Anal Pleasure and Health: A Guide for Men, Women and Couples (22 page)

FECES

The most prevalent attitudes that block enjoyment of rectal stimulation are the ones we have toward feces-shit, if I may be blunt. You probably confronted concerns about feces when you first touched your anus. But rectal stimulation, reaching farther into the unseen interior of your lower digestive tract, is more likely to trigger intense reactions. Some people can't help but see rectal experimentation as a threatening descent into a mysterious nether world of the intestines, perhaps punctuated by taboo images of darkness, dread, and defilement. Peter got right to the point: "I just don't think I should be messing around in there. I get the eerie sense of being where I'm not supposed to be. It's creepy."

Clearly such reactions, to the extent that you have them, aren't going to make rectal exploration any easier. As with other strong emotions, vehement denial of their existence suggests that you're not dealing with them. If you continue to keep them outside of consciousness they're likely to haunt you in the form of persistent tension or tenacious avoidance.

Freud and many others have observed that infants show no particular disgust with feces; they readily play with them or even take pride in them as "gifts." Before long, however, almost all of us change our opinion dramatically. Through a non-rational learning process we come to see feces as dirty, repulsive and foul-smelling. Freud theorized that adults, while expressing a conscious antipathy toward feces, often retain an unconscious attachment to them as well. Most people I've talked with will admit to at least an incidental interest in their own stools, such as gazing at them in the toilet after a bowel movement-not a bad idea, incidentally, for monitoring your digestive health.

But this is about as far as most of us care to go. One thing is clear, though: the overpowering revulsion typically focused on feces goes far beyond any legitimate concerns about hygiene and cleanliness. I believe this revulsion response reflects, in part, our culture's fundamental ambivalence toward the body's natural functions and our relentless efforts to cover up or eliminate all body odors and secretions.

With cultural values tending toward one extreme, it's not surprising that some people are secretly drawn in the opposite direction, becoming obsessed by the very smells and excretions they were taught most vehemently to hate. A few even make excrement or urine the center of their erotic interest. In a sense, these seemingly opposite attitudes actually complement each other. What so often eludes us-and what most promotes optimal well-being-is a more accepting and less negatively charged attitude toward all of our secretions and excretions. Any parent caring for an infant soon learns this kind of acceptance.

There's no escaping the fact that the anus and rectum are passageways for feces. Consequently there's always a chance of encountering the brown stuff during rectal play. I've heard many stories of men and women tentatively enjoying the sensations of rectal insertion, only to have their pleasure squelched by the sight or smell of feces on their dildo, butt plug, or finger. More than a few have felt so traumatized that they quit anal self-exploration for good. This is why it's so important to develop a two-part plan to: (1) reduce the chances of encountering feces and (2) calm the severity of your reactions if you do.

Worries about feces can be reduced by keeping in mind that they're not normally stored in the rectum, except when the body is preparing for a bowel movement. The rectum is merely a temporary passageway. The consistency of your stools determines, to a large extent, how much is left behind after a BM. Soft stools leave more traces, whereas better-formed ones exit more cleanly. The well-formed feces that result from a healthy diet rich in fiber are almost universally reported to be less messy and repugnant-even less smelly.

On days when you notice that your stools are especially soft, you may prefer not to insert anything into the rectum, or to make a point of douching or washing inside with your finger. If you're concerned about feces you might want to look over the discussion of douching in Chapter 7 again, and then experiment to see what works for you. For many people, cleaning out the rectum with warm water is the simplest way to avoid an unwanted rendezvous with poop.

Although these precautions are quite logical and effective, primitive attitudes toward feces may continue to haunt you. Visceral reactions aren't necessarily calmed by practical measures. If this is true for you, an important challenge is to deliberately initiate a shift in attitude. Paradoxically, one of the best ways to launch such a shift is to acknowledge and accept the depth and intensity of your current outlook. After all, you can only start from where you are.

I suggest that you look mindfully at your feces and notice, without judgment, exactly what you think and feel about them. It also helps if you raise the subject with an intimate friend, an admittedly difficult yet highly beneficial thing to do. Gradually you can cultivate a greater acceptance of what you've probably long considered to be the least acceptable aspect of your body. In the final analysis, few of us are ever going to like feces. But it's realistic and healthful not to hate them either.

HOMOPHOBIA

Among the most pervasive and intractable beliefs about rectal stimulation is that men who enjoy it are homosexually inclined, if not overtly gay. It's easy to see how this belief can have a huge chilling effect on men who might otherwise be curious about anal exploration. Ralph, a straight client of mine who initially tried anal self-touch because his girlfriend thought they should do it together, soon discovered that he actually liked it. But when it came to rectal insertion, his pleasure quickly switched to worry. "Putting things inside my ass," said Ralph, "makes me wonder if, underneath, I might be gay. Sure I have gay friends and I've even tried gay sex a couple of times in college, but that just proved how totally turned on by women I am. Yet suddenly I'm uptight about it and I don't get it."

Ralph's not alone. Hardly a week goes by that I don't receive a letter from a straight or mostly-straight man who's tremendously relieved to learn from this book that his secret desire for anal stimulation is far from unusual. Others write because they're having trouble finding a comfortable place in their lives for anal gratification. For example, one 39-year-old man wrote:

I've always had a great sex life with my wife until I recently told her I'd love it if she put her finger up my asshole sometimes when she gives me head, which she and I both like a whole lot. At first she laughed at me like I was joking and then she gave me a strange look like I was some kind of freak. Now she accuses me of wanting to get fucked by a guy. That doesn't appeal to me at all, but the truth is I'd like to get fucked by her! She's warmed up to me again but I guess I'm doomed to play with my ass alone.

What makes so many guys, and often their partners too, so edgy about anal play? Of course the anal taboo accounts for a lot of the problem. But men, regardless of their sexual orientation, must also contend with homophobia-a deep, irrational fear and loathing of homosexuality. While it's true that many segments of our society are becoming increasingly accepting of gays, the destructive effects of early anti-gay messages are difficult, sometimes impossible, to eradicate.

Straight men go to great lengths to avoid being labeled queer. So do most gays, bisexuals, and lesbians-until they come out of the closet. Even then, it usually takes years to repair the massive damage to their self-esteem caused by their own internalized homophobia, which typically proves to be more tenacious than they had hoped. Sadly, many are unable to stop hating themselves.

Although homophobia affects both men and women, rectal stimulation appears to trigger it almost exclusively for men. I've worked with dozens of women of all sexual orientations who struggled with the anal taboo, but virtually none of them believed that enjoying anal stimulation would make her any more or less gay. Men tend to be much more confused on this point, partly because men in general experience homophobia more intensely than women, and partly because being anally penetrated raises the specter of playing "the woman's role" in bed.

Many straight men are only able to enjoy anal self-exploration once they fully realize that doing so, by itself, says nothing at all about their sexual orientation; it's simply one more sensuous or erotic option. It helps even more if a man can sufficiently work through his homophobia so that fantasizing gay sex doesn't send him into a tailspin.

The challenge may be even greater for gay and bisexual men. For instance, some of my male research participants were in the early stages of coming out. Their reactions to rectal exploration were often particularly strong. Obviously, reassuring such a person that a desire for anal stimulation bears no relationship to his sexual orientation is useless, because he knows that he wants to explore gay sex, possibly including anal intercourse. For these men, anal tension is a natural reaction against real desires they're having trouble accepting. Some have had to delay rectal exploration until they were better able to accept
themselves. For most, this takes time, but the process can be accelerated with the help of a supportive psychotherapist. Unfortunately, far too many gays go through the early stages of coming out in painful isolation.*

It's also not uncommon for openly gay men who appear to have accepted their orientation to periodically encounter residual doubts about the acceptability of their erotic and affectional desires. Certain experiences can bring these doubts to the fore. Rectal stimulation, even with no partner present, is one such experience. This is what happened to Lee, a successful and normally self-confident gay man: "I had just managed for the first time ever to get a dildo up my butt without any pain. I was getting really turned on when everything stopped cold. I thought, `You know, if I were a real man (translation: straight), I wouldn't be sticking dildos up my ass!' And then my muscles pushed that thing right out and clamped shut. I could almost hear the door slam. And I haven't been able to do it again since."

Gay men such as Lee are often shocked by the intensity of their reactions, especially those who believed they had conquered the last vestiges of internalized homophobia. The development of gay pride furthers this goal immensely. But unfortunately, pride is sometimes merely a thin veneer pasted over festering shame. Facing lingering guilt and self-loathing is uncomfortable, to be sure, but almost always results in a more relaxed and solid stance in the world. One man, after a long walk in the woods, felt the raw pain of his self-hatred and began sobbing uncontrollably. Afterwards he squatted down and took what he called a "cosmic shit." He later told me, "never before have I felt so open and free. I'd been holding in all the crap my father had told me about queers."

GENDER ROLES

THE MORE THAT homophobia is studied among people of all sexual orientations, the clearer it becomes that anti-gay attitudes aren't as much the product of traditional sexual morality as we might assume. Instead, fear of homosexuality is primarily the consequence of narrowly defined sex-role behaviors and rigid gender identity. While it's true that homosexuality has no direct relationship to masculinity or femininity, most people, including gays themselves, are convinced that it does.