Dear Carol,

I would like your thoughts about the aspect of anal pleasure that is related to its top/bottom aspect -- this incredibly enhances my arousal. Soft verbal humiliation turns me on a lot, particularly during anal play, when my partner tells me things like, "I'm going to give it to you, you little slut, all nine inches," and so on. I fantasize about being a big slut girl who enjoys having a big dick in her rear, or about me being fucked by a gay man. In hearing that talk I lose control and always keep talking dirty myself, describing my feelings or asking for more. Once I was told, "You took this dildo so easily, I am pretty sure you have actually had sex with a man." When this pretty girl said that to me I felt so turned on that, even though I have never had any homosexual experience, I "confessed" that I had! I imagined a lot of details and told her everything. I cannot describe how much I was turned on narrating this nasty, pure fantasy story; my girlfriend was amazed and fascinated and never figured out it was pure fiction.

This story makes me think of the sexual power some women have over their partners. This idea of being able to give pleasure to a man, who would love it and ask for it more and more -- and I can refuse and say no. That's the sexual power. I really love this idea. Women are more familiar with that power, of course, but I use it in my fantasies all the time. What do you think of all this?

--M.

Dear M.,

You may think your ass is your most important erogenous zone, but I can see that your brain is truly giving it a run for its money. Besides the physical
pleasure you get from anal play, you're associating it with a variety of fantasies and roles which enhance your experience. I think this is fairly common -- in considering anal play in particular, people confront cultural assumptions and taboos aplenty, and they either have to overcome these taboos or incorporate them into what they find hot about the experience. Jack Morin, author of _Anal Pleasure and Health_, also wrote a book which might interest you called _The Erotic Mind_: It deals with "unexpected aphrodisiacs" like fear, guilt, and shame, emotions usually considered negative but which give many people's fantasies much erotic fuel. Guilt and shame, in particular, are emotions many associate with sex -- many of us have past experiences of punishments or humiliations over early sexual questioning or self-exploration, and more than one religious system inculcates shame in response to erotic desire. People who play humiliation games in a BDSM or roleplaying context have found a way to take these negative associations and use them to power their turn-on. It's actually a very clever turnaround of society's sex-negativity. I don't know whether your personal history involves instances of being shamed for your sexual explorations, but in any case, being on the receiving end of erotic humiliation can also represent a kind of exhibitionism -- you are the focus of attention, even when it is given in a mocking sort of tone.

Your fantasies also let you explore gender and your fascination with erotic power. You have felt that power wielded by women -- in the first part of your letter, which I answered last week, you wrote about your desire to experience certain kinds of play which your girlfriends don't always want to engage in --and in your fantasies, you can explore for yourself the power of being desired and of saying no. I daresay this is a more positive way to experience this imbalance than the way many people do it, which is to grow angry and frustrated when they don't always get what they want. I do want to point out that, as a primarily heterosexual man, you are seeing this power imbalance in very gendered terms -- you are a man desiring women, so you see women as possessing sexual power. But some women are also put in this position, of course (desiring others more than they themselves are desired), and this power situation can be enacted between males, too, as you instinctively recognize when you fantasize about having sex with other men.

It is interesting to me that you express no concern about what your male-on-male fantasies "mean" -- you seem to put them into perspective without feeling troubled about your own orientation. This further suggests to me that you really *are* using your brain to work through and utilize your experiences of desire -- your kind of gay male fantasy, while not necessarily a sign you would or wouldn't have sex with a man in real life, is mostly a way for you to generate erotic heat in response to a partner's suggestion. Your way of responding sounds downright improvisational. ("Gay sex? Sounds hot! Let's go with it!") This is a pretty sophisticated use of fantasy (as you perhaps know, some folks have only one hot fantasy that they play over and over -- they would never respond to the opportunity to go in a different direction). And since roleplay is fantasy acted out, it seems that your biggest challenge will be to find partners erotically theatrical enough to want to play along with you. I suspect that women who already enjoy certain aspects of fetish play (perhaps also involved in BDSM) will be the most likely to take your fantasy and run with it, or generate something new and hot for you to respond to. They will be much more tuned in to top/bottom roleplay, and they might also be much more likely to want to engage in anal play. Good luck finding them!