A few days ago, I was asked to provide an Instagram-friendly promo pic for a podcast I recorded last month (it’s called The Second Circle, my episode should be available some time in May – and yes, it’s awesome). Bored of sending people my Twitter avi, and unwilling to take the plunge with a head shot, I decided to trawl through my WordPress media library in search of something just SFW-enough to make it past Zuckerberg Corp’s joyless censors.
The sweet spot – as it were – turned out to be my butt. Or more specifically, the sizeable collection of ass pics I’ve built up over the years on my blog. Whether atop a log in Epping Forest; on a deserted High Line, looking out over Manhattan in the pouring rain; or a pale smudge set against the moody Scottish wilderness, my peachy cheeks have been captured on camera so often (and in so many different settings) that narrowing the field down to one undisputed winner proved unexpectedly tough.
The solution? Twitter, of course! Within minutes, I was merrily tweeting out a bunch of faves and asking my followers to help pick one – which brings me to today’s post. Because surprise, surprise, sharing my best nudes and getting feedback on them was a lot of fun. I know: crazy, right? It’s as if 5+ years of Sinful Sunday and February Photo Fest have taught me absolutely nothing. `However, what the whole exercise also made me realise is that like many of my sex blogger friends, I have a vast trove of erotic photos (and stories) sitting on my site gathering dust; and that actually I ought to take them out from time to time, and give them a polish.
I’ll add a caveat here: other people already do this far better than I do. From WordPress plug-ins that automatically share old posts on Twitter, to themes and navigation options that make it easy to showcase your best work, there’s loads I could do to improve both the UX on my site itself, and the visibility of posts and photos from way back when. I have a ‘top posts’ page pinned to my main nav bar, with additional tabs for all my erotica and dick pics, plus the usual dropdowns to search by category and date, but it feels like a token effort given the functionality at my disposal.
So yes, mea culpa. Stuff doesn’t have to get lost. Even so, for anyone who’s been blogging for 4, 5, 6 years – and who’s churned out over 500 posts in the process – there’s an occasionally painful awareness that most readers will only skim the surface of everything you’ve ever written. Sometimes that’s no bad thing: like most bloggers, I’ve published plenty of crap in my time. Stories that were rushed or ill-conceived, photos that I couldn’t be bothered to edit properly, and opinions I’ve since re-thought or that I now realise make little sense – you’ll find all of those somewhere on this site, if you look hard enough (those of you who don’t particularly like my writing won’t have to look hard at all).
But I’m also enormously proud of this blog! I’ve done so much cool stuff with it over the last few years, and it’s opened more doors than I thought possible when I started writing (including the most important door of all – the one that led to Liv, marriage, Martha, and all the rest of it!). For every bad post, I feel like there are half-a-dozen that range from solid to pretty damn good, which means I’m sitting on literally hundreds of stories, essays and photos that I’d be happy for people to (re-)discover. If I want that to happen though, I have to do something about it – with very few exceptions (you know who you are…), no-one is going to spend their time trawling through my archives unprompted.
Hence this post. Dick pics aren’t to everyone’s taste, but I know from excellent experience that plenty of people do like them, and they’re certainly no less legitimate a form of erotic photography than any other. Just ask Robert Mapplethorpe. His electrifying, intimate, and profoundly sexual penis photos are rightly lauded, and have appeared in mainstream galleries around the world – including the Tate and the Guggenheim. He turned dick pics into art long before they even existed as a cultural phenomenon, and while I’m clearly a long, long way from achieving that level of creative excellence, I have felt legitimised and inspired by his work since I first discovered it.
Unfortunately my quest to put together a basic dick pic ‘top 10’ from the dozens of photos in my WP library took a bit of a left turn when I emerged from my initial sift with a shortlist of 27. Apparently I really enjoy looking at my own cock. The list would’ve been even longer, but I applied relatively strict criteria to the definition of ‘dick pic’, which ruled out any photo featuring people doing something to my cock (‘sex pic’) and any photo where it clearly wasn’t the main focus (‘pic containing dick’).
Unable to see the wood from the trees by that point, I whacked all 27 images into a Google folder and asked a small group of partners/friends/reliable perverts to help me out. And happily they did not disappoint, with plenty of variety among the photos they voted for.
So here we are. With a brief nod to the couple of pics that just missed the cut…
…it’s time to play Top of the Cocks!
#10: Parallel Lines
I’m happy that a less conventional dick pic made the top 10. Although there’s a lot going on here, I think the way it’s framed ensures that my cock is still the main focus, and I like the way it falls against my leg, helping to form the parallel lines in the post title.
#9: Grip
One of two photos here that were shot by Exposing40. Taken immediately post-orgasm, she managed to capture that single drop of jizz hanging off the coronal ridge, which I’m guessing is what holds most people’s attention when they look at it.
#8: Cupped
This was designed to illustrate how you can take a broadly innocent, tender nude and turn it into something much more powerful and sexual just by tweaking the lighting a bit and slightly adjusting your body position – regardless of whether the cock you’re holding is hard or soft. Check out the link in the title above for the ‘before’ image.
#7: Stairway
My old flat was so good for nudes! I took loads in the couple of weeks before I moved out, including this somewhat uncomfortable pose on the staircase up to our living room. Like #10, I’d argue it still counts as a dick pic, even though you can see my whole body and jawline sprawled out across the steps.
#6: Balcony
Until the elastic went, these were my favourite boxers, and I’m almost more nostalgic for them than I am for this awesome balcony. I suspect people chose this photo for the startlingly blue sky behind me as much as they did for my dick, but I’m ok with that. If I posted it again now, I’d probably crop it a bit tighter at the bottom – I’m not sure you need to see quite so much of my legs.
I was super horny when I took this (check out the bulging vein…), mainly because I was in the middle of writing an incredibly filthy story that made its way onto Malin James’ blog a few days later. I find it interesting that while a lot of the background details and general ambience are different, five of the top six photos on this list essentially feature my erection front and centre, shot from roughly the same angle. Guys are rightly encouraged to be creative and thoughtful when they take dick pics, rather than just wanging it out there, but maybe there’s also something to be said for finding what works for you and keeping it simple…
#4: Dark Corners
A second E40 effort, shot in a cave (yes) in Luxembourg (really). Low lighting is always pretty flattering, but this takes that principle to extremes. I really like the sliver of light along the shaft, and that little spiderweb of veins on my hand.
#3: Sheer
This might be my favourite! I love wearing Liv’s knickers – or any lingerie really – and I was really happy with how I composed and edited this photo. If I was going to hang one dick pic on my wall, it might be this one.
#1=: Mojo
An appropriate title for a photo that attracted all kinds of (welcome) pervy comments when I first shared it. I don’t know why, but it looks like my boxers are painted on, and while I’ve increasingly moved away from posting heavily filtered images, I think the slightly stylised effect kinda works here.
#1=: Cock
Well quite! This photo and the one above were the clear winners, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that they’re both so…basic. Challenged by a blogger friend to take a clean, simple dick pic for February Photo Fest two years ago, I put on my best white shirt and just went for it. Black-and-white doesn’t automatically make something sexy, but in this case I think it really works – and clearly a number of people agree!
