This interesting image via SlaveBoy.Tumblr.com.

One of the things that has seriously bugged me for a very long time is how lots of people think about submissiveness, particularly but not necessarily as it relates to male sexuality. It bugs me because for all the lip service paid to respecting submission, very little about the way it’s discussed actually seems to be respectful of submissive desires.

I, unlike many submissive young men in their teens, surrounded myself with the culture and ritual of dominant/submissive relationships through the very fortunate circumstances in which I found myself. Yet, despite my incredible access to such resources, it was indescribably difficult (not to mention painful) for me to get to a point where I felt like I can enjoy my sexual submission as a valid part of my masculinity.

Why was it so hard for to me feel validated in my submission? Why does it continue to be a struggle for many people, as the overwhelming response to my subversive writings at MaleSubmissionArt.com show? This question, at once both simple and unspeakably intricate, is what I want to address in this post.

Imagine for a moment you’re a young guy (or a guy of any age, really) trying to understand your sexual desires. You know you want a relationship with (in the name of simplicity) a woman who will “take charge in the bedroom,” but you don’t really know what that looks like. You come across porn and sex blogs and, like a second (or third, or fourth) erotic awakening, all sorts of fantasy imagery involving either getting butt-fucked or not being allowed to orgasm, or both of those, starts bubbling in your brain, since—let’s face it—that’s most of the erotic material out there for such guys. You finally get a girlfriend and, remarkably, she’s good, giving and game, so you get butt-fucked and she doesn’t let you come. “Wonderful,” you’re likely to think, “now I’ve been submissive.”

If you’re lucky, maybe it was really wonderful. More power to you. But what if it’s not? Moreover, and I suspect this is most common, what if that wonderfulness is just the tip of the iceberg? What if the new experience was amazing and novel but you want more? What is that “more” that you want? More butt-fucking? More bondage? More sexual service? More orgasm denial? What are you yearning for, really?

This, sadly, is where many of us get stuck. I’ve read countless words from hundreds if not thousands of men, all of whom seem to be trying to answer these very questions. I’m one of these men, trying to figure out what the fuck all this desiring is, trying to make it “more” and “better” as though I’m following some kind of primal programming. I want to be more passionate. More intimate. More connected. More devoted. More focused. More meaningful. More submissive.

Obviously, this is a very big topic, and I often feel overwhelmed just thinking about how submission relates to my life, influences my relationships, or shapes my desires. As I often struggle with articulating these thoughts, I figured that even if I don’t get it quite right, it’s worth sharing some of where I’ve gotten to because I no longer enjoy sex despite being a submissive man. I finally enjoy sex because I am—and want to be—a sexually submissive man.

Hopefully, I’ll clarify the imprecise language we currently have available to explore gendered power and submissive masculinity in particular, and I’ll address how such feeble language may cause egregious ambiguity in communication as well as misconceptions about fundamental desires that hamper our understanding of consensual sexual submission.

Hot or not? Submission isn’t arousal.

This submission stuff is hard, and I’m not the only one who’s struggled, or is struggling, with it. One reason it’s so goddamn hard is because the way I so often see it conceptualized feels polluted by imprecision, absolutism, and sexism.

Most of the time, I ignore a great deal of the polluted chatter because it comes from people I don’t hold in high regard to begin with. Recently, however, some of the men who blog that I respect a lot have hit some of the same notes while singing submissive masculinity’s tunes as the people I ignore, and that is something I cannot ignore.

More specifically, Thumper, whose blog I read almost religiously, inspired a debate between MyKey and myself. In a comment on one of Thumper’s posts, MyKey said:

The denial after [lots of orgasms] is much harder and much sweeter for it, and the submission deeper and more fun. Of course during those periods [after orgasm] its hard to be as submissive[…].

Although I’ve read this opinion expressed in about a bazillion different ways, it’s a sentiment I’ve never felt completely comfortable with. Indeed, the more I dissect my own submissiveness and explore what submission means to me, the more upset I get by its prevalence. I get even more upset when bloggers perpetuate this, because they are currently the most influential source of education about submissive masculinity.

But before I get too far into what I find so upsetting about the way this is framed, let’s make one thing clear: what I’m about to say has nothing to do with espousing a submissive ideology, a One True Way® for being a “real submissive.” It’s irrational to, for instance, call a self-identified switch “a submissive” when that person is feeling submissive by sole virtue of their feelings; they are no more or less “a submissive” than they say they are, despite how desirous of submissive feelings they are at any given time. Insofar as identity politics are involved, they stop at the point of acknowledging that your identity is a part in your personal experience of the world.

This post, however, is not about your experience of the world. It’s about finding a way to convey your experience in a manner that is reconcilable with the different experiences of others. This is important because, lacking this ability, all conversation about submission starts with “for me,” repeats the caveat, and then ends with “Your Mileage May Vary.” To date, every way I’ve heard anyone talk about submission breaks down when someone else introduces their own, differing, experience, and I’m afraid those conversations are no longer useful for me.

Anyway, the short debate between MyKey and I ultimately lead to a post in which Thumper put forth the following equation:

Denial + arousal = submission.

In the comments—worth reading despite veering into predictably unhelpful tangents at points—Thumper later amended this to read Denial + arousal = submissive energy. That’s better, thanks in part to the focus on “energy” (I think more precisely termed desire) over the intrinsic nature of the outcome. Nevertheless, I want to challenge both statements because I think the premise underlying them is simply not true.

Both statements feed into a dangerous, wide-spread stereotype: the cock-centric notion that if you control a man’s penis, you control the man. Is that true? Of course it’s not. These activities could certainly be an expression of dominance or submission and they might trigger dominant or submissive feelings in oneself or one’s partner(s), but Thumper, MyKey and I already seem to agree that the acts are not, themselves, the root cause of submission or dominance.

To wit, and to Thumper’s credit, one of his next sentences is the following:

That’s not saying I’m in no way submissive when my sexual appetite has been totally sated. I think I would be accepting of domination even then. [And later, in the comments:] I wasn’t trying to suggest it’s just that simple […] but they are strongly related.

Indeed, I can think of no realm less suited to the beautiful simplicity of mathematics than human desire, so it’s obvious that Thumper’s equation is an oversimplification. Since we can all see that things are not “just that simple,” I presume that what Thumper, MyKey, and other submissive men perpetuating this simplistic formulation are trying to get at is that they feel submissive more acutely when the fact of their orgasm denial is at the fore of their thoughts. Thumper says he feels his “sub mojo” lessen after he has come. MyKey calls this sensation “sub drop” and, since I disagree with the premise of their statements, questions whether I’m “wired differently”.

At least in this regard, however, I am not wired differently. I do understand the sudden, often startling change in desires post-orgasm. During relationships with keyholders, the degree with which my interest in, say, getting my penis locked away waned after having an orgasm was (and still is) totally remarkable to me. Nevertheless, similar to the experiences of others, when my keyholder wanted me locked, I got locked. Why? Because that’s hot! It wasn’t quite as hot right then, but it was super-hot shortly thereafter, when I was once again unable to masturbate freely.

This simple after-the-fact observation points to a crucial distinction I fear is missing from the conversation about submission: just because an activity is less pleasant at some moments than it is during others doesn’t mean I won’t do or enjoy those activities. Moreover, the drive to perform those activities independent of one’s immediate motivations is a distinct, separate pleasure, from the pleasure one gets from desiring the activity directly.

I think Tom Allen illustrated this in the sexiest way ever in his erotic story, Ahead of Time. Portions of this story are so apropos to this discussion that I just have to quote it:

“And I want you to come really hard for me. I want you to remember this for a long time.”

“Oooh,” I moaned aloud.

“That’s why I’m going to make you eat my pussy right after you come.”

I gasped. It was like an electric shock to my groin. I’ve long had this fantasy, but could never bring myself to do it. The idea of being forced to clean her, to lick my still-hot come from her, to hear her demanding that I make her clean, to make her come with my tongue… I’ve only mentioned to her a handful of times over the years, but I’ve never been able to ask for this, let alone to try it. She was right, there’s something about the first ten or fifteen minutes after coming that puts all that desire right out of my head. I was excited, but at the same time a bit fearful. I knew that I wouldn’t want to do it afterward…and so did she.

She sensed my hesitation. “I know the idea turns you on,” she said.

Thinking fast, I said “But, I, um, thought that you were satisfied. You told me that you had come enough for tonight.”

“Oh, you’re not going to do it for my pleasure,” she said, “at least, not for my sexual pleasure. You’re going to do it because in a few days, you’re going to think about it, and you’re going to remember this evening as the hottest thing we’ve ever done.”

[…]

I was still partially dazed as she inched her knees alongside my body. When she finally rested her legs over my arms and braced her other hand against the headboard, though, things…changed somehow. Her pussy, which just minutes ago was a beautiful, warm cave, suddenly now seemed like a hairy tube of flesh that was filled with something that I didn’t want. Ugh, how could I ever have asked for this? I pursed my lips, but it was too late—I felt the drips onto my cheeks and chin. Seconds later, her slick lips were pressed tightly against my mouth, and I could hear her encouraging me to clean her, to keep sucking and licking until everything was gone.

(Emphasis mine.)

What Tom’s story and our many similar experiences show us is that not even the men who purport to quantify submission based on sexual arousal or orgasm denial actually do that. Although our awareness of submissive feelings may be intensified by specific, often fetishistic triggers (e.g., being horny and prevented from coming), those two concepts are not causally related.

For men like Thumper and I, who clearly dig orgasm denial pretty hard, it makes sense that this desire is a core aspect of how we want to fuck. But we do ourselves and our readers a terrible disservice by perpetuating the idea that our fetish is the cause of our submissive desire rather than a manifestation of it. Submission does not come about through someone else’s control—that is mere restriction in the best case, and abuse in the worst case—it comes about through our active desire to submit. Consensual submission is not about how someone else controls me, it’s about the opportunities I create for myself to be vulnerable to that person.

When I hear people discussing submission as though it is the result of the thing they want instead of discussing submission itself as the thing they want, it’s like listening to people talk while putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Such an awkward conceptualization of submission is not merely incorrect, it’s very dangerous because it restricts any submissive desire into a necessarily coercive paradigm.

In this instance, with teasing and denial as the addends, it constructs mens’ submission as totally dependent on the myth of male lust (the idea that men are controlled by their penises because they are men). It states that submissive energy is itself induced by a woman (or, more generally, “keyholder”) by accessing that man’s sexual potency in a strictly prescribed, time-release fashion, like a pill.

This is the same misconception that says blowjobs are inherently submissive, or that pain is inherently bad, or even that blogging about sex is inherently submissive (srsly)! Sadly, these ideas are the prevailing view of what “submission” is, and I think they totally miss the point about the validity of submission itself as a core motivation.

Framing submission as a second-class thing, a byproduct of some other, first-class particle, is incorrect. Submission is it’s own distinct facet of sexual desire.

Reductionist Submission Is Dangerous To Your Sex Life

There’s absolutely nothing wrong about getting off on stereotypes. While the reasons for why many submissive men, including myself, fetishize orgasm denial are debatable, that obvious fact does not make orgasm denial a component of submission. Akin to the way desiring anal sex does not make someone gay, abstaining from orgasm does not make someone a submissive. Abstaining longer doesn’t make them “more submissive.”

Sexual “teasing” is really pleasurable and fun for many people, regardless of their interest in submission. For a huge population, that kind of sex is all about improving their orgasms, whether “vanilla” or not; I’ve read of self-identified dominant men who enjoy the practice, too. For other people, like certain religious sects, some portions of asexual populations, and anorgasmic women, living (or trying to live) an orgasm-less existence isn’t even kinky. On the flip side, there are certainly some submissive men who simply aren’t into orgasm denial at all.

In other words, even though sex acts obviously influence one’s mental or physical state at any given moment, conceptually coupling a sexual activity to what an activity means is going to cut you off from the pleasure of diverse sexual experience. Teasing and denial (the “denial+arousal” part of Thumper’s equation) are not ingredients for submission, they’re just toys I play with because I, like many others, enjoy expressing submission with them some of the time. Sometimes we enjoy it more than other times, but sometimes we express that same submission in completely unrelated ways.

Regardless of your personal experience, I’d urge you to avoid linking any sex act to any intention, even “for you,” even if it’s your fetish. The stereotypical view of orgasm denial as requisite for or even directly “enhancing” submission, even for those of us who fetishize it, simply doesn’t account for our own diverse expressions of submission. To assert that it does is fundamentally miscommunicative. It’d be like saying getting flogged is submission and that the harder you get flogged the more submissive you are, and although people often make the “harder=submissivier” false assertion as well, that doesn’t make it sensible, that makes it dangerous!

That definition of submission, coercive at best and abusive at worst, invalidates submission itself as a potential motivation for healthy sex by undermining a submissive person’s power to choose exactly what they do or do not want—a power that’s required to make healthy sexual choices for one’s self, even “as a submissive.” It tricks us into believing all the false dichotomies embedded in hegemonic culture that tell us BDSM is obscene, and that to be submissive is to necessarily be unassertive, passive, self-effacing, receptive, or acquiescent. These are not ambiguous, wishy-washy obstacles to people’s health. For many people, particularly men who are deeply immersed in heteronormative culture, these are real factors that contribute to sexual anxiety and a horrible depreciation of self-image.

Defining the degree of one’s sexual submission as the summation of a period of orgasm denial and current sexual arousal is not only reductionist, I believe it’s actively damaging. The equation perpetuates the myth of male lust and disavows the validity of submission as a sexual self-expression that can be actively chosen, rather than induced coercively.

In the post that spawned all this theorizing, Thumper wrote:

I had cruised all through my adolescence with no inkling I was what I was (though I can see some signs that were there all along).

Like Thumper, I was certainly submissive before I had a dominant partner in my life. So while this rant may sound like meaningless semantics to some, it’s crucial that we amplify these distinctions and move the prevailing understanding of submissive masculinity away from the limiting, misrepresentative, and downright sexist bullshit so often spewed by exploitative pro-dommes and the likes of Elise Sutton (no link because I hate what she says; Google it instead actually, Gloria Brame’s essay on Elise Sutton is totally worth reading). That’s precisely the kind of bullshit that kept “what we are” hidden from men like Thumper and I for so long.

As an adamantly submissive man myself, I’m sure my personal experience is going to be different from, say, a switch’s orgasm denial experience. And that’s the point: submission is not about creating a ruleset of Things To Do To Be Submissive for anyone, yourself least of all. Very simply, it’s about sexual self-expression in order to be happy and healthy.

So please, all of us who blog about such things, stop insisting that keeping a man from his orgasms somehow turns him more submissive. You’re just fooling yourselves, your readers, and arguably worst of all, your lovers.

I was asked to write an essay for Furry Girl’s latest independent porn site, Cocksexual.com. Unlike most porn sites, whose mere descriptions turn me right the fuck off, when Furry Girl described her vision of Cocksexual, I was actually intrigued. On the homepage, she calls it, pansexual porn featuring hot models of all orientations and genders. Here, you’ll find none of those tacky “lesbian” scenes with discount-bin strapons, or the cliché Mistress Fetishqueen fucking her worthless male submissive. Now that, I thought, I could get behind. Or in front of, depending.

So when Furry Girl asked me to write a piece for the launch of her site, I didn’t have any trouble and what I came up with was a touch more personal than even I was prepared for. Here’s an excerpt from my essay on Cocksexual.com:

When I first tentatively explored anal sex, which I began doing in the shower using the handle of a discarded toothbrush, I thought what I wanted was the woman’s role, passive and receptive. At that age, surrounded as I was by the false hegemonic view of penetration as being the same as masculinity, what else could I think? Maybe I was really a woman, because if being a man meant a distaste for anal pleasure, then I certainly wasn’t one of those.

But as the years went by I discovered, to my admitted surprise, that I’m not a woman. I’m a man. One’s gender identity, such as man or woman, and the enjoyment one gets from a particular sexual activity, such as penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse or strap-on sex, are in no way directly correlated. So too are sexual orientation and enjoying anal sex distinct from one another. I’ve had anal sex with both men and women, but I’ve so far enjoyed being penetrated by the women a lot more. For me, a big part of the fun is seeing their enthusiasm.

You should check out the full essay over on Furry Girl’s site. There’s also a really detailed, really personable article by Thomas Roche, and another by Essin Em. It’s pretty neat to find myself in the company of such well-known writers.

Finally, I made some money writing that essay and I’m now looking for paid writing gigs that align with my worldview and message, as this one did. The feeling of getting financially supported—rather than financially “compensated”—for sharing an intimate part of myself in writing is absolutely wonderful. I sincerely hope I can find or make more opportunities to do it again.

Thanks for the first opportunity, Furry Girl, and good luck with Cocksexual.com. I hope it shows more people, especially more men, that they can enjoy strap-on sex without the stigmas so many other pornographers drown it in.

The most interesting reason why I would have considered it, though, is because the thought of being a sex worker (and a sex worker is what a pro-domme is) feeds a fantasy of mine: sexual expression in exchange for money. The thought of having sex with or—even hotter—to be made to have sex with people I didn’t really know very well has long been an undeniably arousing thought. That fantasy is, to this day, one of the very few role play scenarios I can somewhat comfortably get invested in. I vividly remember the pounding of my own arousal the night Eileen came home with her half of the month’s rent in cash, pushed me onto the floor, tied me up, fucked me with a knife at my throat, and then threw the cash in my face.

Like most fantasies, the fantasy itself would probably be very different from the reality of the situation. Getting tied up in someone’s home who I didn’t know just so that I could make a few bucks is so ridiculously unsafe that I’ve purposefully avoided even getting near the possibility of doing it. Nevertheless, this sex-for-money fantasy is a rather frequent one for me, and in fact it’s pretty common among others, too. I think it’s so strongly rooted in the sexual psyches of so many people that it’s one of the most common reasons why I see bottom-ish and submissive-leaning women become sex workers, such as pro-dommes.

But that’s not what this post is about. (I could talk about inverted power dynamics of (many) pro-domme and client relationships for ages, but I won’t since there are lots of places where that’s discussed already.) This post is about the idea of the sex-for-money fantasy in general, what makes it hot for me, and some (geek-inspired) ideas I have about how to go about realizing it safely.

Perhaps it was Tristan Taormino who best explains why the sex-for-money fantasy is so hot. She recently wrote this in the Village Voice about the brothel-themed sex room at Dark Odyssey, affectionately known as “sex camp” among the attendees.

People don’t tire of the sex-for-money fantasy. Actually, there is no one fantasy, but multiple scenarios, dynamics, and roles possible within the brothel setting. I talked to a bunch of this year’s whores (who included men, women, transfolk, and cross-dressers) about what they got out of their experiences. Some said they like being a whore because it’s taboo, naughty, and transgressive; the fact that it’s illegal prevents them from pursuing it in real life. For others, being a sex worker is a longtime fantasy[…].

Playing this role can trigger other turn-ons, like having sex with strangers, no strings attached, and no pretense of romance.

[…]

A sex-worker fantasy can also fulfill a desire to be used for sex, objectified, forced, pimped out, or made to perform. Many of the whores had pimps who collected their money or made them work. There are so many power dynamics to play with. “I am turned on by the power exchange involved,” explained Ellie, a phone-sex operator in real life who’s never done sex work with physical contact. “To some extent, the worker is fully in control of the sexual encounter and can create seemingly arbitrary boundaries or limits without being expected to explain them to a partner. On the other hand, the worker is acting in service to the client, and is expected to please and satisfy them. The tension between the dominant and submissive roles in these sorts of exchanges is interesting to me.”

These excerpts showcase a couple of points. First, it confirms (yet again) that different people have the same sorts of fantasies due to a variety of different motivations. Second, when Tristan mentions that playing the role of a whore can trigger other turn-ons, she’s talking about how enacting one fantasy be a catalyst that often fulfills multiple impulses at the same time.

For me personally, ultimately the fantasy of sex for money boils down to expressions of control, just as most other fantasies do. Fantasizing about whoring is about my desire to be objectified, pimped out, and made to perform, to use Tristan’s words. Now, these aren’t things that I necessarily find directly pleasurable—theoretically I could be made to do something I didn’t really want to do—but it’s not always direct pleasure I’m after. Rather, it’s the derived pleasure I get by being controlled by my “pimp” that I find so hot, even and sometimes especially if that exertion of control is tormenting me.

While at times these desires manifest in a prostitution fantasy, at other times they fit nicely into slave, harem, or even prisoner fantasies. In some of the more extreme ones, I’m made to perform not merely for my livelihood, but for my very life. This can be very intense, but that’s because it’s this intensity of control that I lust for.

Of course, realizing such intensity in reality just isn’t practically safe. Moreover, if any of the life-or-death fantasies were to become real, they’d pretty much have to be one-offs for the obvious and very unsexy mortality issue; sometimes in my fantasies I’m killed, but that’s only sexy in the fantasy, not reality. In no way do I actually want to be in an unsafe life-threatening situation like that, and it’s a fact that there are enormous risks associated with thoughtlessly enacting these sorts of fantasies in real life.

This brings me back to the first part of the title of this post: barring one’s attendance at an event such as Dark Odyssey—which I am even more intent on attending after reading Tristan’s article about it than I already was—how can one go about experiencing the thrill, nervousness, and excitement of this fantasy in a way that isn’t insanely unsafe? As it turns out, some of the best advice I’ve found on this topic came from one of Dan Savage’s Savage Love articles, in which he writes to a bisexual man who has similar fantasies as I do. (No, it wasn’t me writing in!) Dan said:

[T]he only way to safely realize this fantasy […] is by sharing it with your most adventurous [Friend With Benefits] and enlisting his help. After you tell all, ask your FWB if he would be willing to facilitate the realization of this sexual fantasy. In other words, ask him to pimp your ass out. It would be his job to find and recruit a guy you don’t know, a guy who’s trustworthy and safe but just a little freaky, a guy that he knows you would find attractive. Then your FWB/pimp tells you what corner you need stand on what night and you wait there until your pre-screened, pre-selected john drives up and rolls down his window. Be his ho, be safe (the real pros all use condoms), get paid, and run home to your pimp and hand the money over to him. Everybody wins.

I think this is sound advice, but it could be better, which is where the second (nerdier) part of the title of this post comes into play. What Dan’s advice is missing is a certain measure of protection against selective forgery attacks.

What I mean is that if I were to follow Dan’s advice to the letter there’s no way for me to be assured that the john who drives up to me and rolls down his (or her; women aren’t always relegated to the prostitute’s role in my fantasies!) window is the same john that my partner had selected for me ahead of time. Although this may be perfectly acceptable for some people, while the excitement of the fantasy would certainly be heart-pumpingly, penis-hardeningly awesome, without this added level of assurance obsessively detailed people like me would still feel an unacceptable twinge of apprehension.

Therefore, after reading Dan’s advice, I came up with a way to ascertain that the john who might (theoretically…) roll down his window in front of my slutty ass standing on the street corner was, in fact, the pre-selected person while still maintaining the fantasy’s mirage of anonymity. Since I’m an utter nerd, the inspiration of the solution came from the TCP computer networking protocol.

Here’s how the revised scenario would play out. For the purposes of this example, I’ll call my john, well, John, and we’ll assume that Eileen is my pimp (because that would be hot).

1. After discussing this fantasy and building up the courage to actually follow through with it, Eileen would search for and pre-screen a john for me. She picks “John” and she tells me to go stand on a specific street corner at a specific date and time. She also tells me to expect a specific pick-up phrase, for instance, “Hey, pretty boy. How much for a fierce ride?” The phrase is specific enough so that it’s unlikely to be typical (but really, I have no idea what a typical line to pick up a prostitute would be). Finally, she also picks a specific amount of money that I should be whoring myself out for. (After all, she knows how much my ass is worth on the streets.)
2. I wait at the appointed place at the appointed time (possibly wearing the appointed slutty outfit) and when John rolls his window down, I listen for the pre-scripted phrase. This step is analogous to the TCP SYN packet that computers send to initiate a connection. It’s useful because at this point I’d know whether or not this john is really my John.
3. Assuming the phrase I hear is correct, even though I know who he is, he still doesn’t know if I’m his pre-selected ho for the night (though I suppose he could be given a picture ahead of time) so now he waits for me to respond with another, pre-scripted statement. Furthermore, this gives me the opportunity to bail if I needed to for whatever reason. If I decide not to bail, my pre-scripted response, maybe something like, “For you I could be $75. $50 if you only want my mouth,” is analogous to the SYN/ACK packet used to acknowledge a successful connection.
4. At this point, everything is set up and we’re both reasonably confident things are going as planned, so one last pre-scripted response (“I’ve got $150, so I want all your holes, and more than once. Get in.”) from him could be used to signal the end of the pick-up precautions and start the scene, which is analogous to the final ACK in the TCP connection establishment phase.

In computing, this is known as a three-way handshake. Its purpose is to initiate a connection between two parties, and because there is a round-trip before a connection is formally established, it’s resistant to spoofing. That’s exactly the protection which is needed in any fantasy involving sex with so-called “strangers,” so it seems to me as though something like this, which could be thought of as an extension on the concept of safe-words, is just what the doctorpimp ordered.

Then, hopefully, this mysterious stranger, who would appreciate me in all my sexy nerdy glory, would proceed to treat me like the slut I am, and we’d go to a cheap motel and fuck like bunnies.

It was recently my birthday. This is actually a bigger deal than it would otherwise be because I’ve just turned twenty four and, by my logic, this means I am entering my “mid-twenties.” For the first time in my life, I kind of feel old.

Of course, I’m not that old, but I’m still kind of old. It’s summer in New York City even though it’s winter in my new home on the other side of the world, which means school’s out of session. The new Executive Board of Conversio Virium is finding their feet, and though they’re doing a fantastic a job of it if I do say so myself, I notice all the little gaps in their knowledge about things. These are things that will come with time and experience, two things I seem to be finding plenty of in myself lately.

I’ve been a very busy bee and thus haven’t been paying much attention to this little corner of cyberspace except in the form of sporadic tweets where my real life intersects (as it often does) with the BDSM stuff. It is one of those cyclic things wherein kink takes a back seat to life. In part, this is simply a matter of lack of opportunity. I miss the public scene I know and complain about back in New York.

I think this has made play a form of comfort rather than a form of exploration, and doing a scene for comfort is not at all the same as doing one for personal exploration. I’m sure there’s a post in there, somewhere…. Ah, well. At least I am still getting new sex toys to review.

“Oh, but May, not everyone who is your age has the emotional maturity that you do to handle BDSM,” they’ll say, “You’re exceptional.” And then they’ll go on to tell me countless stories about how they saw some young people totally fuck up their lives by not “being ready” for BDSM play.

Of course, it’s kind of nice to be complimented on my emotional maturity, or my intelligence, or whatever it is they feel will drive their point home the strongest, but the truth of the matter is that it’s total bullshit. I am not that exceptional. Very few people are.

Here’s the lie: to be “ready” for BDSM, you need lots of life experience, commitment, maturity, and intelligence in droves. They say you will need these things so that you won’t freak out over what you’re getting into, so that you can spend the years it’ll take you to find the (increasingly less) underground culture that is the scene, and then enough intelligence to “get it” when you’re finally there.

Here’s the truth: BDSM is just like anything else and you’ll get out of it whatever you put into it. That means if you’re an idiot and you think being kinky is the next bi, you’re going to do stupid shit and you’re going to regret it. But you know what, that holds true if you’re 15 or if you’re 40 years old. Age has nothing to do with it.

It is true that 15 year olds have a lot less life experience than 40 year olds (duh). However, I think it’s just plain dumb to assume that because of this lack of life experience these younger people have less emotional maturity (or intelligence, or what-have-you) than older people. Just because you’re 40 doesn’t mean you’re more mature than me, it could mean you’ve just been acting really immature for 40 years. Come on, you all know the kinds of 40 year olds I’m talking about.

People often use my mere presence in the community as proof that you do need to be exceptional to be a 23 year old with a healthy BDSM lifestyle. “Where are all the other 23 year olds in several year long committed D/s relationships?” they ask. Indeed, I’ve asked that very same thing, too. Since there are so few of us, that must mean people like Eileen and I are exceptional. Right?

Well, maybe in some respects (we do write pretty cool blogs, after all), but what’s exceptional about my being heavily involved in the BDSM community isn’t how exceptional I am, it’s the fact that I’m involved despite the odds. In other words, the circumstances themselves are rather remarkable, but that does not mean that the cause of those remarkable circumstances is solely of my own doing.

Though I could easily take all the credit for being one of the few young people out and about in the scene, most of the credit belongs to the rest of the community that doesn’t see young people like me as capable members in equal standing. With consistent decrees that we need all that largely useless life experience to really be a part of the scene, how could young people ever hope to be engaged?

What’s even more bewildering to me is that this apparent necessity for life experience makes no sense. Not only is that kind of disrespectful (albeit in a good-natured sort of way), it’s also contradictory: more often than not, you’ll hear people tell newbies that they need to “unlearn” lots of cultural and social programming to feel comfortable with BDSM. Well, gosh, unless the unlearning itself is the goal of BDSM (which would make for a really really boring kink if you ask me), then doesn’t that put younger people in a far more advantageous position to be “ready for BDSM”?

The inaccurate representation that BDSM requires some kind of special life journey, different or unique from other, “less intense lifestyles” is really nothing more than the older generation’s self-consoling opinion. “It’s okay that it took me thirty years to come out to the community and start having kinky sex,” they tell themselves, “because I needed all that life experience to be able to handle it now.” On the other hand, for them, maybe that was really true. If I were born in the 60’s instead of the mid-80’s, I also might have needed quite a few more decades to get my head around the fact that masochistic or submissive urges are not sick.

That’s not what I needed as a young boy, though, because with information about sexuality finally freed from the stranglehold of large organizations (such as governments and religions), young people are way more capable of exploring their own sexuality safely than almost anyone gives them credit for. Most of us are also smarter than people give us credit for, and we’re also way more emotionally mature than they think.

As long as people like Miriam Grossman don’t get their way, this means younger people like me (and, hell, even younger people than me—damn, now I feel old) will be able to find our sexual comfort zones at much younger ages than the previous generations. And really, how can that be bad?

“Why don’t you write hypertextual porn, then?” Of course, leave it to us to turn a conversation that geeky into a conversation about sex—but still. It’s a really great idea: leverage the power of today’s Web to explore the creative potential of story telling. I started to do some research on the matter when I got home that night. Turns out, this idea is hardly new.

Indeed, this idea even has a name: hyperfiction, or hypertextual fiction. Nevertheless, there aren’t any really good sites out there that have compelling, engaging hyperfiction content.

Why not? I think it’s because hypertextual media is, by its nature, social. It’s social in the same way sex is social. For it to be really engaging, well, you have to engage other people. You have to link to other people. You have to share, and share-alike. You have to be social.

I know this because I tried to start a web site about hypertextual erotic literature. Well, okay, hypertextual porn—or htporn for short (and for funny geek references which I sincerely hope some of you will get). It’s in my playground. However, for the reasons above, it’s become clear to me that the way to successfully create this kind of content is not to do so alone. Besides, I don’t have anywhere near the amount of required cycles (free time) to really get a project like this—one whose direction is still undetermined and whose purpose is still largely an experiment—off the ground by myself.

So, consider this my Call For Participation. I’ve set up an introduction to the theory of htporn and a handful of other stuff on the web site. I’ve also set up a mailing list website with a specific hyperfiction discussion list that I encourage you to join—just send an email introducing yourself and your interest in writing (or reading, or whatever) htporn.

I’m not-so-secretly hoping lots of people will express interest in this idea and put forth their ideas. Right now, this project is really just an infant. It needs a bit of TLC and attention from folks like me and you. It also needs a bit of guidance and (dare I say it) discipline so it can grow up big and strong, knowing what it is and what it’s doing. And, along the way, there are going to be questions we’ll need to answer for it.

Even though I’m hosting this project, I don’t want to be the sole driver. I just really want to see this happen. That’s why I’m asking for your participation. Won’t you please come play with us?

I think the article, which is titled Tie Me Up: A Gadfly Interview with Conversio Virium and begins on page 13 of the PDF, came out really well. I hope it gives CV some more positive exposure to the Columbia University community, and to other colleges and universities as well. Here are a few choice samples:

Gadfly: Are there ways to think about pleasure and pain apart from the classic continuum defined by opposites, with a line in between marking the transition? Is the relationship between pain and pleasure actually circular?

Maymay: I think there are as many ways of thinking about pleasure and pain as there are people thinking about it. When you generalize, you begin to see that more people share classic opinions than those who share the radical ones, but that is true of anything, not just pleasure and pain. People who do SM often find themselves broadening their own awareness of what kinds of interpretations of pain and pleasure are possible, thereby increasing their own maturity and capability to navigate the world around them.

It behooves us to be humble, to acknowledge that we don’t know as much as we think we do. SM doesn’t suggest a relationship between pain and pleasure. On the contrary, SM challenges the relationships science, theology, morality, and other cultural norms have already established about pain and pleasure. SM doesn’t aim to indoctrinate, SM aims to free us from such indoctrination.

[…]

GF: Besides an interest in pain, what commonalities do the activities covered by BDSM share that are unique from other sexual interests?

MM: These things are grouped together largely because there is no other space where people can talk about them. Not even the Queer clubs do enough to educate people about how to practice these forms of sexual activity safely (both physically and emotionally) and consensually, and that’s okay as that’s not their place. These activities are grouped because they share a common physical theme. This is rough sex. Like a sport, people can get hurt. Like a sport, people can become very skilled in doing it in a safer, more effective manner.

You can read the full interview (PDF) over on the Gadfly’s web site.

A while back, Mischief made a pact with Switch and Boy to bare their toybags to the world. I don’t remember exactly how he wrangled a promise for the same out of me, but he did. My excuse for the tardiness of this reveal is, well, look at all that shit! I didn’t even know I had that many sex toys.

In fact, not even all of the sex toys Eileen and I had were in this photo at the time of the shot, and some of the items in the shot were items we (regrettably) never got the opportunity to use (like the big eye-hook and ring wall mounts from Home Depot). Alas, with our move to Australia, we’ve had to slim our collection down even further into two categories.

1. The bare essentials, which we have brought with us in our luggage.
2. The really-want-to-haves that we’ll (probably) be shipping as cheaply as possible to our new home Down Under.

If you’re brave (and bored) enough to read through it, here’s a pseudo-itemized tour of all the items you see in these photos.

At the top left of the photo, right beneath my feet, you can see the TENS unit we own. We’ve not used this much due to lack of experience with such toys and because it was a relatively recent acquisition, but I’m looking forward to learning about more of what it can (safely) do.

Laying alongside the TENS unit are two wooden homemade spreader bars—cheap one-inch diameter dowels with eye-hooks drilled into them, all from the kinkiest store in the world, Home Depot—laying atop our small and growing collection of three whips. Only the two whips with the green coloring are ones we use for play; they’re both four-and-a-half-feet nylon singletails. In fact, the one on the left was my first, and a gift—and still a favorite (thanks, dad). The other one, an old nine foot bullwhip we got for $25(!) at one of the Leather Pride Night Flea Markets is mostly for making loud noises in parks.

Back at the left edge of the bed, you can see our pile of rope. Most of it is MFP from Rainbow Rope, but there’s are a fair number of hemp bundles mixed in. We’re somewhat new to hemp and so we’ve got bundles from just about everywhere: Twisted Monk, Venus Ropes, Rainbow Rope as mentioned earlier, and I think I’m missing another vendor, too (sorry!). At this point, hemp is hemp is hemp to me just because I don’t have enough experience with it to really feel the difference, so I mostly look at price when I shop. (Ask Dov your hemp questions, he’s very knowledgeable. So are Switch and Boy.)

That said, the hemp is clearly far superior to the MFP and other synthetics if rope bondage means something special to you. Also, the different diameters of some hemp over others makes that length more or less suitable for certain things. Most of our hemp is 8mm thick, but for wrist, ankle, and other body-part bondage, Eileen and I are finding that the 6mm or even the 4mm is much better. Of course, for genital bondage, we’re strongly considering even thinner lengths, like 2mm in diameter. Or, y’know, really coarse twine from Home Depot.

We’ve also got a roll of bondage wrap (larger, left) and one of bondage tape (shorter, next to the ball gag). I absolutely adore bondage tape, and I’m not too embarrassed to admit that it’s partly because of the aesthetic. Pretty boys and girls bound in bondage tape are shiny, and the whole industrial tape-gag damsel in distress look is smokin’ hot. The only thing missing from this pile is vet wrap, which is probably more useful than both bondage wrap or bondage tape (especially for turning your human pet’s hands into paws), but it’s also more expensive.

Of course, along with the ropes and the rest of the bondage equipment is the EMT safety shears. Ropes and bondage wraps or tapes without safety shears are one of those bad situations you should take care to avoid finding yourself in. And, of course, you should make absolutely sure the safety shears can cut through whatever it is you’re being bound or binding in. How do you do that? You cut a small piece of it once before you play (not necessarily every time). You do lose a little rope, but that’s a lot more palatable than losing your life.

A good tip when buying rope is to buy one longer strand than you need and cut it yourself. So if you’re intent on purchasing two 15-foot lengths of MFP, buy one 30-foot length and cut it in half yourself. That way you know your EMT safety shears work properly.

Between the rolls of bondage wrap and bondage tape we have a standard-issue ball gag, vibrator, and nylon quick-release wrist and ankle cuffs. The ball gag, unfortunately was too big for me when I bought it because I got it at The Leather Man, a shop in the Village for gay men. Apparently, anything and everything made for gay men is way too big for me. Instead, when I shop for bondage gear, the only restraints that won’t slide right off me are the one’s in small women’s sizes. Unbelievably, even the most heteronormative-focused novelty shops, the ones you’d think would carry all sorts of little bondage things for men to put their heroin-skinny girlfriends into, don’t often carry restraints small enough for me.

Anyway, at the very corner of the bed on the lower left of the photo above (and much more clearly visible in the photo below at the bottom right of the picture), are three toys laying atop the case for Eileen’s Njoy signature product, the Pure Wand, which is nestled within the tender pink folds of…ahem, its case.

To the right of these things are a number of synthetic sex toys. There’s the unmistakable, must-have Hitachi Magic Wand and beneath it is a see-through (“Ice”) Fleshlight. Beneath that is a cyberskin pussy, one of the items from my EdenFantasys sex toy reviews.

Moving on, to the right of these sex toys lie our small but growing collection of dildos and ass toys. There’s the funny-shaped Aneros Helix in white sitting to the right of the Fleshlight and beneath that is the black Nexus Titus, both prostate massagers. Two black butt plugs lie beyond a cylinder containing the Mistress silicone dildo by Vixen, and next to these are the two medical-grade blue plastic attachments for the Hitachi Magic Wand.

Moving back a bit, there’s also a collection of metal cuffs of various sizes and shapes, mostly silver. Eileen’s favorite fire-engine red handcuffs stand out, as does the silver asshook—another gift from the generous and talented Boy. Then, of course, there’s a long bunch of black leather and nylon straps, buckles, and collars of various sorts. There are also (some of) Eileen’s play knives there, including her poniard and curved hunting knife, and her butterfly knives (those are the scariest ones).

Finally, the last patch of the bed is covered by our medical supplies: needles, gloves, gauze pads. There are also the sex essentials: condoms, lube (such as Babeland’s excellent Babelube), our strap-on harness, a blindfold (a Mindfold branded one, as well as a few soft pieces of dark fabrics), locks to go with our loose lengths of chains, and a number of other odds and ends. Our (sadly, now broken) graphite evil stick is there with the blue and white handle, as well as the Master keysafe, used for storing emergency copies of really important keys like the one to our chastity belt I sometimes wear (not pictured).

And, of course, the boy in the photo is me, wearing my “Vivid”-style Eternity Collar, as usual. Eternity Collars are making a name for themselves as being extremely elegant. I’ve worn my collar shamelessly for months on end, including time spent in the office. My office-mates thought it was “kinda hardcore” at first, but said nothing of it afterwards.

Though unabashedly overpriced, the collar is a great fantasy object, not to mention useful for relatively safely attaching leads and ropes to a bottom’s neck. When Eileen started kinking real hard on a certain porn story involving metal collars and was spending quite a bit more time than usual lusting over the pictures at the Eternity Collars web site, I knew I’d buy us one.

I’m also wearing a small leather wristband—a purchase from the innovative Leather by Danny of gripcuff fame—with the words “Boy Toy” engraved on it. Perfectly fitting for this photo.

Phew!

I like the references to religious imagery apparent in much of my play even though the thought of religion in my sex life makes me feel viscerally repulsed. I won’t do religious-themed play (naughty priests, nuns, and even Rabbis spring to mind—all potentially sexy for some people if not for me), but I understand the impetus of those who do. I like getting wings, being referred to as an obedient angel, or the idea of being nailed to a cross. I am no martyr, for martyrdom and ultimate self-sacrifice is in many ways the epitome of what I find repugnant; I ask to be hurt, to be beat, to be etched and marked, because it’s what I want, not something I dislike that’s merely a path to something “more.”

Parts of my life, like kink, present themselves in interesting ways sometimes. They’re like habits, much in the way going to the gym is something that is at first difficult but over time becomes habitual and—not necessarily in a negative context—addictive. If I don’t get my kink fix for a while, I start getting antsy. The physical catharsis of a good beating goes hand-in-hand with emotional catharsis of some kind. It’s one way that I experience the connection between the body and the mind.

What I’ve found over the past few weeks is that, at least for now, writing about these experiences and continuing my own introspective explorations about myself, my sexuality, and how I relate to the world around me (as well as why the world around me is so fucked up), is similarly emotional cathartic. Yes, I’ll admit it: I blog as a form of self-treatment. And I’ve been itching to start writing again.

However, I’m a horribly change-averse person at my core, in spite of the fact that I am also occasionally an eager risk-taker. When I stopped writing often, it became difficult to start up again. So many pieces of my life are scattered about the floor around me, in piles waiting to be sorted, packed, and shipped off to the other side of the planet (I’m moving to Sydney, Australia, from New York City), that I desperately wanted to maintain some semblance of continuity and order among the change and chaos.

You’d think, naturally, that with all the preparations to be made, the telephone, Internet, gas and electric, and other utility accounts to close down, the bank accounts to open and close, the taxes to complete for the previous year, the stuff to move, the apartments (and jobs?) to find on the other side of the world, and everything else I have to do to move my whole life from one of Earth’s hemispheres to the other, that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze in time for more play. In fact, I expected to be so busy that kink would have to take a back-seat to the rest of my life until I was settled again. Boy, was I wrong.

In the past few weeks, I’ve played more often than I have in the past half-year. Furthermore, I’ve played with more people in less time than I ever have before—the exact figure would have been even higher had there been the time. I lament the fact that it’s only now, with my imminent retreat from the in many ways stifling New York City scene that I’ve suddenly experienced an explosion of play partner possibilities who are not only fun and intriguing but who also seem to actively desire playing with men who bottom or, (gasp!) are actually submissive and self-respecting. C’est la vie….

The experiences are not all incredibly intense in and of themselves, but the experience of my own broadening “promiscuity” and apparent desirability is incredibly disorienting, and surprisingly uncomfortable at the same time that it is very welcome. After repeated conversations about the topic, in which I often express confusion, doubt, and glee at the situation, the best I can come up with is that “I’m not used to being liked at so intensely,” to borrow one of Rona’s lovely grammatical idioms. Of course, I’m not oblivious to the reasons: I’m relatively good-looking even if I still don’t consider myself “hot”, I have a pretty wide and (to some) intense range of things I enjoy doing, and I’m an all-around decent person.

What’s so astonishing to me, then, is that other people have taken note of these things, too. Actually being in demand by people who’ve never even heard of me before, as opposed to being merely available, is a lovely, self-affirming experience. It’s the ego-boost I’ve heard so many women talk about. And I’m not too proud to admit that it was really, really nice to have.

The weekend after the Flea in Rhode Island, I went to a weekend-long private party near Boston, having been invited by a friend along with Eileen, and the experience (much of which is the foundation for the feelings expressed in this post) was the exact opposite of what I expected. Instead of feeling shunned, I felt wanted. I played each night, each night feeling a bit more comfortable than the one before, until on Sunday night I not only got beat in ways that made me moan when I moved for days, I also had my first semi-public orgasm and outright sexual experience with someone I’d just met.

Oh, it was tame, and relatively short-lived, but the fact remains that it was the first of its kind: invited to join Eileen and the top both she and I had met (and played with) earlier in the party on the floor in a corner of one of the party rooms, I lay back and the two of them proceeded to rub and caress my bruised body while he (the top) pressed a Hitachi Magic Wand against my penis. A few minutes later, while I was just beginning to start writhing in pleasure on the floor, my friend from Kink in Exile, who had just gotten through beating my thighs and ass with one of her metal pipes, joined our corner and took a spot rubbing my chest, nipples, and sides.

I was uncomfortable being the center of so much explicitly sexual attention. Three people, one of whom I didn’t even know before the weekend started and another whom I’d seen in person for only the second time, were now sitting around me while I lay on the floor and braced myself against the vibrator’s insistent buzzing. And at first, I really was bracing against it.

“This is not very like me,” I was thinking. It was weird and uncomfortable, and I wondered if they were actually enjoying this anyway, letting me just lie back and enjoy myself with almost no words exchanged about it. “Maybe there are expectations I’m not aware of. That’d be bad!” I closed my eyes early on to try to fend off any triggers for more doubt, and not being able to see is something that helps me turn inwards, to focus on the sensations in my body rather than the thoughts in my mind.

It took me a long time to shove the nuisance of my own self-doubt out of my head in order to relax enough to enjoy what they were doing. At the start I was giggly and clearly nervous, but they all reassuringly told me to hush. The orgasm built slowly, but as a result it was fierce and explosive and wonderful and it left me a little dizzy.

After it was over and I came back down from the high of the beatings and the orgasm, the newness of the experience struck me most clearly: I’m changing, too. For years, even though I’ve had due cause, I’d been walled off and detached from the social and sexual possibilities and opportunities laid out before me. No, they aren’t always there in such massive quantity as they were at this party for the first time, but I know they were there.

Maybe I’m starting to be ready to really say “yes” to a lot of the things I wanted but wasn’t ready for before. It took the right people, in the right place, at the right time, to make it happen. Just as it did when Eileen and I first met.

I’ve also been seeing discussions about Orgasm Logger surface on message boards and other blogs every so often. It’s a lot of fun to read through the discussions people are having and to see what they’re saying about it. Here are some telling examples.

This woman, on an Informed Consent discussion thread, says:

Having orgasms isn’t a competitive activity, it’s just something that happens, or doesn’t and it certainly shouldn’t be used as a measure of anything. In my opinion.

I have to say I agree with her regarding her view on the usefulness of orgasms as a competitive measure, but I disagree that it shouldn’t be used as a measure of something. Measure of what is the question. Well, I think that’s up to the person doing the measuring.

I never think of orgasms as competitive, just a lot of fun. They’re fun to have, and they’re fun for some of us not to have, and the fact that some of us are having more than others is also a lot of fun for some of us. I don’t think there’s anything in this world that turns me on more reliably and so thoroughly as watching my lover have a screaming-good orgasm. For me, when she has ten or twenty, or maybe even a hundred and I haven’t had one, that’s an even sexier thought. I like the disparity in the numbers, but I don’t feel competitive about it.

Naturally, kinky people into chastity play and orgasm control see the value of this tool really quickly. Later in the same thread, another woman writes:

I think the ‘logging’ idea would be a nice little extra feature for those who do chastity play.

And then another guy echoes her sentiment:

I can imagine it might be of use if a man were in a sort of chastity arrangement without a device i.e. based on trust, and monitored by a domme at a remote location.

Curvaceous Dee is (fittingly) ahead of the curve by already having experienced first-hand the intent of Orgasm Logger:

It was a great relief to finally come again. The very useful Orgasm Logger has confirmed to me over the past few months what I’d suspected for a while—that I like to get off every couple of days. Doesn’t matter too much whether it’s self-pleasure or pleasure with partners (both have their moments), but, almost like clockwork, every two days on average will see me gushing, groaning, and generally feeling great. Which explains why I’m always running out of ‘bedroom towels’….

Indeed, as she points out, keeping track of stuff let’s you know more about that stuff.

Here’s another blogger’s comment, one I really love:

I clicked, and found out this guy had his last [orgasm] 3.58 days ago, and this is a feed from an actual Orgasm Logger site! What an add-on to one’s blog! The ultimate in advance orgasm management strategy systems!

The ultimate in advanced orgasm management strategy systems? I think this blogger coined a new acronym: OMSS! Naturally, I can think of dozens of improvements to Orgasm Logger so I’m not going to be calling this thing “the ultimate” any time soon.

Of course, Lux of Boinkology said it best:

We’re both fascinated and confused by this application

In fact, that’s been the most common reaction, and it’s really interesting to me. Long before I created Orgasm Logger, I’d just been naturally keeping a tally on my orgasms. It seems to me like most everyone does this, if only not as mindfully as I do. Of course, what made me mindful about keeping track of my orgasms in the first place was my near-fetish for orgasm control, in a sexually submissive headspace.

I got really serious about keeping track of my orgasms about two years or so before I created Orgasm Logger. At first, I simply wrote down when my last one was, so I’d always know. Then I wanted to be able to easily share that piece of information with Eileen, so she’d be able to know whenever it interested her. To make that happen, I started recording my orgasms as events on my personal calendar, publishing those events as an iCalendar to a local WebDAV server I run for the two of us here at home, and then subscribed her iCal to the calendar feed I was publishing.

It worked flawlessly. Now I had a real database of all my recorded orgasms with embedded date and time, location, and participant information! It was pretty much all I needed. But it wasn’t perfect.

It didn’t do the things I was most interested in, which was tell me at-a-glance how long it had been since my last orgasm, the most personally interesting datum. I had to do that calculation every time I wanted to know. What’s today’s date? When was the date of my last orgasm? What’s the difference between then and now?

Obviously, computers are the answer to computational problems, so I started thinking about how I could get the computer to do everything I wanted. In the process, it occurred to me that lots of people heavily into orgasm control are always talking about “how long it’s been” or “what their last one was like.”

Hell, people who aren’t even kinky are talking about their orgasms left and right, up and down, inside and out, this ways and that ways! Moreover, the entire political debate over contraception, abortion, teen pregnancies, abstinence-only sex education, and a host of other issues, are all centered around exactly this topic: orgasms!

None of this would even be happening if it weren’t for orgasms, but I’ve yet to hear someone acknowledge that simple fact. It’s as though, if you were an alien, you’d think orgasms were what made the world go ’round, but nobody was allowed to talk about them directly.

Which brings me to my point. Orgasms are really important for a lot of people. What’s interesting, then, is why it’s so puzzling to so many people that I’ve made a tool to help people keep track of them. After all, throughout history, the one thing people have continued to do with nearly no change in behavior at all is come up with ways to keep track of the stuff that’s important to them.

No value judgement, no assumptions, just an awareness of what’s important to people and the benefits that can be garnered from using increasingly sophisticated tools to broaden that awareness. That’s what Orgasm Logger is about, for me. That’s what I think everything should be about, on a philosophical level.

No one would have looked at me askance if I wrote improvements to banking software, because money is very important to a lot of people. That’s why it’s tracked so rigorously. That’s why it’s used as a competitive measure of status, of wealth, and of many other things, even though a lot of us think that it shouldn’t be.

Why, then, do orgasms seem so out of place? Maybe the answer to that question is also the answer to a lot of other things that we as a country, a culture, and a species, are struggling with. Maybe understanding value, understanding why the things that are important to us are important, things that are currently so deeply ingrained in the cultural tropes of our society that we don’t even realize we can question, will help us in ways we can’t even imagine today.

That’s what I’m puzzling over.

Update: News of the existence of Orgasm Logger is still spreading, and it’s still getting the typical, puzzled and, in some cases, even hostile reactions I can pretty much expect from the mainstream world-at-large. Latest sighting was at a site called Dear Sugar.