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.

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…

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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?

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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

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.

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.

Photo originally posted by fine-mark.

A QUESTION:

“Just curious and wanting to understand your perspective, enjoy reading your blog. Has opened my eyes to a completely different viewpoint. Curious though, and no judgment intended, with all your many sexual partners you write about, what’s your relationship (sexual) like with your spouse. I’m just trying to understand an open relationship like you describe. If you are so active with so many guys, what’s left to be considered ‘special’ with your husband?“

This is a good one. I’m surprised it hasn’t been asked since now so thank you. 

My husband and I had a lot more sex when we first met and over a decade of sexual exclusivity, that frequency gradually grew less and less, but we maintained a roughly once a week routine through year 10.

When we decided to open our relationship, it was because we both really wanted to try it and were both really attracted to other guys, even though we were both really scared of losing our “specialness.” To be frank, we do have less sex now, after 26 years together and 16 years open. We probably have orgasmic sex less than once a month now. We have a good deal of cuddle time and naked conversation.

And… there is simply no one else I love anything near as deeply and tell so several times a day, every day. There’s no one else I literally sleep with, no one else I grieve with when a loved one dies, no one else I sleep beside in the stroke clinic after mortality taps one of us on the head, no one else I share every fear and joy with, no other lover with whom I have never fought (not once), no one else who makes me laugh every day, no one else I believe in so unconditionally and am inspired by so endlessly. There’s no one else in the world I would die for and would have by my side when I breathe my last breath. I mean all of these things as much as I could mean anything.

I don’t believe in soul mates, but Eric and I are insanely well-suited to each other. I truly feel like the luckiest man on the planet because of his presence in my life. Our infrequent sex hasn’t had a shred of impact on that, much as I feared it might. Really, I just keep loving him more and he seems to feel the same way!

Many, many long-term couples—I believe the great majority of us—have less sex over time. Some keep going passionately to the end but they are a small and delightful minority. Many cheat to stay together (as Dan Savage has pointed out many times) and many simply try to shrink their desires and expectations to match waning sexual fire. I have spoken to several members of the Jacks who report living in sexless marriages. The Jacks help them stay connected to themselves, something important that we get from sex.

Like many successful open couples, we’ve found that allowing each other to sustain interest in sex by allowing adventure, novelty (a very common turn-on, likely for evolutionary reasons – see Christopher Ryan’s Sex at Dawn) and exploration of our unique individual desires, has somehow only strengthened our bond.

I can’t tell you how it works or why, and I never recommend openness to couples who are happy to work at monogamy, but it totally works for us. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that. Life feels sane to me because I don’t have to deny my strong libido or hold one individual hostage to it. We are each responsible for our health and well being and we each support each other in that. Once we got past the fear that is at the base of your question, the belief that sex is what makes a relationship special or can make a relationship special, we got to another level of honesty with each other.

Once one is able to satisfy fundamental sexual needs easily, once the myth of scarcity is broken, one sometimes finds that sex isn’t the One True Ingredient for what makes people life partners. Humans use sex for much more than that and it takes more than sex to make a successful relationship.

At least that’s my experience after 26 years of loving one man above all others.

I know that adult blogs on Tumblr are chock-full of spank bank material, designed first and foremost for quick clicks from one hot pic to the next hot pic, helping you to get another zap in that hard cock you’re so happy to stroke while you browse, another surge of dopamine and another crest in your edge. You’re looking for bate fuel. I know that and I support you in this endeavor. I’m one of you, you know.

And in a way, that makes this forum a very, very safe medium for me to experiment with writing because chances are, you’re not going to read it at all! If there’s no GIF, no clip, no pic… you don’t click.

So I don’t need to worry that the thousands upon thousands of viewers who Liked my bathroom bate video or my bator buddies video or my kneeling boner photo and started following me because of those shared images helped them get one more nut will be overly critical of my writing… because they will never see it. I’m safe here to publish anything and everything my little heart, head and penis motivate me to! That’s actually kind of awesome.

But you… You’re different, my friend. You actually read this far without any visual stimulation and frankly, I’m impressed with you. I’m super grateful to know that thousands exist who somehow find my penis inspiring in motion but you, dear reader, you are my favorite. That’s right. Sitting there and taking in my words alone, I appreciate you and I respect you above all others.

Do you want my deepest admiration? Not that you should care about it—I mean, who am I to you anyway?—but here’s how you earn my devotion: Comment. Question. Read to the end and then… say something back to me. Engage with me here and watch my output multiply. I’ll have you to thank.

Part 1 – Discovering Masturbation

This is the first installment in a series of brief writings about my sex life as it manifests today, offered only as a single perspective of one man’s experience of a life of erotic engagement.

Masturbation was not my first sexual experience. Before masturbation came erections, which I don’t recall having a “first time.” As far as I know, I’ve had erections since I was a small child.

Also before masturbation came an intellectual curiosity about sex. I was a precocious child and read adult books, even though I didn’t understand everything I read. I loved words and absorbed them into my brain hungrily. 

In 1967, my parents’ suburban Chicago bedroom included two night stands full of grownup stuff for a curious kid to explore, including books. I remember a volume on Addiction in which I learned how heroin pills could once be purchased at a drug store then ground to a powder and snorted… I also read—cover to cover—one How to Talk Dirty and Influence People by Lenny Bruce. The impact of that story on my attitudes wouldn’t become apparent for many years but it absolutely left its mark.

I don’t know which of my parents had this but I also found a plain, dark blue hardcover without a dust jacket entitled, Love and Marriage. It was a sex manual and oh my God how I ate it up. I was fascinated to the point of fixation and returned to that book repeatedly throughout my ninth year.

I should mention that I hit puberty just before my 9th birthday. My mother was alarmed and whisked me to the pediatrician, terrified that her third child was going to be a giant. Dr. Lesser reassured her that I was simply an early bloomer and would just be a little ahead of my peers for a while. I got my Safety Pop from the bowl and rode back home, completely unaware of why we’d been there but curious. I didn’t feel sick…

Love and Marriage included a chapter on “Autoeroticism,” as I recall. Beyond my enjoyment of the word itself, picking apart its roots and adding it to my vocabulary bank, that section didn’t really hold great interest for me at the time. What completely hooked me was the chapter on “Sexual Intercourse.” In that chapter I found descriptions of all the hows and whats of fundamental sexual operation and was delighted to imagine what I had to look forward to, not so much getting my penis inside a vagina, but experiencing what these intense physical pleasures—this “ecstasy” of orgasms—felt like.

And there came the day that I was re-reading about Sexual Intercourse, specifically about how the wife’s vagina lubricated to provide a slippery vessel for the husband’s erect penis, and I had a thought: Could I simulate a lubricated vagina and “fool my penis” into thinking it was inside a vagina? Could I possibly experience that “ecstasy” through a simple trick of physical subterfuge?

I carefully returned Love and Marriage to the nightstand, walked across the hallway to the bathroom and locked the door. I took off my pants and ran some very warm water in the sink. I took time to warm my hands in the water for a good long time before reaching for a bar of soap and lathering up my hands. I wanted this trick to be convincing.

Forming a two-fisted tunnel and stabilizing it against the top of the sink, I took my penis, which had grown in anticipation of the experiment, and slid it into the sleeve, feeling the slippery warmth, and immediately felt a sudden stiffening. I took that as a promising sign.

I began to deliberately but slowly rock my hips to slide my penis in and out of my simple faux vagina, held steady on the edge of the sink, all the while feeling entirely new sensations mounting inside me as I rapidly approached and entered my first sexual plateau, noticing an odd tightening growing through the shaft and a sharp tingle in the head that was strangely uncomfortable but compelling and really, really pleasant.

I don’t know how long it took but I clearly recall the moment of that first orgasm, the involuntary spasming behind and inside my penis and the wonder of witnessing a completely new, pearly white substance emerge from the slit of my penis. By adult standards, it was very small volume but I had no reference and it was, to me, amazing. A gift of new knowledge about something my body could do that it had never done before. I felt like I’d entered new territory and indeed, in terms of my life, this was the start of something huge: My sex life had begun.