Meditation on (some of) my pornographic tastes

One of my repeated pornographic consumptive habits is to troll through web sites that feature pictorials of individual models, and separate out those pictures in which the models thighs and cunts can be seen – or rather, in which their cunts could be seen, but for the presence of panties or shorts.

[I like porn. This isn’t the only porn I like. Rather, it’s one particularly intense corner of my pornographic habits that I imagine it might be useful to mine for what information it might contain about my hopes and fears….]

I collect these images in whatever way the web site makes most easy. On OnlyAllSites, I assemble “custom sets” – collections of images that meet my exacting requirements. On MetArt, I “favorite” those photos which successfully tick all my boxes. I don’t often go back and look at the images I have collected; rather, it’s the collecting itself that is the point. And while I often stroke my cock while engaged in the collecting activity, it’s not, typically, an activity to which I masturbate to orgasm.

It’s worth enumerating the essential elements of images that meet my requirements:

  1. The woman must be wearing panties, pantyhose, shorts, jeans, slacks/trousers, a bikini bottom. Some sort of fabric that presses against her thighs and cunt. While I love seeing a woman in a dress, or in a skirt, for this particular purpose, while the presence of a dress or skirt can enhance the excitement I feel at a glimpse of panties, the panties are required. A woman revealing her cunt, commando, under a skirt or dress does nothing for me. (I once wrote about the porn site “FTV,” a site that often features beautiful women in dresses and skirts with no panties. I didn’t – and don’t – like that aspect of that site.)
  2. In general, it’s preferable for her genitalia not to be visible at all. If it is visible, any glimpse must be through the fabric covering her genitalia. Labia visible through a sheer fabric, for example, are tolerable to me. Labia peeking out the side of fabric? Not so much. And it’s worth emphasizing that labia visible through a sheer fabric detract, rather than add to, an image’s erotic charge for me.
  3. Ideally, the woman’s thighs are open. And here, there’s a useful limit: if they’re too wide open, if I start to imagine/perceive a sexual aggression on the model’s part, it’s a turn-off. I imagine that the ideal emotions behind the open thighs that I imagine is, “Ok – I’ll let you look.” If, instead, it’s more imperative: “Look!” that is enough to send me running. And if the thighs are closed? Their closure has to still make the triangle of her pubis – under panties – clearly visible. I have to be able to spy the region of her clit, if not of the labia just a little further down.
  4. Somehow, the wider the panties, the stronger the erotic charge I feel. A tiny, thin thong, pulled up into a woman’s vagina, does nothing for me. Repels me, even. But bikini panties fully covering the pubis, nestled in the crease where the thigh meets the crotch? That’s just perfect.
  5. Sometimes, closed thighs, with the panties visible in the crook of the “V” formed by the thighs, can titillate me.
  6. A very small number of the pictures I so collect are face-less; these only are capable of arousing me in conjunction with adjacent photos featuring the model’s face. Somehow, an essential aspect of what I seek is evidence – in the woman’s face – that she is choosing to allow me to see what I can see. Better yet if she seems to take a slight – but not exaggerated – pleasure in allowing me to see. I like to be able to imagine she’s thinking, she’s saying, with even a hint of shameful reluctance, “Well, since you asked, and because I like you, yes, yes, I’ll show you what you want to see.” For this reason, “creep shots” and involuntarily procured upskirt shots carry little to no erotic charge for me. (And yet – read here about my thoughts about creep shots, in the wake of a short-lived erotic experiment T and I engaged in with another couple in which we competed to collect creep shots.)
  7. In general, the images I collect are images of one woman, alone. The presence of a man in an image renders it inert to me. As does the presence of a second (or third, or fourth) woman not similarly arrayed for my pleasure. In other words, a photo of two, or three, or five women arrayed with their cunts visible-but-obscured as described above is very exciting to me. But an image of four so arrayed and a fifth otherwise depicted? Uninteresting.

These parts all seem to point to aspects of my unconscious fantasies worth exploring. I’ve written before of the hypothesis that our sexual fantasies are protective, that they serve to eliminate certain dangers we particularly fear. Here, I am advancing that hypothesis only with respect to me; not with respect to you. With respect to me, though, I believe it. Whole-heartedly.

I wrote about this subject explicitly at least once before. Looking back, it wasn’t a particularly… thoughtful… exploration. Now, I’m trying to be more thoughtful.

For a moment I wondered if, on some deep, profound level, the requirement that I not see the cunt itself might represent the presence of a fantasy that beneath the panties lies… a penis. My conscious sense is that this is wrong. But I think I’m probably onto something, even if I can’t quite parse it. What confuses me is my tolerance for shots in which labia are visible, pressed against sheer fabric. In these shots, I can see clearly that the model has a vagina, and my desire, though lessened, isn’t absent. So the fantasy of a possible penis has been extinguished, but the desire hasn’t.

What I think, instead, is that there’s something essential about there being more – more that I haven’t seen, that I haven’t (yet) been granted. A spread-wide beaver shot leaves nothing to the imagination, nothing to be won. The game is over. I’ve seen it all. Somehow, I want, I need, to be able to imagine something beyond the photo at which I’m gazing.

I can see this principle in operation, too, when it comes to the positioning of the thighs: if they’re reluctantly open? I’ve been given something (I haven’t taken it, which seems also important), I’ve been given something special (I need to imagine almost a reluctance, or maybe not reluctance so much as a recognition that I am being given something), and – and this is most important, I think – I need to imagine it’s being given to me because I want it. The woman also has to want to give it to me, yes, but her desire to give it to me must flow from my desire. It can’t be, say, a free-standing, pre-existing exhibitionism in her. It has to be – in my fantasy, of course – for me.

[A note: I’m talking about porn here. Women being paid to pose nude, or semi-nude, in studios all over the world. I’m not delusional. I don’t imagine these women are posing for me. Or rather, I do imagine they’re posing for me. But I know that I’m imagining.]

This points to my fear of female sexual aggression. I use this fantasy in at least two ways, as it relates to need. First, the fantasy allows me to deny the aggressive aspect of my own desire, my own need. The woman’s willingness is essential. She has to want to give it to me. Reluctantly, yes, but she has to want to. If I imagine she’s being coerced (other than in the way in which money = coercion fundamentally), then I’m not interested. (Those web sites that purport to depict women “tricked” into sex acts? NOT for me.)

And/but, second, the fantasy protects me from my fear that I might be destroyed (or diminished, or demeaned) somehow by a woman’s sexual aggression. That’s why it’s so important that I not imagine the woman is getting off on being seen generically. It’s ok for me to use her for my sexual gratification; she can’t be using me for hers, except/unless it’s explicitly in my control.

What is it about the wide panties? A guess: what is exciting (to me) more than anything else is the tension between obscuring and revealing. If the purpose of panties is to show off a woman’s genitalia, then what, precisely, are they obscuring? For some, transparency (or, with legs, fishnets) represent the apotheosis of this tension. For me, the apotheosis comes far closer to the “obscuring” end of the spectrum. (Similarly, I have a whole other porn collection of women’s asses, preferably in panties, seen through nearly opaque pantyhose.) The point, for me, is in the hiding. I want to be given something special, something the giving of which is belied by the way in which it’s given.

Faces? More of the same. I’ve collected thousands of images like these over the years. In some of them, the expression I read is, “I’m so naughty, showing you this view that you’re not supposed to have, that I’m not supposed to give.” In others, it’s more like, “Look! This is pretty hot, isn’t it?!?” And, of course, there are lots of other expressions in my collection. But the one that I prize the most, the one that really gets me off? It says, “Ok. Yes. It will turn me on to show you what I’m not supposed to show you, but let’s neither of us forget, for a moment, that I’m not supposed to show it to you (and, I suppose, you’re not supposed to look). And, of course, there’s more. More that, perhaps, belongs to you. That I’m not showing to anyone else.” I think that last bit is key. I think part of my fantasy (and again, this is fantasy) is that not only is she not showing me her cunt, but she’s not showing anyone her cunt. And, on top of that? That she would show it to me alone, given the right circumstances.

I think this gets at a big part of it. The image allows me to fantasize that I’m safe from male rivalry. There’s no man more desirable than me. No man other than me, actually.

And finally, as I deconstruct this fantasy: what about the multiples? Why does the presence of a man, or of a woman not complying with my fantasy, in the image destroy the value of the image entirely for me?

After all I’ve just written, the answer feels pretty simple to me.

Beneath it all, I’m using these images, this porn, to undo a latent sense I have – one of undesirability, of worthlessness, of vulnerability, and maybe weakness. And if the image reminds me of those feelings even implicitly, then its erotic power is neutralized.

There. I’ve been meaning to think that through for a while. Thanks for joining me on the ride.

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