of control together. you have to work hard to create barriers to it in a het relationship. and f/f has elements of it but in society as we know it, most ladies have greater access to emotional (sexual? hm.) abandon than men. hence, the most satisfying vehichle is the m/m fic. yis.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

i think, it was about the extra distance men have to go to have that loss of control together.
Absolutely! That is absolutely it!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I love this post. Spot on in so many ways. Plus a free pic of Stuart.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But where can I get a pic of Stuart in mid-orgasm???!!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew!

[airgiodslv.livejournal.com]

You are totally right. That is why I think that Doms always appear so vulnerable when they finally allow themselves to feel pleasure and give into orgasm. Until that moment, they can be in control. But when it happens, the playing field is abruptly leveled.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is so right. Absolutely!

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I must read your LJ more often, if this is the sort of brilliance you come up with regularly. This is one of the things I love about slash, and one of the issues I have with hetfic, because so much of the hetfic I read is still focusing on the vulnerability/abandon of the woman. Except in Farscape hetfic, where the John/Aeryn relationship is near and dear to my heart and my kinks.

I disliked that sequence in Amelie, too, and at the time I saw it, I said to my slash-aware viewing mates, "I would love this sequence if we were seeing the guys orgasming." It's one of the things that drew me about Queer as Folk US.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Hi there, stranger. *g* Yes, read away but don't expect brilliance more than once every four months.... ;-) Oh, and I am so glad that someone else disliked that sequence in Amelie.

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

Man seen from the back, shoulders and hair; woman seen across his shoulder, mewling in ecstasy? I hate that shot!

Oh me too. Thank you for that. And this:

I love the slash because both partners in a pairing (or three or four) lose it. Or there is the promise at the fic's outset that they may lose it and come in glorious abandon.

Nnnnnngggghhh. Guh.

You may also have tipped me over the edge into finally getting around to watching Queer as Folk, too. So thanks again! Great post.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Hi there, other stranger. *g* So glad you hate that shot, too, but love the baring of the male throat. Hmmm. Queer as Folk UK is very moreish. Not as good as The Office but quite brain-addling. I haven't seen series 2 yet and know nothing about the US version (from pics, all the boys there look way too pretty).

[blythely.livejournal.com]

Only an actor can convey that expression of abandon and losing control that I cherish on the orgasming face. A two-bit porn actor simply isn't up to the job.


Yet! Porn actors are *actually* coming. So, if you think about it, the orgasm-face is something very much invented in fiction (whatever medium), and if we are not happy with pornstar orgasm-faces, then what are we actually aspiring to? Or is it that you're okay with the fantasy-romanticised coming-face?

No-one really looks quite right when they come. The moments before and after, maybe, but the actual point of orgasm is face-screwed and silly. But then, I like that.

Ever watched yourself in the mirror? Or videoed the crucial moment? Because it's just silly. :-)

btw lobelia i'm loving your porny thought processes.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ever watched yourself in the mirror?

Precisely! That is not what I want from my fanfic. From my fanfic I do not want the equivalent of porn (high-key lighting, daggy haircuts, absurd dialogue -- "Yeah." "Come on, you're so big."). Conceded, there's real coming (on the man's side: they never really do show the woman's cunt quivering, do they?). But then I don't want real coming from my fanfic. I want the fic of fic: the fiction. I want the equivalent of chiaroscuro, shadows playing on chests, swooning faces. I want something that might make me come; who cares if two-bit actor on the screen comes?

Actually, I amend that: I don't even need to come from fanfic. In fact, I don't. I can go to actual porn for that. Because I love the tingle that I get from slash and nowhere else. The swoon.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

the orgasm-face is something very much invented in fiction
Which is why I adore it so. If I want reality, I can turn over in bed and poke t'husband. (Which is great, don't get me wrong. But it ain't slash.)

Or is it that you're okay with the fantasy-romanticised coming-face?
Yes! I am more than okay with it!!