Of late, since my play and my sex life have become both more varied and more plentiful, some of the particulars of my own sexuality have become more and more apparent.
Some of these things I’ve known for years, but haven’t really thought about in depth. In most situations these leanings and proclivities can be hidden by the normal dynamics of sex, especially casual sex, where every position and combination isn’t going to be attempted anyhow, so brevity aids omission or at least camouflage.
Power and control are a lot more important to my sexual pleasure than I once thought. I am realizing I have a lot of trouble giving up control, or, more accurately, giving up what I consider control. That seems somewhat normal — after all, I’m a mostly-straight guy who is primarily a top. By most social norms I should be used to being in control. Still, my ideas about control seem a little warped when I look at them more carefully.
The act of being brought to orgasm by someone or even giving yourself an orgasm in front of someone is, in some fundamental way in my head, a submission. It is showing your out of control side. It is being vulnerable. It is being needy. It is everything that little Jack was taught was bad.
Intellectually I know that this is nonsense. Still, a lot of our reactions during intimacy are non-cognitive, deeply emotional and hard to understand without some real processing.
For example, it’s rare that I have an orgasm through oral sex or manual sex. The exception is that if I am also stimulating my partner
during this, I can focus on that long enough to make me forget. Does that make sense? Like the sex lives of most kinky people, sex is complicated.
I would say I get off far harder making people have orgasms than having them myself, with the exception of really intense penetrative sex which is usually awesome for me.
Fingering a woman, performing oral sex and using sex toys on them all turn me on in a huge way. I’ve gotten into what is probably my favorite activity, making women squirt, in some other posts. There is also “forced orgasm” which is in many ways the apex of my kink, i.e., making someone come over and over again until they can’t stand it anymore and are so overwhelmed by the orgasms and the sensation overload they are left a quivery mess.
I’ve written about that, though. What I haven’t written about much is my own reactions.
I’ve had partners comment when I don’t have an orgasm or don’t even really get into my own physical sexual gratification in a scene. I can do a whole scene mostly clothed while the bottom has been stripped, tied, roughed up, made to come several times. I can go away from a scene like that completely aroused and satisfied. Really, bringing my penis into the situation would make it less of fun time. I get off hard in a scene like that, and the somewhat less important desire to have an orgasm not only gets in the way, but gives the bottom far too much power over me.
There are different ways to play, though. That is describing one mood and maybe one character I let myself slip into: the super observant
reaction top who notices everything, mocks everything, punishes, pleases, and plays for his amusement and to take the bottom somewhere. When I am in that head space I want to force reactions. Pleasure, pain, humiliation, lust, need and even catharsis.
Other times I can be more playful or more mean. Sometimes I just want to fuck and the kinks that go along with that game, spanking, manhandling and pinning down hands, are very different than a full on scene. Sometimes I want to have relatively vanilla sex, but still I am taking it.
To receive pleasure I have to be in a very different place. I have to be with someone I trust to be vulnerable with and that doesn’t happen very often. It has happened though, in long term relationships with people I am in love with and care about enough to show that side of myself. Even then, it is a pretty temperamental thing.
This is also because of the lingering fingers of the Catholic guilt from my childhood. It marks many of my desires with guilt and embarrassment. Along with guilt are the lessons taught both overtly and subconsciously through my childhood by my father: that it is weak and wrong to show emotions. Both factors conspire to taint things like public displays of affection, talking about my emotions, saying “I love you” and showing desire towards men.
My mixed feelings towards sex with men are some of the most violently guilt ridden and humiliating, which leads to them also being ones I read about and think about secretly. Thus my fascination with slash.
Where do I go with this information?
For the last six months I’ve been trying to do things that are out of my comfort zone. I’m testing myself and having adventures and trying to break the barriers that keep me from doing everything that I want. I feel like I am really exploring my own desire and the desires of others. I’m shaky and wide eyed and having a lot of fun. Some of the things, like bottoming, make my fears and mental blocks much more apparent and cumbersome.
A good example of this is how when I am bottoming I feel like I am good at taking pain and force and aggression, but the cuddling afterward makes me want to escape. Receiving pleasure, especially
when I can’t control it or return it, is almost enough to break me out of the whole scene. When I am really turned on my hands shake with the need to take control. When I am confronted with “giving in” and being “made to come” my head twists and turns and won’t let my body do it.
That being said, I am more than willing to try. I even think trying is important. Breaking down the barriers to pleasure is as interesting as reveling in the sublimations my head has come up with to work around the blocks.
It’s interesting to think of how far I’ve come, so to speak, in discovering my sexuality. From looking at dirty stories online as a horny fourteen year old to writing things and doing things I’d never imagined I’d do. It will be interesting to see where my life will go from here.
