pussy, through a mirror aslant

Nobuyoshi Araki, via Beautiful and depraved

I have a poster of this Araki photograph tacked to the side of a bookcase at home. When my mom was visiting not too long ago, she cast a sidelong glance at the poster and said, "OK, Marjorie. What is this? Is that somebody's anus?"

Putting aside the fact that my mother asking me if I decorate my house with pictures of assholes makes my chest tight with mirth, I do truly love this image. It's so simple, this decontextualizing. All he did was turn a mouth on end and it became the Everyorifice. And by extension, I imagine, the Everywoman.

In the post from which I reaped the image over on Beautiful and Depraved, there's another Araki photo too:



Here's what Kasia, author of said blog, has to say about the both of them:

These two photographs by Araki are the most erotic pussy shots I've seen in a long time. It didn't sink in, at first glance, that I was looking at pussy, but a little tremor went through me and then I smiled.

She sees pussies in visual metaphors of burst watermelons and rosebud lips. My mother sees buttpucker. See? The Everyorifice. Kasia, however, goes on to talk about how it's this "oblique gaze"-- this askance allusion to sex-- that is the real eroticism.

I agree with her up to a point. They are beautiful photographs. And hot. And sly.

However, there's also something pretty erotically compelling about less metaphoric visual depictions of sex. And those can hardly be discounted.

My own erotic fantasies are hopelessly biological. Technical, even. I think my several years spent kissing, exclusively, girls seem to have created a situation in which I may never get over the sheer novelty of being penetrated. In deplorably unkinky fashion. And just that? That strangeness of seeing one body part disappear into another? It's usually enough for me. And sometimes, pretty porn and layered sexual associations just get in the way of this fascination that just doesn't wear thin -- not for me. There you have it: my enthrallment with the mechanics of plain ol' hetero intercourse.

Fuck, that's dull.

And it's certainly not to say that I don't love a metaphor. It occurred to me, as I've been buying little things here and there to finish out my new living space, that I reflexively buy vases. Not expensive ones, really... because I have quite a lot of them. But I do love a good vessel. I favor squat round ones that whittle into necks and widen back out again. Teapots, too.

How silly do I feel that I am so drawn to objects that are hollowed out in the middle? That must speak to some deep self-involvement, no?

When I was an undergrad art major, my senior project involved hundreds of little wire sculptures. I carried needle-nose pliers and a spool of wire in my purse with me everywhere I went. On the train, during lectures, watching TV, I'd model these little bottles and tubes and pots, resembling, in some primitive fashion, those beautifully designed containers for cosmetics-- other vessels that I covet assiduously.

Why on earth is it just now, 10 years later, occurring to me that I was doing nothing with that project if I wasn't making womb after womb after womb?