Performer, filmmaker and entrepreneur Axel Abysse has made waves over the past year, following the launch of his eponymous website, with a series of handcrafted, lovingly produced erotic vignettes that spotlight deep dives into BDSM, mainly fisting, with such luminaries as FTM star Cyd St. Vincent and legendary fetish performers like Cory Jay and Trent Bloom; the latter, in fact, came out of retirement to film with Abysse.
The website, in partnership with affiliate network zBuckz, is a natural outgrowth of the videos Abysse had been creating and posting to XTube, as well as his fetish work for higher-profile adult companies. The vignettes he posts to the new site are intensely personal — at times, almost uncomfortably so — and reflect dual purposes: a young man’s determination to seek out and destroy any last vestige of shame related to his sexuality, and a 21st century DIY mindset as it relates to commercialized sex. Why wait for a studio or producer to roll along and bankroll your dreams? Just do it yourself, at your own pace, and follow your own artistic impulses, wherever they might take you.
People who are not familiar with fisting tend to think it’s a painful practice … in my case, it’s all about pleasure. There’s no concept of punishment. When I hear, ‘I’m a master, I’ll fist you,’ I run away. Anal fisting is intimate. It’s a deep massage, a stimulation of the sphincter and the prostate. It requires you to trust your partner, not to fear him!
Abysse attended a high school with a focus on the arts and went on to graduate from college with a degree in film studies. “I always wanted to work in the filmmaking field, as a creator, a director. Not necessarily the movie industry, but it had to be related to motion pictures somehow,” he says. “I’m obsessed with art in general — when words, sounds, pictures, shapes or textures can bring you to feel an emotion. It doesn’t have to be beautiful. It has to wake something in you.”
He began using himself as his own photography model. “In my teen years,I was extremely shy — I know it’s hard to believe, but I still am — and I never dared asking anyone to pose for me while I was working on school projects,” he recalls. “It was much easier to use myself as a model and pretend I was working on the ego that grows in us in puberty. I was taking photo or video auto-portraits with my digital camera, way before we called them selfies, and spent hours experimenting with the edits. Now that I think of it, they often had a trashy, homoerotic vibe, though. It all started like this, but I never thought it would lead to where I am today. Today, I’m a full-time filmmaker, in both mainstream and porn fields.”
A significant influence on the burgeoning filmmaker was the oeuvre of David Lynch. “His movies, but also his paintings and installations. I love how he turns the human mind’s weaknesses in atmospheres that seem supernatural and yet can speak to all of us, almost familiar,” says Abysse. “It’s often dark, sometimes terrifying, but also terribly erotic. I believe our sex needs come from the same place as fear or hunger — from deep within. Those feelings you’re hardly in control of. I have wet nightmares more than wet dreams, and I embrace that. I try to make it an inspiration.”
He firmly believes we must “switch our mindsets in our judgmental and hypocritical society” in order to fully embrace, enjoy and explore sexuality, “from human to animal, from citizen to creature. H.R. Giger’s work illustrates it perfectly. I guess you can theoretically see those creatures in some of my work too. In my ‘Insomniacs,’ for example, there’s no acting. It’s my creature. It’s still me. I don’t watch much porn because it’s too scripted, and it often looks too clean. I can rarely find that honesty in model’s eyes. Now, I modestly try on my own scale to create what I feel the porn industry is lacking — pure bestiality, and it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with testosterone.”
An independent filmmaking route “sort of naturally happened to me,” he notes. “As I was training (in) my editing skills, I made that first video I posted on (a tube site) a few years ago. The video-making process was much more important to me, so I just fisted myself in front of my camera on a tripod. It took 20 minutes. But then I edited it for hours to make it look the way I wanted, and it got popular. That wasn’t planned, not that I’m complaining about it.”
The clip’s popularity brought Abysse to the attention of Falcon Studio Group’s fisting/fetish label Club Inferno. “I never tried to contact any studio,” he says. “I honestly thought I was too ‘boy-next-door’ to be in a porn cast. Porn studios create body issues for the entire gay community and I was never comfortable with that — another reason why I always preferred amateur porn. But they hired me for my ability to take a fist and, as an exhibitionist, that was the best opportunity.”
He still shot occasionally for Club Inferno, and other boutique labels like StudFist, while filming his own content. “I kept developing my aesthetic, my editing gimmicks, and gained a big base of followers,” and a chance encounter with FTM star Buck Angel in early 2017 — “I’ve always admired his work” — was auspicious. “We shot together. I showed him more of my work and he basically yelled at me! ‘Stop calling yourself an amateur and make your own platform! Now!’ He convinced me. Six months later, I was launching AxelAbysse.com and I can’t thank him enough for giving me the confidence to do it.”
Abysse launched his site in collaboration with gay affiliate network zBuckz. “Their amazing team is working hard to make the site known through their affiliates program, and through media exposure,” he says. “Of course, social networks like Twitter are definitely essential to my promotion strategy. It’s both a way to show what’s new and stay in touch with everyone. I share a bit of my life, my travels, the other artists and fisters I get to meet. However, I feel social networks are getting stricter everyday and this liberty of communication might not last forever. I’m afraid Facebook's hypocritical bigotry and regular controversies are a sign of what’s coming.”
He sees the opportunity, through his online work, to evangelize for fisting. “People who are not familiar with fisting tend to think it’s a painful practice that belongs to the sadomasochism spectrum. I used to think so, when I first saw fisting in leather- and dungeon-themed porn,” he notes. “In fact, that might be true for only a very small minority of fisters. In my case, it’s all about pleasure. There’s no concept of punishment. When I hear, ‘I’m a master, I’ll fist you,’ I run away. Anal fisting is intimate. It’s a deep massage, a stimulation of the sphincter and the prostate. It requires you to trust your partner, not to fear him!”
The purpose of fisting is relaxation and feeling good in order to “reach orgasms you would never think of with just sodomy,” he explains. “Since I discovered it, I have never gone back to regular sex, because it can’t bring me that joy, those rushes of intense emotions. And I want to communicate that beauty through my videos, spread the passion. I have no interest in filming porn that doesn’t express that.”
Abysse has traveled back-and-forth across the globe on his quest, including to Europe, Asia — he currently lives in Japan — and America, with a jaunt to Australia on the boards. “Every trip is a new opportunity to meet new models and crews. I usually recruit through my site and social media and it always happens very quickly,” he says. “I rarely call it a ‘shoot’ but a ‘session,’ true fisting sessions that happen to be filmed.”
He maintains a lean crew. “Apart from the guys onscreen, I don’t want more than one cameraman. The action has to be authentic, the fewer people around, the better. It’s closer to reporting, a documentary-style kind of pornography. We never script anything, and barely talk about what we’re going to do beforehand. And if I’m not performing on that scene, I’ll be that cameraman. Sometimes I will use a tripod for a second camera, and lighting is also improvised last minute. I truly believe that if you overthink the action before it starts, the magic won’t happen.”
Abysse describes the aesthetic as “real sex between exhibitionists, as seen through the eyes of a voyeur.”
Even with his crew, Abysse is picky. “Every time I can, I’ll pick a camera man who is himself into fisting, because he’ll film what he wants to see. I keep it very real. As for the editing, I do everything myself and I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to let anyone touch my videos. I sometimes spend weeks on editing one 20-minute scene until it finally ends up looking the way I want. Some say it’s too much effort for just porn; I strongly disagree. I have my vision and I believe the viewers appreciate its aesthetic.”
However, he does rely on a select group of collaborators. “Because I’m sometimes very messy, I do get help from the illustrator, designer and drag queen Kosmic Sans, who brings a cleaner and more structured touch on graphic elements. He’s also behind the design of the website.”
Abysse has been reflecting on an “intense year” following the launch of his site. “My first amateur video was released four years ago on XTube, I believe. But we only celebrated AxelAbysse.com’s first anniversary in October; so much happened for me so quickly! I got to play and film with some of my biggest idols in the industry. Trent Bloom, a legend of fisting porn, was retired for years, but agreed to film again with me. He confessed he had been following my work from the beginning; a true honor for me. I still can’t really believe what is happening to me. I guess I’m growing, but it’s too early to say. For now, all I want is to keep at it, staying true to what I love doing. It’s really about passion, for both fisting and filmmaking.”
He notes increased attention to another aspect of his filmmaking process. “On another note, I was recently complemented for my porn being inclusive. I play in my daily life with all kinds of men and it was only natural for me to perpetuate it onscreen. It’s not something I worked on; l think it would actually require so much more effort to cast only cisgender, white, muscular men! I never understood why big studios don’t understand that the stigma comes from them. They’ll defend themselves by saying they hire only what sells, which is wrong: they formulate what sells, they create the norm, the same way Hollywood has whitewashed everything they create through the present day.”
Abysse wants to push his creations beyond surface appeal. “I first thought I was not muscular enough to be featured in porn, when I started, because of what I always saw in porn,” he said. “But being a white cis male saved it, obviously. For me, an arousing porn scene isn't about the body or features of the models. It’s about the connection between men giving pleasure to each other.”
“Asian, black, trans, fat, femme, it shouldn’t matter. I try to cast models I feel I could have a beautiful intimate moment with, professionals or amateurs. Sometimes they’re my friends; sometimes we have just met. Of course, anyone can have preferences, and that’s why pornography should offer the largest variety of choice for everyone to enjoy.”
His ethic is reflected in a personal quote, a mantra, greeting visitors to his site: “My hole is my curse. We must destroy it, so I can find serenity.”
“It’s really a way to express how I feel most days about my body. That joy when fisted I was talking about is very addictive,” he says. “My hole is truly needy, it is hungry the same way my stomach can be for food. It can happen anywhere, anytime, I have zero control over it. In those moments, I have no choice but to stuff it, otherwise I won’t be able to focus on anything else.”
He describes “a large collection of dildos” for that very purpose. “I need to stretch myself and hit my prostate. It’s a curse because it invades my life, my relationships, my way of thinking. The more I fuck my hole, the better my body embraces and adapts to the fist or whatever I feed it. So I have to go harder every time. And better orgasms come along. It’s endless. It’s a curse because I can’t get rid of it. I somehow hope destroying my hole once for all would relieve me of this hunger. But, regarding what my life became thanks to that quest for serenity, the curse became a blessing.”
Despite the increased attention that had accompanied his rising profile, Abysse keeps himself honest. “Fisting pornography is a niche; my films won’t change the world,” he says. “But I’ve been told they contributed to opening some eyes already and I’m very happy about it. There’s so much more to do.”
