In a lengthy 2.10.25 New Yorker profile, White Lotus creator Mike White laid out the basic game plan of The White Lotus. The default idea, as always, has been to “find ways of depicting gay life as transgressive or even perverted.” White: “It’s not all harmless, but it’s not inherently harmful.”

Over the show’s three seasons White has made certain that the quivering pleasures that come from the heavenly stimulation of men’s anuses…giving and receiving analingus, guys being fucked in the ass, slurping bro kisses, the visual savoring of ripped male bods…are always lurking or hovering or what-have-you. Women also seek and receive a fair amount of hetero dick action, of course, but anal bend-overs are obviously closer to White’s heart.

Last night Sam Rockwell‘s Frank, a longtime friend of Walton Goggins‘ Rick…a dude who’s obviously straight…delivered a long confession about his once active and very bacchanalian Bangkok sex life, and the main part of his confession was about…well, lots of anal action. Frank wanted to feel what it’s like to be a hot Asian girl, and so he gussied himself up in feminine apparel and invited a series of white dudes to fuck him in the ass, over and over and over. And then, gradually, he decided to forego the endless cycle of lust, frustration and anxiety and become a Buddhist.

Rockwell delivered Frank’s anal soliloquy in a certain whack-ass, wide-eyed fashion…the kind of acting that says to the audience “this is kinda ridiculous…you know it, I know it. I’m a hetero dude…there’s nothing the least gay or Mike White-ish about me…and here I am talking about getting fucked by lots and lots of guys….logjammin’, logjammin’, logjammin’. I’ve never taken it up the ass but listen to my White Lotus shpiel…I’m goin’ nuts here.”

Outside of gay porn, there hasn’t been this much devotional attention paid to the pleasuring of male anuses since Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo, or The 120 days of Sodom (’75). White would probably never admit it, but I began to develop an idea that his basic White Lotus goal is is out-Pasolini Pasolini. All White has to do to even things up is to arrange for a young straight woman to take it up the ass…I shouldn’t say any more. All I’m saying is that White is really playing the transgressive card this season.

Next week, more brotherly incest with a beneath-the-sheets handjob!