I’ve been thinking about this issue for a couple of days. This post was inspired by Cookiebush who said:

So, I’m sad this morning, but having just exercised my onanistic muscles, I’m a bit more relaxed than I was a few minutes ago.

Read her entire post here

We gotta talk about masturbation.

I don’t mean there’s something wrong, or that I want you to do it with me, or that there’s anything, really, new to say. It’s just that we… me… men… so rarely, rarely talk about masturbation.

I mean, look at me! I do it all the time. I love doing it. But I always get nervous talking about it. I really enjoy masturbating and I’ve done it roughly twice a day, rain or shine, relationship or no relationship, before, after, and occasionally during sex, for decades. I’m proud to say how much blood I’ve donated (five gallons) and what milage my car gets (um, actually I haven’t kept track lately but not bad.) I’ve never minded discussing my children’s poopy diapers, getting picked last for sports in elementary school, or how I’ve had to tighten my belt when finances have been low. I’m shy as hell, however, when it comes to mentioning, for instance, that I had a lovely orgasm while masturbating this morning.

So why don’t we talk about it more? I remember reading somewhere that “ninety percent of men masturbate and so do the other ten percent.” I’m surpremely confident the same is true for women. (Actually, the figures for both are considerably lower — an eye-opening minority of both men and women are pretty asexual, but for the sake of the argument let’s say the 90/10 ratio applies to those of us who are non-asexual.)

Anyway, ok. I do it. I’m probably going to do it again, most likely very very soon (though I’ll have to chill for a bit as this makes me — probably unnecessarily — nervous and that’s a bit of a libido killer.)

When I do it’s going to start out looking very much like this:

Click image to see a larger version

{This image is the beginning of an extended slideshow. It’s the only one not behing my “friends” category firewall. If you’d like to see the rest you should a) realize the content is barkingly graphic and decide if you really want to see that, and b) contact me with a request to be added to the “friends” category so you can see it. —fl]

I’ll have more to say about masturbation this week. If you’ve got anything to say feel free to mention it here in comments or in your own blog.

VS of Dilemmas of a Virgin Slut has found a pretty interesting-looking “marital aid” for men. The photo makes it look more complicated than necessary — it’s basically a flat nubbly disk you wrap around your cock, with lots of lube, and masturbate with.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. VS’s final sentence is

I can almost imagine how good it would feel …. but damn it, I want a cock!!!!

Read her whole post, with comments, here.

If you read her comments you’ll notice she’s not the only one. Those comments drive me crazy. I know exactly how it feels.

And I keep thinking “me, me, I’ve got one” but I know it’s just not the same thing.

Lately I’ve been wondering what ever happened to plain old start-with-first-base kissing, the passionate kind where you’ve gone no further and so you try to pour your whole hearts into each other through lips and tongues and try to wordlessly say everything that, once you’re ready to reach into each other’s clothes, undress, screw, you can say so much more easily but also with so much less… I don’t know… longing intensity or something. (I know you know what I mean though.)

But now I want to go further back and ask what ever happened to playing doctor?

You know, “Doctor.” Where you go together, maybe hand in hand, maybe not, to somewhere safe and comfortable where you know you won’t be interrupted. Depending on who’s turn it is you unbotton my pants or I lift your skirt but either way our pants wind up maybe off or maybe just around one ankle. Then I lay you back or you lay me, and you pull my shirt just up over my belly and then you stare and touch as if you’d never seen anything like it before, and whether it’s your turn or mine we can both ask and answer questions without preconceptions. And then its your turn and you lie back and feel your shirt pushed up, maybe as far as your breasts but maybe not, and then you feel my hands on your legs, parting them and you help, wanting me to see and touch and feel, and (lifting yourself up on your elbows) wanting to watch as much as I do.

And maybe over the course of a couple of days we take turns over and over but each of us just learns and don’t even worry if we’ll ever go further.

I can’t have a pussy. You can’t have a cock. I wish you could show me yours. I wish I could show you mine. I’m so sorry we can’t play.

I got in last night around half past ten
My ol’ woman wouldn’t let me in so
move it on over
rock it on over
move over good dog, the bad dog’s movin’ in

Question for men: How many times have you argued with your partner and found yourself “cut off” from sex with her?

Question for women: How many times have you cut off your partner after an argument?

Answer: Well, I get a very strong impression the answers are going to be pretty different. Recent conversations suggest that men may be more affected by argument than women are, and are more likely to assign themselves — or assume themselves into — to the dog-house than their partners are.

Am I on to something here or is my sample size just way too small?

Wow. Wendy of Housewyfe & Caveman definitely got me intrigued again about the possibilities of anal play, including letting a partner ply me with a strap-on. It reminded me of a draft I was too shy to post a while back, a response to someone else’s extremely erotic ruminations on her own recent experiences.

—-

Since I’m in a quiet private place right now I’ve just gotten out this purple double-ended dildo and a bottle of lube! So intrigued that I think I’m going to lean back, put my feet up on my desk and try it right here.

Wow, it just slips right in doesn’t it? It feels pretty good! Very full! I can’t believe I can sit up with it still in my and type.

You should see my erection! Actually my double erection since the other end is peeking out and tickling my balls when I rub my cock. Did I mention it feels very good? I can just rock back and forth on my chair and feel it stirring inside me, and then I can lean back with one hand on my cock and the other on the dildo and just move it in and out.

—-

Now that I’m “relaxed” it’s nice to pull it almost all the way out and slide it back in. If I do it just right it squeezes my prostate just right and out comes a little come. It’s not an orgasm, just a little dribble of cream and a very pleasant sense of stimulation.

Is this what you were talking about? Is this what it feels like to have a cock inside you? Is it what you would feel if my cock was in you?

—-

Oh man, very cool indeed. I’m enjoying moving in very short quick strokes. God I’d like to do this to you, to have you sitting in my lap, buried in your ass and maybe looking over your shoulder watching — and feeling! – another one of your toys in your cunt. Mmmm, mmmm, mmm, I wish you could see this, I’m gonna come!

—-

Well! It wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to spend the afternoon. Nor, for that matter, is that something I feel like doing every day. Still and all it was surprisingly easy, not at all painful, and definitely, pleasantly different.

That experience reinforces, by the way, Laura Tooth’s argument that if anyone gets it everyone does. It’s definitely something you’d want to make sure you did right, and the best way to make sure of that is if you both know you’re going to get your turn. But if you did it right… woozie! I appreciate why Wendy gets so turned on when her partner plays with her ass.

I love Susie Bright. She says the coolest things.

You’re never going to see an ad on this site that promises to “Unlock the Mysteries of the Female Orgasm in Five Easy Steps!” I hate the mystification of sexual knowledge that should be part of normal conversation.

Read her whole post here

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not always easy for women to have orgasms (though TGIC does ask an interesting — and very common — question that casts the “mystery” in a different light: “For God’s sake, it takes me like 25 seconds! How can no man do this for me?”) But that’s not what Susie’s saying anyway!

Rhett Butler sweeps Scarlet O’Hara up the staircase in “Gone With the Wind” and after the cut away she’s lying in sunlight purring “What a man!” To paraphrase Pierre Bosquet “It is magnificent, but it is not sex.” Or not real, mostly. I think I’ve given roughly sixty women an orgasm with my mouth, hands, and other body parts (I was a very busy boy back when I was still a boy) but I don’t think one of those orgasms was a sure thing in the sense that I knew exactly what to do, how gently or hard, for how long, at what speed, with what motions, in what place or places, to get there. Despite all that experience if I were confident enough to sweep you up that broad flight of stairs I’d still almost certainly fumble a bit before I found the rhythms of your soft places, before you pearled to hardness under your pretty hood, before I knew from your reactions that this was good but that was wonderful, and then this led in time to after-kisses and “Now let me get you.”

Out of all those partners only a few said “touch me here and pushed my fingers to the spot.” Even fewer showed me how they did it. Fewer still discussed it with me before or after.

My guess? In the time spanned by that cut away, I think Rhett Butler put her hand in his and said “show me.” I think Scarlett said “Most men try to dig under the hood but that’s too intense.” I think Rhett asked “what works best for you.” I think Scarelett said “your fingers are distracting unless I’m almost there.” I think Rhett said “do you mind if I tease you when you’re close or would you prefer I find your rhythm and stay there till you come?” In other words, I think they left mystery at the foot of the stairs…

... and had a normal conversation some time before morning.

Update: I want to clarify that I’m not knocking the romance and/or emotional connections in the relationship. The staircase-sweep in that movie embodies one the transcendent archetypes of romantic bonding! I’m just saying that true romance includes, and is not lessened by, normal conversations about the ways we are and what we wish. Finally, when I say “normal” conversation I mean precisely that, as something that occurs in the normal course of a relationship rather than clinical interruptions, pre-coital negotiations, or post-coital debriefings.

So I got to go see the Atlantic Ocean again for the first time in years. Lovely day at the beach by the way, with way more women in bikinis than I’m used to in the chilly sun-averse northwest corner I call home. I’ve already mentioned this has been a bit of a working vacation as far as this blog goes and here’s another item.

So I’m sitting with two women who’ve known each other since childhood. I’m not sure how it came up but at one point each was trying to persuade me that hers (though not the other’s) legs were actually fat. Neither was willing to concede to the other’s point. Neither agreed that the other had fat legs, only that they themselves were. Meanwhile fat was the last think I would have said about either since they both have lean athletic bodies.

Ok. So who gets to decide who is or isn’t attractive? I don’t mean to sound bitter here, but are constantly blamed for setting standards for women’s appearances and they weren’t hearing a word of it. For that matter, nobody’s ever listened to me when I’ve told them they were beautiful. Not without contradicting me outright anyway, or acting as if it’s some kind of desperate nose-holding ploy to get into their pants anyway.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m willing to shoulder the blame if it really is my fault, but I still think that the most vain, egotistical, and cruel man I’ve ever met was still more forgiving about appearance than way, way, way too many women are of themselves and others.

Reflecting back on my recently relocated original post to this blog, and a more recent post about men in lockerrooms I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man refer to a woman as a cock-sucker, slut, or whore except, perhaps, when very hurt or angry in which case it was used in the common sense rather that a literally descriptive one.

Outside of maybe romance novels, comic books, and advertisements I don’t think many men think the way you think we think.

I mean, think about it. We can’t simultaneously be accused of a willingness to screw anything that moves on the one hand, and dictating precisely which shade of eyeliner is required to get us into the sack on the other.

(Actually, I’m not sure we can reliably be accused of either, but everyone has to admit we can’t be doing both simultaneously.)

I’m posting this from a lakeside vacation cabin in a remarkably rural, non-trendy part of the north-eastern seaboard. I overheard my partner mentioning to another woman here that she had to trim a little more than usual for her new swimsuit. The other woman, a women’s health practitioner, said that in her local, equally rural practice at least half and maybe more of the local women she sees are shaving now, and added that it’s really taken off in the last three years.

This may come as no surprise to folks from urburbs and suburbs where alt-weeklies seem to get most of their advertising revenue from lazer hair removal shops, but if people here are doing it too then I think it’s pretty remarkable out here where the alt-weekly is far more likely to be “The Logger’s Gazette” than something like the “Boston Phoenix.”

For reasons as yet unexplained, the blog-host IndecentBlogging.com has gone dark, leaving quite a few people in a no-archives-no-thing lurch. Time for the rest of us to send out virtual rescue parties to find currently-lost ID bloggers who are starting new blogs elsewhere and help them re-establish their links.

As I find relocated ID bloggers I’ll post their names and new URLs here. If you’re a relocated ID blogger let me know either in comments or by email and I’ll certainly post those too. And, of course, if you’re a loyal reader and you let me know in comments where someone you’re fond of has wound up I’ll post that here as well.

If others do the same then Google and other search engines will also start picking it up and that too will help readers reconnect with their favorite bloggers.

—-

One of them is Cookiebush, who’s making a clean start at http://cookiebush.blogspot.com/. (Cookie, I’ll update you in my blogroll as soon as soon as I return from vacation.)

Update: Twiddlybits has checked in to say she’ll be back online with a new host but the same old URL in fairly short order. Keep your eyes peeled.

Easily Aroused has relocated: http://www.easilyaroused.co.uk

So has Easily Aroused

Anna has resurfaced at My not so secret self

Red Sneakers Diary is back online too, and she’s the one who thoughtfully provided new links to Anna and Easily Aroused.

Cool! I just found She Kinky who, though not an ID blogger, had also recently vanished from her old site.

DirtyBoy’s Dirty Thoughts has found a new home on BlogSpot.

Know of any others? Let me know.

So I’m rereading VS’s Dilemmas of a Virgin Slut archives. In comments to one of her posts (with a photo of a naked guy in a hammock) there was a brief discussion of the perils of sex in a hammock. It doesn’t have to be perilous at all.

For what it’s worth, sex in the right kind of hammock is delightful. Here’s how:

1) You don’t want one of those big Pawley’s Island kinds that comes with a stand and spreader bars at either end.
2) Instead you want the wrap-around kind made of much finer cotton or nylon mesh — the kind that usually come, I think, from Mexico.
3) The hammock needs to hang fairly low when occupied, just a foot or so off the ground
4) You put him on his back in the hammock.
5) She straddles him with at least her toes firmly planted on the ground on either side
6) Instead of rocking side-to-side you want to rock forward and back

It’s very nice for a couple of reasons. First he’s able to thrust into her just fine, but she’s the one with all the leverage so she has a lot of control over what moves where. Second, you both feel like you’re floating. Third, it’s very easy for her to move from sitting to lying to anywhere in between, plus although he and the hammock are supporting most of her weight she’s still semi-standing which makes it very easy for her to roll her hips as well as rock them. Finally, it feels mind-bogglingly good for both of you when she does that!

Some friends have a house in the country with a hammock just like that slung between two posts, with a grape arbor overhead, on side a porch that offers tons and tons of privacy. We don’t get to go there nearly often enough but in the summer it’s an absolutely fabulous excuse to wear light summer dresses and baggy shorts (or, having read Freya since last we were there, my kilt.)

[Click image for larger version]

Most of this series is behind Flickr’s “friends” privacy firewall. You can also the whole set as a slide show here.

I was interested in the play of light on shapes beneath black fabric. Oh, and hoping (eek!) it would turn people on as much to step through it as it turned me on to do. (Gotta stop sounding all cerebral all the time. Most of the time? Ok. All the time? I’m only human.)

[Note: I’m on vacation again this week and have only slow, and limited, net access. I’m seemingly able to receive, but not send, email. I’ve left a couple of goodies in the hopper to appear later, and with luck I’ll have a chance to post more later in the week as well. —fl]