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Not a Numbers Game

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About a year ago, I started checking the stats on this blog. I was feeling insecure, wondering if I was blathering on to an empty house. The exercise of writing daily was an end to itself, but the thought of putting time into posting a public blog that no one read was a possibility that was going to defeat me. I needed to know that at least it was being read. I didn’t worry so much that people enjoyed it or agreed with it. But just that its existence was noted.

Initially I had a few dozen hits a day, representing about as many viewers. That was enough to beat down my feelings of insecurity and futility.
Over the past year, I’ve checked in periodically to see how the numbers are going. I no longer feel the pangs of insecurity that no one is reading. Enough of you comment, critique and encourage to keep me thinking out loud. I remember when the blog consistently began breaking 100 views per day. It felt legitimating, somehow.
When the stats indicated about 100 people a day (I’ve learned it’s far from an exact science) accounted for about 500 views, I began to feel a little insecure that perhaps too many people were reading. I worried for a while that someone would complain about copyright infringement (I try to track down my pic owners when I can, but I admit to reposting liberally), or that haters would stumble upon me and try to get nasty. I don’t go looking for sour energy in my life, and the thought that a reader would get pissy with me for one reason or another made rising hit numbers seem a little ominous.
In the past couple of months, hits are regularly topping a thousand a day with about 400 or so viewers. I’m confident a lot of these represent people who stumble into the room looking for an entirely different party, and who exit just as quickly. But I’m also aware that many of you are regular readers who share a kink, a sense of humor, and a lust for beautiful men wrestling with one another. Other than a lot of spammers trying to comment with trojan horse links, almost no one has tried to be nasty (1 snarky killjoy tried to get up in my face about 6 months ago about copyright infringement for my reposts of Rock Hard Wrestling pics, which fortunately I had written permission for… so there…). The numbers themselves don’t add up to much of anything to me anymore. The comments on the blog, and the beautiful messages I frequently get when people sign up for one of the wrestling fiction groups mean a whole lot more to me.
But I just have to ask, what happened yesterday!? Nearly 600 people accounted for about 1,500 hits. Sure, my post on the most recent Naked Kombat match was profoundly insightful and existentially provocative, but the dramatic uptick is a little astonishing.
I realize that for most internet publishers, the numbers game means something other than what it means to me. I’ve heard from a couple of producers of homoerotic wrestling that this blog accounts for a good number of click-throughs to their retail sites, which can account for cash flow and financial viability in hard times for these fine companies. All the better, if you ask me. I’m thrilled to have a lot of wrestling kink companies out there making enough profit to keep them producing, creative, and innovating (please, keep being creative and innovating). I don’t advertise here, though, and I don’t take donations. So for me, the numbers are more a curiosity. It’s what they represent that means a lot more to me. They represent a lot of us who share a common interest, an eye for hot guys and wrestling, and a desire to be connected in one way or another. So thanks for reading, and keep the comments coming. An encouraging word, a common interest, a different perspective, or a piece of original fiction to share is worth infinitely more to me than a stat counter. In response to the message I hear over and over again, let me just say one again to everyone: no, you are most certainly not alone.

By the way, the photos complimenting todays post are a theme set. I won’t give it away, but I know that you all are an astonishingly clever lot who will have figured out the common theme anyway. If not, enjoy the puzzle.

Not Alone

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These images by photographer Joe Oppedisano have reminded me of comments I’ve heard from several readers who tell me that reading this blog and others like it have helped them recognize, for the first time, that there are others who are turned on by wrestling. Depending on the circumstances of where you grow up, just coming to terms with being attracted to the same sex can make one wonder, “Am I the only one.” If no one talks about it, acknowledges it, or normalizes it, it’s no wonder that so many of us experience significant periods of our lives as a struggle to figure out if what we feel indicates that there’s something wrong with us.
As for me, at this point in my life, I’m feeling more and more certainty that not only is it a normal part of the diversity of human sexuality to be attracted to the same sex, but it’s also remarkably common to find the image of male wrestlers centered in the eroticized gaze.
Sexuality and physical competition are closely paired in many species. In the classic heterosexual formulation, the young, virile bucks start the mating season by locking horns, butting heads, sparring, or competing for who’s bigger and more intimidating. As the heterosexual logic goes, the fighter who comes out on top proves himself to be of better breeding stock. His offspring will inherit more hearty genetic material. And he, therefore, lays claim to his choice of the female (or females) with which to mate.


Of course, more and more we learn that homosexuality, and same-sex mating and pairings are much more common across many species than the heterosexual version of evolution would suggest. And the story of young, virile men battling with one another is both age old and intimately tied to erotic arts, sexual prowess, and physical attraction. And clearly, mainstream fight-sport is pitched not for female eyes at all. MMA, boxing, wrestling, frat house grappling… these are not packaged and pitched for women to consume. It’s not a female audience that makes televised fight-sport profitable. These competitions are between men, managed by men, for male eyes to hungrily witness.

I wouldn’t suggest that all men who treat a UFC pay-per view as must-see television are raging ‘mos. But I certainly don’t buy the argument that the physical excitement, passionate intensity, and visceral delight that so many men take from following the UFC, or boxing, or pro-wrestling, or their frat brothers scrapping in the chapter house, or the furious young punks throwing down behind the gym after school is somehow an intellectual pursuit divorced from erotic pleasure. Viewers aren’t engaged on a simply cerebral level, no matter how exclusively they sleep with women. They care because watching young, fit, fierce men battle single-handedly for physical domination is titillating. They’re hearts beat faster. Faces grow flushed. Lungs automatically pump faster. Adrenalin is released at the sight of the hard bodies going head-to-head. And men of all stripes find themselves physically reacting, aroused at the sight of young bodies locked in battle for domination, with a physical, climactic thrill to see one competitor decisively triumph, leaving his challenger entirely, physically at his mercy.


You and I aren’t at the far margins of human sexuality. Straight men may not actually have sexual fantasies about wrestling competitions between hard-bodied men (and then again, a lot of them probably do). But the physical arousal to witness beautiful male bodies in body-on-body competition is hardly some unexplained, bizarrely fringe, freakishly abnormal kink.
Perhaps straight men don’t actually orgasm to the delights of wrestling. Perhaps a lot of gay men don’t place wrestling at the center of their erotic fantasies. But for those of us who have a passion for the homoeroticism of wrestling, I certainly don’t believe that we are at all far removed from what is at the heart of the human condition and masculinities that cross many cultures. The heterosexual version of reality will continue to expend a lot of energy attempting to narrowly define normality to protect the privileges that hetero-normativity has long provided. But let’s face it: hard, beautiful young men squeezing and tossing and pressing their muscled bodies against one another to settle who’s dominant is hot. You and I just appreciate it a little more explicitly than most.

All the World’s a Stage

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I recently enjoyed encountering this provocative work of art. The title, “Orlando and the Wrestler,” obviously caught my attention. The Irish artist, Daniel Maclise, painted this Victorian oil in 1854. Based on a scene from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Maclise paints Orlando as a rather fey, doe eyed twink who looks like he has no idea that he’s about to meet the buzzsaw of tattooed strongman and renowned wrestler, Charles.
This isn’t necessarily exactly how Shakespeare set the scene, but I like Maclise’s artistic license. The audience is sucked into the scenario, like Duke Frederick, anticipating that the sexually suspect babyface is in serious danger in the coming match. Orlando appears so distracted by his melodramatic infatuation with the girl in the front row that he may not even notice that his opponent is a nicely muscled testosterone-driven hunk with a look of fierce destruction in his eyes. It’s inevitably going to be a babyface in the blender, as Charles watches his opponent with contempt. Little does Charles or the audience realize that when the match begins, the babyface will swiftly take down the brute. Perhaps capitalizing on his opponent’s underestimation of his preparation and skill, Orlando delivers the story of the cunning babyface heel, luring his impressive opponent into complacency, psyching him out with some pre-match shenanigans. Perhaps the whole heart-clutched schmaltz was even a front for a gay anti-hero pulling the strings of his neanderthal musclehead foe. Just imagine this big brute on his back, Orlando grapevining his hotly muscled legs, spreading him wide and making the hardbody grunt out his shocked, humiliated submission.

Okay, so nearly NONE of this is actually in Shakespeare’s text. Quite a bit of it isn’t particularly apparent in Maclise’s painting. But that’s why they call it art. It provokes in me an entire, titillating narrative that draws me in and brings a smile to my face.

Independence Day

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I’m not the most patriotic American, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not that I don’t like the country in which I was born and live. Not at all, in fact. I just find myself suspicious of people who seem to like it too much. I know people who defend it unthinkingly and uncritically, and generally those people stand for things that I’m opposed to. So I find myself holding the patriotism and the love of my country a little at arms length, so as not to be mistaken for someone for whom their love of the United States is synonymous with sexist, racist and religiously intolerant values.

While I’m pretty cynical about people who wrap themselves up in the American flag, metaphorically speaking, I have an odd near-fetish for hot hunks wrapping themselves up literally in the flag. Well, more precisely, I have a near-fetish for hot hunks wrapping up their barest modesty in the American flag.
I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time today searching the web for a particular photo of porn actor Shane Steele in a hot American flag speedo. Jet Set used that image for their splash page for quite a while, several years back. It was so tasty. It never failed to make me come to attention and deliver that particular form of a salute that makes the heart beat a little faster (you know what I’m talking about).
Sadly, I can’t find the aforementioned pic. In its stead, I’ve mined several other images that circle the same theme. This is really the only context in which I’m a huge fan of the American flag. So on this federal holiday in honor of U.S. independence, let’s celebrate the hard, hung hunk in nothing but a hint of Old Glory.
Yes, yes.Yesterday was technically U.S. Independence Day. If you’ll scroll down, you’ll clearly see that I had much, much more important things to explore in yesterday’s blog post. So for today, here’s my very modest, cautiously embraced homage to the stars and stripes, and most of what it stands for…

R Space

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As regular readers will realize, I occasionally have a tough time keeping up with the demands of both work and play. Work sometimes slams me so hard I can’t see straight, impeding on my social life and, more importantly for some of you, my online musings. I’m closing in on completing my contract with myself to write a blog post a day for a year. It sounded like a simple, straight-forward discipline when I set to it about a year ago. It was just intended to get me writing more, putting my thoughts out there, and building up some thick skin when it comes to comments and reviews. But it’s been anything but simple.

I’ve hung onto the daily discipline by the skin of my teeth, frequently having to sacrifice my more intentional fiction writing for weeks at a time. So the idea of also keeping up on a MySpace page, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever is now cool (clearly I’m not), seems laughable. Still, I’ve set up a MySpace page and Twitter account for reasons still unknown to me. I haven’t worked them into my life, really, but they’re there.
Occasionally readers have found me on those sites and hit me up to be “friends.” I’m resisting that word these days. Virtual social networks have cheapened the concept of a friend a bit, I think. Take, for example, the dozens of big breasted women who keep hitting me up to “friend” me. Clearly they have no idea who I am, so the presumption of friendship just seems absurd.
Still, I’m happy to be socially networked with other homoerotic wrestling kinksters, if you’re entirely understanding that my presence is very, very hit-and-miss other than on the pages of this blog. So if you’re wanting to be socially networked further, look me up and let me know in your request that you read this blog, or that you’re a fellow homoerotic wrestling kinkster, or what you’re favorite wrestling hold is… just something that distinguishes you from the phishing, vile army of devious characters hiding behind profile pictures of big breasted women.
See you around…

Good Use

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Did you catch the story that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department advisory board has once again decided to retain the policy that any man who’s had sex with another man anytime in the last 33 years can’t donate blood? On the day after the debut of the new season of True Blood (more on that tomorrow), it begs the question of what’s the truth about blood?
Those of us who’ve been very, very happy to have had sex with other men since 1977 could find this profoundly insulting, dehumanizing, and humiliating. In a world in which people are literally dying because of a lack of available blood products, our blood is deemed not fit for human consumption. It’s no longer about an inability to test confidently for communicable diseases… we’re well past that problem. It’s not about HIV, regardless of what they say. There’s absolutely nothing prohibiting rampantly promiscuous men and women engaged in outrageously high-risk sexual activity from getting in the donor pool, as long as their high risk behavior was with someone of the opposite gender (which definitely still can transmit HIV). It’s about gay blood being treated as essentially suspect, inferior, and dangerous.

So perhaps the real “fuck you” message here isn’t directed at us. The real “fuck you” message is for all the desperately ill and injured straight people on the edge of survival due to a lack of my universal donor, coveted type O negative. So sorry. This blood ain’t for you. It could save your life, but because of social prejudice, the HHS would rather see you die than for you to possibly receive a transfusion of my blood.
From day to day, my blood seems pretty cheap, frankly. A paper cut here… some tender gums there… spilling a little doesn’t really amount to much. Full contact competition illustrates that blood outside the body even has an entertainment value to it. But blood for life, for the survival of those most in need, the ban on my blood being donated for the health of someone else shouldn’t just infuriate me (and you). It should absolutely appall everyone with a breakable, cut-able, illness prone body who could, through no fault of their own, end up in desperate need of a transfusion. To you, the HHS advisory committee says, “fuck you.” Protecting social bigotry is more important than your life.

Imagination Required

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I’m not sure why we needed an “American” version of the movie Death at a Funeral. The British version is just 3 years old. It was hilarious and quirky and… well, very British. Most importantly for my tastes, it starred Alan Tudyk (an American, by the way), getting involuntarily tweaked out on drugs and running naked on the rooftop. That, my friends, is a formula for a movie wanting to earn it’s way into my collection.
Sweet, ginger Alan is exactly what I want to see naked, soaked in a drug-induced sweat, and swinging his ass everywhere. There’s something about that man that makes him the stuff of homoerotic fantasy for me. The face and body are completely attackable (in the good way), but it’s the intelligence behind the eyes that turns him into an object of lust for me. I imagine him to be the sort of guy that, after wrestling him to a screaming submission, I’d like to just chat with about current events (both of us sweat-soaked, naked, and his head still captured in my figure-4 headlock).

The American version appears to be just about a screen-by-screen remake of the oh-so-recently made movie. James Marsden is the one ending up sweat-soaked and drug addled on the roof. By no means would I suggest that I wouldn’t like to see James stripped and shiny. Personally, I’d have preferred his nakedness to appear side-by-side with Hugh Jackman in an X-Men chapter, but whatever… James is a little obscenely cute-faced and beautifully shaped. Sure, I’ll be happy to see him naked on the roof.

But don’t expect me to be able to resist comparing him unfavorably to the joys that are Alan’s appearance in the original. Line the two of them up (on a roof, naked, sweat-soaked), and I’d have to say I’d kick James’ ass to the gutter for a chance at some full-contact throw down with Alan.

Is there so little imagination left in Hollywood that we have to “remake” widely available, already abundantly entertaining independent movies from elsewhere moments after they’re produced? Someone needs an injection of fresh imagination. For example, I can think of dozens of scenarios involving James Marsden sweat-soaked and naked that don’t require him appearing in a film originally produced just three years ago. For that matter, I’ve already cast Alan Tudyk in a homoerotic wrestling scenario, where he teams up with Nathan Fillion for some particularly sadistic action against the househubands, James Denton and Doug Savant. I need a producer…

Battles

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Happy Memorial Day! It’s a little obligatory these days to “support our troops,” but honestly, I’m awed and humbled by the memory of all those who have fought and died in service to their country.

Still, the thought of eager young men dying in the meat grinder of perpetual geopolitical pissing contests seems like such a waste. Bright-eyed 18 year old studs convinced of their invincibility shouldn’t be dressed up in scratchy uniforms and propped up in front of approaching bullets. They should be stripped and thrown into full-contact match-ups in order to do what the young bucks of most mammals do: compete against one another to prove their virility.
Seriously, I think the first to the front lines in any war should be the policy makers that decide that we have no option but to take up arms. The people who vote to authorize force, perhaps in the sincere belief that we have no option, should be sincere enough to be first in line to face the consequences. This would mean, pretty much by definition, that our front lines would be populated by a crowd of mostly middle-aged, pot-bellied white guys. In turn, this would leave our strapping young, naive, hormone-charged hardbodies for the battle that they were hardwired to engage in: non-lethal tests of strength and domination in order to bear evidence of the size of their genitals, their likelihood to contribute good breeding stock, and their ability to defend hearth and home from predators.

Classic AMG images of just this story never fail to please me. AMG always told the tale of boys being boys, engaging in naked/nearly naked combat with one another. Two young bucks puff up their chests, their eyes roaming up and down their opponents assessing the scope of the challenge in front of them. They strip out of their clothes to free themselves for the full range of motion that they may need to secure victory. Both brash, bold, gorgeous young hunks circle one another, both battlers sincerely convinced that they will overcome their challenger and prove themselves stronger, fiercer, more clever and more determined. Before the first touch of skin-on-skin, in the fraction of the second before they collide, grasping and twisting, in that instant before the battle is actually consummated, they are primal: youthful males announcing their entry into adult mating rituals.
Some hair pulling, bodyscissoring, and humiliating grinding of face to crotch, and one man has proven his mettle, dominating his opponent until he submits in body and spirit. That’s the battle of the ages for which hard, blustering, invincible young studs should be reserved.

Driver’s License, Please

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I’m STILL stuck in bed, and it’s not the good kind of stuck in bed. I think I’ll be presentable in a day or two, though. Thanks for all the kind wishes.
I’m not feeling particularly creative today, so I just thought I’d put a shout out to a series of amateur photos from Grapplers Planet that I keep coming back to… again and again and again. This “Hornets” wrestler is simply captivating. I swear, I thought this was a painting the first time I glanced at it, it’s such an iconic piece of art with such an iconic looking invincible, Aryan grappler. My hope is that, in whatever state he resides, he is of legal age. Since I don’t know that for certain, I’ll keep my comments restrained.
Holy.
Hell.

Incredible.