This is a picture of singer-songwriter Jake Thackray. I don't even know if I'm supposed to have it, and I don't know who to acknowledge for it. If someone can tell me I will gladly give them credit. It's a scan of a blown up photo, so is not very sharp, but the charm is still there for me. So what does turn me on? After reading Lee's blog on Boundaries, and Lillie’s response, I have been trying to work it out. I don’t think pictures, as pictures, do anything for me generally: not nudity, over-developed muscles, sexual organs, hair, tattoos, bum fissures, fancy pouches and unnatural poses. I think Lillie put her finger on it when she found a picture to post, only because she had seen the man move and knew his work as an actor.
The picture I have posted appeals to me because I have seen Jake on TV and film and I too know his work pretty well. His talent turns me on. Also his unaccustomed smile here, as most pictures show him to have been a man with a long lugubrious face with hooded eyes - a beau laid as the French say, or ugly in an attractive way. I also have a great weakness for men in white rollneck sweaters. I just ache to get my arms round them!
In the flesh, the ugly can have an irresistible charm, and I am also drawn to tall men, large noses, and long dancer’s legs. But for the quick clench of the stomach and the indrawn breath I think one needs the totally unexpected, as in this diary entry I made in July 2001, when my house was being rewired during a heatwave:
- The 30-year-old electrician stripped to his waist yesterday, it was so hot. His trousers, pockets loaded with tools, sat low on his hips, and his torso was bare to beneath the navel, taught and smooth, an even all-over brown from the sun. Ahh! so beautiful! Why are we able to give ourselves permission only when we are too old to act upon it? God! that stomach – I could have buried my face in it. I hope he couldn’t see the yearning in my eyes, fleeting as it was. It makes me weep as I write……
12 comments:
I wish that, when thinking of my own looks, I could remember that magazines and fashionista's do not create what is attractive! I too like large noses. I adore laugh lines around the eyes.
My man has a stray eye, that he feels is a terrible flaw. I see it as rakish, a bit of the pirate. I like the way he looks right at me and elsewhere at the same time.
It seems we've found that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
I think we have also found that we are not really interested in Lee's boundaries between erotica and pornography as art forms, but rather in the real thing, and what is actually on offer. Sorry Lee! ~;)
So shall we keep logging on to his Curate After Dark? Ahem! See you there Lillie.
J. This post resonates with me. I too prefer the non classically handsome. I adore long legs too and laughter lines ( lillie).
The extract from your diary brought tears to my eyes. We are NEVER too old to appreciate beauty and we never lose the need to touch.
I very much liked Jake Thackeray's work and can see, as a male, why you might find him attractive. (did you know that he died quite young?)
As to your poignant diary entry about the electrician: We were talking in a male group about females and eroticism. The group contained an 80 year old with the aspect of a bishop. "I suppose, Bill", said I, "that all this must get much easier and forgotten as one gets to your age?"
Shaking his white haired head and in a mournful voice, came the reply, "Oh, no it doesn't!".
Jake was 64 when he died on Christmas Eve in 2002. That does seem quite young from where I'm sitting.
Thanks for the bishop anecdote - it's comforting to know I'm not unusual!
I take your point but you are perhaps running a parallel argument. My original question related to photographs, when are they art, erotic, clinical, pornography or unsettling.
I very much agree that the real person has much more to offer, much more spark and connection than a photograph.
True, Lee, I realise that.
But isn't it fascinating to see a discussion extending beyond one blog, picked up by blogger friends and carried off in another direction on other blogs, and emphasising how blogger 'communities' develop in groups who read each other regularly. I feel we are virtually sitting round the table in someone's virtual kitchen, having a good chat over coffee about whatever comes up.
Who's place shall we congregate at next?
Did anyone bring the virtual Tim-Tams?
I had to look that one up on the web, Lee. With Vegemite and Milo and Tim Tams, I shall soon be able to offer my virtual friends a virtual home from home in my virtual kitchen! (You can hardly get two people into my kitchen, let alone a table and chairs.)
Oh, we'd settle for cushions on the floor. Can we have Mcvities Digestive biscuits?
Sure! Not so many varieties as there appear to be of Tim-Tams, but
I could offer Plain, Light, or Chocolate Coated.
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