April 28, 2010

SAM SHARPE

“Why didn’t you come?”

JT asked me that all the time. I was the first person that she’d had intercourse with and she seemed quite eager to please me. And she did. What she lacked in experience, she made up for with enthusiasm, generosity, openness, creativity and playfulness. JT had an artisan’s approach to sex and sensuality. It was sexual jambalaya and she possessed all the savoury ingredients.

But she was hung up on ensuring that I had pleasure. She was hung up on whether or not I came. More accurately I should say she wanted to know if I ejaculated. She’d go as far as to check the condom to see that it was adequately filled. If it wasn’t, it could be a problem. For JT (and I suspect many women) the equation was simple:

Male sexual pleasure = ejaculation.

But this is wrong. Not only am I (and I think a lot of men) able to thoroughly enjoy an intimate encounter without the payoff that is ejaculation, I am also able to have an orgasm without the ejaculation. See, what JT, and many people don’t seem to understand, is that the male orgasm and male ejaculation are two distinct but closely related phenomenon.

My man Jackie Summers gave the best explanation I’ve ever heard about this distinction. In this interview he summed it up by saying that the difference between male orgasm and male ejaculation is like the difference between humour and laughter. Whereas humour is a feeling or emotional response (orgasm), laughter is a physical reaction to that feeling (ejaculation).

I discovered the differences between the two back in my late teens and early 20’s. My friend Mikey and I used to devour all the information we could on sex. I bought a copy of a book called the Tao of Sex, read it carefully and then lent it to Mikey. In turn, he introduced me to his “Chinese herbalist” who introduced us to all manner of herbs, capsules, teas and breathing exercises meant to improve our sexual performance. We called it our regimen. We were using all natural performance enhancers. No Viagra for us.

Though I haven’t read my copy of the Tao of Sex in ages (I’m not even sure where it is—might be still in my old bedroom at my mother’s house) much of what I learned has been very useful—if only to give me another perspective on sexual practices. Some of it could have been crap for all I know, but it sure seemed to have a positive effect. We felt like we were getting such good results that Mikey and I were tempted to join the old Chinese folk in our neighbourhood who used to do all that tai-chi. But I’m not sure they were ready to have two young Nike and Adidas wearing brothers all up in their mix.

Anyway, all this sexual knowledge that I’d gleaned at that age didn’t help me with JT. She wasn’t having any of it. For her, my sexual pleasure was paramount, which wasn’t a bad thing. But because she had such a narrowly defined view of what that was we were both left feeling frustrated – very, VERY frustrated. On more than one occasion I found myself seriously considering blowing a load just to make her happy, regardless of how I was really feeling. And to make matters worse I had to deal with the strange sight of a woman carefully examining the contents of my condom to see how full it was, virtually every time we had sex.

Ladies, in case you were wondering, checking to make sure your man got his ‘release’  after sex is NOT a great a trust building exercise.

Trust me folks, that shit definitely ain’t fun.

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