Or Four...On the Floor

I may have mentioned something in passing at some point about my affinity for a certain pop star whose name rhymes with "Split We Beers" (hmm, I may have just coined the name of a future budget brewery)...have I mentioned this? (Hint for those readers just joining Adonis Complex: Yes. I have. Several times. .) Well, as I was brainstorming a theme for today's post I realized I've done several three-fer posts but few, if any, posts of foursomes. Perhaps tellingly, I also realized once I'd selected today's quadrilateral theme that while photos of three good looking semi-nude men are relatively plentiful in my collection, photographic foursomes are strangely far more difficult to come by. It's not quantity, because I have tons of group shots with more than four guys, so I wonder why. Perhaps four falls in that little no-man's land of sexual fantasy between the threesome (a staple of the adventurous sexual mind, especially in males, throughout history) and the all-out orgy (a staple of HBO dramas set in ancient Rome and Stanley Kubrick films starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman). I guess four just isn't as risque or prevalent in the fantasy repertory (being a close multiple of two, I suppose a foursome has an annoying tendency to lapse into an often awkward side-by-side 1-0n-1 thing, which kind of defeats the purpose...unless the wrong people are paired up).


Still, the best part of Britney Spears' (there you go, for those bafflingly still unable to parse that preschool-level clue above) recent single "3," IMHO, is the end of the oh-so-Britney bridge, after Brit claims with mock innocence the way only she can that "what we do is innocent" and assures her lover that if he prefers some 1-on-1 lovin' she's more than willing to oblige: "let's just do it you and me," she says sweetly. Except she's not done, adding a few bars later "...or three..." and then, almost as an afterthought in the seconds before the final chorus returns, she adds gamely, "...or four...on the floor." At that moment in the somewhat maligned music video, the largely dead expression the blond starlet has worn since her marriage and return to white trashdom suddenly flickers with an almost infinitesimal smirk, a split second where her eyes connect and spark with the knowing mixture of innocence and sexuality that made Britney an icon unlike any other beyond her music. I love that moment, because it's the first time since the fall of the Spears that I have seen an indication that there's still a trace of the old Brit in there behind the dead eyes, beneath the anti-depressants, below the sadness, beyond the conservatorship. It may never again show itself the way it once did, but by golly if it isn't reassuring to see, even for a moment, that there's still a crazy, overprotected, outrageous, freakshow slave 4 u in there somewhere.