Author: Paul Rosenberg

  • … I find that I deal daily with some form of reticence about sex, so it’s great that you share openly with such a positive approach. It’s a simple act of sharing, but its important. -Ernie

    I think we all deal with reticence about sex, at least in Western civilizations. In the original meaning of the word “reticence,” we’re reluctant to even speak about it, much less experience it with untainted joy. Today is the first day of Masturbation Month and my thoughts after I masturbated this morning were about how we learn to hide it when we’re kids. While I masturbated, I was doing a lot of very basic positive self-talk about simply loving my penis and loving how good masturbating feels. It always feels like self-care to affirm the fundamental goodness of my body and my sexual expression, specifically because I share the same early negative conditioning.

    I think it’s always worth expressing love, not just for others but for ourselves, which seems to be the harder thing for most of us.

  • Any questions? Ideas? Requests?

    I need some writing prompts. How about helping a buddy out! Use the “Ask me anything” link and engage with me right out here where everyone can see.

    Thank you, friends.

    Paul

  • People Porn Power

    When I was a gay college boy in the midcentury midwest, I treasured a tiny collection of gay porn. I poured hours of my post-adolescence into it, kneeling too close to the family TV and masturbating again and again, focused intently on Al Parker’s penis and everything he did. It was magical, naughty and absolutely me time. 

    Porn was then about scarcity and precious secrets. It lived in material things—video cassettes and books and magazines—things that could be hidden and treasured and infused with the danger of discovery.

    In high school, I had erotic literature or “dirty books” as they were commonly known. Well-worn paperbacks with dog-eared pages of my favorite passages. Reading was where I developed my sexual imagination and began to discover what I was really into beyond just being attracted to guys.

    In college through the late ‘70s, VHS invaded the culture and being a tech geek, I had to have a video deck and the porn industry was demonstrating that it was going to forever be the vanguard of new media by providing their product to the masses in the way the masses were going to be consuming. The porn industry has always been the sector that best embodied Steve Jobs’ ideal of “skating to where the puck is going.” 

    I loved receiving those plain envelopes offering brochures full of explicit photos from Colt, Falcon and Maverick Studios to market their products. The brochures alone inspired countless orgasms but I scraped up the money I needed to get a couple of the most promising tapes to play for myself in private and in full motion and living color. I loved my porn even as I was finding real sex with real men in the real world. From age 19 through my twenties I had semen to spare both for the holes of the willing and my own two hands.

    Through the years, erotica has remained part of my life in varying degrees and in evolving forms but there has been one massive shift in its universe for all of us: the ability for me and you and everyone to make our own porn. We ourselves have become the source of the most authentic erotica available and the professional industry has struggled to compete with us. 

    What has evolved at this moment of erotic history is what I call people-powered porn. The range of variation is as broad as the populations of people with smartphones. From selfies have come dick pics (and yes, I am a dick-centric homo so that’s my focus, but I know perfectly well that women are making selfie porn too) and all manner of artful to artless erotica that we can and do make with the production tools now in our hands.

    I am a fan of “amateur” porn, the views inside erotic reality that people are making and sharing out of pure passion rather than profit. Inside that world is the spark of creativity and originality that has created new, artful-while-still-wildly-hot erotic filmmaking of Noel Alejandro and Antonio da Silva, as well as the pro-amateur efforts of Proud Bator (sadly, now retired) and countless others.

    Now, as I near 60, I have found my taste, my preference in erotica and it is the non-professional exposure of genuine male sexuality I see on Tumblr and BateWorld. I no longer want to see shaved bodies, six-pack abs and porn professionals. I see them as artificial, staged and insincere. The mere fact of classic, idealized physical beauty (according to the popular esthetic of any particular time) isn’t enough for me. If I’m not actually touching and being touched by a genuine man IRL, I want him evoked in my erotica. I want to see imperfect men displaying frank, sexual joy in the actually awkward way that real men do. I want to see men who embrace their everyday magic and expose that to the world.

    And when I record video of myself making love with myself, I’m doing my best to not act for you, but to expose my reality, just as I am now. What I make is what I want to see.

    This is one of the aspects of living in this moment of time that gives me gratitude and optimism. We can actually create and share intimate sexual chronicles of our moments and lives and expose ourselves to the whole world. Yes, we still have a long way to go before our idea of sex is foundationally about joy rather than shame, sin, weakness, crime and danger—a very, very long way to go—but putting our bodies and faces out there and exposing our joy is a critical step forward.

    Seize your power to spread the plainest human truth: Be authentically sexual and joyful, make a photographic and video record of that truth and expose it. This is another example of being the change you wish to see in the world.

  • The long and the short of it.

    Yesterday was for me a rare Saturday alone. It’s usually “Our Day,” the one, weekly, designated day that my husband and I put everything else on hold and spend all our waking hours together, brunching, chatting, seeing films, napping, talking, making out and anything else that we want to do. We’ve considered it a sacred part of our relationship since we began shaping it back in late 1991.

    You may have noticed a missing item on the “Our Day” menu: Sex. We haven’t had sex for quite a while. It’s definitely a concern for both of us, although we continue to adore each other and cohabitate with rare ease for any couple. We both miss our naked boner-time and we’re working on it… but that’s not what this entry’s about. It’s about my solo day.

    He took the dog with him so I didn’t even have to deal with letting Jake out or playing tug-of-war. It was just me in the empty house and nothing planned. As you might guess, I recognized an opportunity…

    Marty is my go-to bate buddy. He’s truly got all the features I love in a bator. He’s a furry cub with a light, easy attitude and he really values masturbation, loves his penis and understands edging. I’ve had lots of amazing sessions with him and while a penis might go occasionally into a mouth or hole, we’re both very aligned on spending the great majority of our time together stroking our own and each other’s penis. We always ejaculate together and that always happens with hands on penises.

    I texted Marty early and it was a little while before he replied and we set it up. It was determined that I would go to the gym and check that off my list before heading over to his place. Without asking, I didn’t shower after my workout, just cleaned a few key areas before gearing up for the gym. I was going to have some scent on me when I arrived and if he preferred me freshly showered, I could take care of that there.

    It was moments after I arrived that we were touching each other, easily rubbing bulging crotches and feeling rigid dicks. There was no hurry. There’s never a hurry when I’m with Marty.

    We chatted, stroked ourselves and each other, gradually undressed and alternated touching and sucking each other, simply being with the fact of our easy connection and arousal. His penis responded without hesitation to my fingers, hands, mouth and mine was similarly engaged. 

    Over the next two hours, we stimulated each other and repeatedly edged skillfully and naturally. There was no question that we were going to just ride the curve of the edge with an occasional crest, and put off full ejaculation until we felt like wrapping our lazy afternoon up.

    Over two hours after I arrived, I chose to cum and we rode up the ramp together, locked together in a pretzel of presence, fully able to take in each other’s penis, scrotum, assholes, faces, breath and the totality of energy that is sex. We rode up and over the crest and I shot hard all over his penis, stomach, thighs and one foot. He followed me only a moment later, ejaculating his seed all over himself to mingle with mine, moaning and breathing together.

    We lay still, relaxing into the oxytocin fog, both dozing off briefly before rousing and standing up from the couch to lazily wipe up the coconut oil and cum. Happy apes after beautiful, bonding sex. We looked at each other and smiled, appreciating our unique friendship and hugged warmly and long before dressing and parting ways.

    This basically is our relationship. We are passionate bator buddies. We speak easily about whatever we like, there is seemingly no romantic interpretation of our affection or desire for it. We just fit well around this intense, human experience.


    I go home, smelling of the gym and coconut and pheromones, and ready myself for an evening out with my husband, who I am to meet up with briefly later. I go in the back door, strip and turn on the shower, glancing behind me at the image of my naked body reflected in the big mirror… and I pause. 

    Here is my 59 year-old flesh. Here is the over-generous waist, the aging skin, the still-swollen shoulder and arm muscles. Here is my somehow still shapely butt. Running my hands down my ass cheeks and thighs, I marvel at the silky smoothness of the naturally hairless expanse, remembering that while I am most turned on by the sensation of body hair, this is my own body and it is good too. I think, “This is me,” and I’m alive and still loving my life and I am so fucking grateful for all the sexual joy in it. It’s wonderful and I want to cry from the gratitude.

    Instead, I twist my body a little and look at the reflection of my resting penis. It is small and spent and beautiful. I reach down with my left hand and cradle my penis and balls in the cup of palm and fingers, just feeling the weight and warmth of the gift between my legs. It starts to swell and I watch as it thickens a little and extends itself forward.

    Licking my palm, I wet my penis and begin masturbating it, smiling at the delicious pleasure growing again with my full erection. It has been a long time since I was ready so soon after an orgasm and taking a big breath, I stroke myself with full abandon and just feel my body spring back to life.

    The shower continues running and I have no goal here. I’m just pausing to love myself with my hands, running one hand over my pecs and stomach as the other masturbates the happy penis. I feel so good and I’m barely thinking of anything but my body responding and breathing into that moment and in minutes, with no edging or hurry, I am ejaculating a massive, spraying gush of semen into the air and onto the floor and my stomach. Slowing my cadence, I continue stroking up and down the full length of my penis and tight scrotum, sperm and saliva mingling and slick on my skin. 

    For the second time today, I clean up my cummy body, step into the shower and prepare for the evening. This is the sex I have today. It is mine and it is nothing short of glorious.

  • Tramadol

    I’m addicted to Tramadol and it is fucking up my sex life. 

    It was first prescribed for a minor back injury and later for osteoarthritis in my thumb, a common malady with Tramadol its common pharmaceutical treatment. As an active guy in my 50s, I’ve got plenty of OA all over the place: thumbs, feet, knees, hips… and OTC meds like ibuprofen help a lot but my gut can’t take them in the amounts my pain dictates so I got into combining NSAIDs with Tramadol and got everything down to a pretty manageable level of hurt.

    But then came the side effects and the withdrawal symptoms. and the reason I’m writing about it in my sex blog instead of just bitching to my echo chamber on Facebook.

    It turns out that one reason Tramadol is prescribed, something I wasn’t aware of when I started taking it, is the treatment of premature ejaculation. Yes, it slows down the race to the finish line.

    PE has never been an issue for me because as I occasionally like to demonstrate, I’m a skilled edger and have been able to control my orgasm to the second, lasting as short or as long as I like, for most of my adult life. I did not need anything to slow me down because cum control is my MO.

    But a couple of years ago, after being a regular Tramadol user for some time, I started to experience more frequent bouts of unintentionally cumless sex. More and more frequently, I just wasn’t getting to 10 no matter how long I bumped up against 9.9. I sometimes went days unable to cum, and again, this was not something I was choosing to do but something it seemed my body was doing against my will.

    This has become more commonplace lately, with every kind of sexual encounter a candidate for orgasmless conclusions, or I’d just focus on my partner’s pleasure and satisfy myself with his orgasm—which I do love—but damn it, I want orgasms too. I love sperming my penis and I love sharing that moment with playmates who want that cum.

    It’s only over the last month that I’ve begun to address the elephant in the room and weigh my options: I can explore other drugs that might alleviate my sexual side effects, or I can just accept and deal with reality: I’m an addict and the drug that’s helped me live with pain has chopped too much joy out of my sex life.

    And I know myself well enough to admit that sex makes me happy. Not just having sex and orgasms, but wanting it, thinking about it, smiling at the sexjoy that waves through my whole body when I simply remember I have a penis, when I anticipate putting it inside a hungry bottom, a skilled mouth or a warm, lubricated hand. Sex doesn’t just feel good to me, it is my connecting force, the instinct that draws me to others and joins us. This really makes me happy.

    I’m getting older. My body is doing what all bodies do with time and I’m okay with that. Some degree of sexual slow-down is normal and I’m completely okay with that too.

    But this fuzzy-headed numbness is a barrier to my joy. It’s like wearing a thick condom all the time and this sexual dampening is not normal.

    I still love my penis frequently and I do orgasm, just not as often. It’s a great time to have masturbatory expertise because it helps me work through the fog… but that fog needs to go. It’s not just about orgasms. It’s about welcoming the full presence of sexual joy. 

    So ultimately, it won’t be the fear of withdrawal, the brain shivers and tinnitus and brain fog that make me stop taking Tramadol, it will be the love of my penis and the greater sexual vitality of my life it expresses that push me to finally break the habit.

    Today is my first day ramping-down from 150 mg to zero. Understanding how long it takes the brain to adjust, I’m hoping I can pull it off in just three months but I may not get fully off the shit until Labor Day.

    I write this as my declaration of intent. Starting now, I end my relationship with Tramadol and fully restore my relationship with Penis.

  • Tuesday Update

    At 59, I’ve got a love/hate relationship with my prostate. While I really wish I could still piss as fast and hard as the millennial at the next urinal, I wouldn’t trade that expediency for all the tireless work accomplished in the spunk production arena.

  • Who are you Cumming For?

    For years, we’ve been adapting to smart phones in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. As a consumer of online amateur content (porn) you are part of this new way of being publicly sexual.

    You watch hundreds of men stroking hundreds of dicks, pounding hundreds of holes and jizzing on hundreds of faces and you just might be contributing your own content. How has this ubiquitous medium effected the way you have sex with yourself? Who are you cumming for?

    It’s a question I ask without judgement. Okay, I have a little judgement…

    I notice some very specific ways that sex on camera isn’t optimal sex, and I’m not talking about professional porn here (which I consciously don’t consume) but I’m talking about the porn you and I make…


    Masturbation

    When you record your bate, do you stop and grip your penis at the point of orgasm for maximum trajectory? Do you stop and take your hand off so you can have a hands-free cumshot? Do you take pains to get the right angle and lighting to maximize your appeal to the viewer? Is it important that you shoot up to your mouth and be seen licking it up? Are you gooning while looking at the camera? 

    Oral

    Who holds the camera when you suck or get sucked? Do you take brief breaks to adjust the camera angle? At ejaculation, does the penis come out so the viewer can see the cum shoot? Does the semen spray visibly on a beard, face or tongue or does it go down a closed-mouth throat?

    Fucking

    Do you make noise? Are you sex babbling to your partner or the viewer? Who’s holding the camera? Do you look into the camera? Do you pull out at ejaculation so the viewer can see you cum? Do you seed your partner and then pull back so the viewer can see the proof dripping or expelled from the hole?


    It can be incredibly exciting to expose pleasure, to make porn for others to appreciate. It can amp up the sensations of sex to know you’re sharing it with untold numbers of invisible viewers, to be aware of the danger of someone recognizing you, to simply wallow in the transgressiveness of making porn.

    And like every kind of exciting sex, doing something all the time wears a groove in your psyche and ultimately de-emphasizes alternatives. You might be fine with that and many of us are. The process of favoring a particular sex practice over all others is pretty normal. Whatever our orientation, we develop specific preferences over time.

    So here’s the question I offer for you to ask yourself if you’re one of the many, most prolific amateur porn producers out here: As I record video of my sex acts, whatever they are, am I having that sex for myself or for others? Is the exposed orgasm as satisfying as the orgasm I have while nobody’s watching? Does it feel better to cum on a guys face or to cum in his mouth? Does it feel better to feel cum on my ass and back or do I wish I were feeling it gush inside me? Is the ejaculation I have while displaying my penis pulsing as satisfying as the one I have while I continue stroking through the orgasm?

    And if you’re only a consumer of online porn, to what degree do you model what you see online when you masturbate or enjoy sex with a partner?

    I’m not saying that any of these acts are better or worse than any other, only asking you to assess the value of your sex and ask who you’re trying to please. If you’re aware that something you’re doing is being executed over and over and over again the same way, you might not have enough variation to choose from.

    We model what we see. This is absolutely human. We get great ideas and not-so-great ideas all the time and we test them out in every sphere of life. Whatever your sexual expression, I think it’s worth pulling back from time to time and reassessing how and why we do what we do and trying something new. You probably do that already but if you’re currently in a rut and didn’t realize it until now, consider this a reminder that ultimately, the person you most need to satisfy is yourself and your partner in the moment, not “the viewer.” He or she isn’t actually there. If it most pleases you to imagine the remote viewer is getting off on you, that’s perfectly valid, but I still think it is always worth taking time to examine the quality of our sex lives and consider ways of improving it.

    Maybe it’s time to change things up! For me, it’s always a good time to change things up, but ultimately, my sexual pleasure is happening first and foremost inside my body and I am cumming for me. My ejaculation belongs to me above all. Others may and will and do appreciate it and be inspired by it, but if I’m not getting maximum benefit from it from time to time, I’m being stingy with myself.

    Be generous with yourself. Be extravagant in owning and embodying your own authentic pleasure.

  • My penis thinks it’s spring

  • I love your blog and I also love masturbating. The problem for me is I always have an immense sense of shame afterwards. I really admire you for your ability to love your body and love solo sex. Did you ever have a period where you felt shame about masturbation? And if so, how did you work past it? I love playing with myself, I love the feel of my cock in my hand. I really want to love wanking for what it is and how it makes me feel, even after I cum.

    melbournebator:

    This is sadly a very common problem. Yet shame is very specific to you though. You need to diagnose what is causing you shame. It may be religious indoctrination that masturbation is a sin. It may be the patriarchal capitalist system that says unless you devote your idleness to spending or earning you are not contributing. It may also be that we’re taught that only partnered sex is good for you so what you’ve done is wasteful. All of these are acute conditionings but they are all false. I’ve written extensively on all three. Just saying they are false is sometimes not enough to battle the shame monster. I felt shame throughout my twenties because I did not yet exalt masturbation to the high importance to which I ascribe it today. I think battling shame is about emboldening your belief in masturbation. I spent a lot of time focusing on what I like about masturbation and what I believe is true. I think about masturbation positively a lot, both before and after I masturbate. I underscore that positivity. It feels good. It’s good for your esteem. It’s good for sexual health. It’s a tonic against pain. It’s a radical fuck you to capitalist patriarchy. Yell with pride when you can and the echo will drown out the voice of shame until it is a pitiful whimper. Treat yourself with kindness. Hey, if it helps, tell yourself that Melbourne Bator masturbates more than you do 🙂 

    I consciously don’t write about shame relative to masturbation, but it’s a real thing for lots of men and boys. As adults, we have the power and responsibility to agitate for change so future generations of children (and parents) learn the truth about sex, pleasure and their bodies before shame beliefs take root.

    Find out who is offering comprehensive sex ed and support those institutions. There are several including Planned Parenthood, the Woodhull Alliance and, if you’re looking for an organized religion that does it right, the Unitarian Universalist Church. You can also support organizations training the next generation of enlightened sex educators, like the Kinsey Institute, Sex Discussed Here! and AASECT. I like local action so I personally support Planned Parenthood Northwest and the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture.

  • Sunday Rant

    Sorry… This is a rant.

    In the USA, The activity shown in the photo below is a crime and enough to put a guy on a public national sex offenders list for life. The immorality here is not in the publicly visible penis, the naked body or the erection. The immorality here is in the war on sex, our insane, puritanical social constructs that criminalize sexuality itself. These laws are garbage that hurt people who are hurting no one.

    I won’t live to see an end to anti-sex culture and neither will you but this is a battle that should be fought. As long as we persecute and prosecute people for sex acts that harm no one beyond offending their sensibilities, we’ll continue to be a deluded nation, convinced that we’re good and moral when in reality we are a petty and mean people.

    A good people do not jail their citizens and ruin lives as punishment for simply being sexual where others might see them.

    Fight back against the Puritans in government, the church and in your neighborhood. Reject a philosophy that teaches you sexual expression, even public expression, is bad. I’ll say it again: the immorality is in the persecutors and not the masturbators.

    image

    Photo originally posted by fine-mark.