Back on December 31st, I posted on male photographer David Arnot and his Boy Next Door calendars (for 2012 and 2013), with a full set of the images from the 2012 calendar. On Facebook, Michael Newman then inquired:

On a language point, doesn’t “boys next door,” imply a kind of (pseudo)unposed twinkish look? If so, these guys may be hot, but not in a boy-next-door way.

Michael is both a card-carrying linguist and a gay man, so brings two kinds of inside information to the discussion, both relevant, and, in this case, his critique is right on. These  guys might or might not be hot — that’s a matter of taste — but they’re not boys next door, in modern American English, at any rate

In this variety, boy next door is a fixed expression, a kind of phrasal idiom picking out men by their age and appearance — they are young, no more than their early 20s, and young-looking — and by their character — they are amiable and dependable (so that a loutish 17-year-old-old meth dealer would not qualify); there is absolutely no requirement that the young man in question actually live next door to the speaker. Translating all this into a gay context (given that Arnot’s photographs are homoerotic), we get to the gay folk taxon of the TWINK: stereotypically,

“Twink” is a gay slang term describing a young or young-looking gay man with a slender, ectomorph build, little or no body hair, and no facial hair. (link)

Arnot’s men just don’t fit this picture.

Thinking this through led me to the extraordinary complexity of boy in modern English. Start with the distinction between the relational noun boy ‘son’ (used as the object of have, as in We have three boys and two girls, all grown up now, or with possessive modifiers, as in Our boys are all artists, and our girls are all in technology) and the non-relational noun boy ‘male child, little boy’, with much wider syntax. The usage of the non-relational noun is especially complex, because it marks age as well as sex and so gives rise to all kinds of questions about the taxonomy of age: in various technical contexts, bright lines are made between the technical taxa CHILD and ADULT, but these distinctions map very poorly onto the folk taxonomy, which involves a three-way distinction CHILD (boy ‘little boy’), YOUTH (with various lexical manifestations), and ADULT (grown-up, etc.). So the male-female gender distinction for people in the YOUTH taxon has shifted over the years in its primary lexical manifestations (especially for the young people in question), from boy vs. girl to guy vs. girl.

Now to a one-volume dictionary’s — NOAD2′s — account of the usage:

1 a male child or young man: a group of six boys.

• a son: she put her little boy to bed.

• [ with modifier ] a male child or young man who does a specified job: a delivery boy.

2 [ usu. with adj. ] used informally or lightheartedly to refer to a man: the inspector was a local boy .

• dated used as a friendly form of address from one man to another, often from an older man to a young man: my dear boy, don’t say another word!

• dated, offensive (often used as a form of address) a black male servant or worker.

• used as a form of address to a male dog: down boy, down!

exclam. informalused to express strong feelings, esp. of excitement or admiration: oh boy, that’s wonderful!

PHRASES

the big boys men or organizations considered to be the most powerful and successful.

boys will be boys used to express the view that mischievous or childish behavior is typical of boys or young men and should not cause surprise when it occurs.

one of the boys an accepted member of a group, esp. a group of men: he expected to be treated just like one of the boys | Ms. Patton is one of the boys.

There’s quite a lot not covered here: boyfriend (and girlfriend) and cowboy, for instance, which mark only sex, and boy band, which marks both age and sex. And a collection of uses of boy to mean ‘gay male’ (as in gayboys and in Boystown, the gay village in Chicago, in both of which the age component is largely given up).

Then three clusters of uses: boy as subordinative or submissive; boy as affiliative; and boy for jocular reference.

Subordinative boy: Here fall a conventional use of Boy as a counterpart to Daddy in a specific type of gay male relationship; more generally, boy used, especially in vocatives, for the submissive partner in gay sexual interactions (where it alternates with whore, bitch, and slut, and, less commonly, cunt, queer, and fag(got)); and, most famously, boy used offensively as a vocative for a black male servant.

It turns out that subordinative boy seems to be the historically original use. Dictionaries track boy back to Middle English, where it denoted a male servant; before that, the etymology is unkown.

Affiliative boy: This is the usage in a night out with the boys, poker with the boys, and the like. The reference is to grown men.

And in occurrences of the boys with reference to young men, often overlapping with the jocular uses coming up. So, an ad (this month) for a return of the television show Psych to the regular schedule crows

THE BOYS ARE BACK

referring to the protagonists Sean and Gus, young men who spar ornamentally in adolescent fashion with each other and almost everyone else.

Jocular boy: Here I quote my own uses of self-referential the boy in two Facebook postings about my recovery from hip replacement surgery. From 12/19/20:

The boy is back in briefs! Recent big advances in my abilities (a) to lift my right leg and (b) to bend forward without threatening my hip have opened up a big area of normal life; I could almost surely get back into my jeans, and I’ll try that tomorrow. (Socks continue to be out of range without special equipment, but I’m creeping up on them.)

And the next day:

And today: the boy is back in jeans! It was a snap. One more step towards normal life.

(Socks came soon after.)

Bonus discussion, on the “types” of men who get to be subjects of male calendars and of male porn in general: a catalog of sexual interests. Twinks of course, but also: uncut men, men in business garb, ranch hands (the cowboy fantasy), college men, Latinos, hustlers (from rentboy.com), Cubans, black men, bears, fitness models, rugged guys, leather men, international models. (Then, in porn flicks, any number of fetishes, plus specialties like heavily tattooed men, and, at the other extreme, inkless men. And in calendars, the totally dick-focused presentation of models from underneath, as they would be viewed by a man on his knees in front of them; it makes the cocks look really, really big.) The David Arnot models I posted about count as hunks or studs, all-purpose categories for hot men outside of the twink/bear/leather axes.

On AZBlogX, a posting about male photography by Tony Duran, famous for his fashion and celebrity photos. Two have full frontal nudity, which is why they’re on my X Blog. Another two are technically not X-rated, but they’re certainly sensual and (homo)erotic.

Continuing in the male photography series on AZBlogX (there because of some full frontal shots): Dean Keefer, from back in the 1990s. Once again, I touch on the line between porn and “serious art”, customarily distinguished by intended function: porn intended to get the viewer off, serious art intended to arouse intellectual reflection and artistic appreciation. But of course these motives can be mixed, and in any case genres with some sort of utilitarian purpose can be accomplished with great skill and style. Tafelmusik can be far from trivial and ignorable, and technical manuals can be marvels of composition. (I don’t subscribe to the idea that porn is just bad art.)

Yet another male photographer on AZBlogX: Parisian Dan Throsby, with five full-frontal dark-toned b&w shots, very much focused on the model’s penises (though the models are not displaying their dicks for consumption, as in porn shots).

Again, a link to an AZBlogX posting on a male photographer, in this case Michael Taubenheim. Six full-frontal nudes in several different styles.

On AZBlogX, a longish piece on the master of erotic physique photography, Jim French / Rip Colt, with plenty of illustrations. And with more reflections on the line between art and porn. But note the X warning.

Over on AZBlogX, a piece on porn photographer Kristen Bjorn, with a special appreciation of his 1989 flick Carnaval in Rio. You have been warned.

(About sexuality rather than language.)

I’ve often reflected on the line — not at all clear — between gay porn photography and male art photography. The easy delineation has to do with intent: gay porn is intended to get guys off, male photography is aesthetic appreciation of the male body. But of course motives are mixed: porn can be artfully done, male photography can be arousing. There’s no one reading of an image.

A case in point: the main image in this TitanMen ad for a post-St. Patrick’s Day sale, viewable on AZBlogX here. Carefully composed — certainly not great art, but well crafted — with a dose of humor in the green shamrock on the model’s ass. What makes it porn is in part the context, plus the presentation of the model as a hole to be fucked. (But there’s male photography not much different from this: Steven Vaschon’s two Rear View books, for example,)

(About male photography rather than language.)

The hook is the David Vance photo of two men kissing that I linked to in my “Men kissing” posting. Which reminded me that I hadn’t posted on Vance, a Miami photographer who’s a romantic (in several senses) and a fantasist. (His blog here.)

The closeup kiss photograph is part of a series on models Paul Francis and Levi Pouter; the whole series, from Beautiful Mag (which specializes in photos of beautiful men) is available here. A three-part sequence from the series:

  (#1)

  (#2)

  (#3)

(Vance doesn’t do dick shots, but he gets close. But lots of underwear, pulled down; hands over genitals; draped crotches; butt shots; and so on.)

A relatively conventional solo shot, of model Corey Higgins:

  (#4)

Then a shot of aerialists Stephane Haffner and Emiliano Simione, from another (well-named) series, “Spectacular”:

  (#5)

Finally, one of his many fantasist/mythic photos, yet another version of San Sebastian:

  (#6)

His books: David Vance Photographs (1998), Timeless (2008), Heavenly Bodies (2009), Erotic Dreams (2010), Jungle Fever (2012), Timeless Bodies: Gay Erotic Photos (2013). (Of course, he also does fashion shoots and ad work. It’s not all homoeroticism.)

(A little bit of language stuff, but mostly about male photography and homoeroticsm.)

As Mr. April was replaced by Mr. May in my Boy Next Door calendar (photography by David Arnot), I reflected once again on the inappropriateness of the label boy for the men in this line of calendars. And then, looking for net images of the calendar, I stumbled on the underwear model Philip Fusco, who like Daniel Garofali in an earlier posting, specializes in what I’ve called cock tease shots.

This year’s Boy Next Door calendar: front cover here (with a pits ‘n’ tits display) –

  (#1)

and back cover, with the men of each month, here –

  (#2)

Lots of Just Barely Covered shots. Carefully sculpted bodies, handsome faces (not a one of them smiling, alas), shirt-lifting and armpit shots, but the focus is on the men’s dicks, even though we don’t actually see them.

On boys in these calendars:

Back on December 31st, I posted on male photographer David Arnot and his Boy Next Door calendars (for 2012 and 2013), with a full set of the images from the 2012 calendar. On Facebook, Michael Newman then inquired:

On a language point, doesn’t “boys next door,” imply a kind of (pseudo)unposed twinkish look? If so, these guys may be hot, but not in a boy-next-door way.

Michael is both a card-carrying linguist and a gay man, so brings two kinds of inside information to the discussion, both relevant, and, in this case, his critique is right on. These  guys might or might not be hot — that’s a matter of taste — but they’re not boys next door, in modern American English, at any rate. (link)

Then, in searching on {“boy next door”}, I came across the Boy Next Door Blog, which recommended the Philip Fusco 2013 calendar. Three images from the calendar: a small naked shot of Fusco (but with dick concealed) and two larger ones of him in underwear, doing the beginnings of pants-lowering maneuvers:

  (#3)

  (#4)

  (#5)

Then, from other sources, more extravagant cock teases. First, a moose-knuckle display, plus a pits ‘n’ tits display (his legs are always hairy, but his chest is sometimes smooth, sometimes very lightly furred; he sometimes has light facial scruff trimmed like a beard outlining his chin, sometimes is clean-shaven):

  (#6)

Then extreme pants-lowering:

  (#7)

Then (clean-shaven) shirt-lifting (displaying his armpits meanwhile) combined with extreme pants-lowering:

  (#8)

Finally, Fusco in the most minimal of sheer undergarments, pulled down almost to the cockroot:

So many ways to display his dick while concealing it. More can be viewed in this video of Fusco cock-teasing in Andrew Christian underwear:

There’s an entire (huge) Pinterest gallery devoted to Fusco here — one of a number of such galleries.

Fusco describing himself on his Facebook page:

Philip Fusco is a New York-based commercial, lifestyle and fitness model dedicated to inspiring you with his physique and passionate lifestyle! [underwear doesn't come into it]

His blog, Phil’s Spot, is here. And a video in which Fusco is interviewed for The Underwear Expert is viewable here.

Finally, there are a very few full-frontal shots of Fusco. A few are available here; a particularly nice one is now on AZBlogX, here.

From recent images sent on by Chris Ambidge, five that could have gone on AZBlogX (though they are not visually X-rated) but would also fit here.

1. Toby Young. One of the genres that Chris specializes in is the Naked Man in Kirjasto shot. Kirjasto is Finnish for ‘library’ (literally, ‘book place’), and the name of my library/study/office condo is Kirjasto Zwicky. A number of examples have already come past on AZBlogX. Now here’s one of general interest, since it features a writer of some note — who is, indeed, naked, but covering his genitals with a copy of one of his books — in a photo by a photographer of some note:

  (#1)

On the book:

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2001) is a memoir by Toby Young about his failed five-year effort to make it in the U.S. as a contributing editor at Condé Nast Publications’ Vanity Fair magazine [an obvious play on Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People]. He has written a sequel called The Sound of No Hands Clapping which chronicles his failure as a Hollywood screenwriter in the years after he left New York. (link)

And on the movie made from it:

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a 2008 British comedy film based upon British writer Toby Young’s 2001 memoir of the same name. The film follows a similar storyline, about his five-year struggle to make it in the United States after employment at Sharps Magazine. The names of the magazine and people Young came into contact with during the time were changed for the film adaptation. The film version (adapted by Peter Straughan) is a highly fictionalized account, and differs greatly from the work upon which it was built. (link)

And the website of photographer Serge J-F. Levy is here.

2. Eel Man. For the phallicity file, this wonderful cover from a men’s magazine:

  (#2)

For the masculinity / homoeroticism files: the bare-chested men, the machete, and of course the phallic eel (in bright red, not a typical eely color). On eels as fish and as food, see this posting.

3. From the gay past. A 1955 ad for Austin Reed men’s clothing:

  (#3)

This was from before gay picked up its ‘homosexual’ meaning in general use. Even so, the ad is odd, especially the two men on the right: Sun Top Man looking down the shorts of handstanding Amphibious Man.

4. Father and Son. Another theme of Chris’s photos is the Bookend, the pairing of two similar but contrasting shots (often, people clothed and unclothed). Here’s a touching, and entirely G-rated, bookend of father-and-son photos:

  (#4)

The son is holding a soccer ball in each photo, but they’ve both aged — and you can see how much the trees have grown.

(Ok, no discernible linguistic interest in this one.)

5. Easter rugby. This one is just wonderfully silly. It has men in jockstraps on the field of sport, with an Easter basket. And the guys have pouffy gloves and excellent bunny ears, as well as rugby balls:

  (#5)

Not a triumph of the photographer’s art, but still charming.

On AZBlogX, amended images from male photographers, amended by having captions added and B. Kliban cat stickers as well — hence the portmanteau name cattion (cat + caption), pronounced /kǽtʃǝn/, for the form. Two sets so far: 12 photos from Michael Taubenheim (some of them dick shots), 15 from Benno Thoma (none actually X-rated, but none with much of a linguistic point).

On AZBlogX: a piece on male photographer Michael Reh (not actually X-rated) and another set of cattions (male art + a cat + a caption), this time based on the male photography of Reh and of Kristen Bjorn (totally X-rated) and on the homoerotic (but not actually X-rated) drawings of Kino Sekigushi.

As in the two earlier collections, the cattions are variously poetic, funny, slyly queer, and vulgar, often several at once.

While gathering examples of Michael Reh’s male photography, I came across several sites that referred to genital nudity as present or absent in various photographer’s work (so far as I can tell, there’s none in Reh’s, though he cuts the line very close). In genital nudity, the Adj genital is nonpredicating (His nudity was genital is anomalous): genital nudity isn’t nudity that has the property of being genital, but instead it’s nudity of the genitals, that is, exposure of the genitals. The Adj genital is interpreted via the N genitals — interpretation by evoking a noun is one mark of the type of nonpredicating adjectives known as pseudo-adjectives. (Resistance to modification by degree elements — note the oddity of very genital nudity — is another.)

Putting this aside, there’s the question of how to refer to the images that are banned in certain contexts (U.S. postcards, WordPress postings, etc.). Here’s I’ll restrict myself to the male body in these contexts.

For the Latinate usage have (or show) genital nudity, what’s banned is dicks (or parts of dicks) and balls (though pubic hair gets by). My recent vernacular usage are dick shots is close to this; it doesn’t encompass balls-only shots, but these are few (usually, if you get the balls, you also get the dick). The usage show dick(s) would work similarly, and both could be made more modest by using penis(es) instead of dick(s) (or its alternative cock(s)).

You can find the euphemistic-sounding have explicit nudity and have full-frontal nudity as well. The latter is clear enough, but insufficiently restrictive, since banned images can show dicks from the side or from the rear or merely protruding from clothing in one way or another, and none of these presentations is full-frontal.

The usage have genital nudity is itself a bit short of picking out the banned images exactly, since the depiction of assholes is also banned. (Butts are fine, and acceptable male nudes very often show them, indeed focus on them, but assholes — which are not genital organs — are out).

The usage are X-rated (which I sometimes choose) would cover things perfectly, but you have to know what merits an X rating in visual images to understand it.

So there are the choices, as I see them. We do need some expression, so that people who buy books or look at websites can be informed about what they might get — though I think that it would be useful to be able to tell people that they might be getting a lot of what I’ve called cock tease shots (which might be a plus for some, a minus for others). (At the moment I have no less vernacular expression for these.)

A few days ago, an intense Benno Thoma postcard from Max Vasilatos (in an envelope), with the note: “This could probably go in the regular mail, but I’m taking no chances.” The issue is whether the image counts as X-rated or not; Max and I fairly often puzzle over the categorization of images, sometimes for the purpose of mailing and sometimes for the purpose of posting in certain places on the net (like this blog). The line isn’t clear.

First, the case at hand. Then, some general discussion.

Hoping that I’m not getting myself in trouble, the Thoma photo:

  (#1)

The model’s crotch is in the shadows, and pubic hair is certainly visible — that doesn’t take us over the line into X — but, if you look closely enough, so is the barest outline of a shadowy penis. I’d put this on the good side of the X line, but it’s a close call.

I’ve been in this territory before, with respect to a Tom Bianchi  photo that has no “private parts” visible, but is clearly a photo of one naked man about to penetrate another anally. This one counted as not-X, to the point where it could appear on the cover of one of Bianchi’s books. (I find the image gorgeous and, um, moving, but if I’d had to draw the line, I’d have put it in X territory, for its interpretation and intent.)

On Thoma: I’ve done two postings with his (sumptuous) images of Bel Ami pornstars, here and here, most with frank genital nudity, plus another posting with 15 captioned photos of his, all homoerotic but all dickfree.

Now to more general issues. Male photography ranges from the merely homoerotic through what I’ve called cock tease shots (which skirt the X line as closely as possible) and on to frank genital nudity. To my mind, cock tease photos, drawings, and paintings (and there are a huge number of these) demonstrate the absurdity of the X line and the horror of the penis on which it’s based (the idea seems to be that representations of penises are intrinsically corrupting, at least to children and women). Meanwhile, huge numbers of art works celebrate the male buttocks (so long as penises aren’t involved), and exceptions are made for penises in recognized great works of art.

Now from art to clothing, and the concealing or revealing of a man’s package by various sorts of clothing. Here the range is from hung guys, men who naturally have large packages that will be discernible under clothing; to those with enhanced packages, wearing clothing designed to show off the genitals (dance belts, codpieces, and the like — more below); to men sporting moose knuckles (in trousers; in gym shorts, swim trunks, wrestling singlets, and other sports clothing; and in underwear, especially tight, abbreviated, or sheer underwear); and then to men in underwear that embraces genital nudity frankly (I’ve posted a number of times on AZBlogX about these items). For the underwear, the questions are: how tight is too tight? how abbreviated is too abbreviated? and how sheer is too sheer? And once again, the lines are hard to draw.

The UnderGear catalogs try to draw the lines, marking certain items as involving explicit nudity, but the company’s labeling strikes me as erratic, letting through some items that I would have put on the other side of the X line, while marking as X some items I’d have classified as merely risqué. As with art, so with underwear.

Now to step away from the X line and go back to enhanced packages, a topic I looked at back in 2011 with respect to a garment called JeanPants, essentially a codpiece worn as underwear. This turns out to be a crowded field. Here’s the beginning of a piece from the Fashionista site, “The (Painful) Backstory Behind New ‘Junk’ Jeans, Denim Specially Designed To Support a Man’s Package”, by Nora Crotty (8/13/12):

Men of the world: Are you suffering from scrunched junk? Is regular-old denim cramping your style–and your package? Moreover, do normal jeans fail to provide you with the comfort your goods deserve? Well, at long last, someone’s come up with the perfect solution for all your dick discomforts. Yes, Florida-based clothing brand The Hot Child is manufacturing what it’s calling the “first anatomically-designed jeans with a man’s junk in mind,” aptly dubbed ‘The Hot Child Junk.’ Really.

But these so-called ‘Junk jeans’ aren’t just an advertising ploy – and they aren’t your average penis pants, either. They’re actually constructed with what’s described as a built-in codpiece – you know, that lovely little dick decoration somebody we witnessed Tom Cruise don in Rock of Ages. Or, to put it more bluntly, there’s a pouch … for your penis. Why didn’t we think of this?

  (#2)

Note that this garment is marketed as for comfort rather than display. Yeah, sure.

No doubt there are other brands out there.

Over on AZBlogX, 13 more cattions (male photography with captions by me and cat stickers by B. Kliban): 2 based on Michael Taubenheim photos, 3 on Benno Thoma, 1 Marc Bessange, and 7 Bel Ami. Some are X-rated, many are not, but none is particularly language-related, so they appear on AZBlogX, rather than here.

However, from Cattions 1, here’s a Taubenheim of interest:

The caption is a nice bit of trochaic tetrameter: Pérry / dréams of / béing / píssed on. With the accented vowels in a tight phonological space: — / ɛ  i  i  ɪ / — and the foot-initial consonants — / p  d  b  p  / — as well, with the repeated vowel /i/ in the center of the line and the repeated consonant /p/ at the edges, and with the closely related lax vowels / ɛ ɪ / at the edges and the closely related voiced stops / d b / in the center. I wish I could say that I achieved this amount of balance in the line by calculation, but frankly, I just went with what sounded good to me (and analyzed the result much later).

Then, of course, the caption dirties up the model’s earnestly yearning facial expression.

Four recent postings on AZBlogX that haven’t been linked to from this blog:

6/15/13: Heretic sweat (link): sweat in the gay porn flick Heretic – six shots from an ad, plus information on the eight actors in them

6/16/13: Morning Wood redux for Pride (link): another angle on a three-way from the gay porn flick Morning Wood

6/17/13: Who WAS that masked panda? (link): five recent images (most X-rated) from Chris Ambidge

6/22/13: Cattions 6: twelve more (link): twelve more cattions (only one X-rated), based on Taubenheim, Thoma, Reh, and Roffman photos of men

On AZBlogX, a set of 19 Asterixions: Asterix stickers on captioned male photography (with snarky, silly, sexy, or poignant captions added by me) — 12 photos by Howard Roffman, 4 by Benno Thoma, 3 by Michael Reh. This posting continues the series of five sets of cattions (with B. Kliban cat stickers).

A few of the images show full-frontal nudity, but most do not. There’s some linguistic interest in the representation of sounds in Asterix (in French and English).

(About understanding photography rather than language. Warning: high sexual content.)

Interpreting what’s going on in a photograph can be quite a task, especially if the photograph is untitled and uncaptioned, or provided with only a minimal title (“Miami Beach, 1985″ or the like). Sometimes the interpretive task rivals that of discerning a narrative in projective tests that use visual materials, like the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). (Other visual art can present similar interpretive challenges, especially if the art is unmoored to the rich matrix of historical, social, classical, and Biblical allusions that informed most Western art for centuries.)

In an exhibition, photographs can supply clues to one another, but if you’re looking at one photo in isolation, you don’t get that help. It can also help to know who the photographer was, so you can try to relate one photo to what you know about their work; knowing that the photo came from, for instance, Diane Arbus, Weegee, Garry Winogrand, or Gordon Parks can be helpful.

But without such context, you’re on your own. An example follows. One photo, out of context.

  (#1)

One man, apparently lying down, his eyes closed, one arm behind his head, with a second man staring at his face and three other men staring at his body (possibly his crotch). As far as we can see, the men are naked, and the three we can see most clearly are muscular hunks. Two of the four watchers have some sort of amulet visible on cords around their necks, and the other two probably have amulets as well (we can see the cords). In the background: lush tropical foliage and something that looks like a tiki torch.

If the men were dressed, and not in a tropical location, we could be looking at some sort of examination of the man lying down — perhaps a professional consulation about him. But that’s unlikely, given the jungly nakedness.

Some kind of ritual? Worship? Sacrifice? Given that we’re dealing with naked muscle hunks, and that the image comes from me — there is some relevant context after all — the encounter is probably sexual.

Compare this with a TAT image:

  (#2)

Ambiguous like #1, but in a different way. The physical setting and the clothing are as open to multiple interpretation as the physical setting and the lack of clothing in #1, and in neither case is it clear what’s going on.

The full image for #1 can be found in my AZBlogX posting of 7/13/13 “More group sex” about the gay porn flick Cross Country Part 2 (where it’s #1). From that posting:

Erik Rhodes with his dick as the focus [this has been cropped out in #1 above], then Maxx Diesel handling it, with (from left to right) Derrick Vinyard, Alex Rossi, and Joe Sport giving it their rapt attention. This looks like it’s the beginning of a dick-sharing scene (everybody taking turns at sucking Rhodes’s cock [a gangsuck; see here on these), but turns out to be a prelude to a gangbang of Diesel by the other four guys plus Mike Powers. Sometimes you can’t tell where a group sex scene is going to go.

The back cover of the DVD is in that posting (as #2). The front cover (featuring a naked but not genitally nude Erik Rhodes) is #1 in “Three sex workers” of 7/14/13 on this blog. From Falcon Studio’s press notes:

Two parts… ten scenes… twenty three unforgetable men. Rise to the challenge! The movie event of the year is here… Falcon’s Cross Country is a must-see epic destination movie filmed on location in breathtaking New Zealand.

The story picks up from Cross Country Part 1. On their journey to return an ancient Maori totem to Roman Heart, Matthew Rush and Erik Rhodes quickly learn things aren’t as simple as seem. They come face-to-face with a sex-crazed cult that worships the flesh, a mysterious Maori guide and more.”

So both a sex scene and ritual worship.

From the sub-annals of Unintended Phallicity, this photo on the front page of the July 25th Fort Collins Coloradoan, cropped down a bit here:

 Eli Gallegos, an electrician with Loveland-based Gregory Electric, installs an outlet box as construction continues Thursday on the Colorado State University Powerhouse Energy Institute in Old Town Fort Collins. / V. Richard Haro/The Coloradoan

From Andy Sleeper, who sent me the photo:

I had to ask whether I am the only one in Fort Collins to see what I see in the composition of this picture. Do they have editors at that paper??

Of course they do. But most people viewing photographs tend not to focus on people’s crotches, so it would be easy not to notice the phallic drill, even though it’s a big one.