When I was in high school I imagined that being able to hold out for more than three or four minutes was a rite of passage. Watching porno and listening to other men talk about their sexual experiences I figured it was something that just inevitably happened, like baldness. I was wrong.
I always experience a moment of doubt when I'm sleeping with someone new and we're about to have sex for the first time. It's hard not to get carried away on the wave of excitement and physical discovery, which is usually when I start to wonder whether or not my sprinkler head is going to go off too soon after entry. There are few things quite as soul crushing as feeling like you've got to apologize for something after sex.
I have a decent understanding of the varying levels and intensities of my own arousal and what it means for my prospects of coming. With a little extra management and thought it's easy enough to keep everything at a maintainable level of arousal without getting the sneezy tingles. Still, there are times when it all evaporates into a vague momentum that suddenly materializes in a few irreversible seconds of spasm.
It's nice to think that lovemaking can be reduced to a handful of colloquial rules of thumb, but sex always surprises me. I can't think of a single experience I've had where there wasn't something new or unexpected. I'm surprised enough by all the subtle shifts and new aspects of my own body: a fleshy callous felt from the underside, the tangle of my hair in the mornings, the veins of my forearm. The more you get to know something, the more it changes.
Having sex with someone new is a flood of new detail. Feeling the touch of a new hand, the taste of a new mouth, the sweat of skin, a new rhythm, new contours; there's so much happening all at once that keeping track of my own arousal slips a few notches in importance. Then the moment is irrevocably at hand.
Other times, I come too soon because I just don't care about lasting longer. I get infatuated with my own immediate feelings and don't want to moderate them at all. I want the galloping rush to carry me in as far as it can. This is usually the least satisfying kind of sex. In the moment it seems like a great idea; the impulse to keep pushing farther and faster is totally logical. Then it all evaporates, the starry chariot that seemed to be ascending heavenward minutes earlier is transformed into a sweaty hulk with only a distant echo of that thrill left inside.
I suspect this kind of low-level joy, the natural equivalent of popping a whip-it, is what makes it so easy for men to celebrate sex as something worth bragging about. This kind of sex is the ego running unrestrained, the dog off the leash bounding through the park with no understanding of where it's going or why.
For how much anxiety I've experienced over coming too soon, I've never gotten any real flack for it from the women I've been with. "Don't let it get to your head," S told me the first time we had sex for a good three minutes.
I look at orgasms during sex like punctuation in a paragraph. They don't make me tired, or lethargic. They're energizing and they make me more interested in continuing. It makes me hungry to see and feel even more of my partner. When I masturbate, I avoid doing it late at night because it will keep me up with a racing heart and restless mind.
There's something private about having an orgasm. It can be like a little departure, watching your partner leave her body for a moment, eyes closed, moving in a silent rhythm of her own making. In the best cases, both people can go along to the same relative height, like looking at someone on opposite sides of an elevated chasm. Coming early is like being on a pretty mountaintop and not seeing anyone else, it's pretty and lonely. Narcissistic and irresistible.
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Sex Education Machine: Abstinence, or Waiting is Easier Because...
Sex Machine: The Funny Thing About Handjobs
Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch
Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis
Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?
Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses
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Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds
Love Machine: Making A Scene
Hooksexup Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant
Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate
Love Machine: My Mother
Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection
Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room
Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph
Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On
Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry
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