The Guide to Getting It On (93 page)

A labret is a type of lip piercing, of which there are many variations. The inside of the lip can sometimes grow over the jewelry, and gum recession and chipping of tooth enamel can be problems. Be sure ask if there’s a special kind of backing you can use that might help prevent these complications.

Piercings to Avoid

Surface piercings can easily reject and can leave a scar. Hand webs are piercings in the skin between the thumb and forefinger. Not a great idea. And under no circumstances should you ever attempt a uvula (throat) piercing, unless you have no gag reflex or aren’t concerned about choking.

Abandoning a Piercing

Always check with an experienced piercer about protocol for pulling out a piercing and letting the skin grow back together. And if the piercing is on your face, seriously consider getting the advice of a plastic surgeon before pulling out the post for good.

Airport Security

With a couple of recent notable exceptions, airport security is unlikely to discover your piercing jewelry. One of the reasons is because it’s usually made of high-quality metal that isn’t magnetized. As one woman on a web forum remarked, airport security didn’t catch her rather stout nipple rings, but they did find a penny in her pocket. Nonetheless, the government recommends that you take out your body jewelry before going through airport security. However, you should probably try to put it back in as soon as you clear security, as holes can start to close almost immediately.

Some people who are screened frequently, such as pilots with Prince Alberts, elect to replace metal jewelry with acrylic jewelry. Other options include jewelry made of glass or medical-grade plastic.

X-Rays and Medical Procedures

You will usually need to remove all metal rings and body jewelry before having an MRI and certain medical procedures. Think metal in your microwave. You can always put in a nylon post to keep the site from closing.

Tattoo, Tattoo!

Studies done at Texas Tech found that both male and female students with tattoos were “substantively and significantly more likely to be sexually active” than nontattooed college students.

Tattoos can be very sexy, so if that’s what you want to do, why not put some serious thought and effort into it and get the best you possibly can? Learn about the different styles, the different inks, and healing times and sterilization. Don’t just rush out and do it, especially if you have been partying and are still trailing tequila vapor. Save your money for the absolute best tattoo artist you can possibly find. Research, research, research. Spend a few hours reading every line on the tattoo FAQ from the rec.arts.bodyart newsgroup. This incredibly well-organized, helpful, gold mine of information is lovingly maintained by Stan Schwarz. Don’t be put off by the wicked URL:
http://faqs.cs.uu.nl/na-dir/bodyart/tattoo-faq/part1.html

Tattoo Logic

The first thing to consider about getting a tattoo is that it is forever. It’s highly unlikely it’s ever going to go away. If the reason you are getting a tattoo is because your lover’s nickname is Cyclops and you think it would be cute to have a cyclops tattooed on your chest with your nipple as his eye, keep in mind that Cyclops might someday get an eye for another babe, and what do you do then? Even if he doesn’t, boobs sag. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you will blink and gravity will have suddenly gotten its mitts on your perky breasts. It won’t let go, and your cyclops tattoo will start looking like things do in those curvy carnival fun house mirrors. (The same is true for the skin on every other part of your body, not just breasts.)

Or what if you are truly and totally bonded to your lily-white bros in your white-supremacist street gang, and you get a racist tattoo across your entire back, and in two years’ time you fall head over heels in love with a wonderful girl who is Jewish or black?

Hopefully, your reasons for wanting to get a tattoo are well thought out, and you are going to spend some time and money getting the best and most interesting tattoo you possibly can.

Tramp Stamps and Ass Antlers

A tramp stamp is a lower-back tattoo that rides on the pants line. It peeks out at you when the owner—usually a woman—wears low-rise jeans or a cropped T-shirt that shows her midriff, or she bends over and her pants go low and her shirt goes high. The tattoo is often V-shaped and points down in a way that signifies the anatomy below. Tramp stamps are the kind of tattoo you can hide when you’re at work if you need to. Designs range from flowers, butterflies, dolphins and tribal art to unusual symbols, geometric shapes and even sentences, although this is probably not the spot for biblical quotations.

Some women are offended by the term “tramp stamp” because they feel the expression is derogatory and suggests that women who get this kind of tattoo like sex more than most. One can only hope. When you consider other possible terms such as “fart art” or “lower lumbar tattoo,” the term “tramp stamp” starts to sound downright endearing.

There was a brief blogging frenzy when a blogger from Northern California discovered that rub-on tramp-stamp tattoos were being sold in the vending machines at Toys’R’Us, next to the Hannah Montana stickers. All things considered, seems like perfect product placement.

Removing a Tattoo

A study of people who have tattoos removed showed that while twice as many women as men wanted their tattoos removed, at least a third of these women wanted to get new tattoos on another part of their body.

Tattoo removal will cost you dearly, and is unlikely to be totally successful. It can be painful, and you may need to opt for a cover-up instead of removal. Do lots of research and ask tattoo experts as well as a dermatologist or two their opinion before deciding on a removal process. A botched removal can leave an unsightly scar. If you go for a cover-up instead of removal, find a cover-up specialist who comes highly recommended. There are some cover-up specialists who do it often and do it well. There are others who will only make the tattoo look worse.

Reader Suggestions

Here is advice for men from female readers on using their body jewelry to sexual advantage:

Kissing:
Unless you are careful, you can bang and perhaps chip your partner’s teeth. So go easy and be aware that your tongue needs more tooth clearance than one that is less accessorized. Also, women don’t seem to enjoy being kissed by guys who slobber. But having a post through your tongue may keep you from sucking the saliva from it as well as you did pre-op. And some women aren’t crazy about having foreign objects in the back of their throat. So when you French kiss, don’t stick your tongue in very far, and remember to swallow.

Nipple Play:
One woman says that dragging a steel ball across her nipples can be “a bit gnarly.” Assuming your partner likes to have her nipples licked or sucked, make sure that you’ve coated her nipples with a heavy layer of saliva. Extra saliva on her nipples may help your ball glide rather than drag. Use the tip of your tongue when playing with her breasts and nipples. This will help keep the steel ball at bay. The best solution is to talk to your lover about this, with her giving you plenty of feedback.

Oral Sex:
Here’s where the real skill comes in, ball or no ball. It is possible to give wonderful oral sex, but only as long as you know where your ball is and what it’s up to. Try flicking your tongue across the palm or back of your hand. This will help you learn to steer your ball better. The last thing you want to do is bang a steel object against a woman’s tender nerve endings. You will need to flick your tongue more delicately than a guy who doesn’t have a steel ball attached to the end of his. To paraphrase a woman who has dated a couple of different guys with pierced tongues, flicking a pierced tongue across a woman’s vulva can feel really cool, but only if the man is extremely gentle and acutely aware of the impact that a pierced tongue has. She also cautions against probing inside a woman’s vagina with a tongue that’s pierced.

Special Thanks
to Dr. Jerry Koch at Texas Tech, to the people who maintain and contribute to BME (Body Modification Ezine) at
www.bmezine.com
, to Anne Greenblatt, manager of the rec.arts.bodyart Piercing FAQ, to Stan Schwarz, manager of the rec.arts.bodyart Tatto FAQ, and to Dr. Myrna Armstrong & The Body Art Team.

CHAPTER

45

Threesomes

D
ear Paul,

I was originally writing for advice about having a threesome. But my husband and I have recently met up with a third person for sex, and the experience was great! —Bonnie from Bonneville

Dear Bonnie,

Back when I was doing my psychoanalytic training, threesomes were thought to be a very bad thing.

A few years later, a female patient told me that she and her boyfriend had decided they were going to try out threesomes, an
MMF
and an
FFM
. Having been a Freudian black sheep, I didn’t sound any warnings, but I did make sure that we explored the fantasies and unconscious motivations.

As far as I could tell, the
FFM
went off without a hitch. But there was a problem with the
MMF
that threw my patient’s poor boyfriend into an unexpected funk. Seems my patient ended up making the exact same noises when she was having sex with the new man as when she and her boyfriend made love. Her boyfriend was horribly depressed, realizing that “his” special magic could easily be supplied by another.

So the first advice that I have for any couple who is thinking about inviting a third for play, besides talking it over for a couple of months and doing lots of research, is how you would handle it if you discovered that the new person gave your partner as much or more pleasure than you usually do? How would you feel if your partner was lavishing more attention on the third person than on you, although for some people, watching their partner doing it with someone else is one of life’s little pleasures.

I would consider a threesome only if it’s something that both of you are truly interested in, as opposed to when one partner does it just to please the other. Also, it’s a bad idea to try a threesome if your purpose is to help repair a relationship that is struggling. Your relationship needs to have a foundation of trust and love for threesomes to work. Of course, plenty of you are thinking, “How could there be love and trust if my sweetie wants us to get naked with someone else?” To that I would say, love and trust are best defined by the beholders.

One of the first couples I ever interviewed about sex were in their early 70s and had been married for more than 35 years. They were church-going pillars of the community. The most important thing in their lives were their kids and grandkids. When I sat down in their tastefully-decorated living room, the woman said, “Why don’t you look through the photo album of our last vacation that we took with some good friends?”

Within minutes, my grad-student mouth nearly fell off its hinges. Not a single person in the pictures had a stitch of clothes on. Their vacation had been on board a special cruise for swingers. Then they said that just last weekend six couples had been going at it in this very living room. And then the man looked lovingly at his wife and said to me from the depth of his heart, “Mama here is the best little cocksucker of any woman in the group!” His wife beamed with pride and gratitude.

The second couple I interviewed wasn’t into swinging. They were soon to be married. They were madly in love and very pleased with each other sexually. They even invited me to their wedding, which was held in a fine church. They had a traditional relationship and would no more have had a threesome than the Pope would. We stayed in touch for the next two years, when their marriage suddenly split up. I never heard from either again.

A few years later, I was having a conversation with a young woman about computer software. She eventually asked me what I did. After I told her, the volume on her voice suddenly dropped. She told me that she lived with two men and was having sex with both of them. One was her husband, and the other was their roommate. This had been going on for a couple of years, and she said they were all very happy together.