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.