Joshing

This is not a review. This is one of those perhaps tedious introspective posts, deeply personal and tilting towards "too much information," in which I pick the scab of old feelings and attempt to understand, if not completely justify, an erotic obsession. 

Yes, still at my age I'm capable of obsessing over a strapping young wrestler-slash-pornstar. That's a good thing, right? My obsession with Josh Steel at Fucked Hard Wrestling Rock Hard Wrestling is not new. As I said a few days ago, it goes back a couple of years. 

I don't think I've been all that subtle about how I'm taken with the guy, but for the past year the obsession has advanced to the point that merely the words "Josh Steel" give rise to ... concerns, namely concerns about being a dirty old man. Now that Josh has beefed up to mansize and looks safely past his teen years, I feel a tiny bit more comfortable sharing my thoughts about him.

Josh favors someone I know--or, rather, knew, since it's been over a year since we communicated, probably more like two years. Not just any "someone," but someone who once meant the world to me, still does mean a lot, only in a different way now. It's the long face, easily amused yet always unimpressed with whatever it's turned towards, that most resembles this other person, who imprinted on my erotic imagination about 25 years ago, when he wasn't even remotely my "type," when my type was almost exclusively smooth, blond Italians and hairy-chested Jews. 

I knew him earlier as a student (this other guy, not Josh) and was not impressed or attracted. I gave him a C in the college class I was teaching and didn't give him another thought, certainly never fantasized about him, until he purposefully reentered my life a year later. We had a relationship for three years, which involved wrestling and nesting, among other things--and I mean "relationship" in the unnecessarily euphemistic way we Americans often talk about romantic love. He and I maintained a close, still deeply affectionate relationship for twenty more years until distance and time took their glacially erosive toll. 

What intrigues me is how this whole other "type" could emerge as late as my thirties. And how now someone like Josh Steel enters my radar, in large part because of these autobiographical associations (and, of course, because he's a very hot guy in his own right). My mental associations are aided and abetted by the catalog descriptions on the Rock Hard site, which often refer to Josh as a surfer--this other guy (whom I won't name and, don't worry, won't dwell on any longer here) was a surfer.

The bigger picture is that it's probably true that imprints from early childhood, perhaps even from infancy, establish the parameters of sexual attraction in adulthood. We have types we are drawn to. Whether the men who fit these stereotypes turn out to be people we love is another matter. But even in adulthood, apparently, the sexual imprinting continues, and our tastes evolve over time, expanding or veering off in new directions.

Apart from nostalgia for my golden thirties, what do I like about Josh? As I have said elsewhere, I like his O-face, by which I mean the way he sometimes bites his lower lip while grinding down an opponent. To me it suggests an erotic enjoyment in dishing up pain and, at times, having it served right back to him. I like that his hair is "pullable," a concept that's hard for me to objectively nail down, except to say that his hair, long or short, bunches up in ways that inspire me (and apparently others too: check the sixth picture up above) to give it a yank. I'd say the impulse would be difficult to resist if I were ever to meet Mr. Steel in person.

I like the broad shoulders. The perpetually downcast look of his eyes, even when he's smiling. I like the long waist. Mainly I like the guy's gleeful sadism, the fun he seems to be having while playing rough. I like his propensity for using the corner and the ropes as weapons. His use of headbutting is a definite plus. He gives off the impression that over half the stuff he does in the ring is designed to provoke his opponent. I suspect he enjoys getting a rise out of another wrestler, perhaps to stir up trouble, inspire a little give-and-take, which he seems to enjoy as much as I enjoy watching it.

Perhaps his experience on gay adult sites has made him freer about eroticizing the ring action than most other wrestlers on sites like RHW--not in any easily identifiable or porned-up way (overkill which I find less effective, as a rule), but as a facet of his general aggressiveness. The pictures above illustrate some of these points. Five or six of them are especially effective in stirring up old memories of bedroom  and between-TV-and-sofa battles. The screen shots are taken from his rematch with Ethan Andrews (who badly beat him up in his debut), but here they're back in the ring together, bigger, thicker, and tougher than they were when they first faced off.