I chose this picture because it sums up two contradictory issues that animate this blog. The beauty and vigour of the body, the delights of the senses and the question of what constitutes the ennobling employment of these and what represents their debased use.

Which of these is represented by the act of a woman being simultaneously penetrated by two men? What dimension of the question is realised through the act being performed for public consumption, by performers who most likely have no relationship with each other beyond the economic relationship that has results from this engagement?

The skin on the woman glows with enchanting good health, the men’s cocks are vigorous and fully oiled by the power of life; the woman’s face suggests the intensity of the experience-the expression could be contrived for the camera but it achieves its purpose.

Would you like to be in this picture-as watcher, participant, penetrator or penetrated-or even if you wont go so far-does it give you any satisfaction-does it thrill you in any way?

Or does it disgust you-an animal rutting where both excretory and vaginal openings are violated in the commercial denigration of body and spirit?
I find the image intriguing. I enjoy reading good writing about double penetration as at http://www.asstr.org/~SodomTales/emma/consumed.htm and http://www.asstr.org/~SodomTales/emma/consumed2.htm. Both of them being stories that demonstrate a further depth in what St.Augustine dsecribes as the cauldron of lust.

I don’t see myself engaging in it, since the physical proximity of another man at such a level of intimacy would be disconcerting. The sense of erotic abandon, of immersion in sexual possibilities, draws me. The woman’s skin represents that glow that inspires a celebration of the glories of the female body. The vibrant cocks evoke the power I hope to always have when I wish to penetrate too that temple they so violate.

But am I not indulging in the debasement of self by my fellow humans? I expect I am. but I continue to do it and even to promote it through work like this one.

In exploring the notion of decadence,this image would seem to sound the depths of decadence not only in the act it depicts but in the social context of its creation as a public product.This enables us to use it as a point of depature in exploring Augustine's challenge to sensuality in the sections of the autobiographical Confessions where he recollects and repudiates his own sensuality.The stringent terms in which he denigrates his sexual desires facilitates a comparison of different kinds or levels of engement in sexuality.The sexuality he describes is the basic expression of desire between the sexes-the desire to love and be loved and as he puts it,to enjoy the body of the loved one.

What would he say to the kind of sexuality depicted in this image-exclaim that he had been confronted with and perhaps polluted by being compelled to witness a manifestation of a satanic abyss?I think so.











"In Yea and Nay,all things consist"

Jakob Boehme