I can't remember exactly how old I was the first time I put a finger into my own ass, but I remember liking it. I was probably 15 or 16. I was so guilt ridden about it after the fact that I walked around the house for hours torturing myself with the idea that I was probably gay as a result. What other implication could there be for a man to inserting something into his ass? As airheadedgenius pointed out, it's difficult to escape the power play implications with anything involving a man's behind. For a man, putting something into someone else's ass is macho; putting something into your own hindquarters is a lilting defeat. The alpha versus the limp-wristed beta.
It's the same idea that underscores our thinking about dick size and the entirety of sexual expression in a culture where sex is a commoditized lever to manipulate people's insecurities. Sex is a blunt instrument that you exercise, correctly or incorrectly, on your supine partner whose receipt of your unbridled sex thrust is an acknowledgement of his or her powerlessness before the mighty cock. The way zeitgeisty talks about anal is like the Patrick Bateman school of sex.
Stripped of all its macho connotations, though, the ass is just another collection of Hooksexup endings that can be used to pleasure yourself or your partner. The presence of the prostate lying dormant a few inches inside is a double win for men ready to loosen up their instinctive recoil again letting themselves become the receiver for one mortifying moment. Ass play can be an incredibly gratifying sexual experience though, for either sex. It's a kind of sexual dissociative.
The sensory experience of sex for a man is so typically wound up in the act of penetrating, and the specific group of sensations that come along with it. Feeling yourself penetrated at the same time that you are enjoying the metaphysical whoosh of penetrating someone else is surreal. It's an out of body experience, like an alien abduction or astral projection. It's like being in two separate places at once, wholly conscious of everything around you.
One of the enduring mysteries of heterosexual sex is the fundamental divide that separates the penis and vagina. No matter how much rhetorical information we might pick up in afterglow confessions or coffee shop dishing, men will never really understand what it feels like to have a vagina nor will women ever understand the sensation of having a penis. I used to lament this fact when I was younger. Talking to some of my girlfriends about their orgasms I felt wholly jealous that a hummer and gradual build up to ejaculation were my only sexual prizes. It's nice but when there's talk of 20 minutes of roiling orgasm where the whole world turns a different color, it's hard not think of getting one's nut off as a milky consolation prize.
Is ass play the key to breaking into this orgasmic ether? Is "banging" an ass, or anything for that matter, really the key to convincing someone that they love something? Is it just another way of reestablishing the traditional power positions in a newer, hipper vernacular? There's something undeniably whole and complete about uniting the act of penetrating and being penetrated in one person. It also seems to be a particular pleasure that's unique to the male libido. What's the female analog for penetrating?
Ass play can certainly be a complicated affair; it often requires a good deal more attention to timing and logistics than most other sex acts. But in the end it's just another fundament in the language of sex. Avoiding it is sort of like dating someone who insists that you never bring up politics or religion with them. It's not like politics or religion are so inherently important to a relationship, but the focus on them as immutable taboos are surely an indicator of some lapse in communication or basic dysfunction. Likewise, banging someone's ass can be like filibustering a conversation. An empty bit of formalism that gives the appearance of function but whose primary purpose is to prevent progress and avoid confrontation with the other side.
