Open Forum Friday: Cleaning Out

I'm going to name-drop, here. Bear with me. It'll pass quickly, and then we'll get to the topic for our open forum.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my friend, porn actor Jayson Park. I've plugged his thoughtful and well-written blog before, and I'll encourage you all to go and vote for him as Best Porn Star in the Cybersocket Surfer's Choice Awards. (If I'm not getting nominated for Best Sex Blog, it'd be nice to have one of Breeder's Readers win something, right?) Anyway. He and I were chatting about various things, and we happened on the subject of cleanliness and anal sex.

"I don't like making big sweeping generalizations about groups of people," he said to me. "Especially tops. But it always seems to me like tops don't have to do as much to prepare for a fuck. Not compared to us bottoms."

"No," I assured him. "You're totally right. I figure if my teeth are brushed and my breath smells nice, the rest of me doesn't stink, all I need to do is rinse off my dick and I'm good to go."

Which is not to say, by the way, that tops aren't without responsibilities and pressures of our own. We have to keep our dicks rigid for the duration, for example—something a bottom doesn't have to worry about. We're expected to know how to handle a bottom guy, which can be off-putting for guys wanting to top but don't have much experience. From some bottoms, we're under pressure to say the right things, hit the right buttons, follow every cue. But cleanliness isn't generally near the top of anyone's list of the tough things about topping.

I expressed to Jayson something that really doesn't get said enough, not by me, not by many tops in general. I truly do recognize and appreciate all the extra effort a bottom goes through in order to prepare for a fuck. The effort the good and thoughtful ones take, anyway.

We've discussed in this blog and in my comments before how the spread of easily-available pornography may have prompted the current taste for squeaky-clean assholes during fucking. Enemas and comprehensive douching certainly weren't the norm when I started having sex in the nineteen-seventies, at least not in the backwater town where I was growing up. I was lucky to have one of those holes that wasn't particularly dirty under most circumstances; the most I had to do in order to prepare for marathon fucks was hop in the shower, soap up the outside of the hole, and maybe insert a wet finger a couple of inches in and wiggle it around a bit. Maybe.

And of course these days, men go to much greater lengths to clean out before a fuck. They buy enema bulbs and install nozzles onto their showers. They go through cleansing rituals that can last for an hour or more. I've been through them myself, from time to time. Oddly, though I never seem to mind the noises and the smells when they're coming from someone else, when I've had to do it, I've found it embarrassing. It's a mortification of the flesh, essentially, and while it's happening I'm usually shuddering and pulling faces and wishing that I was anywhere but in that shower, or on that john, or bent over with my belly full and aching and with water shooting out of my backside.

No, there aren't any pics. Pervs.

So bottoms of the world, trust me. When I say I appreciate what you go through to clean up for me, I mean it. It's the reason I show up when we've made a date in advance, because I know you've built the time to clean out into that day's schedule. It's why I understand and accommodate when you need me to come over in ninety minutes, rather than the fifteen it would actually take me to get there. It's why I understand your massive frustration when you've made a date with another top and he's stood you up—it's not just because you need the dick in your hole, but also because you've made a pretty significant investment of time, effort, and a measure of personal humiliation, even before you found out he wouldn't be coming.

It's why, when I'm presented with a fresh-smelling and soapy ass, I really like to show my appreciation. It's why I love to rim and bite and get in there and make the hole sing before I lube up and thrust my meat deep inside you. You guys flatter me when you take the time and effort to clean up for me like that. I don't take it for granted. I want you to realize that, every time we meet.

I'm curious about the attitudes of others, though. Bottom men—is cleaning embarrassing and unpleasant for you, or is it a no-big-deal kind of thing? Do you find that most tops take your efforts for granted, and if so, how do you feel about it? Or don't you clean out at all?

And tops, how about you guys? Do you think about how clean the bottoms are when you're in them, and the steps they've taken to get that way? Or is cleanliness not quite the issue for you as it is for them?

I'm willing to bet there's a lot about the other side that both perspectives take for granted. It never hurts to open our eyes and think about things, right?