Tao of Kink

Chapter 5

Weapons and/or cocks

Why do we like to play at/with the roughest boys? Why do the spaces we otherwise avoid attract us so irresistibly? What’s so sexy about the uniforms? Can tenderness be found in the most improbable places? Does adventure smell of sweat and gunpowder? And what is true about metaphor of firing guns and dicks shooting?

* introduction to the visual blog

Guns and Kisses

Quite a lot of guys have military fetish. Boots, uniforms, camouflage. Discipline, drill, iron-men. Guns, cockiness, muscles. We fantasize about the dormitories where men share sleep, often (half?) nude, perhaps with bubbling sexual needs (long time away from home). However cheezy it sounds, that’s often the first thought that appears in our queer heads. Communal showers, all naked, teasing each other. Tough training, playful exercise, physicality having a purpose – which the office crowd of dreamers often lack – and especially the skills it brings with it, not just muscular fluff. Marching through the jungle, climbing, swimming, running, shooting – everything that makes Spartan race more attractive than the sterile weight-lifting in a gym. Camping outdoors, sharing the tents, an air of adventure. There is something of a masculine archetype accessible in this fantasy, something that is usually remote in modern everyday life.

Porn imagery of guys in uniforms involves certain amount of something ridiculous. So opposite to the real-life insights into military life. Genuine pictures of soldiers, where they are not (porn)acting, but are caught in the course of events, not posing, not trying to look in certain way, just being, doing their thing – can be immensely erotic. Real exercise, real sweat, real situations. Just a little extra hint – guys resting half-naked, mock sexual gestures, holding each-other around the arms, signs of friendship or support – can launch tremendous fantasies about what might be happening off the record. We imagine stories. And there the fetish begins. Model posing for the camera has never a fraction of that attraction hidden in real-life glimpse. I’d bet that our instinct here is stronger than even a mythical gaydar. Recognizing beauty that is not aware of itself.

And then you buy the uniform and boots and paint your face with camouflage colors… and look into the mirror… and feel nothing. Then you invite another guy with "similar interests" and nothing exciting happens either. Endless evenings observing desirable mates in showers are not there. The story of "a pinch more tenderness than usual" evolving into the requited affection and perhaps into secret love story from the barracks – does not happen. Not even the physical activity, the skills or the adventure, that would make a counterpoint to the juicy sexual climax. Think of porn – how awfully fake the "acting" part usually is. Click, click, fast forward to the dick. Then think of real well-acted movies from the same environment, how exciting even slightly erotic moments can be. What’s the difference?

While we know men mostly from competing, fighting, macho teasing, bullying situations … tough drill paradoxically evokes cooperation, aftercare, closeness. Army environment separated from the regular world creates demand to cover certain human needs that get covered by the other gender elsewhere. Be it sharing or caring, from intimate conversations to sexual release. While for those straight men in military it is just a workaround within circumstances, for the gay men outside it is quite teasing to see (or think of) straight men being sensitive and available to each other. Unlike what they know from civil life – coldness, detachment, machismo. There is something exciting about contrasts – uncovering tender side in rough men. Sexualizing the guns – the tools of violence and oppression, things bringing death – in context of ultimate expression of life – the sex.

Seeing it may come easier than reading it

Once upon a time

Thanatos and Eros - lethal attraction

Closeness and intimacy

Training together

Action and adventure

Drama queen's impressions

Faces of the fantastic creatures

A story turns into fetish

Queer eyes