Exposure

I exchanged a handful of friendly emails the other day with an ex-fuckbuddy. Those sorts of conversations make me very happy – it’s always nice to find that you can talk easily and naturally to someone you used to get naked with – and in her case we saw each other recently enough that just the act of chatting over email was enough to revive some pleasant (and pleasantly vivid) memories.

However, it wasn’t just the various mental images of her in my bed that distracted me from what, by then, was a wedding reception in full swing. There was also this, dropped casually into her first message:

“I’m at a hen do today. In the afternoon a very friendly guy came and took all his clothes off for us so we could draw him. He clearly enjoyed his job. As we all stared intently at him, his cock twitched and grew until he stood there, fully erect, in front of 10 giggling hens.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that my cock also twitched and grew simply as a result of reading that description. It’s a scenario that ticks so many boxes for me: exhibitionism, public nudity, CFNM, being controlled…and the blurring of whatever line that exists between uncontrollable arousal and a deep, burning shame.

It was also very well-timed, because this is something I’ve been meaning to write about ever since someone reminded me of an old blog post last week. That first experience of posing naked for someone  – all the way back in 2003 – was highly formative, it would seem; ever since then, I’ve got off on that feeling of being exposed, whether or not there’s a camera between me and my audience.

It can also be terrifying, of course, but that tends to be just another part of the appeal. I don’t get aroused by pain, but its close cousin, fear, can inject adrenaline in a way that goes straight to my dick. That kind of exposure taps into the same vein as things like exam pressure, or the feeling I used to get just before going on stage in school plays, or while warming up for my first match in county badminton tournaments. It’s the strange sort of performance anxiety on which I’ve always thrived.

That was certainly the case a few years ago, when I decided to take the plunge and volunteer as a life model for a class in Oxford. I was working through some body confidence issues, and rather than taking a practical, patient approach to resolving them, I pretty much decided to go hard or go home. Literally, as it turned out.

Looking back at it now is a surreal and slightly embarrassing experience, because I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I responded to an ad on Dailyinfo, an Oxford bulletin board, and quickly found myself invited along to an art studio on a Tuesday night. I hadn’t done any research, so I was completely in the hands of the person running the class, which paradoxically made me feel more secure about the whole experience.

Actually, that makes total sense within the context of my wider sexuality. I find it almost soothing to surrender control sometimes, as if the person telling me what to do is sending me on this fantastic mental holiday, where I can just relax and allow my brain to float out to sea (and yes, I have used that analogy before). When the teacher told me in a matter-of-fact voice that the class was about to begin, her clear, unambiguous assumption that I would just go and get undressed made it far easier to do just that.

The sessions themselves were equally relaxing, albeit with a dash of boredom and a pinch of arousal thrown into the mix. I think I expected my mind to race around at 100mph, and for my heart to beat its way out of my chest; as it was, the silence, and the concentration on the face of the students drawing me, induced this almost trance-like level of calm, which I struggled to shake off for quite a long time afterwards.

Twice I found myself getting erect in front of the class, and both times were the result of direct eye contact with a student. I (just about) got used to that intensity of gaze, I think; at first it was the only disconcerting thing about being there, and I actively tried not to look people in the eye, but as I relaxed into it there became something almost voyeuristic about watching people focus on their work – and on me. On the two occasions when that focus became a silent, two-way interaction, I suddenly became much more aware of my nudity; the consequent vulnerability/discomfort was intense, but also intensely sexual, just for a moment.

I imagine that a hen party generates a very different sort of environment – more giggling, clearly – so the two experiences are not directly comparable. Still, CFNM is a recurring fantasy of mine, and like most recurring fantasies it has several variations. My friend’s email revived in me that desire to be observed intently at close quarters, by multiple people, while completely exposed.

Maybe it would be an intimate cocktail party at someone’s house. Hired as the waiter, I’d be there simply to serve drinks while naked. No talking, no flirting, just a long, appraising glance every now and then from one of the guests: bold and open enough to make me blush and look down at the ground.

Or perhaps a much more casual, spontaneous thing. Two or three friends who I know well. We’re all drinking, and one of them dares me to get naked in front of them. They’re laughing as I strip, and I don’t know whether it’s my body or the situation that they find funny. They slap my arse, or take photos with their phones to show their other friends; one woman even gives my cock a quick tug, just because she can, and by that point she knows that I won’t say no.

A lot of the time there’s only one woman involved. She catches me masturbating in the office late at night, and makes me strip and pleasure myself as her price for not reporting me to HR. Or I lose a bet, so have to take my clothes off for her somewhere public, where I might be seen; she teases me the whole time, and combined with the fear of getting caught her teasing gets me really hard, till I have to make myself come in front of her.

I’m not any kind of a dancer, so there’s rarely a clear performance element to the fantasy. Or, rather, the performance lies in what’s not said, and in the lack of uninhibited movement. It’s a performance of the eyes, or the hands, or the attempt to regulate my breathing. I’m silent and still, even if all around me people are chatting, pointing, and making their amusement – or arousal – obvious. Especially if they’re doing that, in fact.

Because for me the appeal lies not just in giving up control, but in watching someone – or a group of someones – revel in taking it. In regarding me as something to observe and perhaps to play around with, like a cat with a ball of wool. The reason my fantasies in that area are so varied lies in the spectrum of intensity with which she – or they – can do that. All the way from studied indifference at one end to forensic focus at the other; my response shifts accordingly, but at each point along the way I can find something to latch onto, and be aroused by.

To some extent, that’s why I started this blog. The early posts are pretty much all dick pics because at that point I really wanted, and perhaps needed, that feeling of vulnerability and exposure. I still do sometimes. These days I’m more comfortable with the online nudity, it’s true, but in person I don’t think I’ll ever stop getting those butterflies right before stepping in front of a camera, or taking my clothes off while someone sits and watches me, glass of wine in hand. I’m not sure it’ll ever fail to get me hard either.

I don’t know whether I’ll do more life modelling further down the road. I suspect I’ll eventually want to try some variant of it, or to lift various other CFNM fantasies off my mind’s canvas and onto life’s page. Until then, it makes me happy to know that there are groups of women out there who enjoy watching a man take his clothes off and get hard in front of them. If nothing else, it makes those fantasies even easier to draw up in my head…