Author: wrestlebard

I'm a gay man with an active imagination.

The Morning News

wrestlebardLeave a comment
I’ve seen a lot of chatter about the probably-ill-advised off-handed joke from Brian Williams that his penis is so huge that he can’t wear flat-front pants. Although I have a well-documented newsboy fetish, Brian doesn’t really quite do it for me. Still, I like this whole train of thought. Long before Brian’s interview, I’d already spent a whole lot of time imagining what some of my favorite newsboys might be packing underneath their cinched ties and navy blue suits. Just to tally the stats from my strip-wrestling fantasies, I imagine that Thomas Roberts is notably long; Chris Cuomo is thick with massive balls; Carter Evans is long and keeps everything shaved and tidy; and Rob Marciano is another thick Italian who manscapes only conservatively. Bill Hemmer is short and stubby, but that’s the least of his problems. For the record, I’m a fan of cocks in a variety of shapes and sizes… except for Bill Hemmer. Wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole.
Anyhow… once again I feel the need to call out another ABC news hunk. Jeremy Hubbard caught my eye this morning filling in as the newsreader. He must be around 37 years old, and it looks like he used to carry a bit more weight at one time than he does now. For my purposes, I’m going to call him “fighting trim.” It suits him well.
The perpetual upturn at the innermost point of his right eyebrow is seriously adorable. There’s something boyish at him, with a “who… me?” false innocence permanently plastered on his face. If that doesn’t translate into the wrestling ring, what does!?
And he’s an alpha dog, which exponentiates his hotness. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s a terrier he’s with, which doubles his already exponentiated hotness. His look doesn’t quit grab be by the genitals the way that Chris or fellow rookie, Matt Gutman does. But as we all know, superior looks are far from what counts the most in the ring. Watch out, News Division. Someone’s got a date with a skinny white boy rookie!

Another Side of Wrestling

wrestlebard2 Comments

I’m a giver. Against my better judgment, I took a dive into Powermen.com. Why against my better judgment? Because this site looks like a one-trick pony. Big, big (big, big, big) boys strip down and stroke for some soft core tease. That seems to sum up most everything I’ve seen at Powermen. Often, you even see the (probably straight) boys throwing down some beers to get a little less inhibited for the camera, which may be a ploy to inspire imagined scenarios that anyone is gay with enough alcohol involved, but for me it isn’t so much a turn on. If you have to be inebriated to entertain the gay guys on this side of the camera, perhaps you should earn your money some other way. Still, Powermen features some wrestling scenarios. So against my better judgment, I signed up for a taste of the goods. It’s all solely in the name of research on your behalf. Like I said, I’m a giver.

First, it was awesome to discover that my very favorite bodybuilder boytoy from MuscleRomania has a strip-down-n-jerk-off scene on this site. Over at MuscleRomania he performs as Andrew, but for Powermen he performs as Dennis Martin. That face makes me melt. His ass makes me salivate. His pecs make my eyes water. Needless to say, there’s a lot of liquid involved.
But the real reason for my foray into this sideline is the wrestling (which tragically, Dennis/Andrew doesn’t do). Those whose kink is strictly wrestling, you’ll want to give this a pass. For the most part, these boys roll around and, at most, grab each other’s asses, rather than actually sell anything that you or I would actually register as wrestling. If massively huge muscle-heads (there appear to be no other body types here) playing around and then jerking off side-by-side in the shower will work for you, then perhaps you might want to dabble in this corner of the internet.
My favorite under the auspices of “wrestling” in Powermen is, ironically, the one with the least amount of wrestling in the genre. Beer buddies Kane Griffen and Jay Brosnan first dabble in some gear play, taking turns stripping and trying on extremely tight and skimpy gear. They pose for each other, and they each take some time admiring their buddy’s gargantuan muscles. One particularly tight club shirt ends up being a favorite of both bruisers, which results in some “wrestling” on the bed.
The “wrestling” lasts about four and a half minutes. These gym bunnies are big enough to do some serious damage to one another, so it’s probably no wonder that they mostly just squeeze and stretch each other pretty carefully, alternating frequently who’s on top. Frankly, I have no idea who is supposed to be “Kane” and who is “Jay,” so I’m going to arbitrarily call my favorite of the two, the blond, tanned muscle hunk, Jay. When Jay muscles out of a bearhug and snaps one of his own on Kane, my wrestling kink is nearly triggered. With some private coaching involving some humbling discipline and a good dose of sexual domination, I think Jay could be a player in homoerotic wrestling circles. Come to mention it, that very scenario (private coaching with humbling discipline and a good dose of sexual domination) is quite a pet fantasy of mine, which explains the entire Major Domos series of matches in my wrestling fiction.
Far too quickly, Jay and Kane quit their romp and retire to nearby chairs for a side-by-side jerk-off session. There’s something a little disorienting about the way Powermen films their duets. My hunch is that they’ve got some straight porn playing off camera to inspire the boys. They’re riveted and glassy-eyed as they stroke themselves, oblivious to the drop dead gorgeous body sitting next to them. This straight-boy for gay-eyes angle is a little less than fully satisfying in my book.
Still, Jay hammering one out is awfully mesmerizing to watch. Kane seems to be the headliner for some reason, commanding a lot more air time in the act of masturbating and in his extended shower scene afterward. But give me Jay any day… in (then out of) that orange thong… mine day and night for private wrestling tutoring… taking turns who’s on top… long, hot showers afterward…
Powermen knows that there’s a market here, and they’ve set up their portable, seasonal shop in the middle of the mall to catch-as-catch can gay wrestling kinksters like you and me. I don’t begrudge that. Be forewarned, though. If you like to see your massive bodybuilders actually wrestle, you’ll only be half satisfied with the Powermen formula. If that’s enough, check out Jay (and Dennis) and let me know if you’re as smitten as I am.

The Whole Package

wrestlebardLeave a comment


Have I gone off on a rant about this before? Probably. It bears repeating (that’s my excuse for forgetting what I’ve said already). Anyway… my thoughts today return to the beauty of men’s legs. I love legs. I love the shape and size of them. I love the concentration of power in them. I’m a big, big fan of powerful legs wrapped around another man’s torso, squeezing so hard that it makes the captured man’s jaw drop.
At moments when I’m particularly obsessing about legs (like now), suddenly I notice how often the objectifying eye cuts them out of images of beautiful hunks.
In the fashion world, pictures of gorgeous men seem much more often than not to slice just below the waist, or at most, just above the knee. What matters to the objectifying, dissecting eye is clearly the territory between (and inclusive of) the crotch and the face. Not that there’s ANYTHING wrong with those bits. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll be obsessing over pecs or abs or shoulders or noses… you know me. I’m fickle. But when I want to linger on the beauty of hot, hard, muscled male legs, the truncated shot of a male model is so aggravating!
I’m no fashion photographer. I don’t have training in graphic design. But I think it says something about what we look for and what we see, that the beauty of the fit male form is so frequently legless. If we who are consumers of the objectified male form were all about legs all the time, surely the torso shot alone would not be nearly as preferred. What counts, what attracts, what sells is clearly, primarily, above mid-thigh. This must drive full-time foot-fetish guys bonkers. In a leglust moment, I need to search a bit to find the whole, stunning package of muscle and proportion, displaying the professional object-of-lust male form from head to toe.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that some of the staple recurring characters in my wrestling fiction show off their gorgeous legs full-on. Ben Godfre, who in my imagination is presently in a hot and sweaty post-match three-way muscle worship scene with Jared Prudoff and Ellis McCreadie, can be found in quite a few pics showing off his tasty, tattooed legs. Wendell Lissimore is a study in muscle and grace, with legs that stretch for days. In his one match so far in my imagination, I wrote a starring role for his fantastic legs, involving Brendan Fraser trapped in the ropes and Wendell hanging from nothing but a figure-4 headlock that just about decapitates George of the Jungle.


Zack Jonathan markets his amazing body all over the place, including in the ring and on the mats, not to mention in pin-up photo shoots. I still think Zack needs a severe, bare-assed spanking over an opponent’s knee to atone for many, many self-conscious wrestling performances (though I’m hoping his improvement on that count continues). But I give him credit. In addition to a beautiful everything else, Zack has fantastic legs and he displays them and uses them skillfully.

You know me. I’m the first to crop out everything but a particular body part that I’m presently obsessing over. I dissect the male form as much as, if not more than, anyone else. I freely participate in the objectification of the male body, turning people into objects, and those objects into disassembled pieces, and those pieces into ends, in and of themselves, for my sexual gratification. But I do appreciate the whole package, from head to toe, with every inch in between part and parcel of a beautiful, graceful, inspiring work of art. And when I’m in the mood to taste some gorgeous, hard, powerful legs, an abridged torso, much less a pretty headshot, will simply not do.

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life…

wrestlebardLeave a comment

It’s like the keen eyes at Towleroad were thinking of me (and you) when they posted this YouTube gem. I don’t speak Spanish, so one of you will have to correct any misconceptions I have about the clip, but from the title and the drama, it appears to me that a Mexican bodybuilder is majorly pissed off with is placing at the end of the day. It looks like he’s disgusted with his, what, second place prize? He rips it up, walks up to the end of the stage and calls out the judges. One hot piece of judge-beef in a polo shirt stands up and invites the sore loser to bring it on.



So Baby Blue leaps from the stage and tackles the hot piece of ass judge. The crowd scatters. Satellite fights break out. Another competitor shows up, pounding a metal chair on the announcer’s table. That’s where the clip ends, but damn… my imagination is just getting started!
The bodybuilding competition as the backdrop to a wrestling match was already dreamed up before Baby Blue ever oiled up those humungous pecs of his. Can-Am was playing up the bodybuilder angle explicitly early on, including Kick-Ass Bodybuilder Feud 1 (it’s a bitter tragedy that Roman Stone didn’t have a longer tenure in homoerotic wrestling). Kick-Ass Bodybuilder Fued 2 doesn’t count, because Billy Vochek can’t pull off the role of bodybuilder. Enough said.
But actually what I was thinking of was Zeus productions Punishment 4, which features the relevant storyline of musclegod extraordinaire, Steve Sterling, getting abducted the night before a bodybuilding competition by Ivan Malek and pro-salesman of the decade, Cliff Conlin. Ivan and Cliff are charged with beating the crap out of Steve in order to spoil him for the bodybeautiful competition the next day. 2-on-1… 1-on-2… in the pro-ring… lots of muscle getting tied up and humiliated in the ropes. Whew! I need turn a fan on…
So I’m all for someone producing the next chapter in the YouTube story, when Baby Blue takes his oiled pecs to the gym the next morning and finds Poloshirt Hunk waiting for him behind a corner. The action simply must find its way into the ring. Baby Blue’s nipples absolutely must be tortured as he squirms, all trussed up in the ropes. The tables must turn… at least twice… and one of these two boys’ muscle-asses needs to get ridden hard in order to determine once and for all which one of them knows quality muscle when he sees it.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

wrestlebard7 Comments
I don’t mind watching hot guys who can’t wrestle… sometimes. Every so often it can just be about gorgeous guys, minimal gear, and going through the motions of what wrestling sort of looks like. I don’t have to believe it. I’ve got an active imagination, and I can suspend disbelief as necessary for the sake of entertainment. But it’s a treasure when I come across a match that meets me more than halfway. When the boys sell me without me having to squint my eyes and pretend I didn’t see all those pulled punches, I’m a very happy camper indeed.
At face value, Submission 8 makes me skeptical. The boys involved aren’t in the upper echelons of my favorite homoerotic wrestling rankings. Jonny Firestorm is in his beefy, hairy incarnation, and though I’m not nearly as fanatical about it as some of the commentators at the BGE discussion group, I tend to get more of a kick out of Jonny tighter and trimmer. This is my first chance to see Skip Vance in action. He possesses such a boyish look about him that it almost puts me off. His level of fitness is astonishing and speaks to more maturity than shows on his face. And there’s something about his tanlineless ass that’s a bit captivating. But frankly, I tend to objectify wrestlers with more size and a little more mature look about them.
Thirty seconds into the match, I don’t care about any of that crap at all. Skip fesses up that he’s “all about the looks,” and it’s all down hill for him from that point forward. Jonny has fantastic skills. He focuses on the task at hand, and he takes the opportunity to illustrate, using Skip as his helpless sparring dummy, a catalog of holds and maneuvers he’s mastered.

Frankly, even all that sort of fades into the background as this match progresses. What’s absolutely fascinating about this match is that I totally believe that Skip is on the receiving end of a boatload of hurtin’. This works for many reasons, of course. Jonny has the skill and self-confidence to twist, toss, pry and pummel Skip to the very edge of physical tolerances. Jonny obviously understands how far joints can be pulled before they pop… how much tension bones can carry before they snap… how far he can push an über-flexible dancerboy like Skip before he’s done actual, acute damage.
This also works because Skip suffers so sweetly. He’s getting bullied and beaten senseless, and he shows it. Early on, when he still has some shred of dignity left (he’s only submitted three of four times at this point), he gets mad when Jonny refuses to release the hold in which Skip has just gasped out his most recent submission. “All right, all right, all right! I give! Fuck! I said I give!!” he snaps angrily.
Skip’s bruised ego gives way to a tone of fear in his voice as he’s forced to submit over and over again. Jonny keeps toying with him, sometimes letting him breathe a few seconds before renewing the assault, sometimes not. Skip’s last gasp of indignation comes when Jonny makes him count out his own three-count pin. After that, Skip’s voice starts to sound a little desperate as he begins to get the picture that Jonny is playing by his own rules. Stretched out in a backbreaker with Jonny clawing at his balls, Skip sputters and coughs, his voice rising an octave. “Oh, fuck!” he pleads. “I give! I GIVE!!!”
Pleading turns to sobs and screams. Sometimes Skip frantically tries to bat Jonny away, squirming desperately to stay free for a precious few more seconds of relief. At one point, Skip has his head in his hands, desperately gasping, “I want a break. I need a break. Just give me a couple of minutes. Fuck, I’m hurtin’…” Jonny’s definition of “a break” is clearly different than Skip’s, though.
Sometimes, Skip looks like he’s trying to play possum, just desperately hoping that Jonny will let the torture session come to a close. But Jonny is relentless. Skip’s entire body is shaking with sobs as he cries, “Just stop. Just stop….” Like a true sadist, Jonny only stops when the pretty boy physically can’t cry any longer.
I genuinely feel a little anxious for Young Skip in this match. He’s suffering so convincingly, it manages to tweak both my empathy and my wrestling kink at the same time. I’m torn, wanting Jonny to keep teaching that lesson and wanting him to give the completely outmatched kid a break. In the end, I’m happy to say that I got sucked into the moment. Skip and Jonny meet me more than halfway. I’m provoked at multiple levels, and that’s a whole lot deeper than I typically expect from homoerotic wrestling. Nice work, boys.

More Leg Lust

wrestlebardLeave a comment
It’s still August, but where I am, summer is starting to sputter. One of the finest side-effects of hot summer weather is the excuse it offers hunks who’ve been working on their hard bodies all year to show some skin. In particular, I’m already feeling some anticipatory grief about losing sight of sweetly muscled legs once cooler weather lures those gorgeous thighs under wraps. There’s nothing about well-worked legs I don’t like. From the front, the back, the lead-in to hard, muscled asses… At this very moment, though, I’m feeling particularly randy for some low-slung, mounded, muscle thighs.
It’s been way, way too long since I took anatomy and physiology to really appreciate the technicalities of how muscles are attached so beautifully to joints. What I do recognize is that our bodies are wonderfully diverse, and even men who share precisely the same diet and workout routine develop muscle shape and size differently. When quads are huge, separated, and encasing the knee like plate armor (like classic muscle jobber Ed Harte) I’m breathless.
And speaking of fine muscle jobbers, huge legs, and me being breathless… Troy Baker was a work of art who absolutely adored his own massive, powerful thighs. It’s not like there was any inch to that blond bombshell that didn’t deserve complete worship, but he seriously got off on scissoring his opponent until they were gasping. His mat battle with Nick Archer in Undergear 9 remains a favorite go-to for me when I’m desperate for some freakish thighs put to good use in a match (and some blond muscleboy humiliation thrown in at the end).


With a catalog a mile deep, Mike Columbo at BG East is also exactly what the doctor ordered for a bad case of leg lust. Honestly, it’s hard for me to take my eyes away from his ass, even when I try…
But when I can manage it, I’m awed by his astonishingly massive thighs (not to mention his gorgeous upper body and sweet, sweet babyface). Derek D’Amore (no slouch himself) thinking he could stand side-by-side with Mike in a pre-match posedown for Fantasymen 21 is just a little sad. Mike is in a league of his own, and it isn’t the last time he humiliated Derek that day.
Aesthetics are as important as size for me. In fact, some beautiful muscle trumps a side of beef in my book. Fortunately, there are plenty of gorgeous wrestlers like Can-Am’s classic battler, Troy Lucas, who had both. As I’ve mentioned before, I think that Troy was one of the most handsome musclemen to dip his toe in the homoerotic wrestling pool, and I’d have paid money to feel those legs squeezing the breath of out me. Just watching him do it to someone else still makes me gasp.
When Tyrell Tomsen is in his competition-ready shape, he can give Troy Baker a run for his money when it comes to worship-ready muscle, inch for inch. Tyrell simply needs to put someone on their knees and mesmerize them with his sculpted physique. Then he needs to shove an awestruck face between those tree trunks and squeeze until the lucky bastard cries.
The hot hunks at the park will be putting their long pants back on soon enough, damn them. Fortunately, the finely crafted physiques of homoerotic wrestling are ever at the read to display the goods and put huge thighs to the very best possible use they could be: making one another suffer in a hot, hard fought, power vs. power wrestling match.

Drama

wrestlebardLeave a comment
The first wrestling fiction matches I wrote featured newsmen going at it in an elimination tournament. I do enjoy imagining news personalities ripping off their suits and ties and getting down and dirty in no-holds-barred battles. My latest upload to the Producer’s Ring is my take on a pro-style battle between ABC news hunks, Matt Gutman and David Muir.
These two beautiful boys made catastrophic oil spills seem somehow sexy this summer. I’m not sure who sexed up man-made environmental disaster more. For that reason alone, I tossed the two of them into the ring in my imagination to battle down until one of them comes out on top.
Because ABC News seems to be out front in maintaining a stable of lustworthy newsboys, Matt and David each arrive with a cornerman to watch their backs. Matt’s hitched up with my perpetual newsboy object-of-lust, Chris Cuomo. You knew Chris would be making another appearance in my wrestling fantasies. Don’t act surprised.

David shows up with giant man, Bill Weir as his mentor. I get the hit that Bill isn’t a simpleton news reader, and smarts are sexy, if you ask me. So in my imagination, he’s a master tactician and brains-behind-brawn, coaching young David with masterful skill.

And, as always, Carter Evans is your host with the absolute most. I’ve noticed that in real life Carter looks like he’s been putting on a few pounds lately, which could force some character adjustments (still sexy as hell… just with the beef outweighing the pretty… that could reshuffle his potential in one way or another). Carter takes advantage of his monopoly of the microphone to continue his psychological assault on the man he humiliated for the pilot tournament championship, Cuomo. Drama, drama, drama… as seems entirely appropriate for a homoerotic pro-style wrestling fantasy.

Novel Ideas

wrestlebardLeave a comment
My last post concerning superheroes and “masculine behaviors” brought to mind for me a reader request. It’s been about a year since a reader of my homoerotic wrestling fiction put out a request for a superhero wrestling story. I’ve taken several starts at this task, and I find it daunting. I put in some serious time in on a superhero angle this spring. I even shopped it around to a collaborator, but I set it aside when I found it still lacking some motivation.
What is there to be done with superheroes that hasn’t already been done and isn’t currently under way? Superheroes are paradigmatically graphic comic based, and that homoerotic angle is handled much more effectively over at Rants Roids n Rasslin than I ever could with primarily text-based fiction. Projecting major heartthrob Hollywood hunks (as populates the Producer’s Ring) with superhero alter-egos seems downright redundant with the steady stream of beautiful men hitting the big and small screens as classic superheroes.
So I’ve been in search of an angle. I’ve been aiming for something along the lines of a Gregory Maquire treatment of a classic fairy tale. Just provoking a reader’s imagination with text, what sort of warped, engaging reality might be crafted that can strike a different angle on superheroes? And in particular, how might a superhero angle in text-form center on wrestling kink, which is really what I’m primarily about?
I think I have some renewed energy and inspiration to dust off the match I’d begun many months ago. It’s certainly a sideline, so I’ll be dropping it into the Sidelineland wrestling fiction group (which is also wanting for some contributions from others). I’m sure there will be some familiar themes that regular readers will recognize from other works of mine, including power and the erotic, high stakes competition, and beautiful men wrestling for fortune and glory. Hopefully there will be something novel as well, and hopefully there’s still an audience interested in my take on superheroes.

Wish me luck. Share your ideas. Keep reading, writing, and imagining.

Masculine Behaviors

wrestlebard3 Comments
I’ve mentioned before that I consider superheroes kink-adjacent to wrestling. There’s a lot of overlap, including full-time attention from the fine folks at Rants, Roids, & Rasslin’ and Eye of the Cyclone. There are also sideline overlappers from the wrestling side of things, including the Superhero Heels series from BG East and the Hard Heroes line of videos from Can-Am. Of course, much of masked wrestling in general draws on the rules of superherodom, turning straight-up pros into icons in the battle of good versus evil, imbuing them with an aura of invincibility when in costume, and portraying their collapse into mortal vulnerability upon unmasking.
Some psychologists reportedly have recently done “research” into the impact of superheroes on children. I’m highly skeptical about the gendered and morality-laden ruler with which they seem to have measured their data. Regardless, though, their findings are that the classic superheroes of the first half of the 20th century had a positive influence on children because they were morally upright, unflinchingly sincere, restrained in their use of force and violence, and explicitly promoting the virtue of humanitarianism. On the other hand, the researchers suggest that more recent superheroes are overly aggressive, sarcastic, self-absorbed, and eagerly embracing of violence and domination as testimony to their masculinity.
I’m just going to set aside the child-rearing aspects of this topic for the moment, which is actually the point of the research study. Those of you rearing children can take from this what you will. But from an adult perspective (and many of the offending superheroes cited are really comics for adults) I’m fascinated with the notion that society should be invested in promoting superhero role-models that “promote kinder, less stereotypical male behaviors.” Some of us, present company certainly included, think that there’s something entirely entertaining and attractive about many of these very same “male behaviors.”
It seems to me that the division identified in this research is the divide between the classic face and the classic heel. Moral masculinity appears to be tied to the rule-abiding, humble, self-restrained humanitarian hero who the masses are sure to cheer as savior, protector, and defender of the weak. Immoral masculinity is characterized as the opportunistic, cocky, hedonistic bully who takes hold of victory with both hands, taking whatever short-cut is necessary, reveling in the exercise of power and domination as ends in-and-of themselves.
I’m not the most versed comic-head in the kink-corner of the internet, but it seems to me that the more recent superheroes reflect a postmodern bent that argues that, just like real life, the world of superheroes is comprised of complex and conflicted characters who sometimes do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons. Postmodern superheroes travel back and forth between turning heel and turning back to face, sometimes doing the humbling and sometimes getting humbled, and inevitably, as always, pitting strength against strength, muscle against muscle, will against will, until one man is proven the dominator and the other forced into submission. It seems to me to be precisely a story about masculinity, and a more complicated, realistic version of masculinity is not one that is unflinchingly moral, non-violent, selfless and humanitarian, but one that is conflicted, as is every exercise of power over another being.
I, for one, would much rather my role models and proxy protagonists be flawed, inconsistent, considerate of their own self-interests, and possessing well-deserved pride in their mastery of themselves, their bodies, and their foes (and their foes’ bodies). I couldn’t live up to a 1950’s rendition of Superman, but I could see some potential for self-improvement by identifying with a postmodern warrior who gets it right sometimes, gets it wrong sometimes, and struggles to sort out the right formula of self-confidence, self-interest, and self-restraint to craft for myself a life that I can feel good about. Again, I have no idea what goes into good child-rearing, but as for me, a vacillating superhero who blurs the line of hero and villain, who occasionally smacks down an opponent and occasionally gets smacked down in the constant struggle to determine whose idea of virtue will win the day seems a lot more… meaningful.
And, frankly, it’s a lot hotter. Which is what tends to turn my crank, and I just bet it will continue to turn the crank of generations of gay (and probably straight) boys to come.

Flexing Our Muscles

wrestlebardLeave a comment
Regular readers are aware that I’m a big, big booster of the erotic imagination. Frankly, I think the distinction between “the erotic” and “the erotic imagination” is almost nil. Bodies are mostly just sacks of fluid wrapped up in skin-packages. If you absolutely remove the imagination, even the most gorgeous naked body is… well, mundane. So sex-for-sale airbrushes and pumps and primps real bodies to turn them into imaginary objects of lust. Sex-for-sale writes provocative, impossible stories to allow mundane bodies to inhabit our erotic imaginations, turning them into gorgeous hunks that ignite fantasies of what we would think, feel, and do with said fantasyman right in front of us. Even right in front of us, the bodies we adore, wrestle, fuck and make love to inhabit our imaginations much more evocatively than just our literal senses. Even the most stunningly hot, mouthwatering hunk of muscled physical perfection is – without our imaginations – just a body, with aches and intolerances and acne and skin tags and weird birthmarks and pigeon toes and bow-legs and… well, the inevitableaccumulation of mundane human existence.
But then we imagine. We put a story together. We mentally remove the clothing. We blur out the wonky bits. We apply our tunnel vision to the nice parts. We mute the cringeworthy laugh or the habitual, gross clearing of the sinuses. We freeze-frame on the particularly flattering angles and overlook the odd divots . In short, we lust because we imagine.
The cover of Rolling Stone is popping up everywhere, featuring three of the main characters of True Blood in a 3-way naked, blood-bathed embrace. This is, in itself, an exercise in the lustful imagination. This scene is out of context. It doesn’t appear in True Blood. It’s full of implication and allusion, but it relies entirely on the imagination to give it a story. It’s been meticulously posed in order to make it PG-13-ish, carefully and barely obstructing any glimpse of pubic hair, penis, testicle, or female nipple. But, obviously, those parts are implied and inevitably imagined. Personally, my eyes continue to be drawn down the long stretch of Alexander Skarsgård’s tight, hard abs and into my imagination of his beautiful cock hiding demurely and just barely behind Anna Paquin’s leg. I’ve imagined that fantastic, gorgeous naked body many times, most fondly in fictional wrestling scenarios. Stephen Moyer, while not asmuch an object of my lust, also has made an appearance in my wrestling fiction. Nothing at all against her, but Anna Paquin has never appeared in an erotic fantasy of mine.

Pretty On the Outside has done a sweet mash-up for you and me to blur the lines some more in service of our erotic imaginations. Rather than an Anna Paquin sandwich between two slices of Alexander Skarsård and Stephen Moyer, it’s now a Stephen Moyer sandwich between naked titans Skarsgård and Joe Manganiello. And isn’t this precisely the work of the erotic imagination? To disassemble and reassemble? To recast and and reconfigure. Now, remove Stephen Moyer from the second mash-up and insert me (or you). And then set the scene in motion.

My point, friends, is that a kink is simply a variation on a human theme. Our capacities for the erotic are an extension of our facility in exercising our imaginations. I suspect that you and I probably possess more vivid and well-exercised imaginations than the general population, but the mechanics are basically the same. If anything, perhaps we’re just the finely toned athletes of the erotic, because we flex those muscles more often.