In celebration of slash men's orgasms
Oct. 16th, 2004 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Further 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?
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?