Here In This Wonderland

The last places anyone should look to for answers about who and what they are in the bed room are societal and cultural norms. Even the word "norms" feels like an oxymoron when it comes to sexuality. The only norms I can agree on is that any intimate sexual acts must be fully consensual, by adults. After that, all bets are off.

What turns me into a hunk o' burnin' love may flat line you completely, and vise-versa. Who is to say what goes and what doesn't between my sheets? Certainly not society. Certainly not culture. The only person that can answer that is me. And my partner.

In American culture, men are sexually socialized to think of themselves first. Women are sexualized socialized to think of themselves second. That creates a bad paradigm, and I immediately call "Personal Foul" and administer the maximum penalty of fifteen yards. Men and Women, don't ever listen to that shit you hear through conventional wisdom (another sexual oxymoron). Listen to your heart, listen to you mind, listen to your loins. The answers for You are there.

Luckily, through years of frustration and masturbation, I learned first hand (pun absolutely intended) what turned me on, what made my motor run, what drove me to beautiful fits of passion. And, luckily, I didn't pay much attention to what society or culture was telling me. I don't really know why, except to say, that, from a very early age, I felt, I knew, I was different. I embraced that difference, because I had nothing else that made any sense except how I felt.  Everything else in my life felt like white noise. 

Through a combination of nature and nurture, I eventually just trusted what was inside. Through a combo of being very sensitive from birth; from having a very emotional father; from being able to lean on nothing but my own internal heartbeat, I eventually just trusted what I felt. Which is not to say I embraced it immediately.

It was, it always is, a learning curve. My first few girlfriends were far more traditional, for lack of a better term. And that's to be expected in the early stages of finding your sexual identity. I knew, from the age of about....six...that I liked the concept of restraint, that I had a foot fetish, that the entire female body was one beautiful erogenous zone, that I whatever I shared in the sack was a fun adventure, an opportunity for exploration. Those tenants served me well then. They serve me well, now. 

Breaking it down by gender, I offer you this: Men, it ain't all about us. She is your partner, even if it's just for the night. Don't make it all about you. Please her. Give her what she wants. That means paying attention to her, a skill most men sorely lack. If your encounter is to be a true experience, there must be common ground of give and take. Of reciprocation. Focus on her. You will be taken care of. If you're not, you always have the option of speaking up. Difficult for many, even us men (yes, ladies, we struggle with that too, even in the bedroom), but well worth the risk.

Men are taught that we should always know what to do. But how the fuck can you always know "what to do" when you are making love to a unique individual? We can't. So bring all of yourself. Bring your undivided attention. Bring your passion and fire. Bring an attitude of gratitude for this woman who has chosen to spend the night with you. Not in the guise of manipulation, but in the reality that the two of you are creating something special. Tall order? Maybe. But that cultivates your highest aspirations of being a great lover. 

Women: play with us; tell us, show us, subtly, what you want. If we are paying attention, we will pick up on that and respond accordingly. Women are taught that expressing what you want in the bedroom is not okay. Again, bullshit. And, we men are not mind readers. You think we should be, and worse, you think you are. But ladies, you are sorely mistaken on both counts. 

There is the potential for a beautiful balance of mutual communication here. Honor that. Any man just in it for himself is just frankly a bad lover. Call him on that. Teach him how to be with a woman. Because if we don't get it from you, where the fuck are we supposed to get it?

I'm calling for a shift in the paradigm. Open up to each other. Don't stay locked in your societal roles. Break out of that shit. It does not make you less of a man to explore her and not know just what to do. It makes you an attentive lover. It does not make you less of a woman to speak up and guide us. It makes you more of what we men want: a woman who will play with us. 

Bottom Line: you are in this together. It is about the other person, first. If you both do that, who knows where it will lead? But if you stick to what you've learned, I promise you, it may be good for a while, but the tread will wear off that tire quickly. And you are left with the same old shit: Looking for that someone who wants to get to know you, honor you, give to you, and communicate as a means to intimacy, but has scant clue how to go about that.

Become vulnerable. Become less than perfect. Become a vast wonderland of exploration. 

© 2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Jasmine (The Art of Kissing part 3)

I've been with a call girl just once in my life, back when I was 24. It happened the night before one of my best friend's wedding. 

The groom to be and three of his lead trouble makers were hanging at a buddy's house, whooping it up the eve before the big day. Unbeknownst to the soon to be husband, we hired an escort through the yellow pages (this was years before Google). We wanted to get our pal laid by another woman the night before his wedding. 

It was a completely baked idea, which wasn't surprising, because by the time we hatched the plan, we were all completely baked. The three of us knew there was no way the upcoming groom, was gonna go for this. But, there was, at that naive age, a certain powerful sense of perverse male duty; as in "This is what you're supposed to do for your buddy as a 'Goodbye to Freedom' ritual the night before the ball and chain of marriage got impaled to your ankle.". We saw the opportunity for him to be with just one more girl before monogamy as a great gift. Maybe we even felt it to be some sort of Right of Passage into Marriage.

Sound ridiculous? Sure. But again, what the fuck did we know? We were 24 year old dudes. Hormone Raging, Egotistical, Self-Centered, Unenlightened, Pig Headed, Know-It-All-Ocasional-Assholes.

Plus, frankly, none of us liked his bride to be. In fact, we couldn't fuckin' stand her. Neither could any of his other friends, male or female. His family didn't like her either. Nobody could figure out what the hell he saw in her. Many of us had had talks with him, trying to dissuade him from taking this high dive into what he saw as a deep, smooth pool of connubial blissful turquoise water. In actuality, it was clearly a shallow, rocky, turbulent cesspool of sure as shit divorce misery. But nobody could get through to him on that.

Maybe our little posse that night figured getting him laid right before his wedding would be our ultimate inside joke on her; a silent, passive aggressive dagger in her back.

I'm not proud about trying to take prevenge on his soon to be wife. It was immature. Mean. Stupid. Morally Bankrupt. But, we loved our friend, and thought he was making the biggest mistake of his life. "Maybe she'll find out about this and call off the wedding!", we fantasized in our compromised mental condition. Our intent, as misguided as it was, was that we were trying to save his ass. We had all seen, for years, what a disaster the relationship already was. And by the time we called the escort service, we were stoned, pretty hammered, and had plenty of the devil's dandruff up our noses; a combo that leads to less than stellar thinking.

After much anticipation, Miss Jasmine arrives. Beautiful little blonde in her mid-twenties. Our friend, tomorrow's groom, wants nothing to do with this. But she's made the trek, along with her gigantic bodyguard just outside the door, and she's getting paid, no matter what. And if we had to pay her, well, one of us was gonna get our rocks off, damn it. I happen to have the money, and had never been with a call girl. Plus, I was horny, and found this girl very attractive. So upstairs we went.

We were hanging at the house of our friend. I'll call him Biff. Biff's parents were out of town, so us knuckleheads had the run of the place. "Where do I take this girl?", I wondered? Why, the parent's Master Bedroom, of course! Why screw around with a double bed when you can go at it on a king size job? It was a no-brainer, even to me, who wasn't using much of his brain at that point.

Having never been with a call girl, but having been with girls, after we removed our clothes, I went in for a kiss. "No kissing", Jasmine said to me. "What?", I replied, completely startled. "I'm paying you $125 and I can't kiss you?". "Nope. No kissing, sweetie. At least not on the lips or on the face".

This was dumbfounding. I loved to kiss. I had kissed way more than I had been to second or third base, and certainly more than I had been laid. I had far more experience and confidence in the art of kissing than any other physically intimate act. And I was a great kisser. Now, that, my most valuable asset, was being liquidated from my sexual portfolio.

It got worse. I knew that when I'm being sexually intimate with a partner, I have an oral fixation: my mouth has gotta be doing something; it's gotta have something on it or in it; your lips, your tongue, your mouth, your neck, your shoulder, your thighs, your ruby fruit jungle, your feet, a gag. Something. But with the no mouth kissing rule, I had to get resourceful and just go after her neck or someplace else.

After I had my jollies rocked, I asked Jasmine "Why is kissing on the mouth not allowed?". She said "It's too intimate." I didn't know a whole lot about intimacy at 24, so I didn't get what the hell she was talking about. But, although the idea that I could have sex with you but not kiss you because kissing was too intimate didn't make a whole lotta sense to me, it certainly intrigued me. It felt counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. But hell, I had just heard it from a pro, so who was I to argue?

 I was a late bloomer, in many areas, especially sexually. But once I bloomed, I exploded. And if I applied my passion, my intelligence, my intuition, and my insatiable curiosity to a pursuit, I became a thermonuclear bomb of excited knowledge and eventual wisdom. This "Intimacy of Kissing" concept fascinated me. So I wanted to learn more about it. Both through books, and through field research. 

I'll share more of what I've learned about kissing and intimacy in part 4.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Riding Your Lover's Edge (part 2)

In the sexual experience known as Tie & Tease (see my most recent post Riding Your Lover's Edge if you missed it, so you know what the hell I'm talking about), the bottom is not merely a passive participant. The bottom has to fully present, engaged, and expressive. If not, it becomes very difficult for your lover to know how close you are to orgasm. And that derails the whole train. Even if the bottom is gagged, if they are present and expressive, the top will be given plenty of tells as to when they are getting close to coming, and thus be in a position to deny orgasm. This whole shabang needs both of you to Bring It. Even if you're tied up so well you can hardly move. 

As a top, find your sinister side and play it out. Live it out. Fully. Show your lover your mean streak. Come up with new ways to sexually manipulate them. Know what words, phrases, attitudes, and actions drive your partner to the absolute edge of sexual and physiological frustrated euphoria. Laugh when they cry. Taunt them with phrases of control, dominance, and power. You can even script something out with your partner before hand, and make it like a play (or even a movie). You both get to create your own little world that only makes sense to the two of you.

Many of us have a sadistic side, usually buried deep; or least a part of us that would love to fully control another person. On the flip side, we also have a piece of us that wants to let go and completely turn the wheel over to someone else. The psychological jargon for those parts of us are sometimes referred to "Sub-Personalities". And, if you take the necessary steps to make this a mutually safe place, it's not only a rush to play with those Sub-Personalities, it's therapeutic. Whenever we give ourselves permission to explore the parts of ourselves we usually keep at bay, or hidden, we make progress in freeing ourselves. We promote healing. We create inner space.

Again, there are similarities to meditation. There's a meditative practice where, instead of denying these "darker" parts of us, we go into them. We engage them. We give them a voice, and allow them to express themselves. We get to know what they're about by developing a more fruitful relationship with them, because, after all, like it or not, they are a part of us. If we then create a safe place to act them out, like during Tie & Tease, we expand our understanding of ourselves. We take a small step towards wholeness. You'll hear actors say this stuff about their craft and why they love it. It often helps them process their emotions and gain self-wisdom.

I love the technique of edging and Tie & Tease because it's a truly loving practice, even though, let's face it, it involves a fair amount of sexual cruelty. But it's not malicious cruelty. I've been driven to tears of frustration as a bottom; and as a top, I've driven her to tears as well; tears of frustration during denial, and tears of joy upon release. Let me tell you, they are some of the best tears you will ever cry.

After the bomb explodes, you both bask in the aftershock The pillow talk that happens afterward can be some of the most precious and intimate discussions you and your partner may ever have. When you both come out of the dominance/submission paradigm, there is a heightened sense of closeness and vulnerability. There's a palpable and powerful experience of love, connection, and peace as you hold one another, love each other up, and settle into this tranquil, mutually created space. This is just one way to manifest mutually intimate and sacred space, unique to just the two of you; space that only you two know how to get to. It can be a microcosm of the whole relationship itself; A Special Place Just For The Two of You. A Special Place that only the two of you know how to find. A Special Place where nothing in the world matters except what you lovingly create together. That is truly beautiful. 

Tie & Tease, and mindful love making in general, promotes so much of what makes a relationship work. Communication. Attention. Care. Intimacy. Love. Connection. Passion. Putting your partner first when that's what the relationship needs. Flex your creative muscles. Create characters, use props, do whatever you want.

There's an expression I learned from a very wise therapist at Sierra Tucson: "When you love, give of your overflow, not of your essence". In this case, however, for a short period of time, it's okay to you give your essence. You'll get it back. Just for this, though, if you're bottoming, let your lover Have It All. And if you're topping, just let your lover......Have It.

This isn't everyone's cup of tea. If you're curious about it, however, don't jump into the deep end right away. Start off with a discussion, and put the ropes and chains aside for a while. Get to know your lover's edge, play with it, then reverse top/bottom roles. Eventually, if this is your jam, you'll intensify the situation, organically, if that's where you both want to take it. It's an acquired taste for many, so give yourselves the bedroom time, and savor the deliciousness of this edge.

And we were told it isn't safe to play with knives.....

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Riding Your Lover's Edge

There's a sexual technique known as "Edging" (also known as "Surfing"). Edging involves maintaining a very high state of sexual arousal for an extended period of time without achieving orgasm. You get close to coming, but don't, and you stay there, as long as you can. Or as long as you can't. When you willingly and consensually give control of your orgasm to your partner, it ain't up to you. Which brings me to the most heart popping way to experience edging. 

Known as "Tie and Tease", the practice involves one partner being bound and relinquishing control of their orgasm to their lover. In this form of erotic denial, the partner in control (the "top") carefully manipulates speed, pressure, and intensity to keep their helpless lover (the "bottom") deliciously close to orgasm for a long period of time. When the bottom is just about to climax, the top reduces the level of stimulation just enough (or just plain stops,) at just the right moment, to deny orgasm. If this process is repeated, over and over again, the bottom experiences an overwhelming urge to come. When, finally, the top allows their partner their sweet release, it is far more intense and pleasurable than a "normal" climax (if any climax can ever be described as such). It is in fact, an explosion. I call it The Hydrogen Bomb of Orgasms.

From experience, I can tell you, with complete confidence, that this is one steamy, hot as fuck way to make love. It's both physically and psychologically extremely intense. The strong level of sexual frustration in being denied orgasm is exponentially intensified by the helplessness of being bound. Coming is, from a human mechanics standpoint, a process of tension and release. Well, like any physical system, the more tension you create, the more powerful the release. And there is no better way I know of to create near unbearable tension than Tie and Tease. 

For the lover being denied orgasm, this technique can induce a near euphoric state, also known as "Flying". And it can even alter one's perceived consciousness; in a way, like meditation. Tie & Tease with extended erotic denial is thus sexual mediation. Good Gravy. What a beautifully powerful combination. 

Mind-blowing-conscious-altering-orgasm aside, the truly wonderful perk of this sexual play is that it builds intimacy, trust, love, and connection. The ability to get your lover that close to orgasm, and knowing exactly when to deny it, takes practice. It takes time. It takes focus and attention. It takes communication. It takes care and love. You have to get to know your partner extremely well. You have to be able to read them. You have to be fully engaged and present. Call it Fully Mindful Sex. 

The benefits of this practice start long before the actual act. Because it's important to discus this scenario first. This often takes couples out of their comfort zone, which is where growth usually happens. Even if it doesn't take a couple out of their comfort zone, talking about what happens in the bedroom fosters communication and intimacy. And it also builds anticipation. And anticipation is a potent aphrodisiac. 

Speaking of anticipation, if I've wetted your appetite for more, join me for part two. And maybe pass this post onto your lover if you want to try it. Send them a link to this post to wet their appetite. And maybe even their underwear. If they wear any.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHear LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved. 

I Invented Fire

I don't write much non-fiction. When I do, it's usually something steamy. 

I’ve invented a Brand New Literary Genre: “Auto-Biographical Unmanifested Erotic Non-Fiction”. This is a technical way of saying, “I will create this romantic experience someday”. 

Actually, I’ve experienced parts of this story already. Just not all of it. Yet. But I will. 

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. Al;l; rights reserved.