A Series of Writings that Celebrate Sexuality and Gender Expression
Rediscovering the Male Body
by Andrew Smiler
Sitting in my dorm room one night with eight or nine of my friends, one of the women in the group asked everyone what they liked most about sex. Among the guys, the vote was almost unanimous for orgasm (and it was nice if our partners had them too). The girls' responses were more varied and ranged from kissing to orgasm. They also lamented guys' general indifference to the broader variety of physically intimate activities and asked why we were so focused on orgasm. We didn't know then, but I have a better response to that question now.
As males, we'd all grown up with movie images of soldiers being told to "eat the pain" and not cry out (in Platoon) so that the enemy wouldn't find them. We also watched the absurd decapitation of Lancelot, who continued to defend his territory, accompanied by claims that it was "but a flesh wound" (in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Above all, there were the professional athletes who were praised for their ability to play with pain/injuries (or recover at a highly accelerated rate). The athletes were sometimes called "machines" because of their ability to tolerate or create injury. They didn't seem human any more.
We learned that males should continue to do "manly" things regardless of the condition of their bodies. “Minor” injuries - anything less severe than a broken bone or bleeding that does not stop within five minutes - were to be tolerated and overcome. I lived up to this ideal and was praised by my peers (as a child and as an adolescent) for continuing to play despite skinned knees and other wounds. Girls, I was told, would not have continued. As I got older, I learned that ignoring my body also extended to work - men go to work unless they need to go to the hospital.
This all seemed to work quite well. I was adopting the behaviors that were expected of me and I was being praised/ accepted for doing so. Eventually I had my first orgasm. It felt very, very good. Suddenly, the idea of ignoring my body didn't seem like such a good idea. I mean, who wanted to ignore that?! I made the adjustment that most American men make: I paid attention to my penis and continued to ignore the rest of my body. I believe this is why the guys in that dorm room were so focused on orgasm.
Like most American boys, I was taught that kissing and touching were for getting my partner excited and ready. Real men didn't need that stuff, they just needed to “get off.” That was my story and it seemed to be the story of every guy in that dorm room. I never really noticed what my partners were doing to my body except when they were touching my penis. In some ways, my penis was my body and the only thing that mattered was how my penis-body felt. During sex, I ignored the rest of my body, the same way that I'd been taught to ignore my body in order to get through the school day, work shift, or game.
One day, partially in response to a girlfriend’s question, I started to wonder why her body reacted so strongly to so many things when mine didn’t. After all, almost every part of our bodies were identical, so why should a kiss on her neck feel any different than a kiss on my neck? The anatomy and physiology are the same.
Exploring my body with her help, and later on my own, I’ve discovered many places on my body that can make me feel good. I’ve learned, for example, that a kiss in just the right place on my neck can send shivers down my spine. I’ve also noticed that once my partners discover this, they start to do it more (sometimes as a sexual thrill without intercourse), thus increasing my pleasure. I think that this has helped me become a better partner because I’m more interested in doing the things that the women in my dorm room said they most enjoyed.
The challenge for me was to notice how my body felt and how it responded. It sounds easy - the sensation was there, I just had to pay attention to it. The hard part was retraining myself to notice what was going on in my body instead of just ignoring it, unlearning what I'd been taught. So, during sex, I focused on what was occurring right now and not when my penis might become involved. I also started to make finer distinctions about being touched. After a little practice (alone and with partners), noticing that good feeling became ‘natural’ and ‘automatic,’ so I turned my attention to other sensations.
I also learned about my body by watching my partners’ reactions more closely and experimenting with their bodies. Noticing how different touches of mine lead to different reactions by my partners, I increased my partner’s pleasure and my own body knowledge. (Same physiology, right?) Paying attention to my partner in this way increased my connection with my partner, adding a different element of physical intimacy to my relationships. I no longer saw my partners as someone to make love to, a one-sided description that highlights my pleasure, but rather as someone to make love with, recognizing that the strength of our pleasures are linked.
By noticing what was going on in my whole body, I discovered pleasures that I hadn't expected and gained new respect for this "machine" that we call a body. I learned that my whole body, not just my penis, was a tool for receiving and providing pleasure. I also realized that the more I recognized the pleasures of both our bodies, the more intimate our connection became.
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