Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

In this week’s Wise Guys feature Em & Lo pass along the question do men ever fake orgasm. They get three answers, all different, all interesting — from a straight single man (“of course!”), a straight married man (“I have personally only faked once.”) and a committed gay man (“If guys fake orgasms, then I ‘d love to know how.”) Read their answers in full here.

My take is it’s actually easier than it sounds. Even easier when there’s lots of lube. And even easier than that when you’re wearing a condom. (You can just say “oops, gotta get this off before it leaks” and scamper to the bathroom.) Back in the old pre-web days a popular Usenet poster also said it was easier than you’d think if a partner was deep-throating him.

And you might wonder how, if one was being deep throated, one would need to fake it. One answer would be if you’ve had too many orgasms recently but you still really like sex. Another would be that you’re taking those #%!$% SSR anti-depressants where you can’t come to save your life, where sex still feels really, really good, and where your partner nevertheless feels bad/inhibited/inadequate/uninterested if you’re not going to have one. There are other less cheery reasons as well (untreated depression, for instance) but those will do.

[Disclaimer: I also appear in Em & Lo’s Wise-Guy rotation. —fl]

Dr. Petra Boynton slips in a really critical point about sex in general, in a very nice post about difficulties with orgasms.

Sex is something to experience, not achieve

She said it here.

Couple of points:

She’s most often asked by straight women about orgasm difficulties but her answers aren’t exclusively for them. Which is handy since whatever the averages might be, individuals with problems come in all genders, orientations, and ages. And as you read her post it’s very clear that she doesn’t mean you just experience sex and not worry about having orgasms.

But what strikes me about that little phrase is how it applies to so much else about sex besides orgasms, from virginity to marriage to first kisses to, for that matter, 20th (or 50th!) Anniversary celebrations. As Boynton says “It sounds corny but if you focus on the destination you may miss out on the journey.”

Note: I’ve made this post about one small almost-unrelated aside in Boynton’s post. If you do have problems with orgasms during sex, or feel you do, the rest of her post is worth a read.

For those of us born to live in maritime climates, once temperature and humidity rise past a certain point having a cool shower becomes preferable to having sex.

Although a cool shower after sex would be nice too.

Or just sex in the shower.

Photo by Flickr user itspaulkelly. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In a recent post about withdrawal I recalled the definition from the days before it was even remotely permissible to let someone know that you masturbate, let alone see you do it, as…

...a brinksmanship-y technique where the man gets as close as he can to orgasm during intercourse and then, somehow, clearheadedly pulls out in such a way and in enough time for his otherwise hands-off ejaculation to occur such that no semen comes in contact with her vulva, let alone is released inside her vagina.

This is but one of a variety of reasons I was a bit leery of the prospect even though I’m a proponent of not coming inside a partner when only low-reliability (annual risk of unwanted pregnancy for “typical” use is greater than 10%) contraception is used.

To which Emily H. of The Clothes That Got Me Laid said in comments (emphasis mine)

WAIT, WHAT? People think the withdrawal method means the guy is supposed to pull out at the last possible second?? & then have an “otherwise hands-free ejaculation”? Well, no wonder people think the withdrawal method doesn’t work. No, no. I’ve never met a pullout method user from back in the day who thought it worked like that, let alone seen a hands-free orgasm of the type you allude to. The way it is supposed to work is, the guy pulls out when he is getting close, then basically finishes up by jerking off (onto his lady companion’s boobs, perhaps). I will defer to the superior wisdom of some guy from Vice magazine on this one: “True pulling out means you have to beat it for, like, 15 seconds.”

I’m just SO GLAD to hear her say that! I think she got the quote from this page. If so I’m not going to vouch for any of the other advice they offer. Just this.

“True pulling out means you have to beat it for, like, 15 seconds.”

Kudos to Vice Magazine. My only quibble (actually it’s a pretty big one) is that, unlike maybe 90% of porn, there are other perfectly lovely ways to give him an orgasm. Fellatio, frottage, friction from hands, toys or other body parts by her — since we are talking mostly about contraception here — in addition to him “beating it being obvious choices.

But, one way or another, yes, 15 seconds seems like a sensible… and also humane/reasonable limit. Any closer and, yeah, the risk of pulling out too late must skyrocket.

One more factor I’m guessing is not taken into account by current research.

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Incidentally the other day I mentioned that there are at least two ways men can have orgasms that in terms of pure physical pleasure are more intense than ejaculating inside their partner’s vaginas. Several people asked what those methods might be.

Before I got there here’s a quick clarification: there are different ways to enjoy sex with someone; there are different ways to experience pleasure. And while intercourse is emotionally, delightfully intense for me the actual orgasms are lovely they’re almost never the best part. (This could be because the emotional and non-orgasmic elements are so nice.) Anyway, what I had in mind when I said what I said was plain old genital-orgasm sensation.

And with that clarified two methods that have sent me over the moon have been slow manual stimulation after extended, emotionally and physically intense sexual activity and slow oral stimulation after extended, emotionally and physically intense sexual activity. Where those extended, emotionally and physically intense sexual activities might include, but not be limited to multiple bouts of intercourse in multiple positions.

I might add that whereas the cliché “money shot” in modern porn may have familiarized (and even, evidently, enamored) several generations with the idea of men coming outside their partners body the evident requirement that semen be visibly projected, preferably onto the patiently-presented body of the ostensible “partner” in order to “prove” ejaculation happened and maybe to “mark” the other actor or actress for the behalf of the viewer tend to… limit the available techniques. Also the evident inversion of status in porn means the ejaculating actor rather than his partner produces it himself.

All well and good I’m sure, and I’d be the last to deprive someone else of his or her heart’s delight of porn-style money-shot ejaculations with a partner. But there are other ways to do it.

Someone partner who shall remain unidentified in time or time-zone thinks (or at least used to think) it’s seriously cool to cup one hand on top of the end of a partner’s erection while she got him closer and closer with the other because she likes the feel as he jets up against the palm of her hand and then rains back down over himself. You usually don’t see that in porn but, at the risk of putting a too much I in the TMI, it feels… lovely for the recipient as well.