Sunday, May 19, 2013

Sunday Morning Questions: Back in the Saddle Edition

When I took my unannounced hiatus a couple of months ago, in large part it was because of a sense of being betrayed personally. I’d had someone cull information about my personal life and attempt to use it against me. The immediate result was to not only to cause me to shut down writing about myself for a while, but to be wary about sharing anything more than I really had to.

That’s why I’ve not done any Sunday Morning Question answering for a while. I’ve had a lot of readers write to tell me they’ve missed the feature—and to be honest, I’ve missed having the opportunity to answer questions that lie outside the scope of what I normally write about for my entries.

So starting today I’m trying to ease back into the old routine. I can’t promise it’ll be weekly at the start, but at the very least it should signal that I’m feeling less beleaguered.

Of course, you can help by submitting some of your own questions to my formspring.me page. The service is still up and running; there was some noise that it was shutting down, but it’s now under new management. Just follow the link above to my page there and ask your question, anonymously or un-. I’ll answer anything that hasn’t been asked about a dozen times before, or that doesn’t invade what personal space I have left.

Let’s get to the questions!


As a top with experience, what advice would you give to someone who wants to get fisted?

As a top with over 25 years of fisting experience, I can recommend a couple of things. Some of my other readers (with more experience on the receiving end) could probably chime in, too.

1. Choose your fisting top carefully. I'm not saying he should be me—though that would be fun!—but make sure it's someone who's going to respect the fact you're a novice and who isn't going to expecting to be punching his fist deep into your gut the moment he's Criscoed up. Being fisted can be an intimate and even loving experience, but it can also being extremely invasive and scary if you don't pick someone who's sensitive to your needs.

At the same time, you want to choose someone who's not going to so over-sensitive that he doesn't give you what you ultimately want. Finding someone who'll back off a little when you need, and yet who will keep pushing your boundaries may be a challenge, but it'll be worth the effort.

2. Manage your own expectations and preconceptions about fisting. You are very likely not going to walk into a guy's play space as a first-timer and end up with his arm inside you all the way to the elbow. You might have seen it happen in a porn video, but you are probably not a porn actor. (A couple of you are.) You might not even get fisted completely (and by completely, I mean at least past the knuckles and down to the wrist) the first time, or the second time, or the third time. When I've worked with fisting novices, we've usually had the best success when we've taken it slowly and in multiple sessions. But we did have success.

3. Clean out. Make sure you clean yourself out thoroughly. Then clean yourself out some more. Even if your top is using rubber gloves, nothing is stinkier than pulling a hand out of a man and having it covered with poop.

Just sayin'.


Since I've started hooking up with guys, it's opened the sexual floodgates and sex with the wife is back to being as good as when we were newlyweds. Q1: Does your mansex enhance sex at home? Q2: Do I have to "come out" to her about my extracurriculars?

I'm not surprised that you find your sex life has blossomed at home now that you've been hooking up outside of the relationship. Good sex has a tendency to beget more good sex. You're probably feeling more desirable, and you're less tense and more happy. The wife is picking up on those things. It's a positive feedback loop. Keep it up.

Now, for your questions.

1. Focusing on being a good lover helps me bring the best experiences to all my partners—at home or elsewhere.

2. This is a question that I can't really answer for you, since I don't know your situation, and I don't know you. No, you don't have to tell your wife you're fucking elsewhere. If you choose not to, however, you're going to have to live with that decision for a long time to come, and it could have extremely negative consequences if you're not good at covering up your tracks, or wrestling with your conscience.

There are relationships, however, that are strong enough that the partners can be open with each other. That is, they can be as honest with each other about wanting and having extra-marital relationships. Honest and open relationships do exist. They take work and talk and kindness and extra effort to pull off. If you want one of these relationships with your wife, you’ll have to address it with her and work out the ground rules first. She may want to know about your affairs, and may even take pride in them and share in your happiness for having them. Or she may be all right with you having your fun in the theoretical sense, while not wanting to hear the details. Only you two can determine which of those options—or some other compromise—it will be.

I think the thing to take away is that your relationship is your relationship. It is whatever you and your wife make it. You don't have to follow a marriage template that you've seen in other couples, or in your parents, or on television. Your marriage is not on a fixed set of tracks beyond your control, like a roller-coaster. It is your marriage. You are helping to steer it. You are half of it, and it is something you can assist in controlling and directing.

So you decide what kind of marriage it's going to be.


As a kid did you ever run away from home & if you did for how long & how long before your parents became worried?

No, I never did, but I fantasized about it often enough.

My rebellion during the teenaged years came in my sexual misdeeds. A lot of the stuff that teenaged kids do to rebel wouldn't have phased my folks in the least. Loud rock music? They listened to that themselves, thanks. Swearing? My sibling's first word was 'shit,' because my parents said it so much. Smoking? My mom did that. Drinking? I tried alcohol and didn't like the taste.

So I fucked around like crazy, and at every opportunity, and inappropriately, and went home with a smile and sweetly did my homework and kept up the appearance of being a perfect child—because when you're a perfect child, you can get away with just about anything you want by flying under the radar.

I didn't need to run away from home. I was getting all the adventure and attention I needed at the end of strange men's dicks.


Have you been to the NYC bathhouses yet?

I have not.

Unless i'm mistaken, NYC has the West Side Club and the East Side Club, and I've heard mixed reviews about both. Someone specifically told me that I'd find them grungy—and while I expect that in a bathhouse to a certain extent, the implication was that I'd find it grungy in a way I'd be actively icked out the entire time I was there. So I've not been.

If someone wants to go along with me to either and show me otherwise, I'm open to invitations.


I don't mean this question in any offensive way, especially given how hot I find your sexual escapades, but aren't you in the slightest worried that your dangerous sexual behavior could lead you to contract AIDS/HIV and what that might mean for your kids?

Look. When you ask the question the way you did—that is, using inflammatory words like 'dangerous' and bringing up the specter of wailing children deprived of their daddy—let's not prevaricate. You're trying to go for the maximum amount of offense possible.

There are two explanations for why you'd frame the question this way.

1) You're butt-ignorant about the transmission of HIV, its treatment, and how it is by no means a swift and certain death sentence, or

2) You're using a 'think of the children!' approach not as persuasive argument—which it isn't—but as what you conceive as an emotional trump card that should reduce all counter-arguments to ash. As rhetoric, it's overblown and transparent.

The risks I take are my risks; I only take the risks with which I've made my peace. I do not advocate or suggest that you or anyone else follow in my footsteps. I have always told my readers that they should only take risks with which they are comfortable and on which they have educated themselves.

I've said this many times in this forum before as well: merely because one of the risks to which I expose myself is sexual in nature does not make it any worse, any more horrifying, or any more 'sinful' than the risks you take to your life on a daily basis—whether that is alcohol, drugs, exceeding the speed limit, living near an electrical sub-station, smoking, high-stress environments, or carrying extra pounds around your waist.

It's quite easy for you to shriek "think of the children!" about a sexually-transmitted virus, but all you're doing is perpetuating an unfortunate stigma that does a grave disservice to many men and women who are HIV-positive. You probably wouldn't whine it out to someone who was crossing the street while texting on his phone—though that behavior can be more immediately and equally deadly than any virus.

In the future I advise examining your own prejudices before asking such a question. You probably think you're well-meaning, but you're really what you profess not to be: offensive.

9 comments:

  1. I applaud you for your answer to the question re: HIV. In my time, I have found that the people who ask such questions have not done their homework, are ignorant, enjoy shaming others, and are no different than those who decry gay people as a whole. The 'think of the children' whine is tiresome and wholly inappropriate, since gay sex has NOTHING to do with children and HIV hasn't been a death sentence since 1996. My message to these people? Get a new mantra. - Uptonking from Wonderland Burlesque

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    1. The problem, Upton, is that many of these people don't understand that dragging the whole 'think of the children!' thing is simply a shortcut—and a cheap one at that—to trying to cut off any opposing arguments at the knees. We never see these people saying "think of the children!" when one of their buddies is at the bar drinking with the intention of driving after; we don't hear it when someone cracks open a bag of Doritos instead of a cup of nonfat yogurt. You don't hear it when someone goes skydiving, or rides his bicycle to work in an area where there are known vehicle/bike collision. You hear it when someone has sex, or when homosexuality is involved, because it's a quick and dirty attempt to assign stigma.

      The notion is utter nonsense that one's offspring should be more ashamed by an HIV-positive parent than by a parent with diabetes, or a parent with heart disease, or a parent with lung cancer, or a parent with skin cancer. The former can be avoided with safer sex, yes, but the latter can be avoided by healthy eating, exercise, shunning smoking, and skin block. None of them should be worse, from a standpoint of embarrassment, than any other. To claim that carrying the HIV virus is, is simply again a way of turning fear and ignorance into stigma.

      Stigmatizing someone because of their HIV status is lazy, and it's stupid. If I have strong opinions about it, it's because I won't tolerate it here.

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  2. Great FFisting advice. The only thing I would add is that the bottom is in control. It is really all about him. It's communication before AND as it's happening that is important: too fast, too slow, too deep, rest a minute, to the right....all things that even experienced FF tops like to hear, to help them to know about a new partner.

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    1. That is awesome advice. Communication is always necessary, especially when exploring new territory.

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  3. You have such great readers who comment(usually) ;). But especially today!! UK and FP give some excellent feedback. Thank you for coming back to this and not letting the a-hole from earlier this year change anything about you!!
    hugs,
    mg

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    1. Yes, the comments I published today were especially spot-on!

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  4. Someone a friend hooked up with one wanted him to fist him. My friend had never done that, but the bottom took care of everything including checking my friends hands and clipping his nails so one of them wouldn't cut his insides which can lead to infection.

    While an experienced Top/Fister may know to check his nails, a novice bottom may not think of that or think the Top knows what he's doing.

    The person who asked the question (and anyone else) should never assume, and should think of everything and be in control since they run the risk of something going wrong, and not the Top/Fister.

    Nice to hear formsprings had a turn around. I was missing the Q&A blogs and asking you question via formspring.

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  5. Thanks for the advice! I've since managed to take a fist--good partner, small hands. I'd topped before fisting but never quite managed to take on.

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  6. I only recently learned about your hiatus from blogging due to some unfortunate experience with someone...of all the bloggers out there, you are consistently and robustly transparent in how you present yourself online or in your blog.

    I just want you to know that I, like most if not all of your followers, respect not only your artistic talents but also your artistic integrity. Week after week, you courageously bare your soul, usually about giving it bare up some lucky boy's ass...couple that with the thought of you sitting at your computer, naked, cock hard as fuck, tap-tap-tapin' away.

    You are sooooo valued, my friend. Please never lose sight of that, if not for yourself, then for those of us who have a little more than a vested interest in your well-being.

    Big hug...and kiss mate,

    RD
    AKA: alphatop

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