Here’s the thing about porn, or modern dating, or everything. I’m not sure which. And it’s also the reason I like women to have a little pubic hair, even though that’s irrelevant. It’s about the hint of things, not the things themselves. The curtain over the door.
Do you see this? This picture?
This picture is the answer. Or the point. Whatever.
We’re all on Tumblr, yeah? We probably see all manner of nudes, some blatant penetration, the occasional labia or erect penis. The works. And most of the people who post them are trying to convey sex, or danger, or sexy danger, or some updated but totally misguided sense of what sexy or dangerous is.
Do you know what this picture is? It’s sexy. It is also, without any sense of conflict, tender. It is arousing but also saccharine sweet. The basic fact is that you’re looking at two naked people kissing. They are going to fuck. Yeah, fuck. Have sexual intercourse with one another. Penetration, fluid exchange, the whole eight yards. Maybe he has a tiny bent penis. Maybe it’s 13 inches long and hard as weathered oak. Maybe she has a piercing somewhere in/on her vagina. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe they’re not even going to have sex because they just woke up and they want a little gross-mouthed morning kissing to start the day and in five minutes she’ll be in the shower and he’ll be making bacon. Maybe this is an apology he woke her up from a nap to deliver.
IT DOES NOT MATTER. This photo covers all the bases, from arousing to anticipatory, and there’s not a fucking areola to be seen. Everything is hinted, nothing is given. That’s what sexy is. It’s imagination meeting provocation halfway. It’s a flash of thigh. A lingering gaze. A fingertip trace along a part of your body that isn’t even an erogenous zone but just became one.
Lord knows I like looking at naked women as much as the next guy but the images that stay with me aren’t gifs of Sasha Grey with semen in her hair, they’re the ones like this. The hint of something tantalizing. The possibility on the horizon.
The smell of berries in the woods, not a fucking Jamba Juice smoothie, is what I’m saying.
Nothing here is explicit. This could be an ad for Dove soap. But it works.
Dear photographers, pornographers, and people: leave a little mystery, okay? The anticipation is integral to the payoff.
He stole the words out of my mouth and wrote them beautifilly.
Couldn’t have said it better.
Aaallllll of thiiissss