Conversation With a Dom, Plus Help! Reader Needs Sexing Advice!

I recently talked with a dominant, K.* He's pretty hardcore in that he would be happy to use an electro-stimulation wand on someone.

I wanted to know what it was about being a Dom that did it for him. So, I just asked him because I'm quite nosy. Here, come and eavesdrop:

K:  As a Dom - I am strict, but very reasonable.  I enjoy training those that are sincere--watching them grow as a person and a submissive and seeing their world expand around them as they learn what they are truly capable of feeling and experiencing. 

I look for someone who truly wants to submit, and please. And I will make sure they are pleased as well.

Me:  What turns you on about it? I mean, you sort of have to do all the work as far as prep goes.

K:  For me it really depends on the person I am with and our relationship, and what it is that turns them on. Knowing you are turning the other person on - that is the biggest turn on. I love being in charge. I enjoy thinking about what to do to a person. How I will do it? What will affect them the most? There is creativity there. How will they react when I make them wear a butt plug to a restaurant? Or Ben wa balls out to a club? Watching the thoughts play across their face. Thinking about, planning the order in which I spank them. Flog them. Use a vibrator on them. So many options. 

I love surprising them, keeping them on the edge. Building. Each subsequent sensation adding to the previous. Pushing them. Getting to know their bodies. Their minds. Paying attention to how they react. Seeing when they start to doubt. Knowing they are seconds away from using a safe word. Then watching them melt as I give them pleasure. Such a rush.  

It is incredible watching how some get so turned on by the right amount of pain. Had one submissive that got to the point she could orgasm and squirt from being spanked. That was amazing. Yes, knowing that they would do basically anything for me - that is an aphrodisiac.

Me:  What is it about the pain?

K:  I have never been into the truly sadistic side. Never driven primarily by fear. But I do use pain to accentuate the pleasure and to train.  I am into all types of restraints, blindfolding - to make you wonder what is coming next. Will it be soft and pleasurable? Or will it sting? Alternating between the two, slowly building up the pleasure until you are begging to cum. You will hold it till I tell you that you can cum.

I want a sub to crave me and be willing to do anything for me because they want to please and because they know I will give them incredible pleasure (along with pain). But never driven by the fear I will whip them bloody. That is too...simple? crass? Yes, I use the threat of things like the cane or whip to keep their attention. Or to ensure they follow certain rules. But that is all.

The vast majority is honestly giving them what they want, sometimes whether they know it themselves or not. And conveniently it is usually what I want to do to them as well.

It is all fascinating.

It IS pretty fucking fascinating.  Thank you K.

Help! Reader Needs Sex Advice! "I'm on Zoloft and can't have an orgasm w/ my partner to save my life.  I can when I masturbate on my own and so I'm defaulting to that cause it's a sure thing. But I want some new ideas we can try cause I really wanna find a reliable partner orgasm situation again like I used to have pre-Zoloft.

A friend recommended this book kinda She Comes First: A Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman but I have two kids and a job and will only read a book if it's close to a sure thing. I also know it's something of a mind game as I can have lucid dream orgasms without even touching myself. But those are less now w/ ye olde Zoloft. This married woman wants to come in the presence of her partner again!!! H-E-L-P, Jill!"

Here are some ideas from me, Little Miss No Medical Degree:
--Switch drugs. Celexa cured my ails but made my sexuality die.
--Drug holiday.  Stop a couple days before doing IT. (If you're going insane, abort mission.)
--Bring on a fuckton of toys.  There are wearable vibes to wear during penetration (haven't tried--anyone?), vibrating cock rings, clit sucking things (this one's good), and if you just want to have an orgasm in someone's presence, I'm all over Doc Johnson's iRock.**
--Get super turned on before--watch porn, jerk off a little, whatever.  You might also try a CBD or THC-based arousal gel like Foria Awaken or Foria Pleasure. You have to massage it in for 15 minutes ahead of time, so maybe the enforced foreplay is what does it, but it seems to do something.  (I think I have a sample packet I can send if you email me your address.)

What say you, orgasm-having reader?

Contest Winner:  The winner of the Prostate Silicone Perineum Tickler and muy importante accompanying Wicked Aqua Sensual Care lube donated by Ella Paradis is a reader named, er, "Fred" who wrote:  Really interested in the Pspot massager and possibilities, kinda skeptical about the orgasm potential. You would think if it were so easy and incredible every guy on the planet would be having one! It reminds me of trying to give yourself a blowjob by becoming more flexible, intriguing but not really practical. I promise that if I win I will shout from the rooftops about my journey into my nether regions.  

Consider yourself warned.

xoxo
jill

*I'm running a series of off-blog conversations I've had with some among you about the odd corners and crannies of the sexual experience (sometimes literal crannies--see also: the last one on M from Alaska's truly stellar prostate orgasms).

**If you buy any of this stuff through those links, IBWMW gets a kickback but I'd recommend them anyway.

Reader's New Dude Has Too Much Stamina. What Should She Do?

"Marjorie, hold all my calls. Gonna be a long night."

One among us has a problem! Quick! Grab your rescue bag* and let's go help!

This urgent query has come in over the wires: 

Jill, my favorite sex writer, who knows all the good shit. I have a question that I simply refuse to google or tweet. So I'm going to throw it your way... I've recently taken a lover who has stamina like I've never experienced. So much so, it is almost a turn off. Despite hours of hot sex, full of variety, it's nearly impossible to get him to orgasm. In fact, it's taken him manually handling business. This is a blow to my fragile ego. I've pulled muscles I didn't even know I had. What's a girl to do?

NAP 

So. Besides bowing in admiration for the phrase "I've recently taken a lover" (~swoon~), here's what I've got:

 --My friend had this identical problem with some dude she was dating from Tinder. Meaning, you are not alone, this is a thing that happens, and actually, I'm not even going to call it a "problem," I'm gonna say "situation."

--Maybe he's watching "too much" porn (whatever that means) and now needs that kind of hyper-stimulation to get off. So a). a l'il porn diet. Yes, tragic, but perhaps necessary. Or b.) bring whatever porn he may be into (or may not--I'm already accusing this unknown dude of overwatching porn) into your fuckery. Imitate it, fetishize it, watch it during, whatever. If something super turns someone on and it's not actively horrible to you, I say take advantage of that passion and explore the sordidness together.

--See if he'd be willing to switch up his jerk off habits. Dan Savage, who knows things, says everyone should change up how they jerk off (other hand, new positions, lighter touch) so they'd don't become over-accustomed to it and only able to come in that one specific way. I personally never follow this advice, but it's something I know I should do, and intend to...someday, like going vegan. (I just read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and holy fuck.)

--Work within this framework.  He needs a hand to come, so do a lot of us. Maybe you can go with the amount of P-in-V fucking that seems good to you both, and y'all just accept that a handy is gonna be how it ends for him. This is not failure. This is kind of a more queered attitude to hetero sex and is super cool and progressive of you. Celebrate that shit. Let him come all over your tits or something spectacular.

That's my part. This chafed reader also wants to hear your advice, dear Internet stranger. Whatcha got?

xoxo

jill 

*Rescue bag suggested contents:

And yes, I did just see Isle of Dogs last night. How did you know?

How to Make a Woman Come--Even If You Are That Woman. AKA Things I Learned from Science, Sex, and The Ladies

Louis CK* has a bit on how men complain about women's "neediness" after sex:

“After sex, you’re looking at two very different people. The man just wants to lay there and be cool and the woman wants to cuddle. 'Why is she so needy?’ She’s not needy you idiot, she’s horny, because you did nothing for her. You did absolutely nothing. Her pussy is on fire because it's gone unfucked completely. Of course you’re fine, you climbed on and went “KFHGSKG” and rolled off. And she’s on you because she’s like ‘WH-at SOMETHING ELSE HAS TO HAPPEN! This is bullshit!!' If you fuck a woman well, she will leave you alone. ‘Thanks a lot, buddy. Zzzzz.’”

Louis says this happens because men are "bad at sex." Perhaps, but I think a lot of us are kinda bad at sex--just by default, because we never got the proper instruction. People want to be good lovers and fuck well. But it's incredibly difficult--ridiculously so--to get any sort of reasonable, real-world education.

Even today, we know so little about women's bodies. So very little!  It was only in the past few years that I learned that the clit occupies an extensive bit of pelvic real estate, that scientists still don't know what the fuck women are squirting when they ejaculate (it's "not pee," which just leaves...every non-pee substance), and that the cervix is so insensitive that 95% of women can't tell if it's being rubbed with a cotton swab. (This being the primary reason that the Gentleman's Cervical Swab Rubbing Courtship Technique of 1847 has fallen out of favor.)

In other cases, we know very well what's going with on women's bodies, but for some reason, bury or don't acknowledge this info.

The most egregious form of our sexual ignorance/denial is about how most women actually have an orgasm: A woman comes from having her clitoris rubbed. There are a lucky few (very few!) who can get the job done via p-in-v fucking, but even then, what's going down with every woman is that:

1. their clit is rubbed.
2. they come (or don't.)

That's it.  

This is pretty much contrary to every depiction of women's sexual response we see in porn, mainstream films, and read about in books. Even books written for women by women. (Er. Or not.  See updated discussion about this in the comments.)

Trisha Borowicz got all Fight-the-Power about this (yay!) and made a smart, funny, cheeky film called Science, Sex, and The Ladies "for all the women who have felt confused, frustrated, or ashamed about their ability to orgasm."  

 I learned all kinds of things from Science, Sex, and the Ladies, up to and including:

--I couldn't tell a whit of difference between the photos of the Aroused Clitoris and Unaroused Clitoris (possible future lesbian lovers: you have been forewarned.)
--Women have their strongest orgasms by their own hand, second strongest with someone else's hand, and weakest via fucking and the frustratingly indirect stimulation of a penis rubbing-near-but-not-quite-exactly-where-you-need-it.
 --Contrary to popular belief, women don't take forever to come. Women come as quickly as easily as men, given the right stimulation. Men would also take forever to come if they were only being stimulated by, say, someone diligently rubbing their pubic hair.

My favorite part of the film depicted scenes of people engaged in various forms of sexual congress--a blow job, fucking, etc...--when a cheery actress would walk into the each scene and advise the female participant to "Rub one out!" to enhance her experience. It was fun, breezy and educational--like a particularly racy episode of The Electric Company.

I actually do wish this was the sort of stuff young people saw. And, while I'm at it, I wish more sex scenes depicted women being stimulated realistically, in the way that women actually need to be stimulated, so that women would no longer have to think they were somehow broken, doing it wrong or hadn't yet found the proper dick.

There is an orgasm disparity among women and men that drastically affects the way each understand themselves and each other. The truth is, women go through their sexual lives having very few orgasms compared to their male partners, and this has become a matter of course, a sort of unspoken accepted reality. This discrepancy, however, is not a result of innate differences between male and female biology, but a result of how we as a culture have come to understand, teach and experience sex.

Science, Sex and the Ladies aims to make it known that this orgasm disparity is culturally created, harmful, and in no way inevitable. It's actually quite an appalling and over arching problem that creeps into every aspect of our lives and relationships. Neither modern women or modern men are fully responsible for this problem, but a change in both are necessary for a solution. Science Sex and the Ladies, as part of a larger Orgasm Equality Movement, is a call to action.--Science, Sex, and the Ladies.

Anyway, if you want to be part of the Orgasm Equality Movement--and I do, although I'm totally not going to refer to it as that--the film makers are offering screeners of the movie if you'd like to host a small group showing. It's free--all they ask is that you send them a photo of the festivities. For more info, email anc@ancmovies.com.

I watched it alone, but wish I'd been with a group because I have all kinds of questions now. Like:

--Why are women writing romance/erotica about easily orgasmic p-in-v sex? Are all erotica writers among the tiny percentage of penis in vagina cumees? Or are they writing about how they think sex should be? Or how they wish it could be?
--What is the connection between emotions and sex? I'm totally onboard with Naomi Wolf's ideas in Vagina about sexual/spiritual/emotional connections, heady neurochemicals, and the transcendence that can happen in a really good fuck. And yet..... While emotional connection and getting "in the mood" is great, and certainly something to strive for, it's clearly not absolutely necessary for an orgasm. A woman masturbating with a showerhead or something can come plenty easily without having a big emotional experience and/or scene-setting. And yet... I have also burst into tears after an orgasm. Why and how are emotions all mixed up with sex? Or do we just assume they are, ergo, they are?
--If you are like pretty much every other chick and need to rub your clit to come, do you do it during sex with someone else? Or have you been among those (and, yes, I have been there as well) making "secret, quiet circles on disappointed clits next to sleeping lovers."

What are we all gonna do about this?

xoxo
jill

PS. I recently was also cited on some Spanish-language anti-gay site (blergh) for my supposed anal bleaching expertise.  "Una experta en el tema, la Sra. Hamilton entra en grandes detalles sobre la historia de esta reprobable técnica."

PPS. That site has 2 million views.

*This was before. Damn you, Louis.

(photo via Church of the Victorian Cult, not sure where Wendy Rose got a hold of it.)

On Orgasm and Beautiful Agony

The site Beautiful Agony exists in a space somewhere between art and porn. It's a collection of short films featuring close ups of people's faces as they pleasure themselves, falling into, then through orgasm. It's a celebration of la petite mort* and it's...beautiful. (It's a pay site, but there are some free samples.)

Explain the Beautiful Agonistas on the project's inspiration:

Beautiful Agony began as a multimedia experiment, to test a hypothesis that eroticism in human imagery rests not in naked flesh and sexual illustration, but engagement with the face. We wondered whether film of a genuine, unscripted, natural orgasm - showing only the face - could succeed where the most visceral mainstream pornography fails, and that is, to actually turn us on.

Considering porn has had a few thousand years to evolve, alongside other streams of culture - you'd expect it to be refined and sophisticated. Yet instead of developing in sophistication and nuance, it has become a brutal and charmless rendering of human sexuality. It's like the people who make it, don't really understand it.

Yes. 

What's also interesting to me about these faces contorted in orgasm is the realization that orgasm does come with a bit of agony. If you didn't know the experience yourself, to see someone moaning and grimacing in orgasm's throes would look, well, you probably would not want to "have what they're having."

The experience of going toward and riding the throbs of orgasm is so outside the realm of our other experiences. I mean, what other thing gets us to this place, this place of incoherence and liquid, sweet strokes leading to the deliciously inevitable?  It's so animal and primal and raw and very vulnerable.

Which brings me to this. Beautiful Agony will pay you $200 for an accepted submission. There are qualifications--you need a decent camera, you have to answer some questions and whatnot--but I wonder how many among us would do it. I could see doing it. The arty veneer makes it seem less porny and I like the idea of contributing real sexual experience to the well of collective sexual consciousness. Plus, hey, 200 bucks.

On the other hand, maybe 200 bucks is not nearly enough for the...gift, I guess is the right word, of something so incredibly personal. I think what makes sex so intimate is not the actual nudity but the sort of metaphorical nudity of letting someone see and hear and feel and smell and taste you as you come. When women have an orgasm, portions of their brain controlling anxiety and alertness go dark.  So to let someone be present with you and for you when you're in that space--bearing witness, as the Quakers say, though certainly regarding other things entirely--is a huge gift of trust.

In a nice twist, the primitive, earthy rutting of bodies, flesh and fluids, leads us to a state of transcendence somehow both grounded in and sublimely beyond the physical. Which is pretty fucking beautiful. (Thanks, life!)  To be able to jump into this void while grasping onto the back or ass of someone else, well, it's a bit of magic, really.

xoxox
jill

*Here's Google, waxing oddly poetic--oh Google, what do you know, really, of melancholia?--on the subject:  "La petite mort, French for "the little death"...describe(s) the post-orgasmic state of unconsciousness that some people have after having some sexual experiences. More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm or to a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of the expenditure of the "life force," the feeling which is caused by the release of oxytocin in the brain after the occurrence of orgasm."



(photo via Beautiful Agony)

Dr. Andrea and The Cases of Post-Vasectomy Sex Pain + The Ellusive Zoloft Orgasm

Welcome to today's installment of Ask Dr. Andrea.  Dr. Andrea is the IBWMW Doctor-at-Large, which is a good thing because the blog spends WAY too much time googling various "symptoms."

Dr. Andrea is a total bad-ass--not only because she's an osteopath at the Center for Sustainable Medicine, with specialties in women's/sexual health, nutrition and Ayurveda--but because she takes time out of her busy schedule (which I imagine involves lots of yoga and kale juice) to answer our questions.*

Dear Dr. Andrea:

I have been a reader of IBWMW for a few years. My husband and I have been together for almost 10 years – married for 6. I am 28. He is 31. He had a vasectomy in 2011. 

Our sex life is different than most (at least I think so). We are only having sex once or twice a month. I wish it was more frequent. When we do have sex I am satisfied – always able to have at least one orgasm and we try just about every position. No complaints about the actual sex.

Since his vasectomy he has slowly admitted to me that he has a lot of pain after sex. He understood it was a risk at the time of surgery. This pain has impacted our sex life in that I don’t feel he enjoys sex as I would like him to. I know that after he knows when I’m “done” he anticipates the pain and is not as hard. I think his inner monologue is something like this: “Ok. She is satisfied. Oh shit! This will be painful!”  I feel badly for him that he does not enjoy things as I do. I am extremely open to discussion but he is a bit more private when verbalizing his sexual needs.

Is there anything we can do to decrease pain? Is there something we can try to help accept the sensation of pain? Meditation? Icing? Breathing? Any insight would be very much appreciated.
--Anoymous
 

Dear Anonymous- 

First off let me express my condolences- this is a tough situation. Any time sex causes pain instead of pleasure can be really difficult physically and psychologically for both partners. 

The first thing I would suggest is going to a really good Urologist- perhaps whoever did his vasectomy if he had a good rapport with the doctor. Ordinarily I would love to suggest holistic or alternative things, but post-surgery several things can happen that need to be evaluated, especially since some of them can be treated so that the pain goes away entirely. 

In the meantime, here is what is likely happening--the sperm have to go somewhere when the vas deferens is cut, so sometimes they build up in the epididymis or in the surrounding tissue and cause chronic pain. If it's happening only during sex or upon ejaculation, it could be partially a positional issue from the muscles around the testicles tensing up right before ejaculation and then the extra pressure of some sperm being released and backing up in the tube (or leaking out and irritating surrounding tissue). 

Some urologists suggest trying ibuprofen, but that would likely work best for the chronic (meaning pain all the time) version. Although it's definitely worth a try. Take the suggested dose an hour or so prior to having sex (assuming you have no allergy to ibuprofen, no stomach bleeding or irritation problems, no high blood pressure, and no kidney issues, etc... of course!) and see if it helps. 

Surgery-wise, they can go back in and clean it up, or remove the epididymis of the side that's most painful, or remove any granulomas or scar tissue that have formed that might be causing positional/ejaculation pain. 

Also, reversal of the vasectomy almost always ends the pain if it's due to one of the above issues. But that requires some definite verbalization of what you're each needing and wanting as a form of birth control and how it affects your sex life. I always try to promote positive thinking in sticky situations--perhaps this issue will help open up the dialogue between the two of you and create more pleasure on both sides. Good luck, let me know how it goes and what works!

 --Dr. Andrea

*******

Dear Dr. Andrea:

I take 150 mg of Zoloft daily and experience the common side effect of having a harder time reaching orgasm.  I'm sure the 3 or 4 drinks I may have also had don't help.  Is there anything I can do to speed up the orgasm (for my wife's benefit, not so much mine) other than not drink?  What if I also smoke a little pot the same evening, how does that impact my issue?  Would it help if I skipped my daily Zoloft dose on the days I think I'm getting lucky?  Thanks.
 A.K.