Columns

Firstly thanks to the readers of Queer Eye who responded to the guest columns on Lesbian Sex. My guest columnist appreciated the feedback and the discussion it inspired about the diversity of the queer community. In relation to this feedback I need to make the following declarations: the following column is no more than my personal thoughts on anal sex between two cisgender men. I do not purport to represent all forms of sex between men, nor all forms of anal sex. Instead I will set out some of the things I wish I knew before I first engaged in butt piracy.

Firstly it would be useful if we all grew up without the stigmatisation surrounding what we do in the bedroom. Most people do weird and wacky things in the throes of intimacy and many people fantasise about doing even more varied and fantastic things to themselves and/or their partner(s). We must throw off the shackles of our puritan approach to what sex is “normal” and throw open our minds. We also need to break down our assumptions about who tops and bottoms in backdoor relations. Too much of this stereotyping is based on fear, ignorance and insecurity in one’s masculinity.

Secondly we all must be good scouts and be prepared. This means having easy access to good quality lube (invest in some of the pricier, more slippery, less absorbent kind) and a large stash of condoms, which you can get cheaply and in ridiculous quantities with a prescription from your local GP. It also means getting to know yourself, especially if you are EVER going to bottom.

Just like a good scout, you must go exploring. Let your fingers do the walking over your rolling hillocks, traverse your tussocky slopes, and poke around in your dark recesses. Locate your prostate and give it a good, playful massage. Do this while whacking off and you should be rewarded with a whole new level of orgasmic bliss. This is the prize that bottoms seek in a butt sex encounter, and is one which tops ought to be aiming to deliver for their partners. Don’t just explore once and think that you are now qualified, but do it enough to know what it takes to loosen things up and get things sliding smoothly.

Another part about being prepared is keeping things clean. Obviously the butt is not the cleanest of spaces, as Rick Santorum found out thanks through a clever neologism made famous by Dan Savage (search for “santorum meaning”). One way to keep free of an excessive amount of santorum is to douche. This is a controversial practice in medical terms as it can irritate things internally so make sure you are fully informed if you want to try it. Otherwise keep things clean by your usual showering practices and try and time your anal sex experiences around an hour or so after you last evacuated your bowel.

My final piece is to communicate. Seems simple enough but I find most people get pretty incommunicative during sex because they want to keep things “sexy” and are worried about “breaking the mood.” You have to get over that stuff especially as you build up confidence in anal sex because the last things that a butt needs during sex is fear. This will pucker things up tighter than Goldfinger’s tiger and make sex painful if not impossible.