There can be a fine line sometimes between kink and dysfunction—that area when you risk that a fetish or other alternative sexual activity goes from something fun and “out there” to something that actually fucks you up in addition to allowing you to fuck (or be fucked).

The psychiatric community, I fear, still has some catching up to do in this regard. Fetishism, for example, is still considered a psychiatric disorder, which I think is ridiculous considering that the word is used among sexually active people with less-than-vanilla tastes (and even a lot of the vanilla ones) in a manner that usually does NOT assume dysfunction. Or at least not any kind of dysfunction that interferes with life much.

Although it might change in the fifth edition, due out in 2013, the American Psychiatry Association’s (APA) fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known affectionately as DSM-IV), one of the key handbooks used by people in the mental health professions, still mentions fetishism between its covers.

The manual defines fetishism as the use of nonliving objects as a stimulus to achieve sexual arousal or satisfaction, in cases where said objects are not specifically designed for sexual stimulation (such as a vibrator or dildo would be). The DSM code for fetishism is 302.81

And yet “homosexuality” was dropped as a disorder back in the third edition. Homosexuality hasn’t been a diagnosable disorder (nor should it ever have been) for the past two editions, but we’re still hung up on sexual fetishes being something that needs diagnosing and possible treatment?

Clearly, sexual fetishes can reach levels where they interfere with a person’s life or interfere with healthy sexual behaviors and relationship-building, but that is a rarity, and I think the APA would do well to use a nice, clinical-sounding term instead for those situations (and which already exists): paraphilia. Then we can have the word “fetish” back and use it for the fun, non-threatening, and non-dysfunctional way it should be.

However, saying all that, I have to admit that I think those of us in kinky circles sometimes don’t recognize dysfunction in our relationships or in those of others.

I’m not saying that we should look askance at each other and speculate incessantly whether a kinky relationship or a fetishistic desire is healthy or not, but neither should we be too blasé about things.

We also should be aware of the motivations of more “committed” kinky folks and the vulnerabilities of “newbies” or “kink-curious” folk.

Now, you could argue that if a person is curious about a kink, or in the beginning stages of exploring one or more of them, that they know what they’re getting into or know enough that they’re “fair game.”

But I think we need to take into account issues like inexperience and/or youth, and how both can individually (and especially in combination) leave people open to potential problems or confusions.

For example, I think same-gender relationships are fine, and every bit as valid as hetero ones. But I don’t know that I completely subscribe to the “born that way” theory. There may be an element of that involved, but I think our desires are formed by early associations and our environment. That doesn’t make them illegitimate desires or less-valid ones. I simply don’t think genetics is the dictator of sexual orientation—or at least not the sole dictator of it.

I can look to my own life for an illustration of this. I’ve been attracted to the opposite gender since at least Kindergarten, when I felt a stirring in my loins in the early 1970s for a classmate with long blond hair and a penchant for wearing white vinyl boots. Or my third-grade teacher, especially when I saw her smoking a couple times (one of my earliest smoking fetish twinges, by the way). And so on.

But I was never really appealing to most girls, and despite being kissed by one of my crushes in fifth grade, I’d never gotten so much as nibble of interest. Eventually, entering high school, with so many attractive, intelligent and interesting ladies, and even LESS interest in me. In the mish-mashed circles within with I moved (geeks/nerds in many cases, a couple “popular” folks, and people who crossed over many social circles), there was a guy whom I found intriguing.

I can’t say what it was, exactly—a mix of things, I suppose. He had a sort of Oscar Wilde flair about him. He had charisma, charm and magnetism in an intellectual and sort of aloof manner, but with this simmering sensual undercurrent. He was confident, assured, well-dressed (and a smoker) and openly gay. He entered my thoughts relatively often and, while not as prominent in my mind or my desires as female classmates, I am certain I would have had sex with him if he had pursued me.

Now, you could say this would simply have made me bisexual, and you might be right. But at the same time, I was young and shy, and hurt by years of unfulfilled desire toward the opposite gender. The guy I had some interest in was a controlling sort and a dominant personality—I recognize this in hindsight. If he had been interested in me it wouldn’t have been hard for him to convince me, or for me to convince myself (or both), that being “gay” was who I really was, and that I’d been deluding myself up until that point. I know myself well enough in hindsight, and with my 43 years on the planet interacting with people, to realize this about my young self. In so many things, it’s easy to convince ourselves we “belong” somewhere we don’t (be it relationships or careers or past times or something else).

And my young self wasn’t that much different in terms of impressionability and desires as any other young folks, then or now. Easily molded by a person with the desire to mold.

I also know that in college, where I didn’t fare any better with women, and where there was a woman on one floor of my dorm who was domineering, sultry and chain-smoked…well, she could have probably convinced me to do just about anything—and perhaps things not in my best interest—had she pursued me, despite her being freshman and me being a senior.

Now, if all that stuff about me seemed like a tangent, it isn’t (I don’t think so, anyway). Because in fetish circles, I wonder at times how people can be lured to do things to others that are not admirable, or allow themselves to be turned into something that isn’t healthy for them.

Let’s look again to my smoking fetish, since I know it so well (and myself) and understand my fellow smoking fetishists more than I would other kinksters and fetishists.

I see often in smoking fetish forums and other online venues a guy with a smoking fetish who is involved with a woman who is a non-smoker. These guys will often wrestle with these major issues of not only whether or not to reveal their fetish, but also whether to ask the woman to smoke, encourage her to smoke, or “lure” her toward a smoking habit.

These guys are often very torn. They love the woman, and are also drawn inexorably to their fetish. They essentially have two loves that they want to combine, but at the same time don’t want to “corrupt” their partner to an unhealthy habit that might reduce her lifespan or introduce health problems down the line.

On the other hand, there are guys who don’t have that tension (or conscience) and gleefully look for ways to coerce or slowly seduce a woman to smoking, and who are turned on by the idea of her becoming addicted. After all, the “dark side” of the smoking fetish (a relatively small percentage of smoking fetishists, but a notable sub-group) often involves arousal over things like smoker’s cough, lung damage, hopeless addiction, etc. (not attractive to me, but then again, neither do bloody welts from BDSM whippings appeal to me, and I don’t judge those folks either generally speaking).

And with that parenthetical statement, I get my segue into BDSM, and perhaps some more “mainstream” examples that will better illustrate how there are fine lines between desire and dysfunction at times.

Having been to various kink munches, and being acquainted with people online—and with BDSM often overlapping with the smoking fetish—I am pretty well-acquainted with the whips, chains, etc. crowd. I don’t see anything wrong with that area of kink. I might not understand its appeal personally, especially the hard-core stuff, but I recognize its erotic validity.

That said, I wonder how many BDSM relationships might mask actual abuse, and how many people might be drawn to the allure of BDSM in their mind, and find themselves in a harsh and unhealthy reality.

Now, don’t jump down my throat just yet. I’m not vilifying BDSM. But like many kinks and fetishes, it can go too far, and people can get involved and convince themselves that they belong even when it’s clear to many others they should get out.

In that way, it’s not unlike any other relationship. Many times, the people we choose to be with aren’t good for us, but we won’t admit that to ourselves. And often, others around us can see the problems but won’t speak up. Or, when they do, they may not be heeded.

Within the kinky community that my wife and I have interacted of late, there is at least one master (who has a primary slave…his wife…and several other female subs) who is very predatory. It was clear that early on he was sizing up my wife. Her stated interest in occasionally submissive activity was something he saw as being something he could capitalize on, and he sized her up away from my presence. But after a few meetings at munches and online interactions, he began to realize my wife was no lifestyle sub, and she made it clear to him in subtle ways that she wasn’t one to be “taken over”—just occasionally controlled.

But no sooner had he moved on from sizing up my wife than we saw him sizing up a woman who was in her first year of college and new to the munches.

Now, I know she’s a grown-up. I really do. But my wife felt protective toward her, especially with a more predatory and extreme master around. The young lady was clearly new to the scene, impressionable, and probably easily manipulated. It would be easy to see how she could be drawn into a world more harsh than she might have chosen for herself, and made to believe it was her place to suffer and serve.

I mean, it’s not like abusive relationships outside of BDSM always start off with overt or frequent abuse, either. It starts small, or subtly in many ways, and by the time you realize there’s a problem, it’s too late, and often it’s hard to get out.

I’m not saying BDSM relationships are all about horrid abuse, or that all (or even most) subs are weak, confused, helpless individuals. Far from it. But at the same time, I can’t help but wonder if in some of these relationships, one or both partners are justifying their abuse (delivered or received) as “necessary” when it’s actually pathological.

And frankly, I don’t know how one sorts that out in some cases, as the people involved aren’t always obejective, and love (or even just lust) can blind us to the harm our partners do, whether intentionally or not.

I’m not saying any of this as an indictment against kink of any kind, nor do I have any answers about how to tell healthy desire from crippling dysfunction (must less recognize the gray areas in between and where they might lead). But I am saying that while not all kink and fetish is dysfunction (as the DSM-IV might lead many to believe), neither is it inherently healthy simply because sexuality is involved. Orgasm or physical satisfaction doesn’t always mean we aren’t harming ourselves, and it’s probably a good idea to try—as objectively as we can—to see the bigger picture in the kinky course on which we are traveling, and whether we have crossed any lines.

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I think it’s incredibly ironic that I’ve written now several times (here and at a couple of my blogs) about how my wife and I very recently decided to embark on an open marriage in our middle age, and how the whole situation around the act has created both joy and stress in our relationship, and yet…well, after quite a number of months, we still haven’t fucked anyone but each other.

Yeah, I’m in an open marriage, but for all practical purposes, I and the wife are still in the traditional monogamous mode.

Sure, on the one hand making the decision to open our marriage is a blessing in itself. It took a lot of pressure off my wife to know that I was willing to let her have another lover (or lovers), and that I was open to one or more people joining us in our relationship. It’s also been a relief to know that if I find myself with an opportunity to have sex with someone other than my wife, or perhaps even to woo that person, I can actually act on it. I don’t have to live with the “what if” scenario in my head or sneak around. All around, a healthier situation than having longings (as my wife has had for some time apparently) to have more than me but to think it’s not possible.

Also, we can talk about real-life or online crushes we might have without awkwardness, and we don’t have to worry that any flirting we do will be misinterpreted by each other—because, whether it’s serious flirting or just friendly, casual flirting, it’s all OK.

But still, since we went through all the angst involved with my wife opening up to me about her desire and need for an open marriage…plus all the long discussions about how we can make it work and what the ground rules are…plus the time spent trying to making connections within the swinging and polyamory communities…plus everything else…well, it sure would be nice to be open in more than just theory.

I mean, I’ve opened myself up to the possibility of swinging, or polyamory, or some hybrid of the two, and it sure would be nice if I could actually open up someone else’s legs rather than just think about it. Or watch my wife do so. Or just know that she’s on a date doing it herself and finally realizing her unfulfilled fantasies.

It’s frustrating, I tell you.

And the thing is that it’s not really for lack of any opportunities. It’s not as though the wife and I are unappealing. Hell, we went to a swinging event and had a great time even though we didn’t play with anyone. We’d love the chance to attend another such event and at least play with each other while someone watches, even if we’re not ready to have relations with someone we don’t know or only know very slightly.

Also, we’ve discovered that many of the people my wife and I both interact with on Twitter, who live in our state, are themselves in open relationships and actively engaged in activities with multiple partners. And then there are people who seem like they’d be pretty willing to give it a go with my wife or I (or both). I’ve flirted with a couple of these women online. My wife has made her own connections online for light chatter and sometimes flirting.

A couple guys have offered to do some body worship or other submissive activities with her. Hell, a woman my wife knows outside of the virtual realm has openly offered to get together with us so that she and I can simultaneously pleasure my wife (though she has no interest in direct interaction with me, which is fine with me).

So, what’s the hold-up?

Are we scared/nervous? No. Well, mostly not. A swinging event recently got some police attention in our state, but it wasn’t run as classily or discreetly as the one we had previously attended, so it’s not likely we’d have problems at the one we’d be going to.

Are we too picky? Yes and no. My wife is pretty particular at times, and she and I both have some specific interests, but we’re not ruling out people left and right. It’s more a matter of not wanting to leap into situations with people just for the sake of “popping our cherries”, so to speak. There’s a guy or two on Fetlife who’d love to worship my wife’s pussy and/or feet, but my wife isn’t really into being a domme, so she’s not keen to rush into that offer.

Are we not committed enough? Hardly. My wife is very much feeling overdue to have a piece of someone other than me (or in conjunction with me). Not having yet acted on the potential of our newly opened relationship is a source of increasing stress for her.

No, the real problem is that we’re middle-aged married folks with a couple of kids.

That’s the dirty little secret of being in an open relationship: If you don’t have copious amounts of free time (and a reasonable amount of disposable income), you’re kind of screwed. Even more so in a state that is large but with a sparse population outside of the couple major centers of habitation and commerce. So, in our case, we have the friend of my wife’s willing to help me double-team her, but she lives over an hour away. There is a woman I think I can click with nicely, but she’s a couple hours away, and she has a husband who’d like to be involved with my wife possibly. In both cases, we’d need to invest in some serious babysitting.

Even going to a munch to meet other kinksters means a few hours in babysiting time eating our already tight budget. Same thing with a swinger event, and to make an event like that work best, we’d want to get a room at the inn where it’s held, meaning we’d need an overnight sitter.

Then on top of the sitter you’re spending money in gas, probably going out to dinner with folks, buying drinks or whatever at some point.

And sure, let’s just assume we save up or we get more freelance work and the money isn’t such an object. There’s the time. I’d love to get some time for some sensual fun, but if it comes at the expense of time with my wife for some quiet intimacy when the kid’s asleep, or time with the kid, or time to write and blog, or just time to catch up on movies—well, then the whole swinging or polyamory thing has to be weighed against the limitations of a 24-hour day and too many things to fit into it.

Make no doubt about it: An open marriage requires time to make the openness work. If you’re swinging, you need time to go to events or just to spend time having fun with your new partners. If you’re going for serious, hardcore polyamory, you have to essentially date in addition to maintaining a relationship that you’re already in to find one or more additional partners to develop a loving relationship with.

To all these stresses, add for us that we have no relatives near us. Add the fact that my wife runs an organization in which her perceived moral character could mean the difference between keeping her job or not. And make no mistake: If her board of directors found out she was having sex outside her marriage, they could (and likely would) remove her from her directorship of the organization. As her organization gains stature and so does she (by extension), she has serious concerns about going to events or being seen getting cozy with someone other than me. There are only a few degrees of separation between most people here in this state.

My wife has a crush on a guy who’s local, which is great in terms of time and convenience, but she hestitates to flirt with him, much less tell him she’s available even though she’s married. That’s a risk for her to take, and one that could lead to word getting out that she’s “loose” or “deviant” and then the shit will hit the fan for real.

So, even as opportunities for us to play with others or perhaps even pursue relationships in addition to our own present themselves, we have to think twice. My wife keeps vacillating as she tries to decide how aggressively to pursue activities outside our marriage, or if she even should right now (or ever) because of the risk of exposure.

It’s not the same for a lot of the people we see at munches or interact with online. I’m not saying that it’s EASY for them, but it’s certainly MORE easy for most of them. A lot of them are younger than us, with fewer obligations and fewer things to drain their money, and therefore more disposable cash. A lot of them don’t have kids, or are divorced and only deal with their kids a few days out of the week (or month), and therefore can have sleepovers without a child (like ours) asking why there are several people in mommy and daddy’s bedroom.

It’s all extremely frustrating. Not so much because I’m not getting any extramarital action, but more so because I know that it’s important to my wife that SHE get some of that kind of activity. It’s something she’s buried for too long, and now she feels like she has to re-bury it, and that hurts me. I hurt to see her want something so bad, have it theoretically in reach, and then have to say, “No, can’t risk it.” Or, “Can’t afford it.” Or, “I don’t have the time or the energy for that with everything else going on.”

I haven’t begun despairing yet, but I know how the years begin to fly by as one gets older. We’re still a reasonably appealing couple of people, individually or as a pair depending on the tastes of potential playmates or partners. But the longer we go unable to act on this and find the right people, the higher the chance we’re going to find ourselves as the couple that’s too old for anyone to have interest in. Then a window will have passed and there will be regrets, and I’ll feel like crap for my wife (and maybe a little for myself).

There are no answers here, I fear. No easy ones, anyway.

I will forever be grateful for the doors that were opened kink-wise when my wife revealed her needs and we re-sparked the passion. But I hope that in terms of the potential for both of us to have other partners and playmates that this isn’t an open and shut case where all the doors and windows are closed before we even have a chance to really be open.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in kinky/fetish circles lately, and it’s the notion that “kink” is a four-letter word that is synonymous with BDSM. I’ve got news for you (though hopefully most of you already know this): A lot more than those four letters fit into “kink.”

Although Eden Cafe is a pretty well-rounded place, I even see it here at rare times, with a tweet about it, or post on it emphasizing “kink” in a relationship, but really being about the bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism scene alone. But I’ve seen it most particularly in online venues that are supposedly oriented toward kinks and fetishes in general, but which end up being almost all about the ropes, whips, chains and so on.

Well, kinky may mean twisted and tangled (much like fetish or fringe sexual behaviors), but there are curves and kinks aplenty to be found in more than those chain links, whip braids, fancy knots and more.

I’ve talked about what I see as the dangers of exclusionary and parochial attitudes in the kinky sexual scene before (like in my “Of Prurience, Pretension and Prudishness” article here at Eden Cafe), and I guess this article is kind of a sequel to that one.

You might wonder: Why do I let it bother me? Simple: With people already making judgments about our sexual choices, we simply don’t need to be divisive among sexually open circles. Yet we are.

For example, I and my wife spend a decent amount of time online at FetLife, which is kind of like a combination of Facebook and Yahoo! Groups for kinky folks. It seemed like a great place for us to be, to connect locally or just virtually with people who might share our kinks, or simply appreciate kink in general. On that social networking site, you can adopt any number of titles, like Dom, Sub, Switch, Sadist and Masochist. Now, you might say, “See, it’s a BDSM site…why are you there if you’re not waaaaaay into BDSM?” But it’s NOT a site just for BDSM. Because, you see, you can also adopt the title of Kinkster, which is what my wife and I did. Also, you are encouraged to list your fetishes of interest, and there are a HUGE number to choose from, many of which I’d never heard of before, and a huge chunk of them (most of them, I think) NOT being specifically BDSM-oriented.

And yet, in one group on that site, a “classifieds” posting section for people in my state, a guy posted a thread recently looking for a kinky couple that could play with him and his partner. He wasn’t necessarily looking for heavily kinky activity right out of the starting gate, but wanted to find some locally (or at least sort-of local) people to play with who were sexually open-minded.

What he got were a lot of responses that he’s posting in the wrong place, and should probably join one of the swingers groups and post the request there. This, in my opinion, is ridiculous. First off, it’s a general classifieds group, and it’s specific to his state. Therefore, it should be the perfect place to post his interest/need. Instead, BDSM people, who predominate at FetLife, came out to criticize him, marginalize him, and explain to him how uncouth his request was. As one sympathetic commenter pointed out, mentioning “sex” in threads like that is often met with ridicule by BDSM folks who see the idea of sex as sullying their BDSM experience, and he saracastically (though pretty accurately) noted that if he had said he was looking for people to pee on, be peed on by, hit or be hit by, he would have had better luck. I saw a similar outpouring of shunning behavior when a guy posted in the same group looking for a cumslut.

BDSM is a category of kink and fetish, and a pretty broad one, since it includes rope play, dom/sub activity, orgasm denial, spanking, whipping, beating, knife play, fire play, cupping, needle play, hooks, blood play, humiliation, simulated rape, and a multitude of others.

So, I get a bit pissed when I see people trying to take the terms “fetish” and “kink” and make them all about BDSM. I don’t deny that BDSM aficionados (and experts, beginners, posers, wanna-bes and more) are probably the biggest single group of kink and fetish folks, but that doesn’t make them the only group—nor even the majority overall.

I mean, there is golden shower/watersports activity, which often has nothing to do with BDSM (though it overlaps with it, just as the smoking fetish I enjoy does at times). There is furry sex. There is foodplay of all sorts of kind, plus other wet-and-messy stuff involving oil, mud, slime, etc. There is tickling. There are foot fetishes. Corset, stocking, panty and nylon fetishes. Leather and latex fetishes that might have nothing to do with a dom or sub wearing them. Lipstick fetishes, and other makeup fetishes. Feminization and adult baby play. Dirty talking and sensory deprivation or overstimulation. Medical fetishes. Enemas. Need I go on?

If you want your online social community to be about people with kinks, let people of all kinks seek and find what they want, instead of trying to co-opt as many areas as possible for BDSM. If you just want a place for BDSM folks to hang out, you should create a place called DungeonLife or something like that (and maybe there is a DungeonLife.com; I’m not currently enjoying a connection to my wi-fi as I write this, so I couldn’t say). There are plenty of places for specific kinds of kinksters and fetishists, and that’s great, but I go to FetLife and places like it for the generality. Instead of trying to force people into corners and boxes, and shove them away, why can’t we have a place where all of us “sexual oddballs” can gather?

I think we have a lot to learn from one another. I like being around other kinky people, whether in the physical world or the virtual one, because I might learn of things I never thought I’d be interested in before. Or I might find areas in which we overlap, and there might be much we can share. I might just be able to learn some new terms and situations that will simply expand my knowledge.

And yet it seems we have cliques instead, with the BDSM clique often being like the jocks/cheerleaders who spurn the art geeks, drama kids, nerds, geeks, emo folks, etc. While they may not all be mean, they are often exclusionary to those “outsiders.” More than that, though, they often seem to want to dominate the community (pun fully intended) and make every place in which they appear their own, even when it’s supposed to be a place for anyone with a kink or fetish.

I often find the same dynamic when I go to munches in my area. While I understand that mostly BDSM folks are going to show up at munches, I am dismayed by the way you get looked at weirdly and semi-shunned when other folks find out you have an interest in swinging, or don’t like pain, or don’t get why the rope bondage parties never involve any “happy endings.” I’d like to go to munches knowing that we can all share what turns us on…NOT to hear endless stories almost SOLELY about how best to tie someone up, where to buy your floggers and paddles, and how to make your own punishment and torture implements. Seriously, that’s 95% of the fetish/kink talk I hear. I still like going to the munches to have general chit-chat among people who aren’t uptight about sex talk, but I end up feeling like an outsider because I’m not in the “cool” crowd of the hard-core BDSM types.

And you know, it’s not that I don’t want to hear about your BDSM exploits and tips. I love it. Bring it on at the munch that I was welcomed to when you knew I was kinkster and not anything BDSM-focused. I’m not going to assume you’re a violent, deviant freak unless you start showing evidence that you are. I know I’m around folks who are mostly doms or subs, and that’s cool. I take you as you are. But when I mention I’ve been to swinging events, too, in addition to munches, don’t give me this look like, “Oh, you want to have meaningless sex with multiple people instead of enjoying the purity of S&M and bondage where sex hardly ever enters the equation.” Sure, they don’t openly SAY that to me or my wife, but the vibe is clear, particularly when reinforced by later posts they make online basically talking that same kind of shit about swingers.

The irony? I’m not even a swinger, really. Nor my wife. We are in an open relationship. Not just open to multiple partners, but to many new avenues of sexual exploration. We’ve declined to set hard-and-fast rules with each other, and have agreed to consider almost everything and try things at least once. We are open to swinging. We are open to polyamory. We are open to kinky monogamy. We are open to more than that.

General fetish online venues and munches that are open to all kinky folks should be places I can feel safe and welcome, rather than places I am marginalized.

I’m sure I stand a good chance of hearing from folks in the comments section below who will either tell me “I don’t do that” (which is great, but there are nearly enough people like you in the so-called general fetish venues and events I’ve been to) or you’ll say “We’re the majority; we set the agenda.”

To that latter group, I have to ask, “Why must you control or co-opt the agenda?”

I mean, BDSM folks often have private parties after the munches, to which they are only going to invite the people they like and feel comfortable. Totally understand that; so why marginalize the non-BDSM folks DURING the munch? You’ll get to do all the coolest stuff (to you) when they aren’t around anyway. Also, why take over a place like FetLife and make non-BDSM folks out to be shallow weirdos, when most of the world thinks you’re a deviant freak? We should be sticking together.

The problem with taking over general terminology and places that are meant to be for broader communities (or should be for broader communities) is that you homogenize things just as unfairly and unnecessarily as any fundie religious type that calls you degenerate for doing anything that isn’t missionary style with your spouse for the purpose of procreation.

When you make America just about white folks, you are wrong. When you make racial discrimination only about Blacks, you are wrong. When you make religion in politics all about Christianity, you are wrong. When you make terrorism all about Muslims, you are wrong. When you make capitalism all about the rich, you are wrong.

When you make kink all about BDSM, tying those two four-letter constructs together and forcing out every other fetish-laden activity…

…you are wrong.

If that is your aim, consciously or otherwise, you are being a pretentious, exclusionary, narrow-minded, judgmental, self-centered jerk.

If you exclude the enema and douching folks because they just like how it feels and don’t need to humiliate their play partner, you’re a douchebag.

If you look down on the watersports and brown shower crowd if they just like the taste or smell or filthiness of it, and aren’t topping or bottoming, you’re a shithead.

If you think anal has to be about hurting and overpowering someone, instead of just mutually enjoying the act of buttfucking or pegging, you’re an asshole.

If you think sex always has to be about power, and anyone who does it otherwise is “vanilla,” you’re a fuckhead.

If you think eating a woman out only matters if she’s smothering you and talking shit, or fellatio only matters if you ram it down her throat while calling her “dirty slave-slut,” you’re a fuckface.

I despise people who try to take over. I don’t care if you’re a liberal or conservative, fundie or atheist, union leader or corporate leader…whatever. I don’t care what your sexual orientation, interest areas, kinks, fetishes or quirks are. What I care about is that that you recognize that except in very few circumstances and places, we occupy a larger community, and it can’t always be your way and your rules.

I have no interest in trying to crash or raid your private get-togethers and specialized venues that are hardcore BDSM; do me the very great favor of not trying to take over the general places and supposedly welcoming venues I attend—because the fact is, I don’t want to only be fed your narrow agenda, and my interests are every bit as “legit” as yours are.

Ah, cities. The clamor, the crowds…the kink…

Not that small towns are exempt from sexual fetishes from the mild to the perverse, or general rampant horniness for that matter, but certainly cities lend a certain grandeur (or raw raunchiness…or both) to their sexual offerings and idiosyncrasies. New York. London. Berlin. Hong Kong. Amsterdam. Bangkok. Singapore. Tokyo.

This city/kink tradition goes back a long way. Really long. Biblically long.

If you came up in life through any kind of Judeo-Christian faith (or spend time in or near a culture largely dominated by that religious tradition), you’ve heard something about the “Whore of Babylon”, or Babylon itself being a kind of spiritual and/or carnal “whore” symbolically. More graphically and less symbolically, you have the divine demolition project that was laid down on Sodom and Gomorrah. Giving “twin cities” a bad name at the time (Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota helped improve that reputation greatly in more recent decades), these two cities were neighbors with a taste for, apparently, rape gangs in the street looking for tourists or new arrivals on whom to perform lewd and degenerate sex acts—with or without permission—and God knows what else.

Now, we’ll never know the full depth of sexual kink and perhaps outright perversion these two cities endorsed, but at least we do get the term “sodomy,” which of course usually means anal sex, from the city of Sodom.

What troubles me is that God struck down BOTH cities in a fiery maelstrom of spiritual fury, so Gomorrah must have been doing stuff at least as bad as Sodom was. The fact we don’t have a sexual act named after Gomorrah kind of scares me. Given how much incest, killing people for their sexy wives, rape, and other soap opera-worthy sexual activity is chronicled in the Bible, I have to wonder why we never got a sex act out of Gomorrah’s particular tastes.

I mean, what could be so awful that God would destroy the city over it, and the writers of the Bible would be too squeamish to ever hint at what it was and give us a term like Gomorrahdy?

Maybe it involved taking a donkey’s head up your ass while you licked pig slop from between a temple prostitute’s tits.

But in honor of the great tradition started by Sodom, I thought I’d share with you some sex acts, some of them pretty fucking perverse even by my open-minded standards, that are named after cities—in a couple cases, the name is actually based on a state or a country, but I’m sure you can forgive me.

Or maybe you won’t, because right now, many of you are thinking, “What kind of sick fuck would even go to all this trouble to research kinky shit named after large population centers?”

First off, I’M that sick fuck. Have some compassion; please don’t hurt my feelings.

Secondly, and on a more serious note, I didn’t mean to. I was actually on an insult generator site a couple days ago, and it created an insult with the term “Cleveland steamer” in it. Curious, I did an online search, and still haven’t applied enough brain bleach to get the image out of my head. Then another insult generated by the website provided the term “Boston George” and, not having apparently learned my lesson, I did a search for that as well. Then I got the idea to dig deeper and see if I had an Eden Cafe article I could produce on such a theme.

Now there isn’t enough brain bleach in the world to save my sanity, and I’m going to pass the madness along to all of you. Admittedly, some of these sex acts aren’t all that gross, but I’m telling you, they’re gonna get grosser as this article progresses, so if you’re the squeamish type, run while you can (I’ll give you advance warning before it gets too bad).

If you’re the curious type, like me, keep reading. Then get back to me later, and I’ll let you know where to get a good deal on brain bleach—in bulk quantities.

Shanghai Shampoo

I thought that I’d start with some international flair and something very tame. This act is, quite simply, working up a large load of semen (ideally, though I guess the actual volume of spunk doesn’t matter all that much) and then releasing it into the hair of your sexual partner. Not all that gross by kink standards, and it keeps folks like Prell and Suave in business. Doubt I’ll do it myself, but I approve in principle.

Boston Cooler

Boston yielded three sex acts; this is the first of them. Go figure. I’ve been to Boston. Doesn’t seem like that kinky of a place, frankly. Anyway, the Boston Cooler is apparently any form of oral stimulation during which you have ice cubes in your mouth, so that you can give your partner some chilly stimulation—often with no prior warning.

Boston Crab

This seems to be based on some kind of wrestling maneuver, and sounds to me like an anti-69, or maybe a Bizarro World version of the 69. In any case, the woman would be on her belly on the bed (or wherever) and her sexual partner would be above her, hunched over her and facing her feet, then pulling her legs up and eating her out—vaginally in most cases, though I suppose it could go anal as well with a rimjob. I’m not sure if it’s anatomically possible for a man to be on the bottom and have this done to him, given the angle of the erect penis, but I’m sure one could do a teabag version of the Boston Crab and suck on the testicles.

Boston George

Rounding out the trio of Boston-named sex acts is one that just sounds really fucking uncomfortable, and probably way unsanitary. It is named after George Jung, aka “Boston George,” who was a big-time cocaine supplier to the U.S. market in the 1970s and 1980s. In keeping with the cocaine theme, and snorting, apparently the sexualized form of Boston George is the act of ejaculating up your sex partner’s nose, followed by that person snorting the cum. All I can say is that as a young man, I read a “Penthouse Letter” (or maybe it was a “Hustler Forum” letter) in which a guy ejaculated up a woman’s nose, and that image haunts me to this day—and there was no subsequent snorting of the jizz in that story. Ick.

Cincinnati Bow Tie

Getting to something a little less gross (to me—hey, if you like a Boston George, I’m not going to judge you, but I’ll steer clear), we have the Cincinnati Bow Tie, which is best described as “backwards tit-fucking.” So, you’d be straddling the woman’s face or neck, your penis pointed downward toward her legs, and your balls form the “bow tie” on her neck. Supposedly, this act is so named because they do things backward in Cincinnati.

Jersey Meat-Hook

There are two variations of descriptions of this act, both involving a finger being curved into a hook shape, and both involving the asshole. The tamer one is to simply insert your finger into the ass of the woman you are having sex with—ideally in doggie style position for this maneuver—and then you feel around for her cervix and stimulate it via her ass while you fuck her. In the more extreme version of this act, you definitely do it doggie style, but the index or middle finger (or maybe multiple fingers) are inserted into the anus not to stimulate the cervix but to physically lift the woman up and down on your cock or strap-on. By the way: No, I haven’t violated my “city name” theme yet—Jersey can be a city as well as a state.

Arabian Goggles

Sort of similar in theme to the Cincinnati Bow Tie, the Arabian Goggles act involves placing your testicles over your sex partner’s eyes while receiving fellatio. So, your ass would be on the person’s forehead while your dick is in that person’s mouth. I’m not sure this is possible for most people, as the penis isn’t that flexible. No doubt you’d need a really long dick or some really long and low-hanging ball sack on you. This, astute readers will notice, is my first deviation from a city-based name to a whole country or state. It’s also the last of the fairly tame kinky acts. They’re gonna get gross from here on out, and keep getting grosser for a while.

Puerto Rican Fog Bank

Yeah, another nation-named act instead of a city—it’ll be the last time I do that, though one other item down the way has the name of a U.S. state. Anyway, this involves farting into your sex partner’s face while receiving oral pleasure from said partner. And folks, if you haven’t been heeding my warnings thus far, it only gets more scatological from here on. And then some.

Pasadena Mudslide

This can be as “innocent” as accidentally leaving a brown smear during tit-fucking or straddling a partner’s neck or chest to receive oral sex—because you don’t know how to wipe properly or experienced a “juicy fart”—or it can be actually defecating, on purpose, on the person’s chest or neck during tit-fucking or oral. Most definitions suggest that shit just happened (so to speak) and you simply kept going because it felt too good to stop over a little crap.

Pittsburgh Platter

OK, so apparently the folks in Pittsburgh said to themselves (sticking up their noses in the general direction of Pasadena, Calif.), “Well, leaving a stain on a person’s chest by accident or taking a dump on their torso on purpose is all well and good, but let’s make it into more of an up close and personal interactive visual art form.” So, what we get is a situation where one person shits on a glass table, while the other person, underneath the table, watches the whole process—presumably both getting off on the experience for slightly different reasons. I’m sure masturbation is often involved. Cleanup is actually pretty easy. Who knew Pittsburgh was into “art kink” and had a neat streak?

Cleveland Steamer

So, I guess the folks in Cleveland said to themselves (after making fun of their fellow Ohio residents in Cincinnati for being too vanilla for the “bow tie” thing), “The folks in Pittsburgh are too fucking prim and tidy, and the folks in Pasadena aren’t nearly committed enough to shitting on people.” Thus was born the Cleveland Steamer, wherein you not only defecate on your partner, but then gleefully grind your ass or dick into the mess and smear it all around. If the shitter is a man and the shittee is a woman, I guess the crap becomes a sort of stinky, thick, possibly lumpy lube for tit-fucking and if you’re not sliding in between the breasts, I guess the two of you are reveling in the sheer texture and ripe scent—and smearing the substance flat like a steamroller (hence the “steamer” part of the name)—because it just feels right. More power to you, but I’m grossed out myself.

Alabama Hot Pocket

After witnessing the Pasadena, Pittsburgh and Cleveland contingents and finding them wanting, the good folks in Alabama (yes, I know it’s a state, not a city) said to all those scat-loving folks, “Y’all are a fuckin’ bunch of pussies!” Taking scat to levels that one can only imagine one reaches with copious amount of meth, crank and moonshine in your system, whomever created this move decided that if shit comes out one hole, why not put it in another? Now, I know some people like to eat shit (literally), and I KINDA get that (frankly, piss is as far as I go personally), but that’s NOT the hole I’m talking about. With an Alabama Hot Pocket, a guy (or perhaps a strap-on equipped woman) actually shits into a woman’s vagina and then fucks that pussy while it is filled with a steam pile of poop. Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t think any fetish sex act can top that for the combination of edgy AND unhygienic. Frankly, even if I was into scat fetishes, the risk of infection and a possibly very embarrassing emergency room visit, if not risk of death of my sex partner via some kind of sepsis, would be enough to put me off even trying this.

Not quite done yet, folks, though at least we’re gonna move away from shit for the last two.

New York-Style Taco

You vomit into the woman’s coochie while performing cunnilingus, and just keep on going. Yeah. Uh…yum? I’m really not trying to pass judgment, folk, but really? Some definitions suggest that this often happens while drunk or otherwise prone to spontaneous vomiting, and either because you’re so committed to oral or so zoned out you simply don’t let the vomit stop you—or you don’t know you’re lapping through a puddle of upchuck. While I appreciate the attempt to protect the honor of people who carry out this act, I am fully aware there are people with things like vomit fetishes (and snot and other dubious bodily excretions), so clearly someone does this on purpose. Multiple someones. And they like it.

Kennebunkport Surprise

I’m sure the upscale hamlet of Kennebunkport in Maine (where former president George H.W. Bush…or “Bush the First”…lives and/or vacations with Barbara) would prefer not to be associated with any sex acts. Nor is it the hub of clam harvesting activity in New England. But, its geographic location is appropriate here. Supposedly, a Kennebunkport Surprise is when a person about to perform cunnilingus on a woman fills his mouth near to bursting with New England Clam Chowder and then forcibly spews it into her pussy. Supposedly, this is done by the person punching both cheeks while loaded up with chowder. Also, the references I’ve found to it usually suggest that the woman doesn’t know a seafood stew is about to enter her holiest of holies. I am rather dubious of the existence of this sex act, not only because it is so specifically bizarre, but because I don’t see how you can smuggle chowder into the boudoir AND stealthily fill your cheeks nearly to overflowing without the woman noticing. But hey, what the fuck do I know? I never would have guessed the Alabama Hot Pocket existed. One thing I can say is that performing the Kennebunkport Surprise would likely lead me to produce a New York-Style Taco—and I’d be fleeing the scene without finishing the cunnilingus.

If you have any idea how committed I am to giving oral sex until the woman comes, you will understand just how gross I find the notions of those two sex acts.

They would be my cunnilingus kryptonite.

But then again, I wouldn’t try most of the things on the above list of menu options.

Now that I’ve ensured you’ll need therapy or hard drugs to get over reading this article, let me simply say that if nothing else, you’ll be set when “Trivial Pursuits” releases its X-rated edition, or “Jeopardy” starts up a category titled “Most Bizarre Kinks.”

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s talk about orgasms. No, not the guys’ orgasms—the women’s. I mean, while nature made it terribly unfair to men that women can have multiple orgasms, often with very little rest required—and men have that fucking refractory period that can be hours upon hours long, especially as we get older—the fact is, that it’s generally not very difficult for men to come.

I don’t hear about large numbers of men unable to orgasm via the act of penile penetration of a woman, or while being sucked off or given a vigorous hand job. While we may like to use various toys at times, like prostate vibrators or masturbation sleeves, we don’t generally need the tools, though many women do. So I think we need to give some thought and attention to making sure our women really are experience la petit morte—the big O—you know, coming for real.

First, before I start throwing around tips, pontificating and being snarky, let’s go through some facts and figures about the female orgasm, which is a more elusive creature than many people think—especially the men who often have female partners faking orgasms to spare the fragile male egos and/or put an end to an unsatisfying sex session so they can sneak a tryst with a vibrator.

Oh, sorry, the snark slipped in already. What can I say? It’s reflex.

Anyway, those numbers…

Apparently, something like 75 percent of women never reach orgasm from intercourse alone, meaning the dick isn’t enough, and at some point, sex toys, fingers, tongue and/or other aids will be needed to help Mr. Happy get the job done. As disheartening as that figure is, it gets worse: Studies also say that between 10 percent and 15 percent of women never achieve climax at all, no matter what you do.

Also, in a recent research of young adults’ sexual experiences and feelings, by Galinsky and Sonenstein, it was found that nine out of 10 men in the study of young adults aged 19 to 25 experienced an orgasm most or all of the time, while just under half (about 47 percent) of the women in the study had an orgasm during a couple’s sexual relations.

Just one more number: According to research presented in a 1999 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 25 percent of women have problems achieving orgasm or can’t climax at all.

Depressing, right?

Well, it’s depressing for a lot of women, and it should be depressing for the men, too. Unless they’re hard-core dominant master types who specialize in orgasm denial anyway, or heartless and self-centered bastards.

Now, as a journalist with more than two decades of experience under my belt, I distrust statistics. They are too easily fudged or twisted at times, which is why Mark Twain (I think it was him) once said something to the effect of, “There are three kinds of lies in the world: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

I don’t refute that many women, and perhaps most of them, have trouble climaxing, especially if the guy is pretty much just relying on his cock to do the job. However, I do wonder about the notion that one in 10 women—perhaps a little more than that—can’t ever climax. It seems a bit unlikely to me. The fact that they haven’t yet achieved orgasm, I would suspect, simply means they have some kind of mental block (anxiety is a sonofabitch) and/or haven’t explored enough types of stimulation or places to stimulate to get to the orgasm.

In any case, it’s a sad situation when one person in the sexual scenario is left out of having a release. Sure, sex isn’t always about the orgasm. I’ve had many encounters with my wife in the bedroom, or on the floor, or in a kiddie wading pool that ended with me not coming, but still having enjoyed many pleasurable feelings and much satisfaction. But the startling elusiveness of orgasms for women is a serious problem, and one that we need to take seriously in our relationships, whether they’re one-night stands or lifelong commitments.

Now, my first piece of advice is for the women, and it’s not, “Just relax, baby.” No, it’s this…

…stop faking orgasms.

Seriously. If you’ve ever faked, stop it now. If you’re considering faking, don’t do it. Don’t. Worst idea ever if you want to have any real ones.

I know the reasons why women fake orgasms. Sometimes it’s because they think there’s something wrong with them, and they’re ashamed. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings. Sometimes it’s because they’re tired of being pounded in the pelvic area and just want to end things before they end up bruised and aching down there, with nothing pleasurable to show for the discomfort. Or it might be some sort of combination of the above.

But, while I understand the reasons, I cannot condone them. If you fake, the guy thinks he’s doing good in bed, and will keep doing the same things that already don’t get you climaxing. This is a zero-sum game for both of you. The longer you fake, the more chance you are going to make the guy really humiliated, angry, wounded or all three, if and when you finally do come clean. It’s just bad practice, ladies. Avoid faking the orgasm. Ever. And if you’re with a guy who can’t handle the truth or will be abusive to you for sharing it, you shouldn’t be with him to begin with. (And for God’s sake, men, please DO take such news without freaking out. The action movies tell us we’re supposed to be able to get back up after a flesh wound when we’re grazed by a bullet or clawed by some monster from the basement, so we ought to be able to handle the news that our penises are NOT magic orgasm machines.)

Second piece of advice is for both genders, and it follows from the previous point: Communicate, people. Talk about what turns you on, and tell your partner when they are doing something that feels good, so that you can train the person to keep doing that and to pick up new skills when they accidentally do something else that feels nice. Speak up. Or moan it if the situation calls for it. But share. No athlete ever got great without coaching, practice, and sometimes boring routines. So too does great sex require us to accept positive and negative feedback. Be constructive when criticizing, but don’t sugar-coat everything and just waddle along when things aren’t working. Because that leads to the same shit, in many cases, as the fake O’s do.

The rest of my advice is for the men, but stick around, ladies, as it’s always nice to get intelligence from the other side of the gender war…I mean, gender line.

Before I continue, a caveat and a credential.

The caveat is that while I’m about to dispense advice to the guys, I’ve only really had sex with one woman. Mind you, not by choice—it’s just I was a shy nerd who’d been shown nothing but rejection for a lot of years. I did have a girlfriend (who was dating me on the rebound) briefly before meeting the woman who would bust my cherry, and a couple years later become my wife, but I got anxiety the first time I tried to have sex with that rebound-girlfriend and couldn’t keep an erection, and before I got a chance to try again, she had reunited with her ex-boyfriend. (By the way, in defense of me, my sexual proficiency, and my ability to sport an erection as a younger man, there were two things working against me that first time. One, she had a pyscho, diaper-wearing dog who routinely tried to keep us apart during previous dates when I was busy with first and second base, and I’m pretty sure watching us with murderous fury as I finally attempted to mount his woman—by the way, when I woke up the next morning he had pissed on my clothes. Two, the woman had type 1 diabetes and had an insulin pump, which is essentially a pager-sized device attached to a tube with a needle at the end that is stuck into her abdomen. Now, you try keeping it hard your first time when faced with slightly intrusive medical equipment in the general area you plan on gyrating and thrusting—and said equipment is responsible for keeping the woman from going into glycemic shock and shit, and you’re wondering how you’re gonna give her an orgasm and not accidentally rip the tube out of her belly. Yeah, thought so…but I digress…)

Second, I have credentials to share with you. Sure, I might not have had sex with anyone before I met the woman who would become my wife, but I know how to please that woman, I have for a very long time, and she had plenty of raucous sex before I entered her life. And she has not faked an orgasm with me since the first month or so we were together (and we’re on year 14 of being married now), and even then she did it few enough times that you wouldn’t need all the fingers of a single hand to tally it up.

That’s right, guys: My wife doesn’t fake with me. Now, I realize that’s not the same as giving her an orgasm every time (there have been a few scattered occasions the “O” hasn’t happened because I wasn’t hitting the right spots, she was stressed out, or both, but even those nights are extremely rare, probably well under a dozen times over the entire 16-year relationship).

Before any women start chuckling to themselves and mutter, “Yeah, right, she never needs to fake it with you—sucker!”, let me point something out: My wife puts too much value on pride to fake it. By that I mean, she won’t cheapen her own sexual satisfaction by letting me off that easy, and she expects me to do my job well in bed (as she does herself with me), so she’s not going to let me get away with not finishing the task. If it really ain’t happening, she tells me it just ain’t happening for her, and she’d like me to stop so she can go to sleep already—or put me to work with my tongue instead. My wife is blunt and honest like that, God love her, and if she faked a couple times in our first month or two (and I wish she hadn’t done so at all), she did it only sporadically to keep my confidence up while she trained me to hit the right spots. (But next lifetime, Babe, just tell me what spots to hit, OK?)

So, I know what growing arousal sounds like, and what an orgasm sounds like (most importantly, I know it’s NOT like Meg Ryan’s scene in the diner in “When Harry Met Sally” or like most porn scenes). I know what an orgasm feels like when a woman is having one. (It’s hard to fake real spasms of pleasure, especially those inside the body—and it’s damn near impossible during oral with a guy who’s paying any amount of attention.) Problem is, that some guys don’t care to know, and some guys don’t pay attention to the woman because they’re too caught up in their own pleasure.

But I’ve made it a point of listening to the gasps and moans and hitches of breath from my wife, and to keep doing the things that make those things happen—as well as finding new ways to make them even more intense. I’ve made it a point to pay attention to her body language and know what things make her press her sex against me harder, or make her start to grab me harder and pull me closer.

So, am I an expert on all women? No, but I suspect a lot of what I’ve learned making my wife have some earth-shattering orgasms—especially in the past nine or 10 years—can help you, too.

It’s not about the size; it’s about the swizzle

You don’t pound your way to an orgasm, unless perhaps you’ve already done so much foreplay that the woman is on the verge when you enter her. I’m not saying women don’t like a good vigorous fuck—my wife certainly asks for them at times—but force alone isn’t going to do it, especially with the dearth of women who come from vaginal penetration alone. Size isn’t going to ensure success, either. Men, I routinely make my wife come during vaginal sex—and almost never having to use a vibrator or finger to help—and my junk is so average-sized I might as well tattoo “vanilla” or “plain oatmeal” on the side of it.

Now, I fully admit that my wife may simply be one of the “lucky ones” who is built to be able to orgasm vaginally. But whether or not she is, I still can say that a lot of it has to do with HOW I do the fucking. If your woman can’t come from vaginal penetration, she just can’t. But maybe, just maybe, the problem is that just about every other man she’s had (including perhaps you) thinks thrusting in and out like a piston is the peak of sexual skill.

Try positioning yourself a little higher up during missionary style, so that your belly is just a little higher than hers, so that when you go in and out, you’re also going up and down a bit and putting pressure higher up her vulva to stimulate that lovely clit, which is so often the secret to triggering the orgasm (I don’t know how to find a G-spot, and my wife has never asked me to look for hers—though I think I’ve hit her P-spot quite a few times…but that might be getting off topic).

Alone or in combination with the above, also go for a sort of dolphin-like “swimming motion” with up-and-down undulations as you slide in and out of her sex. Side-to-side probably won’t get you much, (though by all means, experiment) but up-and-down with the in-and-out should do wonders.

But, you know, for that extra “zip” try some swizzle. As in swizzle stick. As in, spiral. Gyrate. Circle that lovely vagina. At least half the time I’m inside my wife, I’m spiraling around inside to literally stir up the passions. Using round and round motions can be good, especially while doing things that cause you to press upward during penetration, as I described just a couple paragraphs ago. Look, you can probably walk and chew gum at the same time, or rub your belly with one hand as the other one pats your head. So you can probably combine two or three motions into one smooth synergistic one.

If you want to put in the effort, that is. C’mon, give it a try. Worst case scenario, you have to go to plan V.

V is for vibrator

The vibe isn’t your enemy, men. It’s not your replacement. It’s your ally. Perhaps even your savior—if your goal is to give an honest-to-God orgasm on a regular basis to your woman.

Now, I’m not saying you need a big-ass Hitachi wand or something. You don’t need some porn-star-sized realistic-looking penis with seven different vibration settings. A bullet vibe (whether you hold it, or she does, or it’s attached to a cock ring). An egg vibe. A more traditionally shaped vibrator.

If your lady suggests bringing in a vibrator to help, don’t be a wuss. Nod. Say “yes.” Encourage her to keep it around so it’s accessible any time you guys need it. You don’t get extra “man points” for being a dick about things and getting all prideful. The vibrator can’t cuddle her, take her to a movie, cook her some food, buy her clothes, or whatever makes y’all click together. The vibe isn’t competition; it’s your goddamn sidekick to help you be a superhero.

Maybe you don’t have a vibe, for whatever reason. Maybe the batteries are dead. Maybe your gal has vibrophobia, or dildophobia, or something. Maybe it’s just too damn hard for either or both of you to manage toys while getting busy with the screwing. And now, because of that, you (the guy) have come, and if the woman is smart and didn’t fake the orgasm, you know that only one of you has seen Nirvana tonight. Well, time to face your challenge head on. Or, perhaps, tongue on.

Yes, you should lick her out

Shit, even if you CAN routinely produce vaginal orgasms, oral sex is just too nice not to have in your box of tricks. I don’t need it to make her come during most sexual sessions, but often I LIKE to do it instead of all the pumping and grinding. With very few exceptions, women want oral (just like the vast majority of men do). It feels good. Often it feels better in terms of the intensity of orgasm, even if vaginal sex might be better in other ways (for me, I find oral more satisfying, both for me and for her, on a purely sexual basis, but penetration seems more emotionally and spiritually intense).

I’m a firm believer that no one in any kind of sexual relationship should avoid giving oral sex. I will say the women who don’t want you to actually shoot off in their mouths are entitled to that stipulation, and you should honor it. I mean, high-velocity, possibly bitter goo being launched into one’s mouth could be a gag-worthy experience for some. But there is no reason for anyone to deny their partner oral sex if that person wants it and/or needs it to reach orgasm.

Besides, it’s chivalrous. My first sexual contact with the woman who would become my wife was me giving her oral and not asking for anything in return. Few things will earn you more sexual brownie points, I suspect.

I don’t want to hear any damn whining about how it smells like fish. First off, chances are that you eat actual fish at times and enjoy it, so why are you bitching? Secondly, very few women smell like a seafood market down there. Yes, there is sometimes a slightly fishy scent at first. Just lick through it. Literally. As you lap at her, you will eliminate any sour or fishy stuff pretty quickly and as she becomes aroused, you’ll get the nicer, muskier smell going, and there won’t be any fishiness. And if you don’t like musky sex smells, why are you even having sex?

Seriously, I don’t think my wife has ever smelled fishy or tasted sour for longer than 30 seconds. After that, there’s nothing nasty, and then all the good smells start developing. And good tastes, too. If the woman smells perpetually of the denizens of the ocean or local lake, then you know what? She needs to see a physician, because there’s probably something there that needs to be dealt with medically, and you’ve probably been smelling that smell during vaginal sex, too, and already should have been encouraging her to make an appointment. In fact, you might even find out that the source of that unnatural smell also has something to do with the difficulty she’s having with orgasms (if she is having such difficulties).

Real men eat pussy. I will stand by those words. If you can’t do it or simply won’t, you fail a major test of manhood in my book. Punch me in the mouth for saying so, if you like; it won’t change my opinion on the matter. It might, however, interfere with my ability to lick out my wife if you bust my lip, which means I’ll probably be coming after you with a baseball bat later.

But enough “Fight Club” style posturing, since I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Point is, that of course there are women who just can’t have orgasms. There have to be. It just makes sense. But I don’t think the numbers are as high as they appear. I think there is an important group of women who just haven’t been willing to explore enough options and/or who have men who aren’t willing to explore options. Those women deserve their orgasms just as much as the other women—probably more so.

So, men and women, let’s work together, all right? Women stop the faking, and men start getting beyond personal satisfaction and, I think, we’ll all be a lot better off and be seeing the letter “O” brought to us by more than just the Sesame Street characters.

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I am not a fan of rape. I am not a defender of rape. I don’t think men are entitled to take what they want just because they can. I know that sexual assault is a prevalent crime that can be harrowing even if no actual violence is visited upon the victim. After all, the threat of violence (whether actively voiced or implied) can be a powerful thing if you don’t think you can outfight or outrun the person hell-bent on getting into your pants or elsewhere. And that still means a profound sense of violation and emotional scarring.

What I am also not a fan of, though, is being too quick to label something as sexual assault when the facts are fuzzy—particular if the memories, motivations and mind-set of the person claiming assault were fuzzy. You know, as in compromised by alcohol or other drugs.

On the one hand, a drunk person, particularly a woman in the presence of an aggressive man, is particularly vulnerable and easier to overpower, frighten, or to discredit afterward if a claim of rape is made. It’s heinous that there are plenty of men willing to use that to their advantage to force themselves on another person.

But on that other hand, memories are fuzzy when intoxicants are involved. If a woman wakes up the next morning and she’s feeling a bit sore but hasn’t been savaged, and the man never threatened her, is it logical for her to claim sexual assault? She might not even be fully aware of what she said or did the night before, and thus may have given consent or implied it without realizing it the next day. Drugs are shitty that way.

I know that many will say the first scenario (rape) is the more common and the second (a misunderstanding leading to a false rape charge) is way more rare. You’re probably right if you do say that. It doesn’t change the fact that it can, and almost certainly does happen often enough for some men to have their lives ruined while having done nothing wrong. I don’t want any victims, male or female.

Now, I don’t have an answer to this dilemma. People get drunk, or high, or both—and they fuck. This is not wise, but it happens. There are no rules or legislative guidelines that will make things more crystal clear the next morning when they were chemically clouded the night before.

One thing I will say is that women should probably not get wasted in a place where they are vulnerable (whether because of the people likely to be there, because they are out alone, or whatever). No, I don’t think a woman is “asking for it” if they get blitzed, any more than I think a woman who dresses sexily invites rape. But I couldn’t see myself (if I were a woman) going off with a man I didn’t trust and know if I was compromised in my reflexes, judgment, etc.—nor could I see myself getting hammered if I were in an unfamiliar place and not with some loyal friends around to watch my back.

This isn’t about blaming the victim, but rather about not putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. When my wife is out at a meeting, or with friends, or whatever, and I’m at home watching our little girl, I don’t drink. Even if she has a ride lined up with a designated driver or is planning to stay over somewhere, I stay sober because I know there’s always that slim chance she may need me to drive out to get her, and what if I’m fucking three sheets to the wind when that happens? It’s not a perfect analogy to the drinking-and-sexual-assault scenario, but it is in the neighborhood. Be wary, and be ready—shitheads can appear at any time. I don’t go down unfamiliar streets late at night unless I have no choice, particularly in cities or areas with which I’m unfamiliar—and even less so if that area or city has a bad reputation. And if I must be in such a place, I keep my eyes open and my wits sharp.

But now that I’ve made my plea to women to be careful out there and not make yourself an easy target, I have to switch over to the guys (though you’re welcome listen in, ladies).

My fellow men, listen closely: Don’t fuck women who are drunk out of their minds, stoned beyond any sense of reason, or anything like that, unless you know them and are pretty sure it will be OK in the morning.

Just don’t.

I’m not saying that drunk sex or sex while high on illegal drugs isn’t fun. It can be wonderful to have all your inhibitions thrown to the wind. But don’t do it with some woman you just met or barely know. For God’s sake, surely if you don’t have a girlfriend right now willing to get wasted with you and get jiggy, you will at some point in the foreseeable future. Don’t rush into it with someone with whom you have no history or sense of context. Because, really, if she’s hopped up on several drugs and inviting you to do all sorts of things with her, perhaps many of them rough, do you really want to take the risk? And I don’t just mean the risk she might think she was raped by you…or just turn out to be a fruitcake who thinks it would be cool to accuse you of rape. If she wants to have crazy stoned sex with you and you just met, you have to wonder if she’s got a dude nearby waiting to roll you, if you’re going to end up with several STDs, or something else.

Granted, there’s always the chance you might be high as a kite, too, in which case you might not make the best choices in such a scenario, but err on the side of just saying no to nookie while massively under the influence, if for no other reason than it will probably be way cooler if you can remember the next day what you actually did so you can relive it over and over in your mind.

Yeah, yeah, I sound like a prude. So the fuck what? Some of y’all want to party, and you want to get drunk, and if a woman whose judgment has left the building comes on to you, you look at me and say, “Why should I say no?”

I don’t know. Because it’s the right thing to do?

Look, I lost my virginity late in life, as I noted in another recent Eden Cafe article. Part of that is because I err on the side of gentlemanly behavior. I think you should, too. I’m a gentleman, and I’ve been able to have some fucking raucous sex. It’s just that I’ve had such sex with a woman whom I actually know, and I know what her limits are (mostly). Even if you’re a bad boy in most of your interactions, at least show some chivalry when a woman isn’t in her right mind.

When I think about it, I realize I could have lost my virginity long before the age of 27 if I had really wanted to—just by taking advantage of women when they weren’t totally in control of their judgment.

I’m so glad I never was tempted by that prospect, much less guilty of doing it.

I wouldn’t have had a ton more sexual notches on my belt, but I would have been able to get some action. But to me, it wouldn’t have been worth it.

First case in point: There was a woman during my senior year of college who was clearly interested in me. I could have gotten her naked with very little problem. There are two reasons I didn’t. First, she was not a balanced person. I don’t know if she had bipolar disorder or what, but most of the time, you could see the cloud of doom and gloom over her head. She was clearly the clingy and potentially obsessive type, too. Sure, I could have fucked her for a while and later dumped her, but I don’t want the stress of having attached to me a person with mental illness who clearly had no interest in medication or counseling—nor do I want to be a party in fucking up her mental health further by being an ass to her when I didn’t really have any interest in her personally. Another guy in our dorm hall got regular blowjobs from her before she started showing interest in me, but he didn’t give her any affection or really, for the most part, even give her the time of day. His theory: “Giving me head makes her feel better. I’m therapeutic to her.” For the record, her demeanor was clearly not in support of his theory, and he callously told her to take a hike a few weeks after being so therapeutic. So, yeah, I could have used her myself, but just because she’s willing to debase herself to get some illusion of love, and just because she was willing to make herself vulnerable wouldn’t make me cool for taking advantage.

Doing so with a drunk or high woman isn’t any better.

So, yeah, about that…I’ve also been to parties with women passed out drunk or so near to unconsciousness that I likely could have done just about anything and had them mumble “OK” and probably not even have been remembered the next day. But why? What am I going to get from a nearly comatose woman that I couldn’t get a lot quicker with my own hand and some spit or lube? Isn’t part of the joy of sex to get that interplay? To make the other woman hot and show how much a man you are that you can get her to say your name and, at the very least, fake an orgasm for you even if you can’t do the job properly? To me, fucking a woman who’s barely aware of the world around her is just a half-step from heading to the mortuary to find a piece of ass that’s about to be embalmed or just has been.

My point is that in a situation where drugs of any kind—legal or otherwise—are involved, someone has to be the responsible one. Dude, let it be you. What sex is possibly worth finding out the next day that the woman wouldn’t have fucked you if she were sober, even if it doesn’t end in a sexual assault charge or an STD or whatever?

I prefer to know that someone I’m about to have sex with actually wants to have sex with me, and knows she’s about to have sex. This isn’t an area where I want mystery or confusion. And if you want to have that kind of mystery or confusion, I wonder about how interested you are in even having good sex to begin with.

If she’s drunk enough to do anything you say, settle for getting her phone number from her and then call her up when she’s actually got her wits again.

You might not thank me for that, dude, but she might—and that’s fine with me.

Yeah, I was once the real-life version of the guy from the movie “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

Well, minus about 16 years.

But “The 27-Year-Old Virgin” doesn’t roll right off the tongue as well. Besides, in modern times, having to endure virginity until one’s late 20s when one wasn’t seeking to be celibate is still pretty sucky. Or lack of sucky, as the case may be, since it’s not like I was limber enough to suck myself. But, getting back to the point, while I’ve now been sexually active for the nearly 14 years of my marriage, and the nearly two years leading up to my nuptials, I spent my prime years of quick refractory period, limber body, and ceaseless energy with no lover other than my right hand, and no other companion but my imagination, magazines, porn videos, erotica novels, and the like.

I hated it. Despised it. Loathed it.

But in hindsight, I’m kind of glad it worked out the way it did. As with so many things in life, when we have the benefit of hindsight, we can see all the positives, and by that time we’re no longer in the painful reality of the past. So who cares? Does it really matter that I once went without, now that I’m getting sex pretty regularly? No need to glumly dwell on the past. I’m having the orgasms now and giving them out, and they’re no less lovely for coming late in my life. Better yet, I know I came to my wife knowing with nearly 100% assurance that I was STD-free.

Yes, my first full-fledged lover is also my current wife. You can make fun about how old-fashioned that is, if you like. You can, if you so desire, roll your eyes and think, “He only married her because she was the first woman to put out for him and he was desperate, thinking no one else ever would.”

You’d be wrong. As for the first notion, while I was raised Catholic, I never had any aspirations to save myself for marriage. I fully intended to do some fucking before I got into the honeymoon suite. I figured if I ever got past the geeky/nerdy/shy walls separating me from soft womanly nekkidness, I would clock in some significant sex hours before saying “I do.” (Hell, one of the reasons I took cooking classes in junior high was because I planned to be a bachelor for a long time before settling down, and figured I didn’t want to eat like shit while I was still living alone and playing the field.)

As for the second assertion that I married for the sex—please. Sure I was a nerd. Yes, I was painfully shy and awkward when I tried to get a date. But I wasn’t a fucking fool. Not then; not now. I’m not going to yoke myself to a woman I don’t love just to get sex. My right hand can’t make me miserable, but a bad marriage sure could—along with stripping me of my money and my dignity along the way, if a divorce became necessary. I was desperate enough for sex by my late 20s I might have been willing to date a woman with seriously negative issues just to pop my cherry and get some bedroom experience, but I wouldn’t put a ring on that finger.

Besides, let me tell you something: I could have gotten more sex with someone other than my-love-who-popped-my-cherry. You can point to my previous years of non-boudoir activity to refute that claim, but I can tell you something: When I finally lost my virginity, I gained confidence. I walked with a little more swagger thereafter. Was I still a nerd/geek type? Sure. Was I still “the nice guy” to most women? Yup. But something changed, one of the big things being the knowledge that I could make it not just past first or second base, but get all the way to home (in my opinion, the only thing baseball is good for is sexual metaphors). I suspect a lot of people who lose their virginity early, or who ended up paying a professional for the honor (something I was close to doing) don’t have that same kind of empowerment. I’m not saying sex can’t empower you under such circumstances, but in my case, it was a true rite of passage, and a very huge step in my sexual maturation—in a way that it isn’t for most people, I suspect. It’s like the person who spends their whole life shlubby and housebound and then gets in shape and climbs a mountain. It changes you. It changed me. I knew I could replicate that success. It just happens that I ended up falling in love with the woman who claimed my virginity.

And this brings me to another thing about having my first sexual encounter well into adulthood. I think I was better prepared. Sure, I would have enjoyed getting my sex on earlier, and I would have certainly gained more field experience. But frankly, while my first time with full-fledged sex was a bit fumbling, it wasn’t a failure. I didn’t last very long, but I also didn’t come the moment I entered the holiest of holies. Also, I had some sense of where the parts were from many years of seeing pictures and videos of women having sex, and from reading erotic tales. I mean, let’s face it, you can say all you want that book learning doesn’t equal real-life experience, but book learning put me way ahead of any acne-ridden teenagers with more hormones than common sense in the bedroom, who’s only having sex because they feel they must, and are armed with misinformation from most of their peers. In fact, the first time I got intimate with my lady (on the second date), I didn’t go for sex. I licked her out until I made her come, and I didn’t ask for a damn thing in return. I showed I could give her pleasure, and I sat tight, knowing that if I had gotten that far with her, the next date was going to involve sex. It did, and I didn’t embarrass myself.

Unlike the first time I tried to have sex, (maybe a year before I met my future wife) when after several dates involving lots of lips action and touching, but nothing south of the equator, I finally got into the bed of the woman I was then dating, and then, filled with anxiety, failed to maintain my erection. So we ended up cuddling instead. And then her dog got revenge on me by pissing on my pile of clothing on the floor during the night, forcing me to go home the next morning wearing my girlfriend’s sweatshirt. All of which, along with the fact she had been on the rebound when I asked her out anyway, might have contributed to her going back to her former boyfriend before I got a second chance to make love.

But you know, that wasn’t a relationship that was great for confidence-building anyway. I met her through a personals ad, she was a really busy person and lived nearly an hour away from me, she had several animals (most of which weren’t entirely sane), and like I said, she was on the rebound from a guy she cared about. We got along really well, but it didn’t feel like I had broken through my wall of shyness, given that we met through an ad. None of which really made me feel confident, though we maintained a friendship after she went back to her ex. With the woman who would become my wife, on the other hand, I approached her with no expectation that she was even looking to date (so I was going in cold), and although I asked her out in an entirely geeky and awkward manner, I did have the balls to approach her without any signs she was the least bit interested. That was huge for me, and the fact she said “yes”, much less actually enjoyed my company on our first date, was a huge ego boost. Having the self-control to get her off on our second date and wait until the third to bed her, and not be rendered limp from anxiety, probably had a lot to do with all that lead-up. I was making my way, as a man, and choosing my path. I wasn’t wildly trying to lose my virginity, and I wasn’t with someone whose heart and feelings were divided.

And so, I didn’t simply lose my virginity at the age of 27. I completed my metamorphosis and became the complete man I desired to be. I found within myself the self that I had never been able to tap before. I got out of my own way and worked with the personality and skills I had, instead of hoping to score despite them. I made them tools instead of letting them be handicaps.

My wife would sometimes fret that my sex life was lacking for the absence of multiple partners before her (an issue that will soon be resolved now that we have an open marriage), but she had it wrong. I didn’t lack for anything. Because in the end, in my opinion, sex is about the quality more than the quantity.

Just as losing my virginity was more about the attitude than my age; more about the timbre than the timing.

It seems that changing our entire sexual outlook is going to have to mean a whole new set of friends for the wife and me.

OK, we’re not getting rid of all the old friends. Not really. Besides, we didn’t have that many to begin with. Oh, it’s not that we’re antisocial, misanthropic, or unlikable. Nor do we stink, or have any weeping sores on our faces or anything. Frankly, as many of you out there might have discovered yourselves, it’s harder to make friends as you get older. In school, there are so many people in such a concentrated space, all of similar age, that you are likely to find a pretty fair number you actually like and get along with—and with whom you share many interests. Even in the working world, if you’re in your 20s or even early 30s, you might have avoided getting loaded down with kids and the massive responsibilities that go with a full-fledged family situation—which means you can hit the taverns and join intramural sports teams and all that with more frequency than middle-aged farts like me.

With the wife and me, the problem had been moving to a whole new state about nine years ago, far from our families and friends. It’s not a particularly dense population here, so the pickings are slimmer. We don’t have any relatives out here to help watch the kiddo. And the things that interest us aren’t as readily accessible out here (plays and other arts, ethnic food, neighborhood festivals, etc.), so finding people with similar interests is even harder.

In recent years, we’ve made a few really nice acquaintances, some of whom might have real friend potential. But even so, there’s been that nagging sense that something is missing. My wife has a friend who goes way back, and even though he’s still in Chicago, half a country away, they can speak for hours on the phone. I have a few friends from college who, while I don’t communicate with them often, have always remained a strong part of my life. With these friends from way back, my wife and I share history and very key compatible traits. There is a bond there. It’s something we haven’t been able to replicate here in New England yet.

Yes, we have a couple guy friends who are life partners, and our respective little girls are thick as thieves. We like both of them (the adults, I mean…of course, we like their little girl, too), but while we get together at times, and we can have entertaining conversations, there has always been the sense that we’ve really only advanced beyond strong acquaintances to friends because of the kids. There are other folks, as well, with whom we think there might be the possibility for connections, but various parenting, scheduling, and other challenges of adulthood prevent us from finding out. And of course, there are people we really think we’d like, but the interest on the other end to get to know us better might be lacking.

Thus, we know people, but we’re not really “friend” friends. And so we remain isolated and a little lonely out here in our little corner of New England.

And then it happened. The thing that made it all even harder for a little while.

What happened? Well, it was The Big Reveal that my wife made several months ago about what she needed in our marriage. The Big Reveal that led to The Big Talk about opening up our sexual relationship to other people. The Big Talk that led to The Big Decision to actually pursue some hybrid of swinging and polyamory.

Then the idea of making friends with many of the people who might have been good candidates otherwise went out the window.

It’s not that because we’ve embraced an alternative sexual lifestyle, and my wife has discovered all sorts of kinks she likes (and additional ones that I like now and hadn’t considered before), that we think we can only befriend people who are also swingers, polyamorous and/or kinky. It’s not that at all. I love having friends of all different stripes, and so does my wife.

But when you live in a small city, (really, a big town by the standards of where I grew up, went to college, and started my career) and you don’t know what people’s sexual hangups might be, you find yourself being very protective of a new sexual approach like the one my wife and I are developing. It doesn’t fit in with the norms of the community, and there are, at most, three degrees of separation between you and anyone else in our cluster of cities/towns. Should we end up outing ourselves at the wrong time to the wrong people, my wife would likely be drummed right out of her job. We might become an object of derision as a family.

Fine, you say. Just don’t tell them. And that’s fine and dandy. But if they’re asking what you’re doing for the weekend, or trying to get together with you, and you have to lie about what your plans are because they involve scantily-clad people, stripper poles, and sex in hospitality suites in some cases…well, that’s not ideal for forming healthy relationships. Likewise, if you want to ask them to do a little babysitting exchange, and you want them to watch your kid until very late because you plan on driving an hour or more to an event that might keep you up late with kinky activities…well, they might want to know why you’re gonna be out until maybe 2 a.m. or later.

So, suddenly, we are faced with not only the challenge of how to connect with kinky and/or open relationship types (since having an open relationship isn’t much use without additional people for intimacy), but we also find our pool of “traditional” friends shrinking rapidly.

That sucked. More isolated, even as we want to get more connected with people in both sexual and non-sexual ways.

Granted, the exhilaration of discovering such wonderful sexual horizons and such unexpected kinky overlaps between my wife and I eased some of the pain as we fucked each other senseless for a few weeks. Horniness provided some initial distraction.

But eventually, you have to come out of the orgasmic haze to deal with reality, and the need to find more kinky and non-kinky friends.

We lucked out in two respects early on, even if they were minor victories. One of the few people my wife had truly befriended in our area was, as my wife puts it, “just as weird as she was, though in slightly different ways.” This friend was someone who lived her life like an open book, so when she unloaded to my wife about a lot of her kinky sexual desires and troubles getting them met by the kind of men she desired, my wife knew she could confide in her about our own lifestyles and tastes (like my smoking fetish before The Big Decision, and our open marriage after The Big Decision). So, she had at least one local person with whom to share and commiserate. We also had a more acquaintance-y kind of person (who’s developing more into a friend) whom we realized we could hire to watch our daughter so we could begin going to swinger events, munches, and the like. Given that she was a bit of a “freak” sometimes too when it came to sex, plus being a pot-smoking, hippyish un-schooling hula-hooping mom, we were able to let her know what we were up to, and she didn’t judge us. Hell, one time after she watched our girl we tipped her with a brand-new, unopened beginner strap-on, since she wanted to have one to peg her boyfriend with.

It was a start, but a small one—made somewhat smaller by the fact that neither woman was my friend (though I like them both well enough), so I found myself still short of friends with whom I could safely and openly connect, thanks to our new lifestyle. So, there were some weeks there when I really wondered if we were ever going to find people to play with, perhaps form intimate long-term relationships with, and/or add to our tiny group of friends.

This is where living in a smaller population with fewer degrees of separation turned out to be a blessing—particularly when combined with my wife’s eagle-eye, research-hungry, never-forget-a-face-or-name nature. Sure, we could have made connections faster in a bigger place like a major city, where we might have access to kinky clubs and highly active fetish communities with many members. But we found something special that we might not have been able to find in a larger place.

We discovered how many people we knew—or who we knew through others—were every bit as open-minded sexually as us, and perhaps more kinky in some cases.

It all started shortly after we joined the OK Cupid dating site, because we had heard that it was swinger/polyamory friendly (as well as free). It didn’t turn out to be a great way to meet people at all (for us, that is), but we started noticing a few people on there who lived in our area, or within a reasonable drive, who were among our shared Twitter friends online. In fact, one tweep of my wife’s saw my profile on OK Cupid, figured out it was me, and was about to hunt me down for cheating on my wife, until my wife let her know we were both on OK Cupid and were mutually cool with it. Then shortly thereafter, we joined FetLife as a way to make connections in the local kink and fetish scene, and discovered that some of the people we had found who crossed over on OK Cupid and Twitter were also at FetLife. Bonus!

And then those people, as we revealed ourselves to each other online, told us about others in our circle whom we never suspected were in open relationships, into kinky sex, or both.

What this has amounted to is that it’s quite likely in the near future we’ll actually be playing with (and perhaps making deeper connections) with people we already have gotten to know pretty well online, and in many cases are vetted by other people who know and reasonably trust.

That makes the whole crazy trip we’re on so much easier, so much more exciting, and filled with so much more potential. Looks like we’re going from “friends with impediments” to some “friends with benefits.”

[box]What do you think? Let us know in comments or write a post of your own! We’d love to hear what you have to say.[/box]

Like most guys, breasts can be an endless source of entertainment for me, whether just as eye candy or…well, to snack on (like candy). Never really been a “breast man” per se, though, any more than I’m a “leg man.” To be honest, I’ve always been more hung up on lips and eyes. Breasts and legs are nice, of course—and ideally, I prefer women to have a complete pair of each—but I’m not finicky about the particulars. Big breasts have their appeal, but so do mid-size models and small ones. Also, stubby nipples, thick nipples, pointy ones, whatever.

So, breasts on a woman can be, at times, endlessly and blissfully distracting. But again, I don’t dwell on them overly much (though, I admit, when my wife was nursing our little girl, I was more fixated—I’d never before then had the experience of a breast that provides its own lubrication and flavoring for me to enjoy).

Given that I don’t fixate on women’s breasts, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself, at various times and especially as I got older, thinking about my breasts almost as much as I;d think of my wife’s.

Now, part of that is middle age. I’m not a big guy, and I’m not really overweight, but while my arms, legs, ass, face and such are pretty mid-range, I’ve started developing a bit of a pot-belly thing over the past six years or more.

Oh, and tits.

All right, most women would be hard-pressed to think of them as tits, as would most men. But I’m not most men. I’m the man who’s attached to a set of breasts that are, frankly, bigger than I’d like ‘em to be. Not bodacious ta-ta’s but rather my “boy-dacious” ta-ta’s. I joke that I could stand to get a starter bra, but really they aren’t that bad.

Yet.

And hopefully never.

So, they are visually distracting to me, because I look down at myself or look in the mirror and think, “What in the non-lactating, tiny-nippled hell is going on with my torso, and how do I get rid of these puffy, floppy little fuckers?”

They can also be physically distracting when they hurt.

This is a rarity, but it does serve as a reminder to me that if I have breasts, I can have breast cancer—even if I start working out and give myself a nicely sculptured “Baywatch”-style male lifeguard chest. Cancer’s all equal-opportunity like that. It doesn’t give a shit whether my breasts are manly or womanly, because it will strike in any part of the body it fancies. The only place it isn’t going to ever show up in is a part of the body that I don’t possess, like ovaries, cervix or uterus.

Still, my risk (as a man) for breast cancer is pretty low, for any number of factors. For one thing, we men develop smaller amounts of breast tissue as we develop (obviously), and we don’t churn out anywhere near the same amount of hormones, like estrogen for example, that are known to affect breast cancers risk and growth. Something like 1 in 100 breast cancers affect men, and the risk that a man will develop cancer at some point in his life is around one-tenth of one percent or less. Women are clearly at higher risk. But that doesn’t mean we men can just sit on our asses and think we’re immune. After all, those lifetime odd, while slim, are still way better than your odds of winning the top prize in the state lottery.

Women are urged to do breast self-exams, and many do actually do them with varying levels of regularity. Much like we men are reminded—though less often—that we need to roll those testicles around in our fingers keeping a watch (or a feel, rather) out for lumps that shouldn’t be there. You know, aside from the two sizable egg-shaped lumps that are supposed to reside in your scrotum.

Every once in a while, I’ll get an annoying ache in one breast or the other. Given that I’ve made my living for years doing medical/healthcare/environmental journalism, I’m more aware than most guys that my chest isn’t exempt from becoming a home for a tumor that’s hungry to take over the real estate and then grow beyond it. So, naturally, I worry about the big-C when I have such pains, just as I do when my balls seem to be hanging oddly on any given day that they decide to make their presence known more obviously.

As it happens, just as oddly hanging or mildly uncomfortable balls have thus far simply turned out to be balls acting oddly just to fuck with me, rather than something dangerous to my health, the breast thing has always turned out to be nothing more than having strained, pulled, or overworked some muscle or some other part of the chest anatomy.

But it’s still easy to just play things off and play the “it’ll never happen to me, so why worry” game.

I shouldn’t play that game. You shouldn’t, either.

So, as a man, should I be getting regular mammograms? Nah. I mean, really, the risk of breast cancer in men is waaaaaaay lower than women. There’s probably not an insurance plan out there that would pay for you to get regular imaging of your man-boobies. But there are things you should keep in the back of your mind, just in case. And here’s where I take off my Hat of Snark and Irreverance and put on the Hat of I’m Not a Physician But I Could Play On TV (because I’ve been around so many of them over the years).

If you’re younger than 35 and a man, it’s even more exceedingly rare to get breast cancer, but the older you get, the higher your risk, and most cases of male breast cancer are caught between the ages of 60 to 70 years. If you have a close female relative (or relatives) who’ve had to deal with breast cancer, your risk goes up, and a history of radiation exposure of the chest can also increase the risk.

The most direct and clear risk for a man to develop breast cancer appears to be the abnormal enlargement of their breasts, which the medical types (of course) have a nice technical name for: gynecomastia. This can happen in response to some kinds of drug or hormone treatments. It can happen as a result of severe liver disease (which can reduce the levels of male hormones, or androgens, in the body and possibly increase the amount of hormones more associated with women), or as a result of diseases of the testicles, or even because of rare genetic condition called Klinefelter’s syndrome—as well as various other factors.

At one time, physicians and other healthcare professionals thought that male breast cancer was inherently more lethal than female breast cancer, but it seems that when caught early, the outcomes of treatment are about the same for men and women. And therein lies the problem for men: Breast cancer often isn’t caught early.

It isn’t as easy to feel abnormalities in male breast tissues and men are less likely to be suspicious of a lump, pain or other weirdness of the beasts (just as women are often not suspicious of chest discomfort that can indicate an oncoming heart attack, as many see heart attacks as a male problem).

So, what to look for?

First off, if you feel any new mass in the breast area (a lump of some sort or even a suspicious looking bump or lesion on the skin), get it checked out by a physician. Right away. Dude, you shouldn’t have lumps, any more than a woman should (except for your nipples), so don’t fuck around with this. And ladies (or non-hetero men), if you think you feel a lump in the breast area of your gent, make him go to the doctor, OK?

Some other things that should make you be concerned enough to go get your breasts checked would include dimpling or puckering of the skin in the breast region, nipple retraction, any puss or other fluid discharge from your nipples, and redness or scaling of the nipples or breast skin (unless you know some recent activity is to blame, like that thing you and your lover did that time the other night when you’d had too much of something and got kinky).

OK, as we can see, my irreverance is showing again, so back on goes the Hat of Snark.

It’s easy to just brush things off, my brothers…I know. We men are known for becoming wimps when we get a cold or the flu, and wanting to be taken care of by our lovers, spouses, etc.—while at the same time being able to ignore more dramatic and obvious signs we should go to the doctor. Like lumps. Like strange pains that won’t go away. Or even horns growing out of our heads and tentacles out of our asses.

But seriously, pay attention to your body. Even though you probably aren’t reading this article, because you’re a guy, and there’s precious little talk of sex in it, and you’d rather watch the game. But a few of you might have stuck around and, if you didn’t, hopefully the person who shares your bed with you will make you read this or review what she (or he) learned from it with you.

Sure, the reason I’m talking about man-tits is mainly because this is October, and thus Breast Cancer Awareness Month—and because writing this article will earn me a nice little Edenfantasys gift certificate. But it’s also because you never know.

As I wrote earlier, the risk among men for getting breast cancer is low. But low risk isn’t the same as no risk. I don’t figure I’ll ever develop breast cancer. But then again, I never thought one of my classmates from college would die in his sleep around age 28 for no reason the coroners could determine, except that his heart just decided to fucking stop on Christmas Eve at his parent’s house. And I never imagined one of my best friends from college would lose one of his balls in his 30’s because of testicular cancer. I never thought I’d lose my mom and my mother-in-law, who were both dear to me—both of them to cancer—before they had even gotten out of their 50’s.

Life doesn’t give us any promises. Pay attention to your juggs, menfolk, and the rest of your body parts, too.

That is all. Return to your regularly scheduled manly activities.

So, for a few years there, my wife kinda went nuts. I don’t mean she had psychiatric illness or a breakdown or something. In some ways, it was worse, because for so long, there was no cure and no effective therapy.

She got pregnant and decided to get into things like attachment parenting.

Now, I’m not knocking the attachment parenting concept—we ended up doing a modified version of it, with some more traditional parenting sprinkled in, and there’s a lot of good to it. But it meant that my wife, who had already mostly reared a son by a previous marriage in a more old-school way, was frequently on forums, and blogs, and shit online that were constantly bombarding her with the natural uber-involved mommy thing. This left me with a mix of pro-and-con feelings: Nursing our child for the first couple years or so…cool. Gentle parenting…mostly OK with that. Co-sleeping… well, nice to be connected with child more emotionally, but hell on the sex life. Cloth diapers…not so much in favor of that—in fact, never ever again. Unschooling…no fucking way. You get the idea.

My wife never went completely woo-woo and got totally “mommy mad.” You get a high-energy, stubborn girl like ours—currently six going on dictator—and someone like my wife will finally overcome the hormones, and the groupthink and all that, and start bringing some common sense into the mix, along with the newest new-agey stuff. Which is good, because some of the things she read to me from attachment parenting and mommy sites over the years—or that I read over her shoulder when giving her neck rubs during her web surfing—really didn’t seem good for the parents or the kids sometimes. Too much of anything, including liberal parenting policies, is a bad thing.

Also, I’m glad the people in these online venues didn’t totally steal my wife’s mind during her hormonally vulnerable time, because seeing and hearing some of the online rants by uber-mommies also made me feel really bad for the husbands of the women who drink the full-on stay-at-home-mommy-goddess-superwoman-Kool-Aid.

I’m not knocking stay-at-home moms. My wife did it the first couple years of our kid’s life. Many of my online friends are stay-at-home moms or dads. I myself, am a work-at-home dad with a mostly work-at-home wife. But I have to say that there are a large number of stay-at-home moms out there who seem to have some really screwed up attitudes about sex—most particularly a complete lack of realism about male sexuality (and often their own needs, too).

Let me note that I’m a sensitive guy. I love to please, and often to give without receiving. So, clearly, I don’t mind a woman who “gets over” a little bit on a guy. Who takes a bit more than she receives — as long as she doesn’t go too far. But as bad as overdoing the “women gets more” in the bed can be when taken to extremes, that’s NOT what the moms I’m complaining about are doing. The crazed version of the stay-at-home moms just take sex out of the equation entirely, a whole other sort of hell. I can understand wanting to scale back sex when you’re a busy parent (and attachment parenting makes you a busy and beleaguered parent indeed), but most certainly let’s not reject sexual connections in favor of parenting alone. Based on the things that some of these women would post on the mommy forums, I think their husbands would get more loving treatment at the hands of a viciously sadism-minded mistress with a full dungeon than from their current spouses.

One of the things I saw a lot of was women complaining that their male partners wanted to… *gasp*… have sex with them. They often saw this as a terrible imposition. How dare he want sex! Why, I’m “touched out” from spending all day with the kid (or kids) hanging off me! I breastfeed all day and co-sleep with my kids, and I just don’t have anything more to give!

OK, fair enough…maybe.

You’ve decided to be focused on your kids, and you don’t have any libido or energy for sex. Understandable.

Except, of course, for the ones who’ve apparently been denying their partners regular sex not just for a limited period of time, but for years upon years, because he’s some kind of second-class citizen in the family whose sole role is to make money to support the family and shut up. (Truly, some of the women who post on parenting forums and blogs, and the other women who back them up on their diatribes, are an amazingly scary kind of domineering shrew mixed, with equal parts 1970’s feminist and 1950’s mom…a combo I would previously have thought impossible. Many of them refuse to work any job other than being a mother, then they complain that the man doesn’t make enough money, and during all this, they give the man little or no say in how the children will be raised…plus, when he comes home exhausted from supporting his family, he can’t even get any nookie. But he’s still expected to do half the chores.)

So, these very same women, who have gone off the deep end and put their husbands in some emotional and metaphorical version of the “gimp box” from the movie Pulp Fiction, also seemed to get offended if the father of their children wants to jack off. The motto seems to be: If I’m not willing to give it to you, no one can, not even your dominant hand.

And dear God, pity the poor fool who has any porn on his smart phone or computer, and his keeper…I mean, woman…finds out.

Man, this is when the most cold-shouldered and mean-tempered moms on these forums would lose it.

So many posts my wife read to me with mixed horror and amusement, as one woman or another expressed burning indignation that the man she’s denied sex to, and overworked, and bossed around for months or years, has pictures or videos of nude women to which he presumably jacks off. Almost without fail, they expressed terrible feelings of violation, rejection and betrayal. They fretted over whether they should immediately kick him out or divorce him over the possession of porn, and other posters would rush to their defense online to echo the “he either needs to give up the porn or get out!” clarion call.

The mere fact that the man had porn was seen as a sign that he didn’t respect women, particularly the mother of his children. It was instantly assumed to be an all-consuming addiction that was keeping him away from real intimacy with his family (never mind that the woman is too “touched out” to even cuddle with him, much less fuck him, and that his family is probably fast asleep by the time he gets home—seems like a lot of these guys had to work overtime or multiple jobs to support the household). The use of porn and desire to pleasure himself was seen as some terrible, icky moral failing on the man’s part, and something that the woman was honor-bound to cure him of, punish him for or—apparently the gold standard—both.

Now, this ISN’T the world of ALL stay-at-home moms. I realize this. I’m not generalizing, but rather pointing out a very vocal sub-species that is scary as hell. Certainly, you’d see some other woman come in and perhaps defend the man’s position. But the sane ones, when they weren’t blocked or banned by forum admins, usually got shouted down by a huge chorus of voices among forum members, which makes me think that this scary subgroup of women, while not the majority, might be pretty large anyway. I recognize, of course, that in some types of forums, the more extreme people are drawn to it, and that might explain some of the overwhelming numbers.

But still, it was frightening how many of them I saw on those forums, and how quick they were to band together over the importance of family first, while ironically and hypocritically hurting a key member of the family—emasculating their men, and denying them really anything but shelter and food.

Now, we’re here at Eden Cafe, so chances are slim that any of those women are around reading this. Y’all who are reading me now are probably sexually aware enough to realize that both partners should be able to get their rocks off, either together or solo, as the situations warrant. Some of you may be against porn, and there are valid reasons to be against much of it, but I doubt very many of you are against sex and masturbation.

So, I guess this article is mostly for the benefit of entertainment. And venting on my part, on behalf of some oppressed members of my gender.

But on the off chance that a woman of the type I’ve mentioned happens along here and sees this, or plasters this article on a blog with an invitation to her peers to come make my life miserable for deriding them, let me say this:

Porn can be your friend. Masturbation, too. Ideally, both in combination.

And no, I don’t mean they’ll be your friend personally, because you’re probably too “touched out” to touch yourself. But if you fancy the idea of continuing to stay at home and have a stable income when you choose a job with no income (full-time at-home parenting), you might want to keep the guy in the house. If you aren’t going to take care of him, and he’s willing to take care of his own needs with some porn…well, I’d say that’s a lot better deal for you than him waking up, smelling the dead roses, and finding a woman other than you who realizes that family life includes the needs of all members of the family, and not just the mom and children.