Category Archives: Gratuitous Nudity

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood!– when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.” ~ George Eliot

Summer is like childhood in so many ways. It holds its innocence ever so briefly, cashing in on its wonder before it realizes its worth. It is temperamental yet resilient, stalwart yet delicate. It can begin and end in fiery fashion, or enter and leave in peaceful calm; every childhood is different, every summer is different. And always – always – it is gone too soon. 

It feels like we’ve already said goodbye to this summer. Maybe we never really finished the mourning of spring. In truth, it almost seems like I’ve been in mourning since last autumn, when things had to fall completely apart before rebuilding into something better. It was a lot of work, and it remains a lot of work, but it is work I have grown to love – work I’ve always loved but never quite realized as love. “It gives me purpose, gives me voice… to say to the world… this is why I live…”

And so our summer draws to its close. It’s something we will never get back, no matter how much I attempt to pin it down here, no matter how many words I put together to keep it intact. Summer, in its everlasting elusiveness, slips away unscathed, while we are left with the scars and the sunburn, and even they will fade until we no longer remember what it was like to swim in the night and not feel a chill. 

“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You’re going to trip over that for a good part of your life.” ~ Maurice Sendak

“Maybe we look into mirrors not merely to seek beauty, regardless how illusive, but to make sure, despite the facts, that we are still here. That the hunted body we move in has not yet been annihilated, scraped out. To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denied cannot know.” ~ Ocean Vuong, ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’

“I read that beauty has historically demanded replication. We make more of anything we find aesthetically pleasing, whether it’s a vase, a painting, a chalice, a poem. We reproduce it in order to keep it, extend it through space and time. To gaze at what pleases – a fresco, a peach-red mountain range, a boy, the mole on his jaw – is, in itself, replication – the image prolonged in the eye, making more of it, making it last. Staring into the mirror, I replicate myself into a future where I might not exist.” – Ocean Vuong, ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’

Here are my Top Nine of 2019, according to Instagram. 

Such are the most liked photos I’ve posted for the past year. 

Clearly the main theme for popular pics is male nudity. 

[Sigh.]

It’s the same thing every year.

It’s not really where I am right now, but I’ll indulge for the numbers.

Bulge and butt, butt and bulge. Here we go round the mulberry bush.

I’ve been stuck in the muck of around 5400 Instagram followers for a good year now, not managing to break through this relatively uninspiring number. Maybe my Twitter feed can teach the Instagram feed a thing or two. {FaceBook is nothing but a bad influence at this point, on every level, in every way.}

The Social Media Tango.

Let’s do this. Let’s dance.

And remember, it takes tiles to tango. 

Come on, come on, get up, follow me!

And one-two, round, together, and one-two…

Remember, this is butt nine of the salacious summation of shots available on my Instagram account.

There’s only one thing to do. 

It all comes down to this.

Booty-shaking, booty-popping, booty-busting beatitude.

Strike a pose.

Like an Icon. 

The book that is seeing me through the end of the summer is a delightfully decadent Italian romp that melds fact and fiction from the life and times of Tennessee Williams. ‘Leading Men’ by Christopher Castellani weaves real and imagined yarns of the writer’s life, and the circle of lovers and friends around him, while touching on the changing social structure of gay life then and now. It’s an entertaining read, but goes deeper too – a treatise on how we age, what becomes of our youth, and how we face – or don’t face – the passing days. I like a summer book that acknowledges and explores the darkness while putting on a glittering facade. Coupled with a few photos from my summer pool days of 2019, here are a few favorite quotes from the book, because Mr. Castellani is better with words than me.

Of all the desires, curiosity is the only one capable of keeping a person alive. ~ from ‘Leading Men’ by Christopher Castellani

Perhaps these were the two types of men in the world: those who kept trying to save you, and those who would forever test you. ~ from ‘Leading Men’ by Christopher Castellani

To be a romantic was to be seduced as easily by a beautiful boy as by a room full of jowly stonemasons passing around jugs of cheap chianti. ~ from ‘Leading Men’ by Christopher Castellani

By now, he was used to it all. And to be used to someone, to settle into his moods and demands and affections, wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that the best you could hope for, even when sometimes what you wanted most of all was to make love on a boulder for an audience of strangers, and to come back to the boulder every night at sunset to find that same man waiting there? Wasn’t that, possibly, everything? ~ from ‘Leading Men’ by Christopher Castellani

He came for someone else, but I was the one he chose. They are different things: being loved and being chosen. Being chosen is the more powerful drug. It enslaves you. And what you miss when it ends is not the man who did the choosing, but that rush of having been seen by him, and then plucked from the weeds, and then gathered up and hoarded and, yes, owned by him. These desires are out of fashion, but that does not make them any less true. I am sorry to be speaking in generalities. I am not trying to be elliptical. I am trying to tell you, in case you do not already know, that you will be loved by many men but chosen by only a few, and that knowing the difference will save you from making a fool of yourself. ~ from ‘Leading Men’ by Christopher Castellani

When Facebook sucks (as it has for the past three years) and Twitter gets too politically-abrasive (thanks to people like me), I turn to Instagram, where things are carefree, light, and occasionally naked. Those are the shots that populate my Top Nine of 2018, because people are still thirsty and these days I’ve got extra junk in my trunk to give away for free. There’s also my YouTube account, which I thought I was going to get into but was way wrong because I just can’t be bothered. 

Such is the tattered state of my social media world as the year reaches its close. Largely bored by it all, I’ll admit to coasting a bit of late. To counteract that, I’ll be searching out inspiration and working on a new project which will hopefully result in some images to kickstart my Instagram world. Until then, enjoy all the nudity posted in the last year. 

Shoes and a hand bag.

Madonna once claimed that that’s all a girl needed to go anywhere.

This girl begs to differ.

All I need is a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses.

Ford has always had a 70’s porn aesthetic simmering right below the surface of most of what he does.

And this spread is nothing if not a cheap redux of some 70’s porn scene. Bow-chicka-bow-wow.

We wear our sunglasses at night.

Because the night time is the right time.

Barry White time.

It started off with me in a black t-shirt and black silk pants, so I knew it was a dream. I stood in the center of a small black stage that was worn and scuffed with the marks of performers and the desperate scratches of dying dreams. A group of women hollered from the back of the room, while a small assembly of watchers sat greedily eyeing me up and down.

I was there for one thing: to take my clothes off and put on some sort of show. I did what I sometimes do in situations that make me very uncomfortable: I went into show-girl mode and pretended I knew exactly what I was doing. Prowling around the stage, I strutted and posed, lifting my shirt a little and giving a smile/snarl to those who nodded and yelled. In our society, we’ve all seen how to act like a stripper. (Even those of us who have only seen very select bits of ‘Magic Mike’ and the like.)

There was only so much vamping and stalling I could muster, however, and eventually it came time to give them what they wanted, the only reason I was there. I turned my back to the audience and lifted my shirt. Awkwardly, I had to try a few times. Turns out that shit does take some practice to do it without looking like some clumsy virgin.  No one seemed to mind, though I was anything but emboldened by the audience’s approval.

I swung my inside-out shirt around like some white flag, but it was black, and the people took it as a call for more cheers. The spotlights were blinding, but I could make out a few faces in the crowd. The group of screaming women had positioned themselves closer to the stage, and I knew it was time. Black silk caressed my body, and I didn’t want to take it off but there are times we do what we least want to do. Turning my back to the crowd one more time, I bent over and pulled my pants down, exposing my naked ass to everyone.

As I stepped awkwardly out of my pants, I turned around and faced all those people. Full-frontal screaming ensued but I looked each of those women in the face with a doleful stare, and one-by-one they stopped smiling and cheering. There was such sadness to my expression that my nudity was no longer sexy or fun, and suddenly it felt like we were all about to cry.

In the silence, I picked up my clothes and walked deliberately off the stage, closing the door of the nearby bathroom behind me and pulling my clothes on as quickly as possible.

Then the dream ended.

I awoke in pajamas and blankets, with my husband quietly snoring beside me.

Maybe some dreams are better left dead.

On a day following the first snowfall of the season, I am filled with enough anti-snow sentiment to reach way back in the archives for some sunny pre-skinny-dipping photos. Here is the pool in all its splendor, backed by some blooming black-eye-susans and filtered by the leaves of a cherry tree. It is the bare personification of summer, and I miss it.

This is far too early to have snow, especially since the colorful leaves are being ripped from their branches and everything is bent over beneath the weight of the frozen stuff. A ten-foot-tall clump of fountain grass has been felled – especially tragic as that is the main point of interest in the winter garden. All of our dogwoods are groaning and touching the ground with their burdened branches. The hydrangeas are a weeping mess.

Worse than all of this? The first appearance of Christmas commercials. Best Buy you are so over.

Our ‘Erotica’ anniversary week celebration continues with this extra-cheeky post. (If I’m going to talk the talk, I might as well walk the walk.) Taken a couple of weeks ago at the Standard High Line (where nudity and exhibitionism are strongly encouraged) these shots go well with the daring derriere-flaunting show-off nature of the ‘Erotica’ period. I’ll copy a few lyrics from the extra-special version that appeared in the ‘Sex’ book and remix CD.

MY NAME IS DITA, I’LL BE YOUR MISTRESS TONIGHT

I’LL BE YOUR LOVED ONE, DARLING, TURN OUT THE LIGHT

I’LL BE YOUR SORCERESS, YOUR HEART’S MAGICIAN

I’M NOT A WITCH, I’M A LOVE TECHNICIAN.

I’LL BE YOUR GUIDING LIGHT IN YOUR DARKEST HOUR

I’M GONNA CHANGE YOUR LIFE, I’M LIKE A POISON FLOWER…

WE COULD USE THE CAGE, I’VE GOT A LOT OF ROPE

I’M NOT FULL OF RAGE, I’M FULL OF HOPE

THIS IS NOT A CRIME, AND YOU’RE NOT ON TRIAL

BEND OVER BABY, I’M GONNA MAKE YOU SMILE.

LIGHT THE CANDLES ‘TIL THEY’RE NICE AND SOFT

AND WHEN THEY START TO DRIP I’M GONNA GET YOU OFF…

Pietro Boselli has been here in various stages of undress before, but never quite as nude as he is today. Here’s a gift to you when things on my Twitter and other social media feeds have gone a little too political for my comfort zone. Gratuitous male nudity trumps everything, and it’s high time we returned to those core values of this blog. Feast your eyes upon Mr. Boselli in all his butt-naked glory.