My commitment to the companies that give me permission to post their pics is to always cite/link them appropriately, which admittedly amounts to a form of advertisement.

GayDemon references “adverts” on neverland, which makes me cringe just a little. About once a year I teeter back and forth between giving in to pressure and allowing paid advertisements to be posted on neverland. So far, I’ve resisted the pressure, however, and I feel an admittedly self-righteous pride in saying that any link you find on this site is placed there voluntarily by me as a personal endorsement and not a paid advertisement. I possess a (probably illusory) sense of independent license to present my unvarnished opinions of homoerotic wrestling products, relatively unsullied by conflicting financial interests (for the most part). So, sure, technically the links to sites in the margins of neverland are literally advertisements, but they are not paid advertisements. They’re just there for your illumination, not my renumeration.

Are you hitting on me?

There’s something charming about GayDemon’s summary of what he sees when he visits neverland. “All in all this is a neat pace to get a general picture of what the wresting and eroticism combo is all about, or to find some in-depth thoughts and writing on the fetish, genre, subject. Which is another way of saying that you can click there for a sexy look around as well as an intellectual one.” Neat. In-depth. Sexy and intellectual!? Is GayDemon making a pass at me? And if so, is he prepared to trade bodyscissors until one of us cries uncle?

Enough Said.

One of the things about GayDemon’s review of neverland is the obvious way my text-intensive nature strikes him. Now clearly I love images of the beautiful men of homoerotic wrestling! The pages of this blog are littered with laboriously chosen pics intended to be the perfect complement and exemplars of my opinions and thoughts on the subject at hand. But from the beginning, and I expect until my dying day, I’m a man with a passionate fetish for words. The right words, the precise turn of phrase, the strategic deployment of metaphor, the particular poetic provocation of alliteration… these things dial up for me the intoxicating allure of what turns me on: homoerotic wrestling. Writing about it… writing it in the form of fiction and reviews … what I’ve been broadcasting for three and a half years has been not only the subject of homoerotic wrestling, but the subjective experience of appreciating homoerotic wrestling as conveyed through my perpetual self-narrative. I have zero doubt that there are some, quite possibly a majority, of regular visitors to this site who never, ever finish reading my epistles, drawn instead to click-through or settle in with a particular visual for a chart-topping release. Not everyone gives a flying fuck about what GayDemon identifies as an “intellectual” element to the pages of the blog (you FLIRT, GayDemon!).

Denny Cartier makes it to the sweet, sweet end of his match with Alexi Adamov

However, I know for a fact that at least some of the time that there are tenacious readers who make it all the way to the end of even a pretty long swath of text like today’s, because thoughtful readers leave comments (hint). I also know some certain someones in particular read me, because as happened last Friday, I’m occasionally extensively quoted by the likes of the brilliant boys at BG East who sometimes appreciate a particular turn of phrase I offer in praise of one of their gems.

I could still write a novel about what Alexi does to me in Leopard’s Lair 4!

Some back office boy there sent out a promo referring to my detailed admiration of the striking appearance of Alexi Adamov in Leopard’s Lair 4 as me “gushing” about the Russian bodybeautiful superstar. Gushing? Okay, okay. Sure. I gush. Take a look at Alexi’s sweat soaked muscles and just try not to.

I’m gushing at this very moment!

See? Words. Images. More words. It’s a style that I’m sure I’ve plagiarized from plenty of other places, but somehow it’s just how I start to think as I open up Blogger, curse our Google overlords for the pain in the ass interface, and then start to compose a new post. It’s a strange thing to look out into the virtual world and see yourself reflected in the mirror of another’s eyes (I told you I’ve got a thing for metaphors). While occasional commentators has assigned me much less flattering labels than “neat,” “sexy,” and “intellectual,” I’m pretty okay with how my work around here seems to be received, perceived, and reflected back.

Reflecting on reflections.