Sword Play

Put two naked men together and sooner or later comparisons are made. Sword Play takes that familiar curiosity a step further, looking at photographs where two penises actually meet. Sometimes it resembles frottage—the rubbing together of two penises for sexual pleasure—but across these images the contact ranges from explicitly sexual to playful, incidental, even strangely formal.

1. Steve York (left - yellow shirt) and Johnny Hardin (right - blue shirt) head-to-head.

2. Guillermo Ricardo (lower) with unknown model also head-to-head.

3. Unknown models getting together in underwear, jockstrap, and crop-top.

Up close, bodies begin to lose their identities. Two erections become lines, curves, intersections, light and shadow. It can be difficult to tell immediately what belongs to whom—or even exactly what we’re looking at. The sexual image edges toward abstraction.

4. Nick Poulos (top) and Boyd Winner (bottom). "Take it hip-to-hip, rock it through the wilderness." B-52s Roam.

5. Nick Poulos (top) and Boyd Winner (bottom).

6. David Gregory sitting on unknown model in bed. I am not sure, but I think this is by Bruce Bellas. Apparently he worked with David Gregory quite a bit and did some domestic shoots with him and a few other models.

Then the camera pulls back and the relationship changes. Now there are two men attached to those forms: looking, comparing, touching, arranging themselves for the camera. What might begin as the old locker-room question of how do I measure up? becomes something considerably more intimate.

7. Bruno above Will Seagers in an outdoor shot.

8. Nick Jarrett above Leo Ford. Notice the reflection in the mirror in the background.

9. Unknwn models embracing on the cover of The Male Swinger c. 1969-1970. Notice the clock and lamp on the side table and the lamb chops on the model on the right that reflects the period. The "Personals" section was a massive classified ad network. Because it was highly illegal to explicitly advertise "gay meetups," magazines branded these sections as "Pen-Pal Clubs" or "Correspondence Clubs" to safely utilize the U.S. Postal Service.

And finally, the sword play becomes almost secondary. Bodies embrace, kiss, balance and mirror one another while their erections simply occupy the same space. In these last images, the point of contact becomes the bottom of a V—the place where two otherwise separate bodies meet.

10. Brothers Perry (left) and Terry aka Jon (right) Sommers kneeling with arms behind their backs by Bruce Bellas in the late 1950s to early 1960s. Notice the lamb chops on Terry and his pronounced tan lines common among Bellas' "California boys" look in his Series 108 collections.

11. Cid V. (left) and Reuben H. (right) in a profile embrace that creates an inverted triangle b&W composition by Bob Mizer in 1968.

Please leave thoughts, questions, additions or corrections in the comments. Thank you, bns