A Butt-Chugging Good Time

I swear to god, if I turn on the radio or television and have to hear the phrase butt-chugging again, I’m going to take a gun and blow out the speakers. It’s not that I’m offended by the phrase itself, inelegant as it is. What bothers me is the way that most of the newscasters speak it, as if wrapping their lips around syllables so closely related to the evacuatory channel is beneath them—though it’s very plain that most of them get a thrill out of being able to get away, finally, with saying something so crude on the air. Even Anderson Cooper, when he started talking about butt-chugging on his program, wore a little raised eyebrow that indicated he thought the whole thing was. . . .

Wait. You don’t know what butt-chugging is? Let’s back up.

There was a news article earlier this week that reporting about an incident at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of Tennessee. I don’t know about your colleges for those of you who went, but back in the day, the Pi Kappa Alphas were the target of many a jack-off fantasy of mine, because at my school they were a uniformly hot bunch. Whenever I’d see one of them coming my way in those maroon-colored sweats with the gold greek letters on the outer thigh, I’d melt. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were also uniform assholes, I would’ve almost regretted never rushing. Anyway, the incident involved a near-fatal poisoning from an alcohol enema. Alcohol, when douched into the rectum, gets absorbed into the bloodstream very quickly; it’s possible to get much more drunk rectally than it is by actually drinking.

Naturally, the report was bizarre enough to mainstream America that it couldn’t be treated as an isolated incident. No, it had to be classified as a trend, and given the name of butt-chugging. Any news outlet would have you imagining that all the cool kids are butt-chugging on college campuses these days. Hell, they’re probably butt-chugging in the men’s and women’s rooms between seminars, and butt-chugging in their dorm rooms instead of doing what coeds did in the good old-fashioned days when canasta, flagpole-sitting, and goldfish-swallowing was the height of craziness. Twenty-three skidoo, and all that. Parents are now supposed to educate their children on the dangers of butt-chugging. Priests will need to sit down with younger members of their flocks when they sense trouble and ask the question, “My child, are you a butt-chugger?”

It’s all ridiculous, of course. Alcohol enemas have been around forever. It’s never going to be a ‘trend’ because come on, let’s get real. How many frat boys are so un-homophobic that they’re going to give each other enemas? No, people. I’m talking about real frat boys outside of one of those streaming pay-per-view porn websites.

I encountered the phenomenon first back in the late nineties, when a guy who’d share his bottom at small parties would first buzz the boy up with a beer enema. The younger guy was still in training in taking multiple big dicks, so a quick flush to the colon with a Fleet bag and a cheap beer (I have a memory of it being a generic brand, because like his top said, he wasn’t going to have to taste it), and the hole was ready for a couple of hours of fucking. No nausea, no risk of puking—just a quick buzz followed by two or three men piling on to fill him up.

At the other end of the spectrum was a fellow I knew in Chicago who would invite me to his apartment when I was in town, who fancied himself a kind of specialist in the art of the wine enema. He kept a kind of log of his experiments in oenophile colonics, and was as much of a snob about what vintage went up his shitter as if he’d been a member of the Windy City Wine Council. Desperate to impress, he would keep the bottle from which he’d decanted his expensive douche by the bedside table. When I’d be undressing on my arrival, he’d bore me a little by telling me about the label, its history, and the year of its creation; he’d also offer me a glass—as if I wouldn’t be tasting the remnants on his butt cheeks in a few minutes.

On the whole, I had more sympathy for the guy with the generic beer. At least he didn’t have any pretense about what he was doing.

Now, alcoholic enemas aren’t something I’m recommending. They can be dangerous, or even fatal. I don’t even find them vaguely erotic; about the best I can say for them is that at least they don’t leave one’s breath smelling foul. But to pretend they’re something that’s done only by crrrrrazy frat boys is to do a disservice to the vast spectrum of sexual behavior among both gay and straight people (oh yes, straight people do it, too). It reinforces the act as a fetishized, marginal behavior. It sensationalizes what is really not that exceptional an experience, and makes it titillating.

But you know, maybe it’s a little bit worth it, if only to see Anderson Cooper try to keep a straight face while saying the words butt-chugger on the air.