The Friday Sex Blog [In Praise of Darkness]

¡Hola! Everybody…
The nip is in the air: the message that autumn will arrive, dressed to the teeth, at that moment when you most need change… I’m going to get dressed just because I feel like it. LOL

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-=[ Doing it in the Dark ]=-

Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night.
-- Rolling Stones

I'm guilty. I am guilty of equating sex in the dark with shame. Truth be told, sex is the only game we play in the dark. Are we ashamed to watch what we’re doing, or does darkness offer a way to free our most intimate passions?

Darkness offers a safe haven. In the darkness, lovers are safe from each other’s unrelenting gaze, and the prying eyes of others -- children, parents, and neighbors. To the extent that you want to deny others knowledge of you as a sexual person, you will welcome the protection of the dark.

Under the cover of darkness, we are all beautiful. Flab, cellulite, sags, spots, and wrinkles are all mercifully hidden. Out of focus, the often comical contortions and grimaces of sexual exertion become a graceful ballet. If you find down-to-earth images of skin and sweat distracting, you will welcome the camouflage of the dark.

Darkness confers permission and in the permissive darkness, sin and taboo are softened. Transgressions transpire without witness. If your upbringing and social conditioning stressed sexual inhibitions, you might seek, even require, the tolerance that comes with the dark.

Obscured by the darkness, the cracks in your life -- or the ceiling -- lose their urgency. Right here, right now, under the covers, in the half-dark with air as still as held breath, close together, more connected, more alive, the details of everyday existence a faded memory. In the dark it’s just the two of you, two streams of crackling energy knitting together, entwining, tightening, forming a kind of growing liquid knot that becomes more complex, twisting in and of itself, the focus limited to completing that knot, to finding its ultimate expression, until you’re immersed into a blaze of sexuality.

We live in an image-obsessed culture, and once we are blinded by the darkness we are forced to use our other senses. We rediscover touch, sound, aroma. Encumbered by clothing, we are chronically deprived of the variety and possibilities of the pleasures and comforts available through touch.

Emboldened by the darkness, we become audacious, our words and rhythms betraying a lusty eagerness we might otherwise deny. Shyness can be slain in the dark. In the unconditional privacy of the darkness, we can exaggerate and improve our actual experience through our imagination. Our deeper wishes fulfilled, we feel deeper love and greater passion. Through our imagination, we become more engaged in reality. To those of us who cherish our fantasies, darkness is an ally.

The trouble with darkness, it seems to me, that you can’t see what you’re doing. You can’t really see how your partner is reacting. You can’t gaze into each other’s eyes. Travelers afraid of the sexual territory tend to stick to the familiar and sex in the dark often becomes a routine and dry exercise. I think the biggest objection is that people tend to see nudity or nakedness as a sin of immodesty. But c’mon people, we’re talking here of a candle and some moonlight, not film shoot spotlight. But many of us have a hard time believing that anyone would enjoy seeing our genitals. This is especially true of women who have been repeatedly told they are cursed, or dirty. Many women are so paralyzed by shame they even avoid medical examination “down there.” Modesty, my brothers and sisters is often shame in disguise.

Perhaps because of the taboos put upon showing and looking, such acts can be slowly introduced as a final revelation of trust between two lovers. Perhaps the darkness can soften the way a little, so that full openness is something natural and not forced. Otherwise our nakedness becomes a sham -- empty gestures of intimacy.

Love,

Eddie

The Friday Sex Blog [Masturbation]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I'm sick with a painful sore throat and fever.

Today, the online magazine I write for, Subversify, will be posting my reflection on 9/11. I experienced the events first hand and I think I offer an alternative perspective. Go there and leave a comment (click here).

Sex talk...

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-=[ Masturbation ]=-

The following is a true story. Not too long ago, I got a phone call from a distraught friend. Apparently, he was caught by his wife masturbating, which isn’t so strange. What was strange about my friend’s predicament and the cause for his anxiety was his wife’s response: she was outraged. LOL! According to my friend, his wife felt that his masturbating was an affront to her sexual capability. In other words, if he had to masturbate, then that was a reflection of her not “satisfying” her man.

To make matters worse, she confided the incident to her best friend, who happens to be the caller’s sister. I know my friend’s sister and she has the biggest mouth in the world! So, now everybody knows my friend was caught spanking the monkey by his wife. LMAO! Don’t laugh, he tells me, because the whole incident has brought up some issues that threaten the marriage, namely my friend’s wife’s notions of sex and sexuality.

I too find her response strange, but it is not the first time I hear this kind of attitude regarding masturbation. I remember a summer fling affair I had with an intelligent, highly sexual, college-educated Latina. We did practically everything that summer, but when I asked her if she ever masturbated (I wanted to watch/ participate), she looked at me as if I had grown a third eye and told me that she didn’t need to masturbate. Her whole perspective on masturbation was that it was for women who couldn’t get a man.

I was shocked.

I masturbate – all the time. Who knows, I may have masturbated to a fantasy fueled by one of your pics! LMAO! Kidding!

I masturbate all the time especially when I’m writing, or doing something creative. I read somewhere that writers are incorrigible masturbators. My exes all know about my predilection toward pleasuring myself and for the most part, it’s never been an issue. In fact, some were grateful for it because if they weren’t in the mood, I would just take matters into my own hands. However, I must warn you: making me do that too often would eventually lead to you sleeping alone. ::wink::

Masturbation has been taboo for a long, long time. Christianity actually considers it a sin of some type and I remember the kind nuns of my childhood telling me I would go blind and me thinking: Yeah right bitches. I'll believe that when I believe that single, homeless teen moms get preggers without sex and give birth to gods. Well, I didn’t phrase exactly that way, but it was what I felt.

Most religiously inflexible people will argue against masturbation from the point of view that it’s an unnatural act, hence a sin against God. But I beg to differ: if it were so unnatural, then why is there some preliminary research showing that fetuses masturbate? Yep, you heard that right! Fetuses masturbate! In 1996, two ob-gyns in Italy published a letter in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in which they described observing a female fetus at 32 weeks of gestation touching the vulva in a caressing manner primarily in the region of the clitoris:

… Movements stopped after 30 tom 40 seconds and started again after a few minutes. Furthermore, these slight touches were repeated and were associated with short, rapid, movements of the pelvis and legs… In addition to this behavior, the fetus contracted the muscles of the trunk and limbs, and then clonicotonic [prolonged spasms] of the whole body followed. Finally, she relaxed and rested.

They also noted “evidence of male fetuses’ excitement reflex in utero,” such as “erection” and masturbatory movements.

In 1995, the British science series Equinox was the first to broadcast ultrasound footage of a male fetus playing with himself. One doctor, Dean Edell has gone so far as to write: “It is common during second trimester ultrasonography examinations to see the fetus touch itself repeatedly and rhythmically on the genitalia, offering proof that masturbation is rooted not in sin but in biology.” [emphasis added]

So much for the “it’s unnatural” argument. Masturbation is a normal, and (I would add) necessary, function of human sexuality.

So, if it’s natural, why all the beef about masturbation, you ask? Active disapproval of masturbation has largely been based around the widespread concept that the supply of semen is limited. In ancient Chinese culture, masturbation among men was forbidden, as causing irreparable loss of male essence. Similar ideas are the foundation for the majority of attacks on masturbation. Beginning in the 18^th century, descriptions by religious zealots of men gone mad through excessive masturbation led to generations of hysterical anti-masturbation texts. Gadgets inhibiting masturbation and even operations such as adolescent circumcision were done as a way to discourage masturbation. Some young girls were subjected to chastity belts, modified girdles, and in extreme cases, clitoridectomy. Even Freud agreed that habitual masturbators caused harm to their psychological well-being.

Paradoxically, societal attitudes to masturbation have probably varied more than any other sexual act. For example, masturbation is not mentioned in the catalogue of sins in the book of Spiritual Exercises (1548) of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, but the hugely influential Catholic philosophizer and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) reviled masturbation as a sin worse than fornication. Aquinas dismissed female masturbation as “mere feminine lewdness,” probably because there was no spilling of seed.

However, nothing in the Bible directly condemns masturbation. The New Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967 calls it a “serious sin that will keep one from heaven,” but only quotes a verse stating that the “covetous” will never inherit the kingdom of God. From the looks of it, I wonder if I even want to inherit such a “Kingdom.” Sheesh!

Masturbation generally refers to bringing oneself to orgasm using manual stimulation. If this is accomplished with the help of a partner, it is called mutual masturbation, petting, or foreplay. Masturbation is a normal process of sexual development and maturity. Boys generally begin ejaculating between the ages of 10-13 years. One researcher has concluded that masturbation is like sexual rehearsal and if interfered with, can lead to sexual dysfunction in adult years.

As I noted previously, the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries marked the beginning of a two-hundred year period where masturbation came to be viewed as a form of unhealthy self-abuse by the morally degenerate or mentally ill. This led to widespread public phobias that resulted in many cases such as the one reported in the 1894-5 edition of the International Medical Magazine:

A doctor in Ohio decided to eliminate a girl’s desire to masturbate by cauterizing the clitoris. When this failed to bring the desired effect, he infibulated the area with a silver wire. These she tore loose and in a final effort, he cut out the clitoris. Adults have been castrated. As late as 1897 a man was documented to have had his penis amputated as a cure for masturbation.

As with anything else practiced to an extreme, masturbation can potentially have harmful side-effects, but this can be said about almost anything. One unintended consequence of experiencing orgasm primarily through masturbation is premature orgasm. I remember explaining to my son after I accidentally caught him jacking off that masturbation is ok (just don’t fuck up our bed sheets! LOL!), but over dependence on masturbation can lead to premature ejaculation. The hand is not a good substitute for a vagina, and clenching your cock with a tight-fisted king-fu grip can never be emulated by a vagina, I don’t care how many kegels a woman performs.

In addition, this can be a problem for women who rely primarily on masturbation toys and their hands to achieve orgasm. No man can ever hope to reproduce the vibrations created by sex toys and if that’s all you’re doing, it could lead to some dissatisfaction with sex. In other words ladies, go get some fuckin cock once in a while and learn how to ride that tiger in the quest for some old-fashioned mutual orgasm.

Some would say that regular masturbation helps one’s ability to orgasm by keeping the pubococcygeus (PC) muscle toned. This muscle covers the genital region from the mons pubis to the anus. We all know by now that a physician named Arnold Kegel developed an exercise that improves the PC’s muscle tone. How cool it is to have a vaginal exercise named after yourself, huh?!!

For the devoted masturbators among us there are masturbation parties where people come together to meet and partake in mutual masturbation. Safe sex kits are supplied and some add to the festivities by wearing costumes.

One final note: there is no universally accepted theory as to how often one should masturbate. Some men regularly masturbate as often as six times a day with no apparent harm. However, as I mentioned above, men and women who masturbate excessively may risk becoming too accustomed to the stimulus of the hand, which often cannot be equaled by stimulus in intercourse. Abstaining from masturbation for a period of time can restore sensitivity. For my purposes, masturbation should be seen as a thermostat for our emotional well-being and should be used according to a person’s needs.

Sex is good for you…

Love,

Eddie