Author: Paul Rosenberg

Back in early June, I had the misfortune of getting an infection “down there.” Not an STI of any kind, just a nasty little bacterial infection which could have, of course, killed my generously-porportioned ass… As you might imagine, I asked my doctor how I got such a thing and his answer was, “Bad luck.” That sort of took the wind out of any niggling guilt for having possibly done something a little over the edge… like jacking off with a couple-dozen guys in one night…

My doctor knows all about my little club and my frequent co-masturbatory exploits.

To be specific, I had a “UTI,” an acronym many women know all too well: Urinary Tract Infection. My bladder, urethra and (as a special, added bonus) my prostate were all rife with bacteria that somehow fought its way up my piss slit into what was undoubtedly a stress-compromised immune situation. A bad bug plus bad timing equals a bad infection. Emergency Room bad.

Among an alarming array of symptoms, I had the first actual fever I can recall having in the past 20 or 30 years. I just never get fevers. Or at least I didn’t until this little bastard struck. It was a fascinating and surreal thing having an actual fever. The violent shakes in particular were amazing to me.

But without going into too much detail, I will get to the pertinent part that I find I am still living with today. My cum has changed.

The ER doc put me on a strong antibiotic, a “big gun” is how my doctor referred to it. I was on it for a few weeks as the stubborn infection finally abated and I returned mostly to normal function. I could pee again, and very significantly for me, I was horny again.

I have long considered my libido to be a primary barometer of my general health. If I had a terrible cold but was still horny, I figured I couldn’t be all that sick.

So with the return of my libido came the return of masturbation and the return of semen… sort of. It was not the same. It was… looser. More liquid. Less viscous. More pearly than milky. I know this isn’t a huge thing, and I’m glad to produce any seed at all after this episode. Even so, it’s disquieting when an essential substance in your life changes its character. Not better or worse, just… changed.

And now, over five months later, I am still somewhat altered. I plan to bring this up at my next physical in January, although I’ve sort of gotten used to it. I’m hoping he just tells me that I’m fine and to stop worrying…

But here’s the thing: I am hornier too. I am also coming in noticeably larger quantities and more explosively than I was. Yes, it is not as thick, but it sure as hell is plentiful, as many of my recent activity partners can attest: I’ve been something of a jizz fountain…

I now routinely hit myself in the face when I jack off. And I now get a good five spurts followed by two or four little ones. This is not how it was before my June adventure in infection. I’m otherwise completely normal and healthy.

This is not bragging. It is also certainly not a recommendation of UTI in order to achieve more explosive orgasms… It is just what it is: An odd and possibly interesting development in the ongoing sex life of a middle-aged Jack Daddy. I’m certainly enjoying it while it lasts. Getting really sick gives one, if nothing else, a certain enhanced perspective on being healthy: It’s far preferable.

So here I am with my extra juice production, albeit the “less pulp” variety. I feel perfectly healthy now so I don’t hold back from demonstrating my newfound surfeit of seminal fluid. You’re certainly welcome to drop by any RCJ event to see for yourself, even if you have no pre-June frame of reference.

That’s all. Just a little story…

A very brief screed. If you’re one of those guys who really likes the thought of other guys jacking off and you still want to call yourself “straight,” you’re probably not going to like it.

Sorry, but I want to be perfectly honest about this.

People are horny apes. All of us. Women, men… All a bunch of horny apes. And of all the apes, we are among the horniest. When this hyper-libido gets combined with the possession of a big brain, and a lot of delusional religious conditioning, we end up with situations like the following, with which I have grown far, far too familiar…

A guy considers himself straight, but he thinks a lot about jacking off with other dudes. Whenever he jacks off by himself, he imagines the hand wrapped around his cock belongs to some other guy. Maybe he imagines his workout partner, or his boss, or his cousin, or his uncle, or his sergeant or his priest… Whoever he imagines is stroking his dick is also someone who has a dick of his own.

Then, this straight guy “just happens” to be leafing through the classified section of a gay newspaper, or stumbles upon a web site, and finds out that there’s a jack-off club in his very own town!

The next thing, this straight guy shoots an email to the club’s published info address, asking for information, stating unambiguously that he is “interested” in the jack-off club, but is also very clear that he is straight, and doesn’t want to belong to a “gay” club.

… Because somehow, guys jacking off together isn’t gay …

I’ve started losing my patience with these guys. Not because I don’t believe a straight guy can enjoy jacking off with another man. I really believe that can and does happen.

But seeking out a jack-off club, going to the trouble to cover one’s tracks, to hide one’s involvement, just to be in a big room full of men, just men, all masturbating and watching each other stroke and moan and squirt together, totally getting into each other’s dicks and sharing sexual pleasure together… going to that level of trouble to do something that’s supposedly just a sidebar to one’s “actual” sexual nature… that just sounds delusional to me. Seriously delusional and seriously self-loathing.

And it’s one example of how we execute all manner of mental gymnastics to trick ourselves into thinking that the sex we want isn’t sex… just so we can have that sex that we want.

I have news for my curious friends: Butt-fucking is not the qualification for a gay card. Cock-sucking is not necessary to genuinely be gay or bi. What sets a man apart from those purely heterosexual men is his desire. It’s all about what he wants, regardless of whether he acts upon it or not. A gay man who never touches another man, is never naked with another man for his entire life… is just a gay man without a sex life. A bisexual man who only has sex with women is still bisexual.

It’s not the external activity that determines a person’s sexual orientation. It’s the internal drives that command his attention.

I’m all in favor of everyone getting to explore their sexual desires—short of hurting others, violating confidence or breaking local laws, of course—but please stop insisting you are 100% straight when you are trying very hard to jack off with other dudes! At the very least, refer to yourself as “curious.” Accept that! Let yourself be curious! Leave the door of your life’s possibilities open to self-discovery. If you’re really straight, you will ultimately feel indifferent about stroking another guy’s erect, pulsing penis.

But experience doesn’t change who you are in reality, only reveals who you are through the proof of your body’s affirmation or invalidation of your desire.

Stop chopping the universe of sex up into little bits and dividing them into sections… (These here are real sex, but these over here are just naughty and those are definitely not sex…)

You know sex because your cock gets hard or your pussy gets wet. Your nipples get stiff and your skin flushes. You breathe heavy, your brain starts pumping out chemicals that make you focused and aggressive and if you keep it up, you may have an orgasm… That includes masturbation alone, with a buddy, with a hundred buddies or with a woman. It includes getting a blow job in a steam room or under the covers from your wife or in a women’s room from a prostitute. It includes fucking a pussy, an ass, a couple of tits or a rubber doll…

It includes fucking the First Lady or getting a blow job from an intern…

Sex is something your body knows, understands and wants, regardless of how you deny it. Stop parsing it and just explore it like an adult, not a frightened kid. You will only learn more about yourself including what you really want, really like, really don’t want and really don’t like. You just grow up into who you really are.

And as many have said before me, it is ultimately just sex! It will keep taking up too much space in your life until you stop suppressing it. Whether you find out you’re really gay or have a touch of the bi or are really, completely straight, you emerge more complete, more who you really are and less a creature made out of bullshit, which is what all of my sad, closeted brothers are, when you get right down to it.

Sorry to rant…

(UPDATE)

I don’t really care how anyone identifies, unless that identification is contradicted by their stated intentions and manifest actions. Then, it’s just a bizarre circus of rationalizations and justifications to do what you want to do without knowing yourself. Straight guys absolutely get curious about sex with dudes on occasion, but straight guys do not pursue that curiosity with focused energy over and over and over… That’s a whole lot more than “curiosity” my friend. That’s an abiding desire for sex with dudes. That is what you call a “sexual orientation.”

You may not like “labels” for people, but calling a green plate a red cup and trying your damnedest to convince yourself and everyone else that that green plate is really a red cup… That’s denying the obvious and no argument is going to factually make that green plate anything other than what it is (and it’s not going to make it any easier to drink coffee out of). That’s not labeling. That’s seeing things as they are and making the best use of them.

Oh, it is good to be home! It’s also sad to no longer be in France. This qualifies as a great vacation… I had a great time and was really missing home by the time it was over. Even so, it was hard to leave. I want to return there. A lot.

And now, some responses…

How is sexuality viewed in France/Spain compared to the US?

Of the limited exposure we experienced, our couplehood was a complete non-issue everywhere we went. That included Paris, Bordeaux, Biarritz, Bayonne and St. Jean-de-Luz. If anyone had a problem with a couple of out, middle-aged homos in their midst, there was absolutely no indication in the general public. The French may simply be more discreet than American in their disapproval, but we dealt almost entirely with the general public, not gay people, and found them uniformly friendly and warm.

Actually, Paris was a bit colder, but I perceived that as about a general dislike of tourists and outsiders, not Americans or Gays. Beyond that, I’d say we felt safer, more comfortable and less conspicuous there than anywhere in the US.

Do men cruise differently there?

I can’t say. We had very little “gay time” on this vacation. we were sightseers, shoppers and diners, but not specifically cruising homos. We did go to a couple of gay bars in Biarritz, but the tourist town was in total off-season mode and the bars were mostly deserted. Most of the people we saw there were locals being convivial… We’ll have to go back and see.

Then again, neither of us cruise a whole lot in the way single guys do. A little online, of course, but not out and about. I can tell you that there were virtually no cruisers online in Biarritz and Grindr was almost useless there, since it wouldn’t fully log me on to the alien network…

If you have sex with any locals, does it feel any different than sex with Americans?

I wish I could tell you. I’d love that perspective. From my experiences with visitors in the US, there is a different approach and energy, but the sex is not radically different. In my experience, every locale in America is a bit different, feels more or less safe to explore. I can tell you that in places that don’t have a vibrant sexual scene, options are limited and people don’t quite get kink as well. More of them just want to fuck and suck, and won’t settle for just JO. I think it takes the presence of a bater community to increase awareness of options, and Europe doesn’t seem to have JO clubs per se.

Do you feel different sexually while on vacation?

On this vacation, I felt far less sexual than I do at home. This may have been part of a general “lull” in my libido but I think it had more to do with the lack of bear culture versus lean culture. French people are generally quite a bit thinner than Americans. This was obvious when we were there and even more so when we got back and saw how big Americans are in contrast. 

I love how American culture has delivered plenty of lovers for the bigger man, as evidenced quite well in the photo blogs of tumblr, but I think nothing quite branded me as an American quite so immediately as my size did. I’m 225 pounds in a 6-foot body, not that unusual here in the US but a good 40 pounds heavier than my counterparts in France…

Being there made me want to lose weight, and when I’m in that frame of mind, I don’t feel sexy. If I’m in the process of losing weight, that makes a huge difference, even if I’m the same size. On this vacation, I was in the process of enjoying French cuisine every day, and that is not weight-loss mode.

And to be frank, I feel less sexual when I’m with my partner than I do when I’m on my own. I adore this man, but we don’t have a lot of sex anymore. We negotiate our sexual openness and constantly take care of our relationship, and it’s a living process. We’re both very much in love with each other, very comfortable together, share 19 years of history together, but we sleep together in the literal sense, not so much in the figurative anymore. I think that’s normal and I’m grateful we are both still so unequivocally eager to be together, but that means less sex. This vacation was about being together, so there was very little sex. There was lots of walking, eating, exploring and interacting with people, and there was much love. Not much sex… I masturbated a few times but a lot less than usual.

I understand and appreciate why a lot of men who have taken up the mantle of “bater” would express their enthusiasm for the bate by referring to themselves as “chronic,” “addicted” and/or “compulsive.”

But I do not believe in sex addiction, compulsive masturbation or any other identifiers that would brand enthusiastic sexuality as “disease.” While there are uses of the words “chronic” and “compulsive” that do not specifically refer to disease, that is the commonly understood meaning of these words and words make a difference, especially when we use them to claim something about ourselves.

I will grant you that I’m a middle-aged white guy, and I don’t refer to things as “bad,” “dope,” “stupid,” “sick” or “the shit” when I mean something is really great. I don’t pretend to be that urban regardless of my Chicago roots.

I do, however, generally appreciate what people mean to say in whatever context they choose. I assume, perhaps mistakenly, that when you call yourself a “chronic, addicted bater” that you’re trying to emphasize how much you love masturbating. You mean to say that you’re so into masturbation that you want to spend hours a day doing it and may actually do just that. You think that by claiming to be addicted to it, you’re actually doing it a sort of honor, saying that it so good you can’t help yourself… 

But here’s the thing: I just don’t feel good about what looks like the application of disease-model language to something I view as inherently natural, good and healthy. Regardless of the intent, I think this is a bad use of language and we ought to choose alternative ways of expressing our enthusiasm for frequent, protracted self-love.

What I think is this: we almost always judge human sexuality, human behavior and sexual activity, according to social norms, not according to objective reality. There are people who, sometimes for extended periods of time, want to have a whole lot of sex. They may be compelled to have a whole lot of sex with a whole lot of different people. Just because that behavior doesn’t fit with our social fairy tale about what is an appropriate dating and mating ritual for a “healthy” adult human does not make it a disease. It’s only abnormal in the context of a stuck-up, plugged-up social norm.

You want to just have missionary-style intercourse with your legal spouse in the dark of your bedroom in your average, Christian-American suburban home? FIne! I’m still going to beat off every day and it’s not a disease just because you don’t…

If a guy thinks about sex and wants to act on that impulse for 95% of his waking hours (I’m giving you 5% for meals) the only thing wrong with that is that it interferes with many standard daily routines (and most job descriptions). Who cares how much a guy wants to masturbate? It does not harm him or anyone else (I do not include anyone’s hurt feelings because those are always the responsibility of the one who hurts). If it’s more jacking off than his boss or his spouse or his room mate thinks is normal, that may be a source of discomfort but that discomfort doesn’t make it pathological.

If a sexual act is consensual, negotiated and nobody is harmed, then in my view, it’s perfectly okay to do it as much as you can make it work for you.

Around the world, every year, 147,000,000 women and girls are sexually mutilated by having their clitoris removed. This is done because women’s sexuality is deemed pathological by those societal norms. I hope you agree with me that this is fucking insane, barbaric and needs to stop. I also hope you can see that in those communities, the girls themselves go along because it is what their culture deems is appropriate.

In the United States, there are hundreds of laws that limit sexual activity that is healthy only because those societies consider those activities as unhealthy, evil, wrong, whatever, based upon whatever moral judgements they have chosen in their county, city or state. Consider polygamy: Aside from the legal issues involving property and liability, how exactly do polyamorous arrangements harm anyone? How does gay marriage harm anyone? No, offending people still does not count because being offended is not actual harm… It’s just being offended.

I am an enthusiastic masturbator, cocksucker, butt-fucker, man-kisser, homosexual man. I’ve lived with my sexual orientation and navigated my way to happiness through it for half a century and I know it’s perfectly fine and harms not a single person. If masturbating a lot is to be considered a chronic condition, an addiction disorder, a compulsion to recover from, then what’s to stop cocksucking, butt-fucking, man-kissing or even loving someone unconventional from being labeled as pathological?

Just because I live in a moralistic, deluded culture that likes to base sexual morality upon ancient, middle-eastern religions doesn’t make my masturbation diseased no matter how much I may do it. You may not masturbate that much yourself, and the thought of it may make you feel sick to your stomach, but your discomfort with my sex life has nothing to do with my life or with objective reality.

Is it erotic to call oneself addicted? Not if one has personal experience of actual addiction.

I think guys who love masturbating—be they homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, solosexual or sociosexual masturbators—should claim it in positive terms and avoid anything that characterizes their penis-passion as pathological. I’m not a compulsive masturbator, I’m an enthusiastic masturbator! I’m not an addicted, chronic masturbator, I am an avid masturbator! I am an expert at giving myself intense pleasure. I love my penis, my testicles and the orgasms my body gives me in response to my own touch. I know myself and care about myself and I do not accept anyone else’s shame about my sacred body and miraculous life.

We live a very short life. Even a hundred years is a short life. It’s over before we know it so why would I want to waste my precious, limited moments on a behavioral disorder? Nothing is more natural than masturbating. You might as well call me a compulsive breather or a chronic sleeper. Eating, breathing, sleeping, fucking, loving, jacking-off… It’s some of the best of what life has to offer every one of us and it’s all supremely good. We should enjoy it while we can without apologizing.

I’ve got some awesome excuses for missing my blog dates. I’ll post soon… from distant lands…

Monday, October 4, 2010

I haven’t added anything original to the blog for over a week now. Forgive me. I’ve been sick. 

It was nothing serious. There’s a good chance you had something like what I had. It’s a cold. Nasal congestion, cought, sore throat… no fever, no aches… I took one day off from work when I was at the hight of grossness, just to spare my fellow salt miners one day of my ambient miasma, but it wasn’t serious. I could have easily updated the blog… 

But I had this great excuse to “take it easy” and so I didn’t write. 

I apologize… 

Not much to tell you… except I also skipped a Jacks event because I wasn’t 100% better. I came in and set up, arranged furniture and played foreman to the opening crew, but I wrote the rules and one of them is:

8) ILLNESS
Do not attend an RCJ event if you have or suspect that you may have a disease you can spread to other members in the course of an event… 

I couldn’t very well break my own rule, could I? Very bad form. So I went home horny and not as sick, but still sick. 

This morning, I had clear evidence that I am on the road to full recovery: I had a spectacular orgasm with a fine fellow in the steam room at my gym. This was after a complete if easy lifting session, so I got it all done. Pumped up the back and biceps and cleaned out the tanks. I also had a second orgasm just a little while ago. I think I am going to feel even better tomorrow. 

I want to point out that I could have easily blown off this brief entry. I’m tired, my teeth are brushed, my face is cleansed and moisturized and my tanks are, once again, well drained. But I needed to follow through before another day passed. So this was my mundane, boring report on just getting better. 

Next, I will select a topic from my vast list and just write… Unless you “Ask Me Anything” and point me in a new direction… Either way, I appreciate you bearing with me. I’ll be back. 

And in conclusion, here is a picture of my very own penis, just so this isn’t a total waste of your time…

I hate this question. It’s a really good question but I really hate it… Screed follows… 

In the movie, Parenthood, Keanu Reeves’ character, Tod, says this: “You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car – hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.” (YouTube)

The question assumes that school is where children should be learning about sex… 

Parents already teach their children about sex from day one. The problem is, what nearly all parents are teaching is that sex is fundamentally naughty, wrong, bad, dirty, embarrassing, dangerous and mysterious at best; and at worst a sure-fire way to burn in hell for all eternity. In other words, they pass on the disinformation they believe, thereby sustaining all of the lies and diseased thinking that we all suffer from all our lives.  

Am I being too harsh? Too broad? Your parents weren’t like that? Granted, all parents are different to some degree… but don’t confuse being used to something with being over something… Fish may not be aware that they’re wet but they live in water so why should they think about it at all? We live in a deeply repressed world so we probably have only an inkling of what actual sexual liberation might be like. 

Children can’t learn healthy sexuality until the people teaching them know something about it themselves. Parents should model healthy sexuality for children from infancy onward and schools could support that with knowledge and valid science according to the developmental stage of the child. This only works, of course, if the parents know about and actively experience healthy sexuality themselves and are not, in fact, butt-reaming assholes… erm, I mean… sadly ignorant people. 

It doesn’t take much investigation to realize that sexually enlightened parents are the exception to the rule. Most, nearly all of our parents are, in my humble opinion, not… enlightened. Not so much… 

Look, I’m actually trying to be kind here because… well… they are our parents, but I’m sorry: It is highly unlikely that you, dear reader, had parents with a fully positive experience of healthy human sexuality, and they probably didn’t raise you to feel unreservedly great about real human sex. Now, you may be the exception, but I’m guessing that you have long struggled with freeing yourself from various sexual hangups you learned at home, starting long before you were out of diapers… That is, after all, the world in which we live. 

I’m not blaming your parents or you. A society can not shake off generations of institutional anti-sexual conditioning overnight. 

It should be apparent that I have a pretty dim view of the prevailing level of sexual enlightenment in the “modern” world. We are altogether too developmentally retarded by centuries of aggressive cultural colonization by the “People of the Book” (Christians, Muslims and Jews). I see those religions as the principal font of virtually all sexual repression in our world today. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it is a prime example of the cycle of suppression/obsession/maladaptation that twists us into knots. In many ways, religion wrote the book on sexual repression. 

The profound influence of this tragic ideological malignancy is so thick in virtually all families and educational institutions that it couldn’t possibly be resolved without great difficulty and hardship. Healthy sexuality is only one of many aspects of genuine humanity which we have sacrificed to this ancient monster. 

I do believe it is getting better. A lot better in some places, but I think we’re still some generations away from anything like real sexual enlightenment as a culture, and only then if we can free ourselves from the tyranny of these ancient religious proscriptions against it. The superstition that still rules so much of our lives keeps us from reality.

The reality I’m talking about: Our sexual impulse is fundamentally good, creative, integrative, connecting and fully, primordially human. Doesn’t exactly align with philosophies based upon a concept of “original sin” now, does it? 

Someday, humanity may include cultures that understand and embrace our innate biological natures, and those natures will not be at odds with everything else we value and aspire to. Unless and until we finally grow up about sex and shed the obsolete, ideological scales covering our eyes, schools will just reflect and perpetuate our ignorance. 

To end on a positive note, I really do think that we are part of the solution, those of us willing to embrace the most healthy expressions of human intimacy available to us and willing to exchange ideas about sex with each other, frankly and honestly. If we can drag humanity out of its long, dark night of sexual ignorance, our schools will naturally reflect and expand upon an evolving ethic of fundamental sexual goodness. 

I’m a big believer in the ultimate victory of water over stone.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

I don’t know if every single living man does this in the course of his life, but I invested quite a bit of time and energy into exploring the different ways I could masturbate, and while the pace of experimentation has slowed as I’ve aged, I still love to explore what my penis has to offer.

One of the earliest variations I learned was from that time I was sitting in 8th grade social studies and a kid sitting nearby was stroking the underside of his penis through his underwear. I could see it clearly from my vantage point beside and slightly behind his desk near the back of the class. His fly was open and he was sitting back against the chair instead of leaning forward on his desk, and the bulge of his boner was right there, clearly exposed, the underside being brushed back and forth by the side of his thumb. Subtle enough so nobody would see him doing it unless they were viewing from my angle, but he was clearly masturbating right there in class, right where I could watch…

Of course, I was completely absorbed in watching him, even as I struggled to not be caught watching. I didn’t want to be seen staring and I didn’t want him to be caught either. I didn’t want it to stop.

I’d never seen another person masturbate before, and definitely not in a dangerous circumstance like IN CLASS, and it had never occured to me to just stimulate that one part of my penis, what I understand now to be the frenulum, that little trigger nerve on the underside just past the divit in the head. I would come to know that specific two inches better in the coming years and I have that kid to thank. I wish I could remember his name…

Holy crap, it was Joe Morris… (I really did just remember, but I’ve changed his name.) I don’t remember a lot of names from my childhood, and Joe and I were not friends… but I think that moment of crystalized childhood memory has preserved his name for me. He was, in that moment of middle-school recklessness, a trailblazer of sorts for someone he never suspected had caught him stroking his dick in class…

I started following his lead by doing exactly what I saw him do, though not in any place I might easily get caught. At home, in the living room, I lay back on the big blue sofa and opened my fly, keeping my already stiff and pulsing dick inside my briefs. My penis has always naturally oriented in an upward direction in my underpants, so it is natural that when hard the most easy access is to the underside and tip. I took my hand and just gently stroked up and down on those magical two inches with the side of my thumb, just as I’d seen Joe doing, paying close attention to the sensations growing inside my penis, that “tightening knot” feeling which seems to radiate from the core of the shaft.

I found that a faster rubbing than my usual slippery-piston method was natural and produced a more intense sensation of building pleasure. I also found that a specific change in the character of that pleasure happened when I judiciously avoided touching the head altogether. Later, I experimented with switching back and forth between the underside alone and the head alone, seeing how the alternating, specific stimulation felt different.

I discovered that a strong stream of water from the shower onto the magic underside felt great too. I facilitated this by wearing my briefs into the shower, so my dick would stay in the upright position, underside to the stream of water, and I could control exactly where the vibration of the tight stream would hit me with a slight movement of my hips and legs, and of course, no hands.

It was during this prolonged experiment of frenulum play that I began to get use to ejaculating in my briefs, a specific pleasure I would not call a fetish for me, but something I clearly enjoy doing and seeing others do.

I found a strap-on massager in my parent’s room which opened up a whole new world of sensation. It fit on the back of my hand, transforming the whole hand and each finger into an intense vibrator. It plugged into the wall and was so powerful it made my hand tingle for a long time after turning it off. I tried turning it on and cupping my whole crotch, moving my hand very slowly but mainly pressing it into my penis and testicles, feeling it respond with my hand and swelling up almost continuously toward an amazing and rather quick orgasm.

I bought a “Jacpak” that I’d seen advertised in one of the gay slicks, marketed by Jack Wrangler. It was a simple white vinyl sleeve with a specific smooth texture that I could blow up, grease up and fuck. It was beautifully low-tech and easy to clean, I could slide it up and down on my cock or wedge it between pillows or mattresses hum and cum into. I wish I could find an old ad for that thing. It was a sort of proto-fleshlight.

I also put my penis into socks, shirts, jocks, ripe melons, banana peels, raw meat…

I tried zapping it with an electrostim machine I had to rehabilitate my knee after surgery. I just strapped it to different parts of my dick instead of my quad muscles…

It’s interesting to me that I was less interested in putting things in my ass than in stimulating my cock itself, but I think that’s just how I’m wired. I like anal stimulation as much as any guy, but I’m far more dick-hungry than butt-hungry. I think it’s safe to say that I just don’t think about or crave a mouth or dick in my hole ever, although I really enjoy it a lot when it happens, it’s not on my A-list. I think about putting my dick inside other guys all the time… I’m also turned on by the thought of fucking a trans man… as long as he’s a hairy guy…

As I understand it, if a guy is not successfully conditioned to not masturbate, to avoid sexual pleasure through psychological aversion like religious condemnation, he is likely to follow his penis into all kinds of experimentation and exploration, including some incredibly dangerous places.

This almost universal drive to devote an unparalleled portion of one’s life to exploring a tiny percentage of our bodies’ real estate is emblematic of the innate importance of sexual pleasure and our evolutionary heritage of sperm competition, but also the ancient Greek aphorism, “Know thyself.” In the absence of aversive influences, we naturally delve into our own bodies and become explorers of our personal landscape.

I think it’s natural for us to gradually move from one area of exploration to another as our lives progress, and I think it’s likely that the suppression of sexual exploration prevalent in so many cultures frustrates that natural “moving on” process so that we become more obsessed with sex than we perhaps should be. 

My personal experience is that the more one knows the landscape of one’s own sexual response—the freer one feels to own one’s own mojo without reservation or hesitation or shame—the better one is equipped to share one’s true self with one’s fellow humans, the more easily we are able to connect intimately with one another.

I am so grateful to have had relatively little intense sexual aversion as a horny young pup, just the same ambient bullshit we all grow up with. I often wonder how different our lives would be if we were allowed and encouraged to masturbate and explore our bodies healthfully. I don’t believe that teaching children about sex is inappropriate, abusive or wrong in any way. I think that neglecting to be completely honest and positive about sex is abusive. We need to give our youngest explorers the tools to navigate their lives intelligently so we might eventually move out of this long, dark, frustrated sexuality we’ve been stuck in for centuries.

We are all natural explorers. It is part of our evolutionary heritage: To find out more—to go further—to explore deeper.