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A musing part rant part editorial pure provocation of the moment. April 2002 |
Getting Jiggity with Cephalopods
My son was paging through a gaming Monsters manual when he came across this kraken kind of character. After checking its stats, he deemed it "so cool" but I begged to differ when he asked my opinion. "It's been done a million times," I said, my mind racing backwards past the recent Lord of the Rings, right passed Ray Harryhausen's movies, back to the earliest instances I could remember about kraken creature features.
What I didn't tell my son was the one instance of kraken power that's older than its special effects movie appearances yet only hinted at in film: The kraken as an erotic creature.
In all those old creature features, the kraken -- rising with its limb unfurling as water cascades from its wet skin -- is a thing of erotic threat to me. Those limbs spelled action, although I wasn't always aware of the implicit threat.
As a child who weaned from the bottle to the television, I had no obvious understanding of what creature features monsters were getting at. I knew there was some subtext when the Creature from the Black Lagoon stole the girl while the alpha males duked it out on board the ship, but until I was old enough to realize that King Kong was leering at Fay Wray (then groped Jessica Lange), the message was lost on me.
Now I know: Old time movie monsters just wanted some pussy.
OK, it ain't that simple or singular a message. Old time movie monsters also put a face to our cold war fears while newer monsters, perhaps, express our fear of random violence. But still, in the old days, them creatures went after the girl.
And, for some reason, the octopus does it for me more than any skulking skeleton, rampaging dinosaur, or ship-invading Gil Man can. After all, a cephalopod can attack from any number of fronts. When those eight arms unfurl, they can conduct one hell of a search and seizure. And when it gets the girl, we're talking a one-creature bondage and sexual intrusion act here.
Yes, I mean tentacle sex. And when I say kraken, I mean any cephalopod -- octopi, squid, whatever. If it's aquatic, multi-limbed, and suction bearing, it qualifies. The kind of animalistic sex where the femme fatale gets pinned and held by multiple arms, some of which would constrict while others would rely on suction. And the sex is the kind of primal act where the creature instinctively knows what to do. It can smell what to do.
Yummy.
It's not a new concept. Tentacle sex goes back to old Japanese folk tales and it often shows up in its shunga and netsuke. It's carried on in pop culture hentai where comic book illustrations are ripe with wet sex.
Just google the words tentacle sex if you don't believe me.
But why exactly is the vision of a squid holding me down and probing me so exciting to think about? For starters, how about the idea of a prowling menace that means no harm beyond an intensely lusty experience? Add in a love of erotic helplessness, where you have no choice but to endure in the face of raw sexual awareness and hunger. Then there's the tentacle bondage; I can't downplay the effect bondage has on me. All in all, we're talking my desire to surrender to sensation.
Monster movies only teased me with the possibilities, but it took Japanese hentai and shunga to really put the message across. Hentai's quite explicit at displaying wet and wild sex, where tentacle meets cunt and cleavage in a splattering display of wet arousal. The penetration's hardcore and arousing. It makes me want some.
However, what really tops it off isn't the cephalopod's assault -- heck some netsuke portrayals are downright comical -- but the woman's expression as she succumbs to squid passion. Erotic intensity and immersion is written all over her face. It, more than anything else, says hot sex. And superb afterglow.
Sure, it's pure fantasy. But a rich fantasy life is the stuff that fuels erotic initiation, whether you're reaching into your pants or reaching for your lover.
And now I have new fodder the fuel me: a newly discovered squid. Maybe you saw its picture late last year. Long and slender with billowy ears, it's either the Dumbo of squids or aquatically Elfin. I can't decide.
But I do know one thing: Oh, baby!