I’m perpetually irritated by the presumption of politicians who propose to speak on behalf of “the American people.” As soon as I hear the phrase, “the American people” come out of the mouth of a politician, I have an instant, low boil rage that starts. Even when politicians who speak on behalf of “the American people” say things that I agree with, I’m irritated by the arrogant, self-serving rhetorical device of glossing over the diversity of opinions, priorities and passions of 300 million in order to construct some nugget of partial truth that is fundamentally nothing more than pithy propaganda. I’ve toyed with the notion of refusing to vote for any politician who speaks on behalf of “the American people,” but within the past 10 years, that would mean that I’d never vote for any candidates for national office, and that just doesn’t seem right to me.
The purpose of this rant is really just to reiterate a point that I make often around here: even within the relatively cozy confines of the homoerotic wrestling kink “community,” a multitude of tastes and opinions and passions define us as diverse, contradictory, and complex. Anytime I see someone argue about what “gay wrestling fans really want,” I stop reading, because it’s a fundamentally flawed premise that undermines any argument that follows. If at any point I’ve ventured into that territory of speaking for “us all,” then you have every right to call me out on my hypocrisy. But despite any unapologetic moments of intellectual discontinuity, I strive to reflect on the pages of this blog my tastes, my kinks, my passions and predilections. Come along for the ride if you like, but I really know only what I like, not what you like.
For example, I’m infatuated with Lon Dumont. While I’ve heard from several readers who are similarly fanatical about Lon, I’m not under the impression that all of us in the homoerotic wrestling kink corner of the internet are unanimously enraptured with the sharp as a whip, witty, competition bodybuilder with many years of pro-wrestling experience. Some of you probably didn’t have the same knee-jerk, raging arousal to learn that Lon would be appearing in a catalog 87 new release from BG East. Speaking for no one other than myself, however, the news a couple of weeks ago of a Lon Dumont wrestling match was profoundly titillating.
Gut Bash 8, turns out, completely strokes my kink! I’ll wax ecstatic about the sight of Joshua Goodman (that’s Mr. Joshua to you!) trapping Eddy Rey in the ropes and squeezing his head between Mr. J’s bulging thighs some other day. For today, I’m going to focus in on the marathon of gut pounding torture of my reigning favorite homoerotic wrestler – non-pornboy, and the muscle-ox that is his opponent, Joe Robbins.
The existential dilemma posed by Lon v Joe is age-old and intimately wrapped up in the calculus of aesthetics and masculinity in the male form. Lon is a gasp-worthy work of art. He’s perfectly proportioned, cut like a Tiffany diamond, and virtually flawless. I say “virtually” only to give a nod to Lon’s concession that Joe has incomparable legs, which Lon doesn’t even pretend he can compete with. But Lon is unwilling to concede that his sliced to the bone abdominals and obliques are indisputably superior to Joe’s, which, less face it, are flat and fit but nowhere near the perfect shape of Lon’s. Joe, on the other hand, dismisses Lon’s abs for being just about aesthetics, and instead argues that his are superior because they “serve a purpose.” Form versus function, beauty versus beast, grace versus power… there are a lot of ways to approach it, but in the end, it touches on primal questions of the nature of masculinity, making this match explicitly about who’s got better abs, but implicitly about who’s got bigger balls.
Joe is always menacing understated, at least in everything I’ve seen him in. His voice rumbles at an octave lower than some canine’s can hear. It isn’t necessarily apparent at the beginning of the exchange just how personally Joe takes Lon’s rapid fire, cocky swagger and insistence on his superiority. As they take turns, all gentlemanly and self-restrained, delivering fists into each other’s mid-sections, the irritation on Joe’s face slowly grows. It’s not until Lon’s final punch doubles Joe over and sends him stumbling backward, clearly in pain, that we see with crystal clarity how Joe really feels about this entire situation. He’s pissed. He’s really, really pissed.
As Lon predicted in his exclusive interview on this blog a few months ago, the one thing that can pose a serious challenge to Lon in a 1-on-1 is a massive freak of mother nature about 100 pounds bigger than he. Joe is precisely that massive freak of mother nature, and Lon is just never going to weather Hurricane Joe for the long haul without an act of God intervening on his behalf. This match quickly reminds me of some of the classic “endurance” battles of homoerotic wrestling days gone by, where the match is all about watching how much punishment one man can take. The pinfall or the submission is less pertinent than the seconds of agony ticking away between them, each one bearing testimony to the man on the bottom’s tolerance for pain.
With wrestling savvy, salesmanship, and world-class conditioning, Lon can take a whole lot of punishment. He manages just a few rallies, but momentum never stays Lon’s way for long. But what exponentiates Lon’s sexiness in Gut Bash 8 isn’t just the erotic gold of watching a gorgeous hunk suffer; it’s that he takes it for so long. He makes Joe work for every gasp and wince and pleading submission. Joe is coated in sweat by the end of this story, because Lon makes the big, big boy work for it like someone with a the weight advantage that Joe has over Lon should never have to work.
The hints from earlier in the year were that Lon has an invitation to appear in more BG East bouts, perhaps this time sporting a full head of hair, even harder muscles, bigger quads, and a thicker back. I don’t know if Lon is still on tap to show up in another wrestling fantasy for me to be infatuated with. But if he is, I’m pulling for the powers that be to unleash Lon on boys who are, say, within 30 pounds of his weight class. Watching Lon take on big boys is definitely entertaining, but I’d love to watch him work over a cocky musclehunk somewhere near his own size. Lon has a commanding presence, a totally packaged persona, and top-notch delivery of precisely the wrestling repertoire that turns me on. More Lon may not be at the top of everyone’s wish list, but it’s at the top of mine!
Sidelineland 