Cumfaces: we all have them.

Before you disagree, I’m not talking about the messy, squinting grimace of the post-popshot porn actress. (The mandatory fadeout in mainstream wank-fodder nowadays seems to be a dissatisfied blonde wiping someone else’s dripping ejaculate out of her eyes and nostrils.) No, the cumface I’m referring to is your own. It’s that face you make when you orgasm; that almost pained expression of ecstasy you adopt at that very point when the rest of the world momentarily ceases to exist and sensation is paramount. It’s beautiful.

For this reason, internet porn is heading in a new and interesting direction. More and more people are becoming bored with the monotony of hardcore porn where a camera zooms in on the synthetically-lubricated holes of a surgically-enhanced, spray-tanned actress who then yells in feigned enthusiasm at whoever – or whatever – is roughly and awkwardly inserted. Aside from a small number of ethical and genuinely erotic production houses, creative BDSM scenarios and rare amateur uploads, porn had become tedious, so something had to be done.

Beautiful Agony was set up in 2004 and is growing steadily more popular. It’s a site in which you get to see real orgasms from real people – from the neck up. Each video becomes a intimate portrait of the individual’s cumface, and the result is far sexier than the majority of hardcore hole-battering, cock-choking, eye-spattering sessions elsewhere on the internet. The site’s founder, Richard Lawrence agrees: “I think empathy is the key,” he said in an interview with AlterNet. “When you watch a porn video you know it’s acted, whereas to be aroused requires that you believe there is some actual sexual and emotional interchange happening.”

We hope to bring you more from Beautiful Agony soon… Watch this space!