Zeitgeisty speculated last week that it’s hard to know whether pornography preceded certain socio-sexual habits, or whether normal people invented them. Swallowing is something I’ve rarely experienced, but I’ve always found it sweet when it’s happened to me. I’ve never pulled out and come on someone.
I feel ridiculous when I pull out. After all of the intense emotions and dilated ascendency of sex, without a condom through impatience or mutual agreement of some sort, the man reaches his limit and manages to remove himself just in time to spill his seed on some more fallow turf. The well-timed pull out must surely have been practiced by generations of randy men, precocious students, and willow-eyed cock-painters.
More recently, the pull out has become a requirement of most all straight pornography. It’s the pay-off, the visual punctuation for the vicarious masturbator. Whenever I’ve been in a position to come on another person I always feel an uncomfortable parallel with porn. When I feel myself closing in on the ejaculatory pivot point without a condom, I feel torn.
Coming is just a moment during sex for me. It’s not an ending point or some super desirable peak. It’s nice and all, but it’s not a big part of what I want out of sex so the more energy I have to spend thinking about what will happen when I do come is distracting. Especially when thinking about it evokes all sorts of expulsive imagery of porn men milking their scepters onto the fleshy landing pad of a woman’s breasts or face. I can’t handle thinking of myself in that way, and I’m even less interested in thinking about someone I’m sleeping with in that way.
For all the social rhetoric to the contrary, there’s something instinctually derogatory in porn for me. There are a lot of crafty ways to rationalize pornography as empowerment, but I have a wince-reflex when I think about it. For me it’s most effective the more derogatory it is. All the Vaseline-lit softcore porn feels unnatural and alien. The athletic grinding and animalistic hammer sessions feel the most honest to me. I’ve lately found some porn that’s openly derogatory to men.
Groups of Amazonian porn star women roam the streets looking for regular guys to sleep with. They have quick rabbit sex with convenience store clerks, chubby mechanics, dorky comic book nerds. They emasculate the homely, make fun of the guys with small penises, or the ones who can’t get an erection.
When I think of pulling out and coming on someone I feel the same insinuation of macho dominance and conquest, the physical degradation of someone I care enough about to sleep with.
I masturbated for the first time since I moved to New York a couple of days ago. I came all over myself, my chest, my chin, my navel, my thighs. It was a mess. And it felt nice. The warm, velvety come felt soft and inviting as it pooled over my skin. It felt gentle and modest. It was a few ounces of bodily fluid. It smelled neutral; it probably smelled like me.
Bodily fluids are a good litmus test for attraction. When someone’s leakings disgust you, odds are good you’re not really attracted to them. When you really want someone, thinking about their saliva, vaginal fluid, sweat, period, come, pre-ejaculate; it all elicits some carnal hunger. We’re taught to be ashamed of our bodies and their functioning. These are private areas, and personal zones that can feel dirty to share with someone else.
The notion that coming on someone is actually, truly degraded implies that there’s something dirty or improper in coming; that a nice, normal woman wouldn’t want all that foul man tar on her body.
I never imagined that it could be nice and sweet; just another part of yourself to share with someone you really, really like.
Previous Posts:
Sex Machine: Because I Can
Love Machine: Am I Romantic Enough?
Sex Machine: Picking Up Women in Gay Bars
Sex Machine: Diary of a Sperm Donor
Date Machine: Long Distance Lovers
Sex Machine: A Revised History of Whores
Date Machine: Moving to New York in Pictures
Date Machine: Old Love Letters, or Things That Got Thrown Away in the Move
Sex Machine: Talking About Sex With Your Parents
Love Machine: Willing to Relocate
Sex Machine: Checking my Oil, or the HIV Test
Date Machine: How To Pick Up a Bartender
Date Machine: Are You My Girlfriend Now?
PDA Machine: Making Out in a Bar
Sex Machine: The Cake is a Lie, or Does My Butt Show When I Walk?
Obituary Machine: Natasha Richardson, or Smoking Cigarettes on the Roof
Love Machine: Throwing Punches, or Get Your Hands Off of My Woman