A shirtless young man with long, wavy hair and an eye-mask on his forehead looks into the camera with his face directed upwards.
This image was suggested by Lady Grey (major props!), who says that it was “originally posted at Ectomo with an accompanying microfiction.”
Lifting the mask was about the worst thing we could have done, under the circumstances.
He shone. I mean, he was somehow confected…caramelian…slick, sticky, and powdery, with golden sugar dusting his lashes that shook loose into motes as he fluttered awake, fluttered and fixed us with a liquid look.
And we looked back, which was perhaps our second mistake. That shell-chocolate masklet, perched on heated brow, began to wilt, and so, for a moment, did our determination. But we remembered our hunger, and drew strength from it as we chose our knives, and the boy began to struggle.
Wow! Although it took me a few moments to piece the microfiction together with the image, it was certainly hot. The image itself, with the photograph’s levels so obviously adjusted so that the entire thing shines red, is beautiful. Beyond that, though, I wonder if I’ve ever seen a more masculinely “pretty” person in my entire life; the model is gorgeous.
One of the struggles I’ve encountered time and again in teasing apart what “pretty” looks means to me is the misunderstanding (both my own for a while and other people’s) that softness and delicacy is coupled with femininity. While the model in this photograph certainly has traits that modern Western civilization would consider more appropriate for women than for men (such as long hair), there’s very little that strikes me as “womanly” in this man’s appearance. The addition of unconventionally red lips and high cheekbones look not like a cancellation of maleness, but like an additional harmony to the masculine melody still playing loudly.
-maymay