Tease Play

Everyone knows about strip poker, or at least they think they do. But in my fumbled teenaged experience, there was a lot of disagreement out there about what the rules actually are. Some people wanted to play real poker, with all the risk and drama and time which that entails, trading clothes for money as the game went on. Others wanted to play a simpler game where the loser of each hand was required to strip. Between bickering over rules, and the unfortunate fact that the girls chickened out long before they had to show any flesh, it was a deeply dissatisfying experience.

There are simpler games out there. Clan Eros has a lot of simple, but rather silly stripping games like strip tic-tac-toe which at least have the benefit of having clear rules. But me, I want something a little more cerebral. And ideally, I want a two-player game because the number of attractive young women who I can pursuade to do this kind of thing at the same time rarely exceeds one.

So, strip chess.

 Here are the official teaseplay rules of the game.

• If a female player loses any of her bishops or rooks, she must remove an item of clothing.
• If a male player loses any of his bishops or rooks, or his knights, he must remove an item of clothing. The difference between the two players is to compensate for that well-known bugbear of mixed-gender stripping games, The Breasts Problem.
• If a player is placed in check, they must remove an item of clothing, unless they are able to immediately take the piece which presented check. If they can, and do, the other player must remove an item of clothing.
• If a player is check-mated, they must remove all of their clothing and perform a forfeit of the other player’s choosing.
• If a player falsely claims that they have check-mated their opponent, they lose the game and must remove all of their clothing, and perform a forfeit of the other player’s choosing.
• When one player is completly naked, they may choose to accept defeat, and so the game ends, or they may choose to continue playing, but must perform a forfeit of the other player’s choosing whenever they would otherwise have been required to remove an item of clothing.

Hopefully this isn’t too complicated. I will play test it and report back. Any comments in the mean time?

I’m just loving these Met-Art pics at the moment. I’m a fairly serious amateur (and occasionally professional) photographer, and I think these are just superb technically and artistically. Of course, the stunning naked women don’t hurt either. Click on an image to see the full gallery.

Met-Art is an expensive site, but there’s no question that the quality of their product is excellent. Consistently beautiful girls from consistently excellent photographers.

What could be sexier than watching a couple having sex? What could be more arousing than pictures of people actually fucking? Anyone who has seen hardcore porn knows the answer to that; it is usually pretty unappealling. For me at least, good soft porn is far more erotic and far more likely to have me reaching for the Kleenex. And good soft-core is widely available. Good hardcore is rare indeed.

So what is it about hardcore porn that makes it generally so poor? I think there are a number of factors. First, bad hardcore is easy to sell to stupid people. Few business plans have ever failed because there weren’t enough stupid people around. Second, the most beautiful and naturally sexy women generally don’t do hardcore. Third, hardcore is difficult to photograph well. Fourth, bizarre and unsexy conventions have arisen. Finally, it is emotionally dead.

1. If bad hardcore makes money, why make good stuff?

The sheer volume of hardcore material available nowadays suggests that it’s keeping someonehappy. There are large numbers of people paying $39.95 each month for their “XXX Slutz Wharehouze” memberships. However they are clearly not people of discernment and taste. I am fairly certain that they are of below-average intelligence. They probably have poor impulse control (”$14.95 for a 24-hr trial? sign me up!”), and a higher-than-average likelihood of being unable to successfully cancel their account. In other words, they are the dream customer for certain types of adult webmaster, who can then expend the minimum possible effort on generating content for his site.

2. Nice girls don’t do hardcore

I think we’ve reached a situation in Western culture where your average nice young woman isn’t utterly mortified at the thought of being seen naked on the Internet. Photo and video cameras are so ubiquitous, and the means of sharing their output so efficient, that a significant percentage of the population are bound to end up nude on some website, somewhere, at some point - whether thanks to their own exhibitionist desires, or as the revenge of an ex-boyfriend, or even just as the unknowing victim of a hidden camera on a topless beach.

My point is that it is now relatively painless for a pleasant, attractive young lady to make the decision to pose for nude photographs. Check out OneModelPlace some time and see how many amateur models there list various types of nude work in their interests. The result is that there has never been such a rich supply of beautiful, erotic, artistic soft-core material available. These girls are happy to earn a little money in the present, and have little concern about being “found out” in the future, because it’s only nudity after all. We’re nearly at the point where there is no shame in doing soft-core, and I think this is a good thing.

But hardcore is something different. A hardcore photo shoot, turning up years later, might do significant damage to your family and career in the way that soft-core no longer does. It is still largely the domain of those girls who’s tattoos, scars, and just general lack of beauty preclude them from soft-core work. Women willing to do hardcore are relatively rare, and they still tend to be doing it because their education offers them few other options, rather than as a positive and deliberate decision.

The result is that few “perfect 10″ girls do hardcore, and that the performers generally are less intelligent, and so less creative, artistic, and imaginative than their soft-core colleagues. Or to put it more bluntly, most of them are ugly and can’t act.

Here are some random hardcore and soft-core girls. I’m sure you can tell which are which.

3. Where does the camera go?

Lighting and composition are the two golden factors in photography. If you can get those right, you can make anything - and anyone - look good. Both are difficult to get right when you’re dealing with fucking and sucking; the body positions are just wrong. Anyone can take a picture of a penis entering a vagina; but how do you take a picture that conveys how it feels?

If you can find an angle that works emotionally (and it is possible), how the heck are you going to light it? In the eight inches between his body and hers, how will you fit not only a camera, but a two-point lighting setup? There are techniques to manage all these things, but they are advanced techniques. You simply can’t do it properly unless you know both the theory and practice of photography (or videography) to an unusally advanced extent.

A small number of exceptionally talented and creative photographers are able to do a good job of conveying the emotion, excitement, and sensation of sex in their work. But there are far more mediocre photographers than excellent ones; and most of the photographers working in porn aren’t even mediocre.

4. Don’t do that. It’s not sexy.  Why do you think it is?

Certain conventions have arisen in the world of hardcore pornography. At least some of them are the opposite of sexy.

Consider the picture above. Is this sneer attractive to you? Is it erotic? For me, it’s ugly and a major turnoff. This girl looks like she has a fairly pretty face, at least when she’s not screwing it up into a scowl. I want to see a facial expression which says “sex is wonderful and I am enjoying this feeling”, not one which says “I am a crazy bitch from hell and I will murder you in your sleep”.

Let’s assume that I’m not in the minority, and that most guys don’t find this expression sexy. Why then do we see it so often - or if not precisely this, some other similar twisted sneer instead?

I think it went something like this. It started as a genuinely sexy pout, like Ms. Monroe’s here. Marilyn was a genuinely talented actress, and understood the power of facial expression. If she wanted to communicate smokey, seductive sexuality with an expression, she was more than capable of doing it. But most porn stars are not great actresses.

I think this kind of pout migrated into porno-land where it became part of the grammar of porn movies. Female performers would pout as seductively as they could as a way of communicating the sexual ecstasy they were supposedly experiencing. This was copied from actress to actress, movie to movie, getting more and more distorted along the way, until no one knew where it came from or what it was intended to signify; just that it was sexy. Men like it, right?

So you have a generation of women who think that making these kinds of expressions, no matter how crudely, and how ugly the result, is inherently sexy to all men. And you have a generation of men who think there’s something wrong with them, because it sure isn’t sexy to them!

Of course, this could just be me. Maybe everyone else is creaming their pants at the crappy porn-scene head shot above. But I’m betting at least a significant minority of you are with me on this.

5. You can’t act.

More than anything, the body language and expression of the performers communicates the eroticism and excitement of what they’re doing. Or at least, it should, if they’re actually feeling any eroticism and excitement. Failing that, they need to be able to act. 

Those hardcore performers you see are fucking a stranger who they have met only moments before. The environment they’re in, whether it’s a seedy motel room, or a high-budget studio, is almost the opposite of sexy. If they’re new, they’re shy and awkward. If they’re experienced, they’re bored.  In either case, the emotions they are experiencing don’t contribute positively to the end product.

People who have the intelligence and creativity to act or pose well, and hence the ability to convey the emotion they want to convey, generally don’t end up doing hardcore. So the result is mechanical, emotionless pictures of mechanical, emotionless sex.

Is there good hardcore out there?

What am I missing? Are there sites with high-quality hardcore content which is arousing, erotic and exciting, rather than just ugly and boring? Please, let me know in the comments.

Let me take a break from porn and talk about nudity instead :) 

There’s been quite a lot of media coverage recently of Spencer Tunick’s latest mass-nudity art installation in Mexico City. I thought it might be interesting to share my experiences taking part in the 2001 Montreal affair.

For background, I was brought up in a somewhat naturist family and don’t really have any issue with being seen naked myself. I’m an ugly bastard, you understand, but that only bothers other people who’re not me. So I didn’t think it would be a big deal to take part in something like this. I certainly wasn’t concerned about public erections or anything of that type. The Tunick pictures I had seen just didn’t look terribly sexy.

So there I was along with 2500 other idiots in downtown Montreal at 5am on a cold morning, standing nervously waiting to be told to take my clothes off. For someone who was able to stay relatively detached from it, it was an interesting opportunity to observe human sexual behaviour in an unusual context.

Wait a minute - did I just say sexual behaviour? Surely every one of those men and women was there purely in the interests of creating art? Well, some of them might have been. Many more were there, like me, to be part of some big unusual event. But honestly I think the majority just wanted to see naked members of the opposite sex.

I think there is a big part of our sexual psyche that wants an excuse to do sexy things. There is a movie which featured a group of strangers being forced to strip and being tied together (man to woman) by terrorists. I don’t remember anything about that movie at all except for the idea of being forced to strip and be tied up to a naked attractive female. That’s kinky.

The Spencer Tunick installations are similar, I think. Secretly many of us would love nothing more than to get naked in front of similarly-uncovered strangers. Taking part in one of these events provides a socially acceptable excuse for us to do so. And a great many of the people on Rue St Catherine on that morning were there because they were listening to their inner voyeur.

So we’re all there. We’re still clothed. There are a heck of a lot of people, and there’s not a lot of space. There’s kind of an unspoken awareness that the people who are adjacent to you now are the ones you’re going to be exposing yourself to, and seeing naked, and that has an effect on people’s behaviour. Gradually, subtly, clusters of men are forming around attractive unaccompanied young women. Consciously or otherwise, those women are themselves clustering together as if for protection. Except for people who obviously arrived together, there’s no talking.

I’m delighted to find myself between twentyish student type with brown frizzy hair and a slightly older blonde. Not that I’m looking, but they’re both pretty nicely shaped. Despite myself, I feel a stirring in my pants. I focus on an old man, and it’s not a problem any more.

Then suddenly, it’s happening, and we’re getting naked. A moment of craziness. One of my neighbours, the blonde, is a little hesitant. She catches my eye for a brief second, and glances down at my crotch as I’m stripping. Then she turns away, and she’s naked too.  She’s a little fatter than she looked in her clothes.

What way do you face when you’re stripping in a crowd? I’m seeing flashes of genitals and breasts. Everyone is moving so quickly that it’s less than real. Then everyone - everyone - is nude and shivering and a little red, and no one knows where to look. You can only see the people next to you, and they are naked. This is the reality. Unless you crane your neck and look only at the sky, you will be looking at someone’s private body parts, and probably they at yours too. The mood changes. This is now funny. We let ourselves look at each other.

The brown-haired girl has the most stunning breasts, round and plump. She knows I’m looking, and smiles at me. I smile back; it’s OK for me to be looking; this is what she came here for. It’s a bizarrely non-sexual moment. The mood is such that I’m able to appreciate the shape and design of her body without thinking about what it would be like to fuck her.

We’re posed lying curled up on our sides. The brown-haired girl’s butt is close to me and right in my field of view; I can see her pussy lips. I wonder who is looking at my genitals right now. I hope someone is. The blonde would be my first choice, but just as likely its some guy.

We’re naked for what feels like an hour. We get moved and re-posed, but I stay close to the brown-haired girl, or maybe she’s staying close to me. We are developing a little relationship of half-glances and smiles. God knows, she’s a stunning woman, and very naked indeed, and yet I’m not getting aroused. It’s a calm, accepting feeling.

When it’s all over, we’re quickly dressed, and with one last smile, we’re gone our separate ways, platonic lovers who never shared a single word of conversation.

Spencer Tunick’s images are very boring. Thousands of anonymous pink dots. But every single one of those dots had to expose themself to the judgement of strangers. Every single one of those dots built a functioning intimate relationship with the others around them. Yes, at the end, I must say, art happened that day - not in spite of our sexual urges, but rather because of them.

 I wanted to share some sample images from one of my favourite pay sites; DOMAI. They focus on ”non-sexual nudity” which for me at least, is pretty damn sexy. These are nicely posed, professional images of just regular pretty girls. I’m more than happy to list regular old nudity here if it’s well done, and these are extraordinarily well done.

Let’s talk about the classic. Strip poker must surely be the most famous sex game around. From my point of view, it has it all - drama, suspense, risk, reward, the possibility of humiliation, and a lot of brainwork. Wonderful.

I don’t intend to regularly post to text-only erotica, but the “Pure Stip Poker” stories by someone called MikeCA are the canonical texts of strip poker. Warning; it’s a big read, and maybe a little heavy on the minute details of the poker itself, but still incredibly sexy:

 http://www.asstr.org/~mikeca/stories.html

I can’t help you with actually playing strip poker in real life (though I wonder if there’s a market for some kind of stripping game dating service) but of course there are a zillion computer versions of the game. If you do a google search for “strip poker” you’ll get well over two million results, 99.9% of which will infect your PC with something nasty if you click on them. I own ”Video Strip Poker” from Torquemada Games, and I can vouch for both the quality and the safety of the product.

http://www.super-poker.com/

Of course you can also watch people playing stripping games. The granddaddy of these sites is “Strip Game Central” which has been showing pictures and stories of nice girls (and sometimes geeky guys) winning the clothes off each other and then performing forfeits. The site looks like it could use a design update, and it’s a bit expensive (being a UK site and the exchange rates being what they are) but the content is absolute gold.

This guy is trying to build a site based around interactive video stripping games. I say good luck to him, he certainly knows how to pursuade girls to go along with his plan.

As a healthy straight adult male with an Internet connection, I naturally see a lot of porn. In itself, this is a great thing, and I’d like to thank Tim Berners Lee for making it possible. Unfortunately, you don’t need to see a lot of porn to notice that a great deal of it isn’t very good.

Perhaps I am in the minority - and sadly, I suspect I am - but absurdly fake tits, bad makeup, big hair and and an ugly face aren’t enough to give me a stiffy any more. When those phyisical attributes belong to a clearly post-Caesarian 38-year-old who is being passed off as a young girl “just home from school” I have to wonder; do the producers of pornography think we’re stupid?

 And yes, they probably do. But not all of us are. And not all of them are either. There are gems, here and there, of very high-quality - or at least high-originality - adult content. When I find them, I’ll post them. I hope you like them.

Here are my criteria. I will post pornographic content which:

• Is in any way erotic as well as sexually graphic, or
• Involves using brainpower or applying some skill to get to a sexual reward, or
• Is of exceptional quality, or
• Is of such a stunningly sexy woman that nothing else matters, or
• I just plain like. This is my blog, after all.