On Submission to Desire

One of the sexiest things to me is the idea of being overcome by passion. Not romance novel-type emotional passion, but physical passion--being so completely turned on that you just...fucking lose it. I love seeing, hearing and inciting someone to be so overcome and I love being so overcome as well. Nothing is hotter to me than the raw desperate desire of a choked out, "Please..."

That submission to pure wanting requires abandoning your logical brain, throwing yourself into the overpowering forces of all-out lust and hoping you'll come out okay on the other side. I think there's a kind of bravery in that. Maybe that's what is so intimate about sex with another person--you're both jumping into the void together.

It's that line between control and loss of control that's so interesting to me about artist Clayton Cubitt's video series "Hysterical Literature." The stark black-and-white videos each feature a woman sitting a table reading aloud from a book of her choosing. However, under the table, there is an unseen person equipped with a back massager who is assigned to distract the reader as she reads.

The women try to keep it together and keep reading, but as they continue, they begin to show signs of losing focus with a little gasp or a quick intake of breath or wiggling in their chair for a better position. They fight to keep their composure, but finally they have to give in, toss their heads back with a kind of "fuck it" and ride the orgasm.

Here, see for yourself below with Stormy reading from Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho."



In an interview in Salon, Cubitt discussed the idea for the series and his artistic vision.

"I’ve long been fascinated with the concept of control and authenticity in portraiture, especially in these modern times of personal branding, Facebook self-portraits and incessant Instagram self-documentation. What is left for the portraitist to reveal? How can we break through to something real?...These are all attempts to see something they’re not trying to show me.

On an individual level, I’m interested in the battle the sitter experiences between mind and body, and how long one retains primacy over the other, and when they reach balance, and when they switch control.  On a larger scale, I’m interested in how society draws a line between high and low art, between acceptable topics of discussion and taboo ones, between what can be worshiped and what must be hidden."

At the end, the women are instructed to re-state their names and the book they've read from. Some aren't able to do it. Cubitt said of their post-filming interviews:

"It’s quite interesting to hear about what was going through their mind as they started to lose track of what they read and surrendered to their bodies. They talk about it almost like it becomes a religious trance, and they usually have no recollection of the last half of the reading."

What do you think?

xoxox
jill

Portrait of a woman. Lina Corsino, Emilio Sommariva 1933

Thanks to Trace, who reminded me of this series on the IBWMW Facebook page.

Parker Marx and Fucking Art

photo by the unlinkable Lenore Holloway

A few months ago, I spent an entire week watching porn for a magazine article. Perhaps it was the total porn immersion and the resulting heady delirium, but when I finally emerged, bleary-eyed and shaken, I'd had a porn epiphany.

It was mostly due to the discovery of Parker Marx, a fucking genius, a genius of fucking.

Parker Marx is an English porn performer based in Prague. He is lovely to look at, but that's not what it is about him. When he performs, Parker is absolutely in the moment-- or at least does an incredible simulation of that--and clearly relishes a good fuck, completely conveying all that is sublime and intense and connected and primal and hungry about your best sexual encounters ever. Everything from the quick intake of breath when someone first touches their tongue to your flesh to the moment when your eyes meet and you share the giddy realization/mental high five of "We are fucking!"  Whether there's a plot or not in his films doesn't even matter, the sex is the plot and Parker finds the story within every encounter.

So yes, there's humanity and depth and connection and--holy hell--and the eye gazing alone could wreck you, but his work is also very sexual, primitive and animalistic. Marx, like, luxuriates in whatever bodily fluids happen--sweat, tears, a newly soaked pair of panties. In a recent, uncharacteristically conventional-seeming scene, his partner squirted what to me looked like a possibly alarming amount of whatever women squirt, and he burst out laughing, delighted. And, dear god, the man cums spectacularly.

I said something to this effect on Twitter because what better place for private thoughts on someone else's cum and @Jessie67878604, despite their bot-like name, had this insight:  "I think his genius comes from the presence and devotion he brings to each partner."  It's true--his partners emerge from their scenes together changed somehow, as though they're illuminated from within.*

Parker Marx in repose. Kind of.

If you're in public and can't click over to some of Parker's work (here or here), or you've left your porn budget money in your other pocket, see also the self-portrait on the right for a quick visual summation of the above. It's a naked man there presenting his cock, as primates do, but it's also incredibly lit, classically composed and there is more going on in the photo than Man Holds Dick. Arty, sexy, suggestion of possible existential angst. Plus, man holds dick. 

One of the gifts Parker Marx has given me--besides the odd feeling of being well-fucked remotely, simply by witnessing a really great fuck--is that he's been my portal to thinky porn/art/something else entirely.

The one that got me the most was Bright Desire, where filmmaker Ms. Naughty totally mucks around with the genre itself -- it's porn about ideas. Like, what if the performers moved incredibly slowly, almost excruciatingly so? (Linger with Parker and Kali Sudhra) What if you wandered far, far away from a typical "straight" porn script, with no cum shot, no female penetration plus a little pegging and afternoon tea? (Since You Asked So Nicely with Parker and Pandora Blake). "Pandora’s orgasms are intense but they take a while," writes Ms. Naughty of the film. "There’s also a lot of laughter and discussion and guidance. In short, this scene totally queers straight sex and shows that pleasure can be attained in multiple ways, no matter how you identify." Right the fuck on.

On about Day 3 of my private Porn Fest, I wrote something on the IBWMW Facebook page like "Back to the porn salt mines" and most people assumed I was excessively jilling off (a real term and oddly prescient name choice by my parents.) But in this case, it wasn't even true, what was going down was more of a mind fuck, the good kind, if there is one. It was more that arty fuckery lent a background hum of sexual charge to everything and left me with the lingering afterglow from a major mind-blowing.

My week-long porn fever dream, which I am desperately trying not to call a pornucopia, was incredibly empowering. I absolutely loved seeing a woman on top with a belly hanging over a pair of panties (Porn performers: They're Just Like US!). I loved that Lina Bembe spontaneously burst into tears after an orgasm in Trinity, (with Parker and the multi-talented Rooster X-Ray) because weeping means you've tapped into something so deep, metaphorically as well as physically. I loved that some women had to rub the living hell out of their clits before they came or twisted their faces up unprettily (that is, raw and beautifully) or that weird awkward moments happened or that it took a really long time to find an orgasm and some straining was involved or that couches were stained.

I loved that all of it was not only completely fine, but even better, porn-worthy. Representation matters, not just in the way we look, but the way(s) we fuck. We contain multitudes, my friends, and this, this is the real stuff, the very stuff that makes sex so deep and rich and personal and good.

So thank you, brave and honest porn makers, performers and Parker Marx, thank you from the bottom of my whatever.

xoxo
jill
#PayForPorn

* Not ruling out possible infusion of magic via cock.

PS Do the blog a solid and go vote for In Bed With Married Women at Kinkly for favorite sex blog.  Just click the link, click “vote for this blog” and you're done.

(2nd photo:  Self Portrait by Parker Marx)