Thoughts on Jimmy Safechuck and porn.

Kind of bored here. My RL project which has been consuming most of my attention for the last three weeks is finally winding down and I'm back (temporarily) to twiddling my, uh, thumbs. (Too old now to twiddle that other digit more than 2-3 times a week -- enjoy it while you can, you youngsters!) When I can summon the energy, I will try to return to the "Here's a Strategy That Might Work" series. In the meantime, I was leafing through some correspondence from the "before" days (as in "before" this absurd virus upended all our lives) and stumbled onto some reflections that I had been sharing with a good BL friend (and occasional poster) on Finding Neverland generally (which I hadn't -- and haven't -- seen, but he had) -- and, in particular, on the subject of Jimmy Safechuck. I had forgotten which of MJ's lovelies Safechuck was, so I refreshed my memory with a google search. Some of you might find what I had to say of interest. So here goes. QUOTE He was gorgeous, a wet dream come to life. Photographs do not lie (well I suppose with great effort they can be made to lie but these were not doctored) and MJ (as O'Carroll points out in his book) was not only flaunting Safechuck's beauty (see! I attract the hottest boys!) but also Safechuck's sheer bliss (and they dote on me!). I don't doubt that the present Safechuck was abused, but was it MJ who abused him? Maybe it was time, the ravages of age, a world that refuses to, um, "validate" (I hate that word but alas, one is forced when writing quickly to fall back on the debased language of the present) his experience. Beauty; sexual magnetism -- terrible things because so transient (this underlies, IMHO, the female rage all around us -- it slips through their fingers and they have nothing any more -- no art, no literature, no music, no religion -- to help them deal with it). Even that finger-wagging old Christian C. S. Lewis saw this and acknowledged that Eros was a divinity. The Japanese were right to make a cult out of boy beauty because, you see, it is so evanescent, so transient. Boy beauty trumps woman beauty precisely because it only lasts a moment, is gone before you can grasp it ("as soon as they start smelling of genitals, it's over" wrote one poet whose name has slipped my memory) ... What does it feel like to be worshiped for one's beauty, for one's sexiness? To sense that you can wrap powerful and charismatic men/gods around your proverbial, uh, little finger? Should you revel in it, even though it is in the nature of existence that it will only last a moment and nothing you ever experience afterwards will ever be quite as intense? Or should everyone around you conspire to numb those sensations of power, of sexiness, of sheer exhiliration in your own beauty because they will not last, teach you to trash and doubt and fear what you are feeling? Which leads me to reflections on porn... I am aware of the "I know it when I see it" line, but I wonder....I had to go to Seattle (on a business trip)... While I was there I took in an exhibition of masterworks from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. One of the two most famous paintings in the exhibition was Titian's Danae, which according to the notes acquired a reputation as being so erotic, creating such out-of-control reactions among viewers that it had to be hidden and shown only to a select few. Needless to say, I didn't find it erotic and I think that even had I been cursed with muggle sensibilities I would not have been that stimulated since the Danae in question was all sort of soft with a plump belly -- not much like today's toned boy-like female bodies that the muggles get off on. But it did induce some reflections, particularly when I strolled over to look at Reni's Atalanta and Hippomenes. The subject matter allowed Reni to paint a lovingly detailed study of a nude youth. MUCH more to my taste. Certainly would not have kicked HIM out of my bed. But seeing both paintings (El Greco's Boy Blowing on an Ember was also on exhibit -- incomparable study of a boy's face but only generally rather than specifically erotic) triggered some reflections -- exactly who is kidding whom here? What is porn and what is art? Or are the Titian and the Reni porn done to exacting standards so we are allowed trouble-free gazing at them while getting off on some dirty doings on youtube -- not to mention following link after link like an alcoholic searching for just that image that really pulls your chain -- is a bad thing? I'm having some trouble sorting this out, particularly because so much of the objections to porn remind me of the objections to music made by Plato (and others). Great music is, after all, dangerous (see what Kierkegaard had to say about Mozart). So is porn like cheap pop music -- pressing a handful of buttons (loudness, certain obvious rhythmic and harmonic progressions that are almost guaranteed to produce a response even if one doesn't want to respond) -- while "erotica" such as the Titian and the Reni are like Don Giovanni and Tristan und Isolde -- giving rise to dangerous, out-of-control feelings but doing in such a skillful and magnificent manner that it's okay? I don't know. I wish we could discuss these things (we as in the people of our time); alas, we've largely lost the vocabulary so outside of these little corners where one is allowed to speak the truth (Safechuck was hot!) it has become impossible. UNQUOTE Now to turn to the subject of pederasty in a decadent age.... SR