MURDERBALL
On Sunday we watched Murderball, a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players. I went prepared to enjoy the film, not to get totally turned on by it. But I was. TOTALLY aroused. From the opening sequence showing Mark Zupan dressing (or undressing, I can't remember which), patiently and methodically lifting and lowering and rearranging his legs and feet with his hands while also tugging at his pants.

I know it's not politically correct or completely healthy to FETISHIZE obesity or yeast infections or smoker's cough or physical handicaps or girls-who-are-really-stupid-monosyllabic-cum-loving-sluts or sneezing or horse cock or contortionists, but the human body is intriguing, isn't it? When you are confronted with physical conditions that exaggerate the body -- its functions, its parts, its resiliency -- details are highlighted and emphasized. A sneeze that takes four preliminary gasps before coming in a loud snotty shower is a g-rated orgasm. Sometimes something LIKE the thing is more erotic than the thing itself. A horse cock is not a human cock, but it's a distended distorted magnification of the pales-in-comparison human member, visible and uncensored in a field from the vantage point of the road - we can't help feeling a bestial kinship to the funhouse mirror reflection of our own animal organs and a desire to be overcome by the grotesque largeness of our primal desires.

Anyway, I would pay good money to see Mark Zupan and his thick-eyebrowed, nerdily sexy, lithe ripe-tittied able-bodied girlfriend fucking. The movie showed excerpts from an educational film showing the possibilities of sex with partially-paralyzed men; a nude woman lifted a man out of his chair and tossed him on the bed. The technical virtuosity and physical strength required to function on multiple levels, including the sexual, demands we attend to rich details too often overlooked during the ease and auto-pilot of unhandicapped sex.

These guys sit in their chairs at eye level with breasts. Boobs in the face everywhere they turn! Thinking about this turns me on -- I can't help it. And is there an element of weird dominant mommyness for me? Yes, I think so. I used to "fantasize" every so often about a certain position. A seated man (perhaps on the foot of a bed) I could walk up to, his head at breast level. We embrace, his head on my bosom, my head atop his, my arms wrapped around him, his arms wrapped about my waist, fitting together perfectly. My standing legs between his parted legs. That's it. That's the fantasy. It gives me an intense feeling of emotional satisfaction and sensual pleasure. When I get a man in that position in real life I feel like all is well with the world -- I'm totally blissed out. There is something about drawing a man to your chest, towering over him, and holding him there, and that "something" might just be weird dominant mommyness.

When I was about nineteen, I had a crush on a supervisor named Connor. One time his dad came into our store, being pushed in a wheelchair by a woman 25 years his junior. Connor expressed nothing but contempt for his father, explaining to me that his dad had it pretty good and scored with chicks all the time; Connor's dad enjoyed that his disability allowed him to always have a hot young nurse at his side. The dynamics of this fascinated me and made me totally hot -- Connor, jealous of his old handicapped dad's sexual conquests.

I found myself watching Murderball and trying to decide which member of the USA Paralympic Team I would most like to fuck. I believe I decided on the articulate, mild-mannered Eminem look-alike, Andy Cohn.

The film also showed footage from the Paralympics, showing people participating in all sorts of sports (track, swimming, etc.) with all sorts of different bodies with futuristic modifications. I love pondering what is essential to humanity, to gender, to sexuality, etc. It amazes me how little of our bodies are actually VITAL in defining who we are, how we identify ourselves, and how "alive" we are.

Maybe seeing people who are a little broke down or physically fucked up helps to focus our attention on the essentials. To notice the details of our physicality while recognizing their overall insignificance. Maybe the whole gimp thing is especially stimulating to me because I spend so much time disconnected from my body, totally in my head, isolated and withdrawn from my physical self. Attending to the un-ignorable details and challenges of other people's bodies somehow brings me back into the sensual material world in a way that observing other ablebodied people just doesn't. Or maybe I'm just a kinky freak.
posted by Trixie at 8/23/2005 12:39:00 PM -