One man licks the stomach of another whose hands remain at his sides, near the back of unbuttoned jeans slipping down his hips.
The anonymous contributor who suggested this photograph offered a delightfully unexpected interpretation:
Despite the men not being my ‘type’, I find myself coming back to this photo again and again. I think it’s because the man whose face you can see seems like the top to me—there’s a stillness to the other man, with his hands on the backs of his thighs, like he was told not to move or touch and had to hold onto himself to make sure he didn’t do either. The look on the other man’s face is also beautiful to me; he might be looking up (usually a submissive position in most porn) but he seems fierce and watchful.
It’s interesting to note that “watchful” can accurately describe both so-called submissive and dominant behavior. Can “fierce”? I think so; the man on the right has what appears to be a scar on his side, and if that man is the submissive partner, then of the two, his body is showing more grit.
Reversing assumptions is a precious skill; compassion and empathy are circumscribed without it. Although I first assumed submissiveness in the man whose face we can see because of the way he is licking the other model, once I understood the alternative possibility, I noticed that the man doing the licking is the active partner here. And, as our anonymous contributor correctly states, since the man doing the licking is in the stereotypically submissive position, if he is the submissive partner, then it’s his activeness itself that queers this image.
So much for a simple narrative.