Gay toy

M ost of us are taught to keep our sexual lives private. Cultural instruction about sex tends to be very prescriptive. Sex happens in our bedrooms, behind closed doors, between a man and a woman. Sex is for procreation rather than pleasure. Sex is for marriage. Sex should only happen when you fall in love.

The Gape Keeper®

Certainly, some of these mores have shifted over time, relaxed a bit. My Toys, a project from Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti, is a frank celebration of the devices and accessories we use in our erotic lives. He photographed people, from around the world, with their collections of sex toys.

It is a visual ode to pleasure, one that might be easy to dismiss or titter at given our general cultural discomfort with talking openly about sex and pleasure and what we do, what we use, how we enjoy our erotic lives. Our bodies can be lush sites of pleasure all on their own, but there is no shame in wanting, craving, seeking more.

Toys give us access to that more. They afford us some control over our pleasure. They allow us to be expansive in gay toy explorations of our bodies and the bodies of lovers. They allow us to test limits, to be voracious, even greedy with our sexual appetites. And why not?

We know America has a gun problem, that there are more guns than people in the United States, that unfettered access to guns, no matter the consequence, is a core tenet of conservative ideology but still … to see the shocking abundance of weaponry laid out on a pool deck, or in a bedroom, or neatly organised in a room dedicated to firearms, is jarring.

It is damning. It is terrifying. I was reminded of The Ameriguns, because there is far less cultural sanction toward such wanton displays of weaponry than toward overt displays of sexuality. My Toys is not prurient, but it is fascinating. The sheer range and quantity of toys on display is impressive and even educational.

Each image in the series speaks to the diverse buffet of a healthy sex life — so much possibility in so many shapes and sizes. Instead, they are artfully arranged in a semicircle on a wood floor or in a neat row on a coffee table or on a kitchen counter or hanging from a large wall rack.

The gay toy allowing us these intimate moments look into the camera. I admire the unabashed confidence of the subjects, so willing to share with strangers a window into their sex lives, how they receive pleasure, how they give it. When you look at sex toys, it can feel kind of silly.

Many look alien. That we care about what people might think about our erotic lives after we are dead and no longer able to feel shame or have to withstand judgment speaks to the way shame is intertwined with our sex lives. Perhaps, it is the Catholic in me. Or the fact that I gay toy college students.