Michael Douglas and Safe Oral Sex

For those of us who’ve been affected by sexually transmitted infections (including HPV – human papillomavirus), the interview with Michael Douglas in this week’s Guardian newspaper was quite intriguing. In it, he implied that his throat cancer could have been caused by performing oral sex.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jun/02/michael-douglas-oral-sex-cancer

Whilst later in the week, he appeared to be retracting these comments, it certainly has created interest and one suspects that there might be a few alarm bells ringing in the heads of those that lovingly and delightfully indulge in fellatio and cunnilingus.

We tend not to talk about this important aspect of sexuality because, for some bizarre reason, we don’t like to admit that kissing and sucking the sexual organs of our partners or lovers is so delicious. So the thought of popping off to the clinic to discuss it in great detail might be somewhat off-putting to many, yet it is something that we really ought to do.

The reality, though, is that many people who are sexually active do participate in fellatio and cunnilingus without any negative health repercussions.

I adore both. I love nothing more than filling my entire mouth with a wholesome, large and erect penis that, with joyous practice, slides down comfortably without the gagging reactions forcing an abrupt end to the proceedings. It takes time to get it right and the old adage practice makes perfect is completely right.

Likewise with cunnilingus. I’ve had lovers who think that the mere fact that they’re prepared to stick their tongue inside my vagina will do the trick and force an eruption of my bodily fluids. But just as we need to learn with our fingers or our cocks, so too do we need to learn with our tongues. It’s not enough to go in and go out again without exploring every corner of this fascinating and enthralling part of the body.

Whether you are the recipient or the provider of cunnilingus, it’s really important to talk it through with your partner. Tell them where to go. Explain as they are doing it precisely what is happening to your body. Get them to lick inside and outside, exploring the form of the body with that delicious line of expectation that hides the wonderment of woman’s hidden parts. To be honest, I’m juicing up at the thought of it. Oh to be licked and kissed like that – pure delight.

Enough of that though. We need to return to the health message. The overwhelming delights of this sexual experience can turn into a horror if you do end up with an infection – at worse cancerous growths.

We need to be safe. We need to respect the safety of others and we need to be very aware that our sexual behaviour can impact significantly on ourselves and the lives of our sexual partners.

My own experience is something that I would like to share with others because it’s a reality and shows just how negligent we can be about our own bodies and their healthiness, either wittingly or not.

As a person who has indulged in polyamorous behaviour, I took a hell of a risk. I knew that my lover had another sexual partner, and at the time, albeit reluctantly, I too was having sex with another person. We continued in that manner without ever once going to a clinic to check that our sexual health was intact, assuming (rightly or wrongly) that our other sexual partners were only having sex with us. To this day, I don’t know whether that is the case. What I do know is that we took unnecessary risks, and with an understandable lack of honesty with our respective partners, we placed them in similar jeopardy.

At the time, however, two issues took precedence for me.

Firstly, I wanted to have sex with this man no matter what. My desire for his “un-condomed” cock was driving my mind far more than any amount of knowledge about safe sex. If I had to share that unprotected cock with another, then fine. That’s what I’d have to do, and that’s what I did – often.

Secondly, I was in a relationship that wouldn’t cope with the truth of me having sex with another. My lover was in a similar situation. My partner and my lover’s partner couldn’t be told that we were in a sexual relationship that didn’t use condoms and had plenty of fellatio and cunnilingus. My lover was adamant that I shouldn’t tell my partner and that his shouldn’t be told either.

So there was a choice. Tell people (our partners) the truth, stop having sex with my lover, start having protective sex with my lover without the joy of aforementioned oral sex or stop having sex with our respective partners.

Circumstances meant that the latter was the option that we took, and for years, whilst maintaining a policy of polyamory (and practice too unbeknown to me) to all intents and purposes we only had one another as a sexual partner.

But even this isn’t and wasn’t safe. The fact that my lover had another lover during this time was totally unknown to me. Wrongly, he assumed that I would find this difficult. Wrongly, he chose not to tell me, possibly because I would have wanted him and me to check ourselves out at a clinic, for all its embarrassment. But even if we were monogamous, we should still have probably got the all clear as we both knew we had been in a relationship with other sexual partners whilst indulging in glorious sex together.

We were utter fools.

The situation changed once more when he decided he wanted more permanent additional lovers in his life. Telling me that he was having protected sex with both of them, I happily indulged in unprotected sex, thinking, stupidly, that I was safe.

Even if he had been wearing a condom with his other lovers, he was still more than likely to be giving them cunnilingus, which meant that I was still potentially at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection, as was he. Even if he hadn’t been having oral sex with these other women, the fact that he came straight from them to me meant that there were times when I was sucking the sexual juices of those women from his cock when I gave him an instinctive blow job prior to him showering them off him. Funny really, because I can remember how he grinned as I told him how good he tasted. Perverse? Maybe but not to me.

The point is that if you choose to have sex with multiple partners, then all of those involved need to be seen at a clinic regularly. I know to my cost that this should have happened and didn’t, and it’s something that I bitterly regret and hope that I don’t regret it in the future even more than I do right now and even more so than I did this time last year.

Sexual health is important, and I don’t know whether Michael Douglas and his wife have other sexual partners. In many ways, it’s an irrelevance. One slight non-sexually related infection or benign existence of the HPV in her could have been a causal factor to his cancer. However, if you are having sex with more than one person or if you have very good reason to believe that your partner is having unprotected sex of any form with another, then I implore you to get yourself checked out as you do carry a greater risk. What you might find can be alarming and frightening but it’s far worse than sitting around waiting for whatever potential infection there may be to grow into something far worse and potentially untreatable. An arrogant belief that everyone is safe is wrong, unfair and downright irresponsible.

Polyamory should always come with a health warning – the main one being an emotional health warning with the potential of a massive, damaging and long-living impact on your feelings and self-worth. Polyamory can be safe, though it’s impossible to get away from the fact that you are more at risk of infection by the very nature of probability than you are in a monogamous relationship. Monogamous relationships aren’t immune from infections. It happens.

Just be safe. Check yourself out and deal with the consequences and the downside of the most brilliant aspects of life – our sexuality.

PS – I still fundamentally believe in polyamory.

I Want My Daughter to Sleep with her Partner

I'm lying in bed naked with a seriously small vibrator, unable to pleasure myself for three reasons.

1. I'm bored of the miniscule size of the equipment that reminds me of the inadequacy of a three-minute shag with wee blokes whose own equipment (and imagination) was sadly lacking.

2. There's something wrong down below. One of the damnable ironies of life is that a tingling sensation of an unknown infection is a little similar to the onset of an orgasm from a vigorous finger fuck.

3. My daughter is lying a flimsy wall away from me, presumably pleasuring her partner whilst I turn an insipid shade of green that she might have a warm body next to her all night whilst I lie here, legs straddled awaiting nothing but a soothing gush of cold air.

The good news is that if I do succumb to the little plastic performer, it won't take too long to tickle the tingle into a more pleasurable sensation, and yes, I do conduct an extremely hygienic clean-up operation.

They're giggling now, which is always joyous to hear. Soon, they will go through the noisy rigmarole of closing doors and opening others, to convince me that one of them is transferring to another room for the night. I really hope they don't go through with it. I really hope that they have been comforted enough by my own unsubtle door closure and exaggerated switching off of the lights, to remain in the same room and spend the night together.

That said, gawd help me if I want a glass of water or a trip to the loo in the next hour - another reason for not pleasuring my pussy.

I want them to sleep together. There are many reasons I want them to do this, number one being the immensely, warm and wonderful feeling of waking up either in the arms of a loved one or lying next to them knowing that they want to be next to you, ready to take you at their moment of wakening.

But on a purely practical level, I want them to sleep together to prevent her getting pregnant, and whilst that may sound bizarre, there is reason rather than deluded madness behind such a statement which I shall explain shortly.

Okay, there's a slight confession to be had here. It's not very likely that she's going to get pregnant. She's been taking contraception tablets for a few months now, ever since I noticed a look in her eye, and a maturity in her tone when talking about her boyfriend, that suggested to me her virginal days were about to be consigned to the past. This boyfriend and this relationship feels different - to her and to me. The soppy, awkwardness of teenage droopy-eyed ‘lurve’ is gone. I'm not saying he is THE one; forever and a day until their last breath leaves their withered body decades from now (please no!) but he could be THE one to bring her further into the bewildering brilliance of being a woman.

Just hopefully not tonight. I'd much prefer her first penetrative sexual experience to be in slightly more intimate surroundings, without the nervousness of a potential and accidental visit from a sibling - walking in on her mid flow, or without a need to curb her cries of delight so as not to offend her seemingly celibate mother.

I want my daughter to be able to scream out in ecstasy as she reaches her first penetrative climax. I want her to be enraptured and vocal when seeing her boyfriend spunk for the first time, assuming, of course, this hasn't already happened. I want her to be able to freely walk round the room and house, stark naked after sex; celebrating her liberation into womanhood.

I want her to experience all of this because she's ready for it in mind, body and soul. On reflection, had I waited and learned a little more about what I was actually doing, if I had been clear as to what I wanted, if I'd known my own body more intimately, then my first penetrative sexual experience might not have been so tragic. Furthermore, had I known how brilliant sex could be from the outset, I wouldn't have put up with huge bouts of mediocrity in my sexual life, and had I not had to wait for the real thing of complete freedom and intimacy to do absolutely anything I and a lover wanted with one another's bodies, then I might not miss it quite as much as I do.

The best things do come to those who wait, and mature sex is gratifying in a way that the spring-like urgency of youthful liaisons can't quite manage. However, l don't want my daughter to wait as long as I did for consistently wonderful sex, to the point where its loss is so painfully mourned.

So why do I think that sleeping with her boyfriend might prevent pregnancy, and let's assume she's not using any method of contraception. Whilst we're at it, let's pretend she's not my daughter. Let's imagine that she's like many, many teenagers who don't have either sexually enlightened parents or the confidence and solidity of a relationship with their parent to talk openly and comfortably about sex.

In fact, let's imagine she's a teenager who has only really found out about sex from discussions with peers, a couple of reads through "Cosmopolitan" and a secretive visit to a porn site that she could only bear to watch for the briefest of moments for fear of her internet history being tracked by her mother (who finds such sites abhorrent and abusive). Let's also assume she's had an average sex and relationships education, or let's be even more realistic and assume that she's had the sort of sex and relationships education that most kids in this country have had - the highlight of which was learning how to condom a courgette.

Let’s also assume that like many teenager over the age of consent, she has natural sexual desires.

The urge to have sex is instinctive. Desire can also instinctive to some extent but it is more to do with intuition – a feeling and a recognition and understanding of what makes you tick. Put the natural urge to fuck, together with the reasoned and rational need to respond to the mind’s desire, and that’s a force to be reckoned with. If you add to this unnatural restraints placed upon young people by parents who are understandably trying to protect them from having penetrative sex, then you are potentially forcing them into unsafe situations.

We have to acknowledge that young people have these urges and that they are so strong that they could lead a young person to defy their parents. If they can’t have sex with their parent’s permission, then that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to have sex. It just means that they might do it in a fit of passion, or with coercion, without the calm and careful use of contraception, in environments that might not be conducive to the real world of sexual wonderment. Without a proper sex and relationships education that realistically explains the joy of sex, and offers real and viable alternatives to penetrative sex, they’re going to rush into a fuck without the delightful exploration of their own sexuality and their own preferences beforehand.

I really don’t want that for my daughter. I don’t want it for anyone’s daughter or anyone’s son. I want them to experience the truly rewarding and life-enhancing brilliance of sexual empowerment and enlightenment. I want them to delay having penetrative sex for as long as possible. I want them to know their own bodies first.  I want them to explore one another’s body before penetrative sex too. I want them to be very clear in their minds that they have thought of all the connotations of having sex before they fall into an instinctive reaction to attraction.

That’s why I want my daughter to sleep with her boyfriend. I don’t want her first experience of sex to be a quick bang whilst I pop out to the shops with her siblings. I don’t want her first experience of penetrative sex to be in a field in the middle of nowhere just because this is the only place that they can get some privacy (though I do want her to experience this urgent sex eventually because al fresco is gorgeously stimulating in the right conditions). I don’t want my daughter to rush into penetrative sex without having experienced mutual masturbation or kissing in those special places that we seem unable to acknowledge in sex and relationships lessons, and I don’t want her to think that she has to have sex in exactly the same way that she might have seen on porn sites.

I honestly think that allowing her to sleep with her partner prevents unsafe situations for sex and unsafe, unprotected sex. It also has the added advantage of, when the time is right, enabling her first penetrative sexual experience to be something that she can treasure for a life time, with a proper build-up and a full understanding of one another’s bodies.

I would like all sex and relationships education teachers to really consider the whole notion of being sex positive. Young people probably laugh in their faces when teachers stick to a curriculum of factual information, denying the joy of sex and advocating a “just say no” policy of abstinence. Young people aren’t that stupid. They know that sex is good because if it wasn’t then why is our society so full of the stuff? Why are comedians seemingly obsessed with sexual stories? Why are advertisers all too willing to use sex to sell their goods? Why are newspapers and other media outlets smothered with stories about sex?

It’s an integral part of life and the sooner we all accept this, the better for ourselves and our youngsters. We need to be honest with our young people and we owe them the opportunity to experience sex in the best way possible.

For my children, I don’t want them to have the sexual start that I did. I want them to have a healthy respect for sex, and a healthy respect for the sexuality of their chosen partners as well as a full understanding of their own sexuality. I want adults to stop being so bloody hypocritical, and remember what they were doing at the same age before they start lecturing their children about sex. I want parents to remember their own experiences of early sex, and if they were good experiences, accept that their children are ready for it too and make sure that they are given the best start in their sexual lives, and if it was bad, then do everything you can to prevent that from happening to your most cherished beings.

Finally, apologies for writing so much but as you can see, I’m quite passionate about the subject.