(backlog: Jan 14th 2008) Opportunities lost and found

Orgasms since last entry: Eleven

Well, it's been a while since my last entry, as I've been travelling. On the plus side it's a lot of fun, but on the downside it can mean not getting enough sleep, which I find is a libido-killer.

Astute readers will note that my orgasm-count for the year is somewhat less than that of my beloved. This I ascribe to me being male, and her being female, and that whole "multiple orgasm" thing that women can do. So for this entry, I want to talk a bit about maleness and sex. And how we men seem to have wasted the chance to make the most of what we're born with.

Any guy who thinks about sex must, from time to time, have wondered why it is that women get the multiple orgasms but men don't. Certainly, and tragically, there are a number of women who'd be happy to just have AN orgasm, but the fact remains that multi-orgasmic women are achieving something that appears to be beyond the abilities of any man. And that seems a bit unfair, to anyone born with a Y-chromosome.

The really funny thing about this situation is that for decades, women have been taught to explore their sexuality, to learn about their bodies, to aim to achieve more sexual satisfaction. And they've succeeded. Women buy vibrators, they read magazine articles about how to have better orgasms, they experiment with bisexuality... according to More Hot Sex by Tracey Cox, the number of women who experience multiple orgasms is now approaching 50%, up from a mere 14% several decades ago when people like Masters and Johnson started paying attention.

But what about men?

Well, here's the point I'm getting at: we men have done a lousy job of keeping up with the women. We usually don't talk about sex with each other. We rarely discuss masturbation, or anything that may be perceived as an "inadequacy" in our sexual performance. And so we seem to have wasted the chance to figure out how to have more pleasure ourselves.

Case in point: Walk into a bookshop and search through the books about sexual health (NOT the porno magazines! Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just focussing on something else for a second...). The chances are good that if you find a book claiming to teach men to be multi-orgasmic, it'll be based on tantric mumbo-jumbo, and start carrying on about kundalini energy and chakras and who-knows-what-else.

Now just imagine the reaction if someone tried to publish a book about female sexuality that said something like "women bleed once a month because their bodies become infested by evil spirits, and they must be avoided at this time or else they will bring bad luck".

Superstitious clap-trap. Nonsense that has no place in the twenty-first century. So why are men allowing themselves to be peddled a bunch of bronze-age superstition, and where are the scientific studies into male sexual response, focussing on letting men accomplish what an ever-increasing number of women can?

Well, I'm glad to say there's some hope. According to wikipedia, there are indications that the refractory period (the period after orgasm when your dick goes floppy) can be reduced or eliminated by affecting the amount of the hormone prolactin in the bloodstream. And thankfully, some other men seem to be getting the idea that talking about your nether regions is a good idea. Earlier today I came across the titilatingly-titled Todger Talk.

However, leaving aside drug-based hormone manipulation, I've also heard tell of some guys who can avoid going floppy after orgasm, and continue having more sex and more orgasms. And not just 14-year-olds! Sometimes it's an ability they've always had. Sometimes they discover it by accident with the right partner. But either way it seems that the male genitalia has more tricks up its sleeve than we thought, and we have been missing out by letting the tantric mumbo-jumbo stand in the way of proper experimental investigation. And by not being frank and open with each other, and our partners, about how we men compare to each other in the bedroom.

And we men have nobody to blame for this but ourselves.

So let me start the ball rolling, by talking about what I experience in the potentially-more-than-one-orgasm department. From time to time I've had my penis remain hard for several minutes after orgasming and withdrawing. Unfortunately this business of changing condoms creates enough stress to kill the mood and make him go floppy. But I've decided to experiemnt with stimulation, fantasies, and whatever else I can manage to see if I can make this happen reliably, not just randomly.

This morning I brought myself to two fully ejaculatory orgasms, about five minutes apart, with partial (not total) loss of my erection in between. The second orgasm was definitely more pleasurable, producing the kind of buzz that women seem to report from the endorphin rush of multiple orgasms. That seems like a decent start to an ongoing project :-) I aim to get that partial loss of my erection reduced and eventually elimnated. And increase the number of orgasms beyond two. I'm not sure how yet, but I'll let you know how it progresses...