Origami, Ori for short, heard I was going to be in Portland through a mutual friend who told her that Book of Blue would be in town. This was in 2012 or so; I was there on an important family errand for one of my investigative reporting mentors.

Her friend said only that I photographed mirror masturbation and had done so around the world, and it was a “say no more” kind of situation. Ori called me and a few hours later was in my hotel room. She had not heard of me or my project before.

At first blush, she was a shy and ordinary seeming girl, though long experiences had taught me to allow women to emerge and transform in the truth elixir of the mirror. After taking off her long wool overcoat, she asked me what she should do, and I suggested she stand in front of a large, full-length mirror and watch herself undressress.

As she did this, she emerged into her beauty and her freedom. Her face came to life. Her eyes began to burn with eager curiosity. For the next hour, she did not take her eyes off of herself, including the deepest and most persistent self-eye-contact I’ve ever seen.

Maybe this was something she often did. I don’t know. My presence and the presence of the camera seemed to unleash something in her. My sense is that when you feel and see that much beauty, you want to share it with someone, and I was the fortunate beneficiary.

Female masturbation is one of the most beautiful phenomena in all of nature. That’s my experience. And Ori through her generosity with herself was treating me to what I love to experience and witness the very most — and being doused in the mists of her fountain of youth. As she fucked her eyes into the mirror, her scent filled the space around us, encompassing us both in her self-intimacy.

It is sometimes said that one’s true sexual self emerges in the solitary privacy of masturbation. Partnersex is another feeling, another kind of intimacy and another kind of orgasm. It may be amazing but is not as honest as the deeper self of solitary sex. But then there are those who want and need their masturbation to be known and understood by others. That was Ori.

She took the opportunity of being photographed to be especially honest. Once you’ve made the decision to go there, it’s easy to drop the guilt, the shame and fetters of masturbation and swim in your own joy. I’ve had the privilege of being with many women masturbating and she was so extraordinarily real. She held back nothing and I think went to places she did not normally go, emboldened ended by my admiration, respect and sense of astonishment.

She related to the mirror closely and intimately and could not take her eyes off of her own eyes. She plunged her fingers deep into her cunt and then began licking her own pussy juice off of them…over and over…not only in front of another human being but with the intention of sharing with the world. In the picture above, she studies her eyes as she watches herself suck her fingers.

You might think it impossible that I not be sexually aroused. Really, I was amazed, but so focused on documenting her beauty that I was not thinking of myself. My emotional body’s whole purpose was to hold a soft space for her; to not intrude on her experience as any more than a witness. She wanted to show me and she knew I wanted to see and know about her. She showed me her deep and vocalized orgasm over and over again, each time different. The room grew misty with the scent of her sweat and her cunt.

More than anything, I wanted to give her the experience of her own astounding beauty being witnessed and something essential about her being understood. As we did this, she seemed to spiral deeper into a totally private experience that she was sharing with herself in my presence. She did not acknowledge my existence for anything other than photographic arrangements, which were minimal.

I love this one the best, as it emphasizes her private experience. She can see her face and we cannot. Laying on her belly, she is watching herself orgasm. It was a once-ever privilege of watching a woman morph into pure sex in every dimension of existence. The mystery of the experience has led me to wonder whether she is not some kind of tantric diva who offers her blessings to all who are ready to receive. I offer these images to women so that you may know not only the depth of self-intimacy that you may attain but also the joy of allowing yourself to be witnessed. It will take some courage, but only at first. Once you cross the veil, you will find enormous freedom and the admiration of your witnesses who are your selflove lovers.

OK I adore this one as well, as the distance implies a solitary experience and only she can see her face. When she had finally expended and received her passion, she gradually dressed and collected herself. We embraced in a long, slow, melting hug. I buried my face in her hair and smelled her cheek drinking in her gorgeous womanhood for a moment more. She slipped out of the room.

Flooded in her beauty, I stripped and sat naked and spread out in her masturbation mirror and made love to myself in the aura of rapture she had left behind. When I look at these pictures years on, I want to make love to her in any and every way.

I want a long, deep sniff and drink from her cunt masturbating on my face. I want to suck her plump, motherly breasts. I want to plunge my tongue up her sweaty asshole as she plays with her clit and fingers her thick, gorgeous pussy, nibble her delicate flesh, and feel her ass pulse around my tongue as she comes.

I want to orgasm into her existence studying her eyes and she witnesses my blissful ego death and surrender into her being.

What she offered me was something greater and more mysterious, which is permission to be known for your selflove and masturbation. And for me permission to go deeper into my mirror celibacy. I spread my legs in front of her mirror and the sweet mists of her cunty scent, admitted my thirst, and looked at my soaked tongue before watching my face and my eyes as I swallowed my semen. I want her to know that and I suspect that she did.

Every time Beth, whose Book of Blue name is Lakshmi Girl, would come over, the plan was that we would masturbate together, but I would end up masturbating for her. Or rather, for myself, in front of her, which she liked and which made it better for me.

Beth was into masturbation. She recognized it as full and self-complete sex and we had many of the same hottest desires, like masturbating in the same space as a couple fucking.

That night we started like we usually do, talking and telling stories from recent life events. Beth had a lover and I was always curious to hear what she had done most recently, and they were some saucy stories — of several threesomes with her lover’s ex-girlfriend. She told me of some occasions when she watched him fuck her, while masturbating near them; and other stories of his girlfriend eating her pussy.

Beth knows I love to hear these stories. She knows that one of my core fantasies is to be surrounded by sexually active women, while I masturbate, that is, while I am understood to be my own lover, including masturbating to their sex. I’ve been amazed how many of my friends would entertain my playing out this scenario, describing their fucking in clear, passionate detail while I got off to them.

Or they would send me emails (sometimes with photos) recounting their adventures, knowing the effect it would have on me.

Or they would invite me to be there with them and do myself into the mirror, sometimes watching them behind me in the reflection, both m/f couples and f/f as well.

Over time I gained the insight that it was healing and pleasurable for them to share their stories of sex with another man and have him surrender to that, rather than get jealous or controlling. I was getting off on her freedom, their pleasure and their power of choice and we would both go there consciously — and Beth and I were going there right then.

She described the scene as she, her lover and their third partner undressed one another, and then she watched them fuck. I moaned as I heard the words, and watched her face speak them. My cock was so hard it was arched, and my pleasure was taut and elongated. As I would feel my desire to orgasm approach I would relax. One of the gifts of masturbating with a witness is that I can tease my orgasm out for a long time, sometimes for hours.

I knelt up in front of her and masturbated explicitly, my eyes burning as she looked at me with her listless gaze. I lubed my ass and a dildo and then sat down on it, penetrating myself as I turned toward the mirror to watch my face as it happened. She described her experience of masturbating as she witnessed her lover fuck, and then ejaculate into, a woman who was eager, even desperate, to have him.

Then as he withdrew his cock Beth described her feelings as she approached the cunt that had just been fucked, crawling across the floor on her hands and knees, and pressed her face into her and drank the mix of them. She was always eager to lick and suck another woman’s vulva and did so with true freedom, propelled by the intensity of what she had just seen and felt happen.

That narrative evaporated suddenly and were back in the present space and time.

I said to Beth, “I want to fuck you.”

We often played this way. I would say I wanted to fuck her and she would say that I know what you need to do is masturbate. You’ve said many times you need to be celibate and not fuck. Me or anyone. Part of the delight was she would get to deny me and take some pleasure in it since she understood my situation.

When she opened her mouth to speak, she said, “You can fuck me if you want.”

I was stunned. We had only fucked twice — once the first day we met in 2006, then another time eight years later, on Beltane (a year before this particular day).

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yes, you can.”

The look in her eyes — I wanted to penetrate that expression, that state of mind. Her eyes said, “Fulfill yourself in me like you want to.”

I moaned. I soaked in the possibility, imagining how I would do it. I wanted to spread her legs apart, grasp her waist and plunge into her plump, gorgeous cunt. I wanted to show her my face as I did so and study her eyes as she took my penetration.

“I can if I want.”

“You can if you want.”

“Or I can masturbate if I want.”

“You can fuck me or you can masturbate. It’s your choice. You’re free to do what you want.”

I moaned more deeply, pressing the dildo deeper into my ass, clasping the slippery tip of my cock, skating on the edge of falling into my orgasm.

“I’m free to do what I want.”

“Yes, you are,” she said. “You’re free to fuck me. I invite you to do that. Or you can fuck yourself. It’s up to you.”

We stayed right in that spot for a while, for the pleasure of it, for the experience of anticipation. For me there was the added sensation of freedom: she was saying yes, right then, right when I was aching for her, and in that moment she was offering herself.

I felt the exquisite possibility of undressing her and penetrating her right then, or rather, I allowed myself to feel it. She looked at me while I explored my possibilities.

I don’t know how it happened, but we ended up in the bathroom.

She was still dressed and I was naked. She sat on the floor while I sat on the toilet seat masturbating, naked, my legs straddling existence with my ass deeply fucked. I think we both understood that at some point in the last few minutes that I had made a choice, if not in words, then by where I had placed my body and how I was relating to her. But somehow I was not aware of having given up the other possibility.

“Can I still fuck you?” I asked.

“It looks like you’ve made a decision. I will hold you to that.”

“I want to fuck you.”

“I know you do, but you’ve chosen to fuck yourself. Look at what you’re doing.” She held up a little mirror that was near by, showing me my face, and moved it a bit, giving me the panorama of her view, of me on the toilet and the space around me.

She was right. I was naked masturbating, and she was still dressed. I acknowledged my choice.

“You offered to have me fuck you, and now I’m masturbating.”

“Seems like that’s what happened.” She smiled.

“I’ve chosen to masturbate.”

“Yes you have. So do it.”

I was for all this time hanging over the abyss of orgasm by a delicate thread. I looked at her face, knowing I would let go at any moment. To the side of the toilet was a mirror. I picked it up and handed it to her, and asked her to hold it for me. Sometimes it’s easier to mirror masturbate if someone else holds the mirror. Then I can just relax. That is what I did as she held the mirror to me.

I watched my face as I rocked on the dildo deep in my ass, and she studied me seeing myself. I knew I was doing what I needed to do, what I wanted to do.

“Thank you for holding me to my choice,” I said, my voice mixed with breath and moans and gratitude.

She smiled. “I always will.”

She knew I was moments away from letting go, and lowered the mirror to where it would catch my semen as I released my body. I looked at her as she did this, looked at her face, then looked down and saw my face and my cock, and right then my whole existence began to throb. I surrendered entirely, to penetration and to orgasm and to being witnessed and to the sight of my face and cock as I let go, spurting in a long, full, gush onto the mirror.

Beth held the mirror gently, and tipped it toward me, showing me myself and what I had just done. I looked at my face and my semen, bewildered, spinning. Then she held the mirror up to me, knowing what I wanted to do, and sometimes could not, which was press my tongue into the pool of myself. I did this with my eyes closed, and then remembered to open my eyes, seeing the feral expression as my tongue drew into my body what I had just released from my body.

I watched for as long as I could and then continued to lick the glass with my eyes closed. She guided the mirror to where there was any remaining semen, including on the frame; and then she put the mirror down and wrapped her arms around my head and held me.

’

Photo above :: I lay on my belly and lick my floor mirror in blue studio, which is coated with many streaks of my partly licked back semen. eventually, i squatted up, faced the vertical mirror and surfed the glacial edge of selflove…and ejaculated and watched my face lick back fresh cum. always leaving a little behind. anyone who walked into the space knew what the mirror was for…or their intuition whispered it to them.

Polyamory is not a lifestyle choice. It is a sexual orientation. No more than a person can choose to be homosexual when they are not, someone cannot choose to be polyamorous. Nor can a partner have a ‘poly lifestyle’ when that is not innately who they are. It sounds to me that in choosing monogamy, you are choosing to be true to yourself.

What makes the distinction is usually compersion, which is a kind of erotic empathy. When one feels compersion, they love what their partner does and feels, whatever it might be. If your partner shows up in your presence fresh from being with another lover, you will love their mixed scent and consider it a privilege to be near. Your love for them includes all of their experiences and all of their desires.

This is a rare state of being; most people are jealous and often feel disgusted by the notion that their partner has been with someone else. This can even extend to their partners in the distant past. Compersion embraces the whole sexual past of your partner — and their future. Compersion honors that your lover will have other lovers. There are people who feels this way and they are rare. But a nonmonogamous situation can and probably will be living hell without compersion.

One thing to get out of the way is that in our world today, nearly no human being is monogamous. I have seen that men and women both have this strong tendency, which they can set aside for a while. But tantra teaches that we live in the world of time and transience and that the current form of all relationships eventually ends.

Monogamous means one sexual partner for life. Whether you call it cheating or not, a great many people have more than one sexual partner at the same time. But rather than be open about it, they compartmentalize, and this is character-dividing.

There are a diversity of biological qualities of human beings that indicate that both sexes have a drive for multiple sex partners, regardless of the spiritual quality of the relationship. The book Sex At Dawn by Ryan and Jetha (2010) talks about these biological qualities, including the desire for sperm competition and why women are so vocal during sex, advertising their pleasure to the household, the tribe or the village. That “men spread their seed” is only half of the story. An ovulating woman will be horny to fuck and that can include more than one person the same day.

In our time, nearly everyone in our time goes from partner to partner. This is called serial monogamy, but I call it serial nonmonogamy. It’s considered OK as long as the latest partner is thought of as “the one” no matter what has happened in the past.

Consider, though, that monogamous and polyamorous are not opposites in any way. Monogamy means one sexual partner. Polyamorous means many loves. When you study jealousy, you can often find that people who are sexually monogamous and have sexually monogamous mates are jealous of their partner’s close friends. Love interests can take many forms; a man and his longtime secretary or assistant can have a bonded love affair even if they are never sexual with one another.

The capacity to be emotionally loyal to two or several people (true polyamory) is a discipline of maturity. It honors a basic fact of an honest life. The capacity to love forever anyone that one has ever been in love with is an ability or state that some people have; I am one of them. Once I fall in love, I never really fall out of love and I am not saying that I “carry a torch.” To me love means a soul bond.

There is one other factor for today, and that is one’s relationship to oneself. All love and all sexuality are ultimately moderated by one’s inner relationship. One of the core principles of tantra is that it’s a journey of integrating the seemingly opposite other; it is the path of the wholeness of self, and understanding that very often sexual attraction of the opposite sex is a projection.

How you feel about yourself, and whether your psyche is whole or has a tropism for wholeness and being a unified person is going to be the single most important mediator of your relationships with others.

This is the basis of my proposal that the most important sex people can have is to masturbate in the presence of their partners, proposed partners and even past partners. I suggest doing this with a mirror in the space. Exploring one’s inner dimensions and one’s comfort with oneself and one’s orgasm in the presence of another is to explore both one’s own sexuality and to see where the relationship is at in terms of mutual acceptance.

Humans, like bonobos, can take great pleasure in masturbating in groups as well. Though this is not part of Western society or any traditional tantra that I know of, it is a frontier. Group masturbation has had a few moments here and there, such as early in the HIV/AIDS era (the jack and jill off). There are some sex clubs that have masturbation night, though they are rare. It’s an unusual form of loving, sexual and therapeutic expression. Last night my friend Neal described what he called co-masturbation and co-witnessing as some of the deepest and most beautiful experiences of his life, not just sexual but in any form.

I would agree. My word for people who are adepts at these skills is “thresholder.” They are those who help accompany people to the edge of their inner being and face the abyss of who they are, without emotional or sexual attachment.

I’ve written a lot about this and I will answer any questions or any request from another participant in this forum and share some of that writing, which I offer freely to anyone who may benefit.

I would love to open up the discussion of co-masturbation and co-witnessing, both same sex and mixed sex experiences.

Dear Friend and Reader:

Over the years, in a wide diversity of projects — from the horoscope to my spiritual presentations to Planet Waves FM — I’ve mentioned a project called Book of Blue. Often the reference is in photo credits. New readers may not have noticed this yet. Blue Studio was active from about 2005 through 2017 in Canada, Paris, Brussels, and London; then as a steady location in New York for nine years, with visits to a few other places in the United States.

My catalogue includes photos of people looking into mirrors, holding mirrors for one another and of the mirrors themselves. There’s a lot behind the images, though they’re designed to work subliminally and without explanation. However, now seems like a good time to say more and to share some of the work in its original context.

Introduction

The extreme emphasis on power and politics in our time has, at its roots, the denial of honest sexuality and intimacy. That is its purpose; that denial is the object of the game. Yet the basic human needs of contact and acknowledgment exist no matter how vehemently they are denied.

The digital environment puts people in a desperate and alienated state, and many are in love with it. We live amidst a constant emphasis on the marketplace, news of trauma and alleged or real transgression, plus seemingly endless agitation over what the Supreme Court thinks — yet with no discernible discussion of actual sharing.

Here in our supposedly awake times, sex is freely distributed with the No Fun certification. It’s a little like monks putting ashes in their food so they don’t enjoy it.

There seems to be no easy way out of the chaos and into honesty and sincere communication about desire and sharing. This is emphasized by those poorly-lit, badly-acted five-minute digital movies hijacking the erotic imagination. We might ask why they appear to be so addictive; perhaps because there is so little else available. That would not persist if we were willing to make it available.

Enter: Book of Blue.

Compersion Means Erotic Empathy

The idea for Book of Blue came out of my work as a facilitator on the Tantra, Polyamory and Swing conference circuit starting in the mid-1990s. As a presenter at a diversity of events, I took up two topics that I didn’t notice anyone focusing on.

One was compersion, which is an idea that covers a broad spectrum of forms of erotic empathy. Essentially, compersion means experiencing a positive response to your partner’s sexual pleasure — in whatever form it takes — including their desires and imagination. Yep, they would take pleasure in knowing what lurks in the back of your dirty little mind, and you would get lusty telling them.

Part of understanding compersion calls for being in contact with the nature of jealousy, which is not what it seems (more details on that for another discussion).

In sum, though, jealousy is an inner crisis connected to the fear of death, triggered by one’s sense of self dissolving in the face of a jealous episode. If someone is strongly identified with a relationship, if the relationship is threatened, they will feel their whole identity is threatened and their whole life is collapsing.

Envy, a different feeling, is related to competition (and is often thought of incorrectly as jealousy). Envy is about wanting what someone else has. That’s running through the streets and racking up cash on monetized videos: the envy economy. You will pay me to want to be like me.

Exploring compersion can get complicated when people outside the primary relationship are involved (such as in polyamorous situations). Typically, that is the only time the idea of compersion comes up, if it does. Usually this is in concept only. If you’re struggling in your poly situations, dive into compersion. It’s learnable though mostly takes either a sense of daring or natural appreciation for life.

I take an additional approach to the topic. Compersion can be explored within couples who are devoted to their own and one another’s truth. No third parties or extracurricular activities are necessary. The easiest way to demonstrate and experience erotic empathy is by witnessing your partner do themselves while you tell them how beautiful they are.

And there is self-compersion, where you would explore pleasure-gifting and verbal appreciation for yourself…with the resonance of empathy as you observe yourself. This invokes the inner witness.

Selfsex as a Primary Loving, Relational and Cosmic Experience

Speaking of compersion: the other topic I presented on was selfsex as a primary loving, erotic and relational experience, both with oneself and with others. ‘With others’ potentially includes with relationship partners, friends or whoever is appropriate in that circumstance.

I have conducted group sessions at a diversity of conferences with a wide age range of adults (20s to 70s), including both men and women demonstrating their selfsex for the group in front of a large mirror. You would be amazed how natural this is, how easily it happened, and how good it was. I discovered how curious people are about one another’s selfsex.

I think we have the sexual equation all backwards, in assuming that partnersex is the real thing and selfsex is some kind of substitute. Partnersex is often a placeholder for masturbation, or a form of masturbation using another person’s body. (That’s often the concept of a hookup these days.) Few would dare to admit it.

We may agree that one is capable of loving others to the degree that one loves oneself, and it’s the same with erotic love. For most people, selfsex is their most fulfilling and most honest form of erotic experience. In our time, for many, it is their only one. Usually it’s your first sex, your last sex and most of what happens in between.

Is it true that your best orgasms are the ones you give yourself, alone? I’m proposing that those are the orgasms we would benefit from sharing with others, and that doing so would open a new frontier of intimacy and healing. Oh, and did I mention fun?

If you’re coupled and have noticed that the quality of your sexual exchange is stuck or nonexistent, try masturbating together, touching only yourselves, not one another. Keep a mirror handy; in this ritual, holding the mirror for the other takes the place of touching. If the mirror feels too intimate, start without it; just leave it handy for when you want it. Yes, this is a daring, but ultimately a safe activity.

An Open Field of Exploration and Self-Discovery

While I was still a presenter, I did some early photo experiments with my friends Keiko, Maria and Tia in 1998 and 1999, with Neal McDonough as the principal photographer using medium format film cameras. That was called Luscious Photo.

Then in 2005, I got a digital camera and began to guide my experiences from workshops into the photo studio. I started in Montreal and Toronto, and then created photo sessions in Paris, Brussels, London, Amsterdam, New York and on the West Coast. World Mirror Tour, powered by Craig’s List!

Book of Blue in its various locations provided me and the participants with many experiences of learning about ourselves and one another — and making art in the process. I think it’s interesting that the project started outside of the U.S. and once I had developed it, I imported the concept into American culture.

Creating and reviewing the photos, I discovered that I was on a search for the nature of my inner feminine, which mysteriously came with the ongoing discovery and emergence of my inner masculine. My photo subjects were on a quest for self-understanding and affirmation (and many knew they were modeling an aspect of myself for me). Even if they came in for a hundred bucks and some pictures for their portfolio, each session was a kind of ritual, in its own way extraordinary.

For me, a personal exploration of left/right integration emerged as I accepted each of the women as an expression of my inner goddess, and many an expression my my mother.

My journey includes longterm and potentially lifetime experiments in ecstatic celibacy. (Such an approach is sometimes known as White Tantra.) This is an underlying theme of Book of Blue, so we might say Blue Tantra.

Reducing the Projection Content of My Relationships

Personally, I have found abstaining from penetrative sex helpful at reducing the projection content of my intimate relationships. At the same time, this leaves space for sexual feelings, experiences and understanding. Said another way, I’ve taken possession of my inner feminine. And said yet another, the basis of my relationships is honoring everyone’s relationship to themselves.

Through these experiences, partners in any form serve as witnesses and mirror-holders (including the use of the True Mirror, which shows you a non-mirror-image of yourself; highly recommended).

The camera is also a mirror. Both give the person reflected an experience of being seen and felt, perhaps the deepest need we have in relationships and often a missing experience. Unlike most photographers, I spent considerable time on both sides of the camera.

It’s fair to say that this exploration process is the ground that all my other work emerges from, whether astrological, spiritual, journalistic, musical, visual, or whatever. If your sexual energy is flowing in a focused way, so too is your creativity.

The Digital Hall of Mirrors — and a Real Mirrorspace

The relational and sexual environment we now exist in is a largely disembodied space that is induced, magnified and conditioned by overexposure to digital technology. It is in effect a massive hall of projection and electronic mirrors. It is a cold and aggressive state of mind and of existence, detached from human reality.

Another thing missing in this space is curiosity, which is much of what motivates wholesome relationships and healthy sexual encounters. Sex without sensuality, curiosity or affection is immensely boring.

In the digital world, money and meager attention ‘substitute’ for love, trust, friendship and acknowledgement. Transaction with a receipt for cash paid ‘substitutes’ for exchange. Aggression ‘substitutes’ for self-actualization. The more people are asleep to themselves, the more they will tend to attack others. The more awake we are to ourselves, the less we will do this.

Digital communication has also given rise to an environment of extreme mendacity, where people serve as their own nonstop 24/7 multimedia publicists, and can create any image of themselves, or their past, that they want.

Living in this condition has pushed many people into a dissociated state verging on hallucination or a psychotic break. Many are terribly lonely and starving for touch; many are angry and don’t know why. The hyper-reactive and impersonal digital environment eliminates the experience of sex (there is no male or female in electronic space; our bodies are not here).

It has also given rise to services/disservices like Chaturbate, OnlyFans, PornHub and #metoo (a form of porn, and notably with the name in digital code, a hashtag) — all of which exist in a near-total vacuum of trust, truth and empathy, and would not be possible without the digital environment.

In this environment, under these strange conditions, fully embodied orgasm may be our best resource for staying present on Earth and remembering who and what we are. Sharing this experience with those we trust may be our best resource for reminding ourselves and one another something essential about being human.

This goes far beyond ‘sex’. It’s about being fully present in our lives, our bodies and our senses, and experiencing unconditional sincerity. I think we would let off a lot of pressure and begin to find a new kind of peace with one another. This is more fun than worrying about Trump all day, but only if you say so.

No Room for Pretext. Only Truth is Erotic.

When you reveal yourself to your partner or friend in front of a mirror naked with all your mixed emotions — and all that you might say to yourself, and say to them — you’re taking a step in a new direction of not just intimacy, but existence.

There is no room for pretext or pretense. Only truth is erotic. The purpose that deception serves is to extinguish erotic feelings and isolate people from one another. That is the likely source of its appeal and popularity.

Sexual experiences with a mirror and a witness can reach a depth of communion and communication that few have imagined possible. Central to the experience is engaging and working with shame and embarrassment consciously (rather than hiding them), and using these emotions as a means of opening up to intimacy rather than avoiding it.

If you have followed this branch of my work (for example, through my Tantra Studio and Shri Yantra programs on Planet Waves FM), you may have heard me say that deeper pleasure, sharing and healing are accessed by going toward shame and embarrassment rather than away from them.

This translates to toward ourselves rather than away from ourselves. Embarrassment surrounds the restricted areas within us.

Imagine if the people in your life had the role of helping you forgive yourself rather than participating in your self-condemnation. Imagine if you could truly be who you are, which must extend into sexuality within sexual relationships. Imagine if your healing came first in your relationships, rather than your personal gratification.

What We Call Love is a Quest for Selflove and Approval

It is my observation that many people — without admitting it — enter relationships seeking approval and acknowledgement of who they are, or who they want to be. It’s not about loving the other. It’s about being affirmed by the other.

We want to be seen, known and acknowledged for our beauty, and our seeming flaws. Very often ‘loving another’ is a kind of glorified way of attempting to love yourself or prove that you’re lovable because you have this person in your life. These are often relationships based on guilt and not on love (and what A Course in Miracles refers to as the Special Relationship).

Another purpose many relationships serve is to ‘complete’ our personalities and fill in for a sense of feeling incomplete and insecure. This is of course dangerous territory. Such scenarios often descend into an environment of extreme projection where people lose track of who they are, or feel unloveable when they believe they are no longer loved. Such relationships usually end in bitter disillusionment, and sometimes in court.

Then there are the people who enter relationships under totally false pretexts — they know who they are.

Gestalt Therapy co-founder Fritz Perls perhaps 50 or so years ago described relationships as the primary means of attaining self-knowledge. There is an idea in there, though I think Fritz missed an important point.

Maybe it was more relevant then — but if so, it has not really panned out very well. People seem to get lost in one another a lot more than they get found, and it’s usually not easy to get out of the maze. I think the discovery experience was more available when there was far less electronic distraction and when we had to talk to one another if we wanted to say something.

As a friend wrote to me recently, commenting on a draft of this article, “Makes me see just how much I’ve hidden myself through sex, instead of the opposite, and then wondered why relationships feel so not intimate, why I’ve felt disconnected — from the other, and from myself.”

Mm hmm.

Starting Relationships on an Honest Basis

I propose starting relationships with an affirmation of selflove and the necessity of learning how to love ourselves.

This reversal would be on a fully conscious basis; an agreement and an understanding, inherent in the the nature of any commitment. It would feel like, ‘I am here to help you love and forgive yourself, and you are here to help me love and forgive myself’.

In a sexual context, participants in this idea would masturbate together before ever having penetrative sex. Yes you are now in my fantasy world!

This would be followed by a conversation (when fully dressed). If that goes well, they might try again; and if that goes really well, they might consider getting mixed up in one another’s root chakras. This mix-up usually happens way too fast for anyone’s sanity or happiness. Fast, like a hit and run. Sharing masturbation is more like, “So how do you take your tea?”

In my view, a total rethinking of the purpose of relationships is called for. I propose that your role in the lives of others is to help them love (and confront) themselves; their role is to help you love (and confront) yourself. By ‘help’ I mean taking as a primary purpose of the relationship the cultivation of mutual independence, self-awareness and inner experience. By ‘confront’ I mean gently face ourselves, like in the picture below.

While this is a long way from where many people are today, there are some who are ready to embrace this as a kind of relating; many for whom these words and ideas will bring a sense of relief.

Your Secret Inner Space

We all feel that we have an inner sanctuary. There is that deep-in place where it is only possible for you to feel yourself and there’s nowhere else left to go. To invite people into your masturbation brings them close to you. Yet deep in, it’s just you. That’s where you go when you’re fucked so deeply and beautifully you forget anything but you exists.

Mutual Independent Relationship

These ideas are drifting in the direction of selfsex based relationships. That is to say, sexual pairing where the sex is masturbation, alone and/or together.

These relationships exist. Housemates who are not lovers may be aware of one another’s masturbation. With that knowledge, a special empathy forms…maybe even active appreciation or compersion. Friends occasionally discover the simple pleasure of masturbating together and its enhanced closeness. There are couples who hold themselves as lovers who only masturbate; that is their only sex, potentially alone.

Imagine an couple or ‘partner’ type relationship based from the outset on selfsex and selflove as the modes of sharing affection. Touching might be included though the theme is solo rather than penetrative sex. There might be tremendous and delightful sexual tension between the partners that is then expressed into the mirror, as mutual support for the other’s selfaffirmation. Orgasmic selfgifting…

Implicit in this pattern is enhanced emotional independence. If the couple has never fucked, the root-chakra cord may not exist…and attachment can be formed on another basis. Aikonomirā kōsan (eye contact mirror orgasm) can fill that space joyfully. The outer world may hold the people as couples, knowing nothing about their erotic practice. It’s easy to envision a few others with whom they are intimate about their exploration.

Mutual independent relationship is a descriptive term for this form of sharing. I imagine there are many approaches to this, all with the underlying theme of mutually supported independence.

Self Betrothal

Imagine if one’s relationship life could begin with a commitment to oneself, supported by the community. Then after a time of maturing into that relationship, commitments to others could be considered. Currently go the other direction: commitments to others are supposed to teach us about our relationship to ourselves. I propose this is why our relationships tend to be so messy.

[continued as written below]

april 14…sodus…addendum…

I’ve been glossing over this phase of my experience. By “abstaining from penetrative sex” I mean weaning off of yoni. This has been quite the delectable drama the past 20 years…and the theme infusing bOb…as the women intentionally held the space of no as a gift to me.

My lovers have done this as well, helping me explore a place of no or choosing not, deep in my sexual attachment to them. As we consciously held the space of transforming my thirst for She into my thirst for Me.

Right now I’m listening to a mantra by eryca where she is saying,

Look in the mirror, eric, look in the mirror, You are never going to suck cunt again. Look in the mirror. look in the mirror, eric.

This began with me saying to her, i will never suck your cunt, eryca.

And she said, that’s right…and expanded the field to all women. all cunts.

++

The most embarrassing of these situations to reveal is arranging a situation where where i beg for yoni and I am refused.

And then there’s beth bee saying, you can fuck me if you want. It’s up to you. and then this scene morphs into me sitting naked on the toilet with her on the floor, dressed, in front of me, saying, It seems like you’ve chosen to masturbate.

Now I’m pleading. But I want to fuck you. I want to cum into you.

She is firm. You’ve made your choice. you can’t go back.

She holds the mirror faithfully, to my face, knowing I’ll slowly melt. You are a mirror masturbator.

before i can’t hold back my love…i embody the truth…that she offered me fucking and licking her cunt and I’m sitting here moaning into my face. with her, for myself, for her, for myself…for myself as she witnesses and she holds the mirror as i eat my spirm from its surface. i show Lakshmi my full mouth.

in realtime the audio is still playing, ery over and over. Look in the mirror, eric, look in the mirror, You are never going to suck cunt again. Look in the mirror. look in the mirror, eric. you will never suck cunt again…

[continued]

The Narcissism of the Digital Environment

Regarding narcissism, I speak not in the classical psychiatric (pathological or abusive) sense of extreme grandiosity and self-importance, or being dominated by your parents, but rather in the colloquial sense of self-absorption, solipsism and vanity.

And for sure, lots and lots of people think this is cute.

The problem of the mythological Narcissus was not that he was a cunning manipulator, dominator or thought he was better than others.

Rather, the problem Narcissus had was that he did not know the person he was seeing in the reflection was himself. He thought it was someone else. And at the same time, he lost interest in the real women who were around him and who were aware of him, and there, he languished and died.

This is our situation in the digital age; we think that all that stuff around us, all those images we see, are something other than us. It’s not obvious that it’s all a projection or extension. Therefore, to work with what is known consciously to be a reflection will be helpful and provide a way through the maze.

Masturbation in Dom/Sub Relationships

A dom/sub relationship is one where there’s an agreed upon top and bottom: a dominant and a submissive. One might propose that every relationship is organized this way, or that one party is a top and the other is a sub in different aspects of life.

As the Mistress Paige once said on an early version of my radio show (live on the air on Radio Woodstock), ‘Whoever has the pussy has the power’. Most women know this is true but are afraid to claim themselves, as the rewards of feigned victimhood seem more appealing and require less responsibility. This is called topping from the bottom.

In the situation of unrequited desire — the subject of plenty of masturbation — we have the ultimate dom/sub situation. The entirety of pornography is getting off on not having. (Porn also reveals an aspect of compersion in ordinary life; someone gets off to other people having an experience.)

However, for the purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on intentional dom/sub play. This is far more popular territory than most people realize, though it’s not often talked about, and probably not the kind of thing you would discuss with the average therapist or astrologer (though the dynamics will be evident).

Masturbation is inherently submissive. Even if you ‘top yourself’, the self that you’re topping is the sub part of your psyche. This is interesting to explore in masturbation that involves self-penetration, since the same person is the penetrator and the penetratee. Ultimately, with masturbation, you submit to yourself, or to the idea of something larger than yourself (which is your idea).

Even if your fantasy content involves domination, the whole thing is going on in your mind, and ultimately you let go to something about you or your own thoughts.

In dom/sub situations, one form of play is the sub masturbating for the dom. There is plenty of mutual gratification here; ‘reciprocity’ is not necessary (i.e., both parties masturbating together or taking turns, as the setup of dom/sub is not about being on equal terms).

To give a few examples of dom/sub (sometimes called top/bottom) masturbation play: The top instructs the bottom to masturbate. This can come with various shades of humiliation, from mild degradation to setting up a scene where the sub masturbates in front of everyone at an otherwise ordinary party or gathering.

Or, the top, being the object of desire of the bottom, and the bottom is permitted to display their desire and/or beg without getting to touch. This can be reversed: the top masturbates for the bottom, but no touching or tasting is allowed. The bottom gets to see what they cannot have. The fun for both parties is in the tease; there is plenty of having involved. What most people seek from their sexual encounters is some form of acknowledgement and complete communication.

Notes for Couples With a Desire Differential

There are many couples where there seems to be a desire differential: one partner wants sex more than the other. Without speaking at length to both partners, it’s not possible to tell what is going on. Usually, though, a deep and honest conversation can help. Write it on your mirror: Only truth is erotic.

And I’ve found — as have many sex educators — that there’s nothing like masturbating together to spark things up. Remember that this is as much about intimacy and emotional sharing as it is about sex.

However, there’s an alternative to that, which is (for lack of better wording) the horny partner masturbates and the not-so-horny partner keeps them company. It’s a lovely way for one partner to show their devotion and caring, and for the other to relax and be affirmed in the experience of taking care of themselves.

Nothing quite says “I love you the way you are” than inviting someone to masturbate in front of you, and bestowing your attention on them.

The amount of touching is up to those involved; you might hold your partner, or be right nearby. You might speak to one another, or maintain silence. You might make eye contact, or use a mirror for the selflover to focus on themselves.

The effect will be to take the pressure off of the less-sexually interested partner, and also offer some relief and emotional attention to the more desirous partner. Said another way, sharing this experience will keep your energy moving, ease off on the frustration and perhaps facilitate a conversation.

It’s Not About Them, It’s About You

Essential to the theme of mirror play is the recognition that you are looking at yourself. One role of the witness or thresholder is to remind you of this. The presence of a witness makes it more difficult to hide from yourself. So both parties must be able to handle the vulnerability gently. This is the time to check judgment at the door.

Reflection also implies the idea of projection. One of the original starting questions of Book of Blue went something like this: is all this beauty I see in women really there, or is it me projecting my inner feminine onto them and seeing an aspect of myself in some other form, or seeing what I want to see?

This turned out to be an evocative and revealing question for all involved. And it does not have an easy answer. These photographs are all collaborations, and require a mutually supported environment of trust. Yet over time, I took more and more responsibility for what I saw and what I felt.

The photos are based on my perception and my vision. You are seeing how I feel about the women I depict, and also how they respond to my feelings. I would add that trust and appreciation of this kind are barely imaginable today, when we often pretend everyone and everything is a threat.

Anyway, here we all are, seemingly lost in the hall of mirrors of a vast digital dream (or paranoid nightmare), where the imagination and senses have been externalized, and where most allegedly erotic experiences are head trips that lack any exchange of empathy, gratitude or warmth. Yes there are exceptions — though they are rare.

There is a better way.

The Power Question: Disarming Sexuality

One of the most significant challenges we face today is the constant association of sex with power, which is an aspect of politicization. We know very little about sex and often confuse the shrill discourse around ‘rights’, categories and sexual politics with sex itself. These are the very opposite of sex, deadly to trust, pleasure, curiosity and friendly desire.

Facing into a mirror, one’s sexuality can have no power over. It is the true submission to oneself, which is the only submission there is. Facing one another masturbating, people are as equal as they can ever be. That is their sexual orientation — the one that all the others have in common. Men and/or women exploring together in this way must respect the individuality, self-expression and beauty of each person in the space. To be better than someone else is a farce.

Our society seems to think it has a problem with ‘consent’. This is a legalistic term, descriptive of a supposed undocumented contract that can be revoked after the fact. Most sex does not happen by this elusive thing we call consent. Most people just do what they do, especially when drunk — consequences be damned.

To create the experience of sharing masturbation requires a sensitive discussion, where the parties have little choice but to talk about how they feel entering this unusual and rarely-explored intimate territory.

The conversation that would have to happen prior to sharing masturbation is the same discussion that rightly would occur before any form of sexual sharing. Therefore, it can serve as an example of how to establish mutual desire and appropriateness of the experience as a standard. To put a point on this: Consent is a useless concept in intimate relationships. But some people think the new way to ask someone out on a date is, “Do you consent to having dinner with me?”

As for consent, we are fast approaching the time when the only thing that will count is a Venmo receipt.

Solitary Sex Within Relationships

There exists a vast number of people for whom selfsex is their only sex. Generally, there are those who are happy about this; there are those who are angry about it; and there are those who just accept it as a fact of existence. Some are in partner relationships and some are not.

We never hear any discussion of these people in the copious tirades on sexual politics, sexual rights and sexual orientation. Selfsexuals don’t get a stripe on the flag. Rather, they should get the whole flag, since every one of those colors has one thing in common, and that is that nearly all people are to some extent selfsexual, and many are so exclusively.

It’s a sexual orientation if this concept has any meaning, though there are very few openly declared selfsexuals. It’s as if these individuals don’t exist. This is because masturbation has long been categorized as nonsex, and another prejudice — again, usually kept silent — that people without partners don’t really exist.

Then there are the people with partners where there is no sex in the relationship. Some of those wish they could get something going; others have no interest.

My observation is that masturbation is the most closeted form of sex. There are plenty of partners who masturbate separately from one another. There remains a pall of shame and embarrassment over the whole topic. In another presentation I will get into how this shame and also guilt (often a response to having been pruned back like a hedge, or having been abused) are the glue that holds together every hypocrisy we see in society. From a tantric standpoint, that is the crux of the matter.

For those in sexually stagnant relationships who want to get something going, you may find that masturbating together does something you could not have imagined. Most people have two versions of their sexuality: the one they share with others and sometimes talk about, and the one that exists within their own personal experience that they keep quiet and do not dare describe.

Often this concealment or withholding is what is choking off the sex between the partners. However, one of the reasons that selfsex is kept secret is the fantasy content that comes with it. If you’re interested in or obsessed over someone other than your partner and get off to the thought of sex with them every day, this is unlikely something you will want to share with your partner.

But sooner or later it’s going to come out, potentially right before you suffocate and decide you actually need to breathe. If you are living another life, whether in your mind or in reality, that you cannot share, that is an important situation in your relationship. It will be difficult to have a meaningful emotional or sexual exchange under these circumstances. What to do about this is outside the scope of the present essay, but maybe for another time. However, there really is no way out except for honesty.

Other people don’t share their masturbation or their fantasy life because they fear it will be embarrassing. The good news is that you can play with the embarrassment factor. It’s so much fun you’ll miss it when it’s gone. But this requires a sense of adventure. I think most people would wonder why anyone would possibly want to share this aspect of themselves; and one reason is because it might be fun or healing. You would find out when you get there.

How Deep You Are, and How Much You Can Feel

The suffocating secrecy around masturbation is an artifice induced by religion and enforced by culture. The secret being kept from you and from all of us is how deep you are, and how much you’re capable of feeling, and what cosmic information comes through this misunderstood cosmic experience we call orgasm.

Those people who come from religious backgrounds, whether sly or extreme, have been led to feel guilty about who they are, what they think about, and what they feel. Sex is merely the excuse, and selfsex is almost always the focal point of the assault.

The coverup involved is about your beauty and your depth of feelings. There are some sexual feelings and experiences you can encounter with partners; there is another set of feelings and experiences that you will mostly encounter alone and that are deeply personal. Consider how you experience orgasm alone and with others present. There are many women who do not experience orgasm with a partner; they only do so through masturbation — and this is revealing.

Notes on ‘Incel’ or Involuntary Celibacy

There’s a kind of movement of men who consider themselves incel, or ‘involuntarily celibate’. This is a strange concept, which translates to some form of ‘can’t find a partner’ or ‘can’t get laid’. There is a lot of anger in this discussion, a lot of blame being cast and not much understanding to work with. Part of the problem here is that in our society, masculinity is often measured by a man’s desirability to women.

Yet a more significant issue is that this is happening in the digital age, and the ideas and the experiences are being driven by digital conditions. In other words, incel is a digital effect. That includes both the experience as it is felt today, the category and the organizing around it. In the era of digital feminism, women are being blamed for the experience that men are having. Whether this is true or not, the blame posture is not going to solve the problem, which is not the problem that it seems to be on the surface. You might say this is the opposite of making some claim to being selfsexual.

However, it makes some sense to look at the surface level and see if any insights are available. Initiation into manhood in our culture is often viewed as sexual initiation — with a woman. And if women don’t seem to be interested, that seems to be a reflection on the man and his masculinity. It is not helpful, indeed, it’s dangerous, to think of masculinity as a locked room to which only women hold the key. For those with this situation, trying to find a woman with the key to the lock is not going to help. You have no idea what is in this hypothetical initiation chamber until you get there.

Despite what you may see in movies and on televsion programs, no woman holds the key to a man’s self-esteem or to his masculinity. However, the woman to study, if there is one, is your mother.

There many other moving parts to consider. Many men carry a wide diversity of prejudices, ungrounded expectations and ignorance about what women want and what they feel — and that leads to further disconnect. Most women don’t do too good of a job of being forthright about what they want or who they are, and too often encourage bad treatment from men.

There are a lot of reasons you’re in this situation, and it’s worth considering that one of them is missing knowledge. To get out of any stuck place, the first thing to work with is your curiosity. This at first will feel daring, because it gets results. The Pathwork teaches that sexual curiosity is the highest form of curiosity. This would apply to curiousity about your own sexuality and that of women; and potentially of other men. How much do you know about sex?

Most people have only ever read about sexual politics (i.e., pro and con feminism, pro and con trans) and have never read anything whatsoever about sex, itself (for which I suggest you rely on books, not the internet). Nor have they considered their sexuality with any real thought. Sex is the topic about which everyone is an expert and nobody knows anything.

It does not help that the Digital Internet Education Department puts out thousands of “what passes for sex” videos where people get hot and heavy in the first 45 seconds. These tell you less then nothing; they misinform and disinform you about what actually happens in intimate situations.

They reveal zilch about how men and women respond to one another, nor are they especially accurate about same-sex encounters. The deeper problem is the digital environment itself. Porn as we know it today is an effect of the digital environment.

You Need Real Life Experience

If you consider yourself an incel man and have grown up on porn, and have not had many opportunities to explore with women, your whole orientation around sex is digital. Said more directly, you have quite a bit to unlearn, which is the essential precursor to any learning process. And the main thought you have to unlearn is that sex is not digital, which is discarnate. Sex is incarnated. It is physical and emotional. To experience sex and emotional intimacy you will need to come back to the wavelength of the body…of meatspace.

And in my considerable experience, there are exceedingly few women who, in physical reality, are anywhere near as sexually confident — whether men or women — as porn actors pretend to be in those little movies.

One approach to incel is to make it voluntary. You might assume there is something you need to learn and decide you’re going to take your time and find out what it is. Maybe take three months off from being incel and do it by choice. Imagine if the foxiest little vixen offered you anything you wanted, you would refuse, in honoring your chosen independence.

You might discover opportunities for intimacy with women open up if a sexual or ‘romantic’ relationship is taken off the list of possibilities. What you’re actually doing is suspending expectations and getting to know women for who they are. This creates the space to develop communication and learn mutual trust. If you are interested in women, those are the skills you need. This is not about being in the ‘friend’ category; it’s about you gathering information and observations — mostly about yourself.

For any man who is wondering, any woman who is actually interested in you is going to let you know sooner or later. It’s much better if they take the initiative, which they will do (if interested) once they feel confident enough in you. That is a matter of trust, about which we know very little in the digital age.

If you consider yourself incel and have by some miracle found this article and read this far, I have a proposed suggestion. Watch your face orgasm 10 times. See how much love for yourself you can bring to the experience. That’s a reflection of how lovable you feel. Then the 11th time, invite someone to witness you.

Keeping Selfsex Interesting

One of the challenges for those who who have sex only with themselves is keeping it interesting. This is also the challenge for people who are in some way coupled. I have divided this off as its own section and will develop it over the next few weeks.

The first question, though, is whether your selfsex is for maintenance, or consciously part of a relationship with yourself. Is it something you do just to do, or is it a way you express yourself to yourself? There in lies a significant distinction. If you view your selfsex as part of a relationship to yourself or to existence, that relationship will guide the way; and your sexual experiences will be an expression of the relationship.

I could say that exploring in various unusual ways can be fun, such as taking mushrooms and selfsexing in the attic. Setting up a mirror altar is exciting, especially if you put it someplace where people can see it such as your living room. You can get a photo of your face at mid-orgasm and frame it on an end table. I think that the way into the deepest experiences is by inviting others into your personal journey and accompanying them for a time along theirs.

Meantime, for those looking for some fun and interesting ideas around solo play in its many configurations, I would offer two resources that might expand your horizons. One is Solotouch, a very old website that is still updated regularly. (The programmer who developed the first advanced Solotouch and also programmed the original sales system for Planet Waves using the same code base, so we are distant cousins.)

Another is Beautiful Agony, a vast (truly incredible) collection of user-provided videos studying the facial expressions and sounds of selfsex and orgasm. The contributors to the site have also added hundreds of what are described as confessions — that is, detailed discussions of the experience of masturbating on camera for an audience as well as other facets of their sexuality. I consider this a legit and excellent source for educating yourself about what real people say, do and feel.

It’s well worth a paid subscription. See the free preview reel to the left on the landing page. Gather ‘round the laptop, pass the gummies, spark up the projector and have an in-person watch party.

Yes, these are digital resources, but they are alive and fresh and portable into the real world. For example, you might read some of those Solotouch stories out loud. If you know of other resources, please let me know. When in doubt, make your own. You can, for example, write your own Solotouch story, or record a video for Beautiful Agony whether or not you send it in.

The Eew Factor of Male Masturbation

In the current sex ecosystem, the perception of female masturbation is empowering selflove-making, while male masturbation is wanking to disgusting porn. A woman basks languidly in the afterglow of her orgasm, while a man reaches for a sock.

The attacks on masturbation which still contaminate consciousness today have their roots in the early 18th century, in around 1712. The book Onania seems to be the point of origin of this campaign. It was an infomercial for some kind of product that cured the alleged medical/moral sickness of “self abuse.”

However, in our time, there is an eew factor associated with male masturbation and male sexuality generally. This is part of living in an era where maleness and masculinity are regularly degraded, and women and their needs and issues are glorified. We are all supposed to be happy about this [link to porn video], and many would be — while if the sex roles in this scene were reversed, there is no doubt most people wound think the result would be degrading to women.

However, that particular word or concept bears no relationship to having a woman ride my face (my particular favorite form of partnersex). And there are a couple of women here and there who love to have their mouth fucked. And…?

Sex is, in a sense, degrading — to the pride of the ego. And sex exalts the natural men and women we are below all that psychic baggage and latticework and pseudo morality.

But then there is the degradation of one sex at the expense of another. I’m a daily reader of The New York Times, not because it’s so well-written or because I trust it so much, but rather to get a sense of what the voice of God is telling us to believe. Nearly every day, there is some new article extolling womanhood and taking manhood down a few notches.

In the edition for Feb. 1, we have How Quitting the Patriarchy Saved My Marriage and The Manosphere is Now Mainstream. I recently read an article that I can no longer find, about how to tell your son he might be a rapist. Yes, the Times was advocating for the psychological and emotional abuse of young adult men by their mothers.

This is an Old Bias

So it’s not just an eew factor. There is a presumption that male sexuality is inherently evil and violent, while female sexuality is something natural and beautiful to celebrate. The modern-world origins of this view, so far as I can discern, are in 19th into early 20th century feminist thought in both the United States and England. On both sides of the pond, men were sold to women and the public generally as drunken, whoring, immoral beasts who gave the clap 80% of their wives.

All of this is according to a famous tome by Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958), the most influential feminist of the early 20c, called The Great Scourge and How to End It (1913). It includes the claim that men would allegedly persuade prostitutes to conduct “unnatural acts” though it would seem from her ideas that Pankurst never set foot in a brothel in her entire life.

To those who might suspect this could be true, there were no “diagnostic tests” nor were there enough brothels to serve 80% of the male population, nor were there studies about the activities of brothels, nor could could most married men afford such a luxury as a prostitute, nor were most married men interested in such. Sex with a prostitute is typically boring, fast and routine. Specialty items, especially in that era, were extremely rare — and expensive, as they are today.

Meanwhile, in Victorian times (approx 1837-1901), the propaganda around masturbation for both men and women was horrifying — worse than that of the 1712 era. Medical assessments, for example, promised moral descent, perversion, sickness, insanity and death — this, according to the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine. It helps to know this history.

It’s also important to note that prior to the early 18th century (about 1712), posterity seemed to have had no opinion about masturbation. It is not mentioned in the Torah or the New Testament. This history is covered in the book Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation by Thomas Lacquer. Religious prohibitions are made up with no basis in text or scripture, seemingly as part of the antisex marketing campaign that has made religion into the inhumane monster that it is.

From Greek lore we learn that it is Pan who taught humanity how to masturbate; and it is Pan whom we fear is amok in the dark forest when we hear noises at night. His name is the root of the word panic.

The Use of Entheogens

An entheogen is a newish name for substances that shift one’s awareness. In the ’60s these were called ‘mind expending drugs’, which did not include pills, cocaine or heroin. The spectrum runs from cannabis to mushrooms to ecstasy, ayahuasca, LSD and DMT. Any of these may have a place in your exploration — or not. For accurate information about any or all, see the Vaults of Erowid.

The mirror is a dimensional portal and a psychoactive tool. Substances act both ways as well. So it’s wise to handle the territory with care and proceed gradually and intentionally. By the way, the root of ‘entheogenic’ is entheos, which is Greek for contact with God. It survives in modern form as ‘enthusiasm’.

When I asked Betty Dodson why she believed that cannabis was illegal (back when it was), she said because it helped both men and women drop sexual inhibitions and fire up their libido. It also opens up the erotic imagination. Not much is necessary; it is potent sexual medicine when used well, which means lovingly.

There are many spiritual and tantric teachers who oppose the use of substances entirely. It’s worth considering what they say even if you don’t follow it. Assuming that for you their use is not precluded by some other credo (i.e., recovery), let’s consider the possibilities.

Entheogens have been used as part of ritual practice since times unknown. There are good reasons for this. They help humans shift out of rigid egocentric thought and pick up a sparkly kind of god-essence. This can include softening inhibitions and other attachments. These qualities often define a personality. So an entheogen can facilitate loosening up one’s resistance to inviting a more imaginative approach.

At times they can help induce various shades of transcendental bliss, eurythmia and surrender. One of my most profound experiences of selfmerging was using dmt personally crafted by a woman I loved and trusted…combined with the right moment, and had a wildly honest moment with myself were no ego got in the way of what I wanted and was ready to give myself. A wide open field of…myself.

Using any of a diversity of substances, it’s possible to enter unusual, beautiful and otherworldly psychic environments; these include intimate and self-intimate experiences, and out-of-body experiences. In those spaces, you can make discoveries about yourself, connect with your healing in a deeper way, and admit to feelings you might have avoided speaking about. And they can take you dark places in yourself that you may not be ready to face; but you will be doing so, if this happens. So it’s good to be prepared in advance for this potential.

Is all of this an illusion? Well, the ego itself is often said to be an illusion. I think that integrating astral experiences back into the body — and keeping them focused there throughout — is essential to the helpful use of entheogens.

Apply the Set and Setting Principle

It’s also possible to have ‘bad trip’ type experiences, therefore it’s wise to apply the set and setting principle, know something about any substance you experiment and know your sources. If you’re with another person, it’s wise to know them well enough to trust that they are loving spiritually grounded. (Whoever you’re with is part of your ‘set and setting’.)

I suggest that where tantric practice is concerned, less is more. Knowing how much of a substance will shift your consciousness enough for you to take it further on your own steam is helpful. Remember that your love and creativity are what makes any trip pleasurable and informative. So generally, microdosing would be the best approach.

How much is that? Everyone is different(and you may have this mapped out), but for example in range of under 5mg of THC via edible (5 mg is a lot for some people!), and under 100 mg of mushrooms (less than 1/10th of a gram when a ‘party dose’ is one to three grams); or one toke of good weed.

You don’t want to be burdened or constrained by being high, and you want to leave plenty of room for your emotions and your imagination to be free. Also, it’s important that you trust your feelings, which will be enhanced or exaggerated. This includes your loving responses and also shadowy emotions like guilt and shame. So you need the skill of bringing yourself back around to love if you feel any of those, which is usually about moving through them.

Dark emotions, when felt and considered honestly, can be among the best teachers and reveal things to you that otherwise remain hidden. And once you’ve explored these places within yourself for a while, you may be in a position to serve someone else through a self-encounter as a thresholder.

Assuming everything goes well, the use of entheogens has one potential drawback. That is wondering whether what you experienced was real. If you go to a deep place and discover something about yourself, when you’re back in normal waking consciousness, your ego can say, ‘that didn’t really matter, it was just the drugs’.

Does this even matter? Well, you’re exploring for a purpose, and to have an experience negated may not be helpful. That encourages being very present for any experiences you’re having while you’re there — in whatever state of mind. And you can make contact with the element of yourself that might deny what you’re feeling in that moment at some time in the future.

Another possibility is you’ll experience something exquisite that you’ll want more of, and you’ll probably give it to yourself. So it’s important to have a conscious relationship with your metes and bounds.

There are teachers who express a belief that substances delay development, block energy and can do significant harm. This may be true for some people.

Tantra at its roots is about violating taboos, not falling for them. There are ritual spaces that are not available to most people without the help of entheogens. Do you belong there? I don’t know. I can say that it’s up to you to show up for yourself, and to keep your experiences loving.

When you’re combining entheogens with ritual, remember: set and setting; easy does it; take your time; less is more. And always remember your purpose.

The Longest Standing Creation Myth: The Complete One

We learn something surprising from Egyptian mythology, where Atum, the longest standing creation god in known history, masturbated and swallowed his semen. This was so pleasurable he created the other gods and goddesses to share the experience with, thereby creating the universe. (His name means “complete one.”) Perhaps he is arising; in our time there is a major genre of porn wherein women help men drink their semen. This is called CEI — cum eating instructions.

The assistance is called for because so many men want to drink themselves and can orgasm to the desire — then once they ejaculate are often ashamed that they even had such a thought, and cannot bring themselves to do it. There is much emotion released here. And among other places this is where the thresholder’s role emerges: the person who helps another with their self-acceptance.

This is the bare essence of my journey, and many of the women in my life and some beautiful men have helped me learn how to swallow and receive my pleasure (by which I mean my living seed), whether sweetly or afraid, my love or shame, and accept myself as my destiny: who have held my mirror for me. Deep in here is a profound healing of my relationship with my mother, involving not having had her milk, and through my life, having myself. My existential thirst has made it possible for me to be a mirror celibate self semen drinker.

I would love and adore a conversation among both men and women about this practice of elegant beauty. And among men: let’s get together, talk about this, and do it. I can see it happening with women present as witnesses, and with just the men themselves.

From the Book of Blue essay, “The Spirit Molecule: 11:44” (I was alone) —

All this time fresh seed was collecting inside me. Filling up and encouraged by licking up so many other orgasms. Ready to release; wanting to; happy in the truth that….I squatted over the mirror and watched myself give up control of any ability to hold back love. I spurted in long streaks and made out with my hot liquid, melting into myself, filling my mouth swallowing and leaving fresh thick streaks.

The Delicate Work of the Thresholder

The thresholder, or ‘guardian of the threshold’, is present to guide the initiate to the edges of their consciousness. They serve as witness as well, though this is an active witness who consciously participates in the experience of the beholder — the one who encounters himself or herself in the mirror. It’s a delicate role.

Mirrors have been used in divination since at least biblical times, and in sexual ritual since the days of Karnak. Betty Dodson had a vision of Karnak that she shared with me: an open-roofed temple with a mirrored floor polished so perfectly that it reflected the stars. In this space were men and women, shaved head to toe, who maintained continuous collective orgasmic ecstasy through the days and seasons, and over the generations, reflected back to the cosmos.

Perhaps we shall create this for ourselves.

The starting place is one person learning the art of thresholding. This is not ‘orgasm coaching’, which would be relatively simple (and worth exploring). Thresholding is about assisting the beholder to fully encounter their own presence, which reaches into the spiritual realm and can truly be called a tantric role.

Mapping Interior Space, 1 | What is CEI and Why?

Another role of the thresholder is to help men map interior space. This is the essence of recovering and connecting with one’s anima. Women have tremendous freedom to do this. They are expected to and many of them want to get fucked in the mouth, ass and pussy. It’s not a legend: much of women’s sexuality is about being receptive, and that means exploring the interior space of their body and their feelings.

First a brief bit of history. The ‘sex toy’ industry was invented by women, inspired by Betty Dodson’s bodysex groups, and founded by, and Dell Williams. In 1974, Dell opened the store Eve’s Garden in Manhattan, the first of its kind. In the years that followed, woman-run Babes in Toyland in Seattle and Good Vibrations in San Francisco. Walk in and all you see, displayed on classy boutique shelves, are devices women can use to fuck themselves (and one another).

And you can see video of this on most of Onlyfans pages, and watch live on numerous cam websites like Chaturbate. So it is commonly understood and accepted — in both Eastern and Western society — that women can explore their inner space without the help of men.

And if there is one discussion point missing in the discussion of sex and the different approaches of sex by men and women, it’s the consideration of the inner space of men. I imagine that a large majority of heterosexual men would consider the topic of self-fucking to be gay territory. (Nothing goes in, it only comes out, and so forth.)

However, we now know that many couples are interested in playing “bend over boyfriend.” And we know from porn and from elsewhere that CEI — cum eating instructions — that men are interested in swallowing their own semen. I cover this in the comments at the end of my Compersion article [password ethos]. Some of these videos have hundreds of thousands of plays.

They all have one thing in common — the involvement of women assisting the men to admit their self-thirst, and then orgasm and swallow themselves. And most of these have a femdom (female domination) theme, which seems designed to get the male viewers to let go of their animus or male inner sense and to connect with their female inner sense (their anima). I don’t mean to impress you with my use of terms from Jungian psychology. These are words for inner states that I’ve explored since my earliest sexual experiences.

Why is CEI Necessary?

So why is this CEI-type assistance necessary? Let’s take it slowly.

Before orgasm, both men and women experience a kind of meltdown of inhibition. Those last few minutes before orgasm, particularly during masturbation, can contain all kinds of interesting psychic content — by which I mean totally free and wild fantasies. These are set free by the rising orgasmic energy and the melting of the fearful, repressive ego.

In this state of mind and emotion, it’s easy for men who are interested to admit to themselves that they want to drink their semen.

However, after they ejaculate, most men experience what is sometimes called libido drop. This is a sudden drop in desire that Masters and Johnson sex-therapist types say leads to the “refractory phase.” This is when, no matter what he was thinking, a handful of his own cum is not going to be appealing; and after all, he was supposed to leave it inside his woman’s vagina.

So getting the semen in his mouth can be greatly facilitated by a beautiful, caring woman encouraging him to do exactly this.

This is about resolving a Zen paradox — and it is a spiritual issue above all else, reflecting much else about the nature of existence. He wants his semen before he has it. It might be the hottest thought in the universe. Then when he has it, he doesn’t want it anymore. Imagine that this has happened hundreds of times when he’s alone. Imagine the collected and unfulfilled desire — that is often projected onto women.

He’s finally found the courage to ask for a woman’s help — not as a projection but as a conscious reflection. It might be his lover, wife or girlfriend; it might be a sexworker of some kind. Preferably it is someone in person.

What is going on here? It’s difficult to express in plain talk; it’s easier to express through revealed experience. However, it seems that there is one hemisphere of consciousness that is in contract with the desire, and another hemisphere of consciousness that is not. The exploration of anima is what’s happening when he starts to connect his desire and his fulfillment.

Here, the mirror plays many potential roles — especially in the hands of a woman who consciously directs his awareness and his desire back to himself. In the course of the conversation, she can ask him commit to swallowing himself no matter how he feels after his orgasm. She can hold him to his promise. She can ‘force’ him to do it. She can play various roles of dominatrix or mother.

In truth she is the thresholder; and one role of the thresholder is to guide him through the experience and then help him get his semen into his mouth. On the occasions when this does not happen, you might call it a missed opportunity. That means wanting semen and not having it; followed by having it and not wanting it. This may happen accompanied by a diversity of emotions, from self-shunning, regret, shame and even disgust. These are the emotions the thresholder can help him delight in, and gradually learn to follow through and receive himself.

Here is where what I’ll call The Conversation can be helpful. The Conversation is held at the begining of the session where the beholder starts by admitting his intent, which is to drink his own semen. If he’s embarrassed, that’s a point of exploration. This would occur in normal waking consciousness, such as when fully dressed. The beholder who wants to go past the shame of reluctance after he’s spilled himself can anchor this desire with the thresholder. Then this becomes a topic of the conversation — the truth of this, which can lead him easily to orgasm. Then she says, ok now do it. I’m here for you.

Mapping Interior Space, 2 —
Self Thirst, Self-Penetration and the Cum Mirror

In this little section I want to talk about the relationship between following through on self-thirst and being penetrated. I also want to talk about the cum mirror, which Thresholder Simone above is holding in her hands. They are both means of exploring self-shunning and learning to receive.

First a brief word about the orgasms of men and of women.

Many women easily experience rolling multiple orgasm, and nearly any woman can learn if she spends some time with someone who knows how to guide her into this space. The ‘orgosphere’ tends to be much more spacious in women, and while the female orgasm can seem elusive, the thing to remember is that it’s all about trust. By that I mean feeling safe.

Most men experience orgasm differently, and I have observed that many do not — they experience ejaculation, which is physical and can arrive with a sense of relief, though it’s not necessarily orgasm. It’s kind of proto, or a little orgasmish.

Most men need women to feel much sexually. Most men experience Eros through female emotions and the female body. It’s a little like the relationship between a guitar string and a guitar; you cannot hear the string vibrate without the guitar body, which incidentally is shaped like a woman.

There are a lot of ways to get sound out of a guitar body. There are not so many ways to get sound out of the string.

However, men have rather tremendous undeveloped orgasmic capacity. Tuning into this begins with feeling the difference in the experience of orgasm and ejaculation. Usually the orgasm comes first, in a wave of emotion, followed by the pulses of ejaculation. One key to the most pleasurable orgasm is to totally relax as the emotional phase of orgasm begins, breathe gently, stop moving, stop thrusting or pumping, stay perfectly still and feel the wave — not knowing when the pulses of ejaculation will begin. Let them surprise you. That’s what they’re for.

This is a good time to look into the mirror your lover’s eyes. Or to ask your lover to hold the mirror for you. And if you’re alone, know you’re the lover, the one and only.

What you experience in this kind of space is the beginning of feeling interior pleasure.

Self-Thirst as Interior Space

Another experience of interior pleasure is the desire to receive one’s own semen. This is a common experience among heterosexual men. And it seems to be expanding. I’ve noticed a number of reasons for this, though the important thing to know is that such desire comes from a deep and archetypal place. It may be something you feel often, that you notice when your inhibitions drop in your peri-orgasmic state — that is, when your mind moves out of the way and you just feel honest desire. The self honesty of that near-surrender space is its beauty.

As I described earlier, this experience can be ‘hemisphereic’ — the desire to drink oneself can be very strong and the ultimate turn-on prior to ejaculation, with the loss of desire or onrush of shame or reluctance after. However, if you can sustain your orgasm through ejaculation, you can have your semen while you’re still cumming, and then it’s much easier to find some completion. This takes practice.

Here is where the help of a thresholder can be most supportive. She has to understand what you’re experiencing, which means you have to tell her. Nearly any available woman would intuitively be able to help. By help, I mean to help you maintain your self-awareness and the resonance of your orgasm using her emotions and body. Then she helps you get your semen into your mouth, where you want it.

In one session on Vashon, Thresholder Pamela kept guiding me toward the mirror and scolded me for turning my back on myself. Avoiding speaking to myself…

If you thirst for yourself, it will feel VERY good to admit this to a woman, and even better if she shares her understanding with you. Keep talking about it. Say it over and over. She will understand. If you are into men and feel your emotional resonance there, find someone you trust and let it out. Just say the words. It could turn out that doing it is a natural follow through, if the moment is right. I think it’s good to take those opportunities when you can.

There is a submissive quality to all of this.

After all, evolution sort of dictates that you’re supposed to fuck her and leave your semen inside her and that’s all there is to it. In this situation you’re inverting that, and the woman is taking a facilitating role rather than a receptive one.

This is a whole other order of consciousness; a whole new relationship. It’s going to be much more vulnerable for you. You will really need to trust her. She is showing you something about your anima — she knows what it means to thirst for semen and to want it in her body, and she’s going to acquaint you or model for you the facet of yourself that wants to do so.

If you’re honest about this, it will be much easier. She is there so you can state your intentions and ask for her help. If you know you will need encouragement, ask her. Part of this experience is exceptional honesty. That will almost always mean going into embarrassing or shameful territory. That is what you’re looking for; that is the thing to relax into. The most exquisite pleasure is right on the other side of the embarrassment or shame.

Now, how will she respond? It depends — if this might be your thing, show her this article and talk about it. I can tell you that nearly all of the women I’ve met who have served in this way have found it beautiful, intimate and enlightening.

OK, the Cum Mirror: “If I Can Do This I Can Live My Life”

I cannot take credit for this idea; in the late 1990s during Web 1.0, I was reading various websites and bulletin boards devoted to masturbation and someone wrote about a solution to self-shunning after orgasm. He said basically, cum on anything, like a dish, and leave it there; when you’re ready you’ll come back to it and it’ll be really good. This is a workaround to “wanting your cum and not having it, having it and not wanting it.”

A mirror seemed logical; it was right there.

This is from the Book of Blue essay, “If I can do this, I can live my life,” which was originally written as an email to my epic lover Dani. Quote:

The mirrors depicted in the Book of Blue series tell the story of a journey of learning deep self-nourishment and practicing self-acceptance. The mirror is my meeting place; the place where I meet myself and the world.

One in particular, a cheap, rectangular WalMart special, has become a kind of altar of self-surrender, where I witness my own orgasm. I’ve used mirrors as cum altars before, because they were conveniently there when I was watching myself let go, or trying to. I’d never used or explored them as a place designed as a kind of sacred licking platter, or where semen could collect and dry, leaving a many-layered and infinitely complex pattern. In the process, the mirror became a kind of art piece, then the subject of many photos and self-portraits in the Book of Blue photo series.

At first my models only posed in pristine mirrors. Eventually I discovered they were willing to be depicted in marked mirrors, or to hold them up to the world for me. What I thought would repulse them became a place a number of them have been willing to look for and see themselves.

Most of the time it was the place I would look for and see myself, though often uncomfortably at first. But I could (and can) always work myself into a frenzy. Sometimes I would spill myself onto the mirror and take it back right away, dreaming into the residue of earlier orgasms that were melting into my fresh spill, traces of which would reenter my body. This would leave a layer upon the prior residue that I had left behind, since a little always remains.

Other times I would be repelled by the thought of my semen once I released it. I learned to leave it for another time, to receive while my libido was building rather than after it had dropped from the experience of ejaculation. You may know men who go through this curious experience of self-rejection after they cum. This is why receiving their semen into your body is such a loving gesture. Despite craving it, it is often challenging to do for myself, for this reason.

Along the way, spilling on this particular mirror (and a few others) many times, it occurred to me that what went onto the mirror (this one, or any one I used) would all go back into my body. I would never wash the mirrors, I would only lick them clean. I made this commitment to myself. It felt loving and like I could heal a deep inner split with the gesture. I would receive myself whether it was new warm seed or if it had been deposited hours, weeks or months earlier, or perhaps having spilled out of a condom. (That was true of the oldest, by then yellowed, crystallized mess that was on the mirror when I began.) I kind of made a masturbation rule that when I was alone, the mirror would be my place of surrender, and that all that ever make its mark there I would eventually lick it back down to glass.

This began my rhythm, a cycle. It began with a ritual of working myself up to a sufficient level of desire and erotic heat that I craved my own semen, and my tongue wanted to melt back some of that old ejaculate. Then journeying on that feeling, I would dive into ever deeper places in myself: places of admitting my erotic needs, including for men. I could talk to myself about this odd little ritual I was doing; there are moments where I face my death. After a while I decided that when I licked the mirror, I would always do so naked. The mirror became a place where I could admit anything to myself: any desire, fear, need or fact of my life.

It came to represent the place of abject honesty with myself, pushed by or drawn from my core by the imminence of orgasm. [One day I wondered what each of those markers of emotional surrender was letting go to; and I remembered that each time I let go here, it’s moaning into mirror celibacy…over and over…that emotion is what my mirrors are coated with. - 2025]

On many occasions, alone or with different witnesses, I licked the dry semen off of my mirror, stretching the thread between humiliation and humility. Many of my closest friends have seen me do this, women whose primary erotic role in my life is to support and embrace my masturbation and process of self-acceptance.

On one occasion, a kind of prayer came to me: I’ve made a mess and I’m going to clean it up. (Ejaculation often does feel like making a mess, particularly if it’s followed by guilt or shame; and for me it often was.) This became a kind of mantra for my journey, and an invocation of my erotic healing. At other times I saw the patterns not as a mess but rather as an image of my karma and the marks I have made on the world, at some moments witnessing what I had done as beautiful, and at others feeling a need to leave as clear of a mirror as possible. Other times I would slip into an overwhelming sense of how erotic this smeared, spattered mirror I was looking into really was, and invite, allow or encourage myself to meet it with my mouth. Invariably I would spill myself there again. It began to feel like the never-ending cycle of karma.

Occasionally I would explore to a depth that is transcendent as deep cunnilingus or fellatio. I would endeavor to lick back significant portions of the residue of my life that lay on the surface, which is slow, patient going; making eye contact with myself as much as possible. I chose to work on the oldest stuff, because sooner or later it would be coming back in, so I may as well do it right then. From experience alone and with witnesses present, I learned that the older the semen, the more erotic the experience of licking it off. It became a symbol of accepting my past, and being willing to accept myself no matter what. And, the older, the more embarrassing to think what I was doing.

I have learned to be present for and live with that embarrassment, even appreciating it as a gift; until gradually it becomes transparent and I am free to experience what I am doing without judgment. At other times I tune into my feelings and imagination and recognize that I am taking up a sampling of a wide diversity of my orgasms spread over many months, and be reminded of the many times I had knelt over the space and let go.

The mirror and its pattern represent a journey into self, and this often pushed deeper by loss or separation; by unfulfilled desire; by surrendering to and ultimately celebrating the unavailability of someone I want to be with. Each of those marks has a story, its feelings, its fantasies, and its intricate passion. Many of them are the story of taking my one opportunity to go beyond a feeling of loss to a space where I am the one who must fill my own need and consciously feed myself fulfillment, love and the water of life.

On a visual note, the irregular rings on the left on glass in some images are the result of leaving an ejaculation on the mirror overnight, then licking it wet in the morning. What look like brush strokes are really tongue marks that were laid down in fresh semen.

Thank you to all who have held the mirror for me. With some of your help and a lot of mine, I have learned to make love to myself, to love myself.

(July 15, 2008 (rev. July 30, 2008)

Self-Penetration and Sustained Orgasm

Another facet of inner space is self-penetration. This has not occurred to all men, but it’s surely occurred to a good few, who have nothing to do with gay. Many ‘straight’ men take deep pleasure in it, whether solo or playing some form of bend over boyfriend. This is one of a few cool things about how sex has evolved the past fifty years: people now know about this, it’s acceptable to a great many and — many women are into it.

It takes practice to learn how to be penetrated, whoever is doing it. Possibly the single biggest gap the sex gap is that women experience sex inside their bodies, while men generally use an appendage that is somewhat external to their body-core. The penis actually extends deep into the body, but most men don’t experience it that way. Yet once interior space is opened up, so too is a new world of intimacy and pleasure.

I can break down learning into a few steps, to which you can add ‘practice’ every time.

1. be ready and willing — and freshly showered, moving your bowels so you don’t have ‘a bullet in the chamber’ as anal sex pros say. however, it’s important to remember that with anal play, a little scat is inevitable

2. start small — with a buttplug and not a dildo. use products that are either stainless steel, silicone or tempered glass (which I prefer to avoid). do not use ordinary vinyl, which has a funny smell and emits toxic chemicals. silcone is perfect, and this line of anal toys is A++. or you want something like this. buy from a reputable seller! both of these are. the toys may be expensive but they last forever.

3. you cannot use too much lube, and I don’t recommend chemical blends but rather organic coconut oil assuming you’re not allergic to coconut. i realize that various sources say not to use coconut with silicone — that it degrades the silicone, etc. i have not found this to be true, and ‘water based’ lubricants have a lot of chemicals I don’t want in my body.

4. go slowly; a lot of finger massage of the anus and buttocks helps

5. relax and breathe and take the penetration very slowly — as you continue to relax and breathe

6. if you’re with a female partner, the chances are she’s done this, so let her guide you

7. use even more lube

8. take your time, share your feelings, relax and keep breathing.

I think you probably have the idea. You will, if you go slowly, and are thoughtful, and feel, notice that you have a whole new world of interior sensation. It may be centered around your prostate, which is a little like a male G-spot. The prostate is the gland that secretes much of what is in semen (there are others) and is what pulses when you ejaculate. So there is a lot of sensation there.

Then you get to explore the exerences of orgasm and ejaculation when you’re penetrated. Ejaculating penetrated and not penetrated are two different things, and if you get some experience you will map out the differences. There is one main difference, is that when you are penetrated, your core is filled and your body has something to hold onto when you let go. You will be able to feel how deep inside you orgasm reaches.

It is possible to orgasm and ejaculate just from penetration. But you have to be really relaxed and open in a way that you love when women are. That does not need to be a goal; I suggest what you may be looking for is a feeling of deep release and vulnerability. With practice, you can experience these things.

In whatever space you’re experimenting, keep a mirror or two nearby — such as hand-held and one on the wall, reaching down to the floor.

The Connection — To Myself

I have found that orgasming while penetrated sustains the experience and if I am filled, I’m less likely to experience libido drop or self-shunning — especially if I have company.

With my inner space stretched a little, my orgasm is amplified as I feel rooted to the earth and aware of my inner space. And in that space, I am ready and more willing to receive. Penetration — especially sitting or kneeing up solidly on it — is stabilizing and feels VERY good. The experience of orgasm and ejaculation are different, focused and intensified with a profound feeling of vulnerability.

I have found that sharing this in the presence of another person is an expression of intimacy beyond my imagination, which starts as self-intimacy and ripples out into the world around me.

Modeling the Suspension of Self Judgment

In tantric practice, the women are held to be the teachers. Teaching happens not by words but by example, and the example of the thresholder is self-acceptance.

Implied here is the thresholder modeling the suspension of judgment of oneself and others. With this presence, the beholder might slip into the space of self-awareness like it’s warm bath. Or they might feel a diversity of emotions, such as apprehension, shyness, embarrassment, shame or fear when facing themselves naked. The thresholder is present to make it easier; to remind them why they are doing what they are doing; and to provide a stabilizing and loving presence before, throughout and after the experience.

Their most important role is to guide the beholder back to the mirror and self eye contact. If the beholder wants to speak to the thresholder, they are guided to do this making eye contact with themselves; anything the beholder says is said to himself. This is an elementary way to call back in the projection of ‘the other’. When the thresholder speaks, their words are taken as a voice of the beholder.

The thresholder can provide the role of erotic inspiration, whether through encouragement, revealing themselves or serving as a screen for sexual fantasy (which is then guided back to the beholder, in the mirror). Sensaina roshutsu, or delicate reveal, is shown in the topmost photo. The thresholder experiences compersion for the beholder, and models the beholder’s compersion for himself.

To do this well, the thresholder must be extraordinarily comfortable with themselves. They must be soft and pliable within. Daily practice of Aikonomirā kōsan — eye-contact mirror orgasm — is essential. This is then practiced with others observing until it is wholly natural.

The vibration of the thresholder is all yin and deep trust. If someone is going to orgasm looking into their own eyes with you holding the mirror, they have to trust you deeply. Essential to that trust is your holding space for the full spectrum of emotions that the beholder may feel, no matter how negative or judgmental. The thresholder’s role is to help the beholder find a sense of their own completeness.

This calls for a form of devotion that is not usually part of sexual relationships in any conventional sense, particularly the full awareness accented by lack of attachment to the beholder, or the outcome of their experience. A thresholder must be good at honestly telling a person how beautiful they are, which means seeing and feeling that beauty. They may make direct or explicit statements to the beholder, called contact statements, under their own guidance or as requested by the beholder.

For example, as the beholder approaches Aikonomirā kōsan, the thresholder may ask: “Is there anything you want or need to say to yourself?”

Profound spaces of self-forgiveness can open up here. Thresholder as witness stabilizes the experience for the beholder, and is a reminder in the world that it actually happened.

A Strong and Gentle Spiritual Hand

The thresholder needs to have a strong and gentle spiritual hand to guide the beholder back to herself. They remind the beholder that any sexual desire experienced in the ritual is accepted as sexual desire for oneself. And they help the beholder (of either sex) state their desire to drink themselves, to get their amrita into their mouth, including potentially helping them collect it, and helping them past any shame or reluctance they may feel.

If the beholder is embarking on a path of mirror celibacy, the thresholder will be there to help them accept that truth and to explore its erotic beauty.

In these sessions, there is usually no sexual touching or penetration. There may be holding of hands or feet and perhaps light massage if there is a difficult emotion to work through. The thresholder may demonstrate Aikonomirā kōsan for the reflector. There are times when the thresholder will masturbate with the reflector, serving as a human mirror. This can be done with the participants facing one another, or facing into the mirror.

The thresholder gently guides everything into the mirror. In one poignant version, called Hitori de kyōyū suru, the thresholder goes to a certain point with the beholder, and then gently leaves them alone in the room with their reflection to experience their Aikonomirā kōsan. Given to the beholder as a gift, it’s an extraordinarily pleasurable and loving way to experience and heal ‘abandonment’.

In other experiences, Aikonomirā kōsan will be practiced with several people observing, including potentially ‘inappropriate’ ones. (This is an essential tantric factor.)

Shaping the Experience into a Private One

The ultimate art to the thresholder is shaping the beholder’s experience into a private one, over time. Toward the deeper phases, the thresholder will not look at the beholder’s face, directly or in the mirror, another gentle expression of Hitori de kyōyū suru, or self-tutoring. In truth, orgasm is always solitary.

Additional details about this ritual practice are written about elsewhere.

Where To From Here?

I’m not sure where to go from here, though sharing these thoughts with you seems to be a single step on what may be a new journey of a thousand miles.

Or perhaps in the words of A Course in Miracles, the journey is the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and who you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a place that has never changed.

I’m interested in connecting with people who resonate with these ideas and want to put them to use; who are ready to drop the masquerade of sexual relationships and co-create something friendly and trustworthy. So let’s get a conversation going.

As well, I have a trove of materials that can facilitate your exploration alone and with partners. I also do custom work in any medium, and am open to new photo sessions, especially with couples and men. If you’re interested, drop a note.

I’m available to present both talks and workshops (including podcast appearances). I’m experienced working with individuals, couples and small groups. This includes as an astrologer; astrology, while not necessary, can focus on these themes as part of a consulting process. The real knowledge and need for understanding come from you.

If you want to reach me, please write to me at efc@bookofblue.com. All inquiries are of course confidential. Ideally, we would speak in person.

With love,

Your faithful astrologer,

Comments to this article are off. Email responses are welcome.

I discuss the ideas in this article in the last segment of tonight’s Planet Waves FM.

Additional Reading

Letter of Recommendation from Lorraine Hutchins

Letter of Recommendation from Betty Dodson

From Self to Self: Masturbation as the Future of Sex from the Journal of Bisexuality, by Eric Francis, October 2008. Includes ideas for ritual play.

How To Be Your Own Lover by Eric Francis, c. 2005

Planet Waves Special Edition from November 2000

Wearing Buttons is Fun

To get some “I am my lover” and “Make selflove, not selfwar” buttons, send me a SASE adorned with two stamps at PO Box 3606, Kingston, NY 12402. (U.S. only.) Thank you…

All photos in this article are Copyright ©2005-2025 by Eric Francis and Book of Blue LLC, a Nevada company. They are eagerly awaiting a gallery exhibition. (845) 481-5616.

With love and gratitude to my eternal friend, mentor and astrology client, the artist Betty Ann Dodson of Wichita and Manhattan, il miglior fabbro (1929-2020).

Blue Studio is compliant with all CFR 2257 record keeping requirements.

© 2026 Copyright by Eric Francis. Published by Book of Blue LLC. · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice

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I met Nichelle on a Vancouver tantra harbor cruise. It was a magnifico summer night and we floated around on a party boat in the calm water for three hours as the Sun descended. Someone had brought a plate of cannabis brownies. We were all feeling the indica vibe deep in the Pacirica Northwest.

A mutual friend introduced Nichelle and me.

Besides swooning at her otherworldly beauty, I knew I had met someone I could open up to. I told her that, and she said come see her in her studio the next day. I found my way across town.

I walked in the outer door. A receptionist, also a stunner, with dark brown spiral braids on the sides of her head, and gazing brown eyes, sat at a kind of reception desk. She said go right in.

Nichelle was kneeling at the center of a large, sunny room that seemed circular.

I knelt down across from her. We sat in silence, left-eye gazing for a few moments, and when we recognized one another, she said: tell me.

So I told her, everything, as best I could, as she absorbed patiently. Then we sat in silence. She said, your path is called Hazukashi-sa no michi. It exists but it is rare and many tantrikas never meet one.

But that is you: Hazukashi-sa no michi. The way of embarrassment as self freedom.

There are many doors into ‘the space’, though some are concealed and narrow openings…or they are veiled…and yet everyone feels a little bit of this one. Everyone is called just a little though the rarity is the courage to respond.

The essence is: go toward embarrassment when you feel it. It seems like a bar — bar is is in the word. Yet it’s really a soft veil veil, inviting you in, and when you push aside the veil and go through, you will discover your bliss and have a new experience of liberation each time.

She suggested that I strip and face the mirror, really, a triptych of mirrors a few feet back from one of the walls. I walked up to the space and dropped my clothes and sat on the a little stool facing three of me.

She said, say the words to yourself: Hazukashi-sa no michi. Look at your eyes.

I said, Ha - zo- kashi - sa - no - michi.

And say it again. My penis was quickly becoming full with blood and heat, and then stood up craving touch. I did not.

Ha - zo- kashi - sa - no - michi.

Yes, the path of embarrassment. Embarrassment as liberation. An opening in the defenses of the ego, the lure of deep pleasure making it the more irresistible over time.

I was flushed with desire like I had never felt. My penis making me feel vary naked.

Nichelle picked up a little bell and rang it. Into the space, her assistant emerged silently, and looked right at me in the mirror. She studied me; I did not dare make eye contact with her in the reflection. I held my own gaze.

Nichelle said: Ha - zo- kashi - sa - no - michi.

Her assistant repeated the words, and added, definitely. Then Nichelle said, you may touch yourself and say to you what you said to me. In not so many words, I admitted my thirst and my need to surrender vagina.

I said, I am so thirsty. I surrender vagina. I licked my hand and pleasured myself.

Her assistant said, he is sweet.

Nichelle added: One thing that will help your entering the veiled space will be to hang a photo of your face at orgasm in part of your home where others may see it, such as in the bathroom. I said I would do that.

Then Nichelle said, that is good, we are now going to leave you to your private thirst and your freedom and your self-witness. The two barefooted women quietly walked out the door, closing it softly behind them, leaving me facing myself in three reflections.

It was the ‘before times’ — the time before society was irrevocably changed by the events of November 2000 and September 2001.

There, through a series of introductions, I met the tantrika Nichelle, who explained what in Japanese tantra is called Hazukashi-sa no michi, or the Way of Embarrassment.

There was a vibrant sex scene there, with poly meetings, parties, and tantric practitioners. There was also Wreck Beach, a clothing optional beach on the west side of the city, which was like stepping back into 1966. To get there you had to go down a flight of about 490 steps from the UBC campus, down a steep forest cliffside, to the water level. Then you were in another world, an isolated paradise of beautiful naked or mostly undressed people sunning themselves, selling little craft items like pipes and dream catchers, and at night, of fires and beach bands along the seven kilometer stretch of coastline.

I spent several nights there and the experiences were initiatory. Something new always happened. I discovered something about myself. Perhaps I will get to one of them later in this journal. Or maybe now is a good time, because I discovered something there that led to my first conversation with Nichelle.

I was at Wreck Beach one weekday afternoon in July 2000. Despite being midweek there were many people there, but it was a little quieter and felt more settled. Weekends had a restless quality. The women usually went fully naked, though some wore a thong bikini bottom, and the men usually wore shorts. I was laying on the beach naked, on a large pastel rainbow towel. A woman walked by several times, pullng a little cart, calling out, “Dream catchers! Mushroom cocolates!”

I thought this was hilariously brazen but — we were where we were. Finally, I waved her over. She walked the short distance, with her cart following behind her; it was a cooler. The dream catchers were hung on the long handle. She was a beauty, with a sweet face and brown hair framing large brown eyes, hair trailing down her plump little breaasts. Covering her pubic area was a string bikini with little flowers. The strings clung to her hips, tied at the side. I wanted to lean in and sniff her, but I restrained myself. Feeling blood rush to my loins, I looked up, still laying on my belly…

“Hi…what have you got?”

“Homemade mushroom chocolates. And I make these dream catchers.”

“Tell me about the chocolates.”

“One gram of mushrooms per six squares of chocolate, which is an ounce. $10 per ounce. The head is dreamy, not edgy. You’ll like them.”

“Okay…I’ll do one ounce.”

“It’s strong, don’t take it all. Ease in.”

“Okay, good idea.”

“And they come in waves. You’ll peak more than once.”

She opened the cooler and fog overflowed the sides — dry ice. She handed me a cold, foil-wrapped package. I rolled over and sat up to get money, not caring that my penis was becoming erect.

“What about the dream catchers?”

“They work, it’s weird. When I hand it to you, focus a desire. Dream catchers are $10.”

She handed it to me and all I could think about was her adorable pelvis. I reached into my bag and haded her $20 plus five for a tip.

“Thank you,” she said, and strolled off. “Mushroom chocolate! Dream catchers!”

I unrwapped the chocolate and did some math. One gram is 1,000 mg, so one square is about 175mg so two squares is…a little over 300 mg. I thought that was enough. I ate the chocolate and laid back down. And I drifted off to sleep in the late afternoon heat. The voices from the beach entered my misty dream. First, women’s laughter, which felt like pure sex trickling like streams of water through the cosmos. Then a man’s voice said something I could not make out. Then more laughter. Suddenly I was in a pool of my own desire. And I was thirsty. I was unsure where I was until I heard mushroom girl say, “Mushroom chocolates! Dream catchers!”

I knew I was on Wreck Beach. I was burning up and my cock was stiff. I sat up and pulled my towel around me. All over, the evening parties were starting, fires lighting up, men playing guitar and forming beach bands. By the water, a group if women started to wade in, wearing bikinis, their curvy hips silhouetted against the darkening sky. I was utterly desperate to smell cunt. To drink and swallow cunt. I focused my attention on one of the women and imagined smelling her and dipping my tongue deep into her. The mushrooms made this incredbly vivid, like the air between us was plasma. I could smell the ocean and it smelled like her pussy. I had the illusion that she could feel me doing this. Then she turned around and looked right at me.

My penis was stiff and I wanted to burst. This went on for a long time as different people seemed to float through my waking dream. In this dream, I had to live with my unbearable simmering horniness, unable to gratify myself. I was broadcasting my desperation across the landscape and out into the water. My mouth was parched. I didn’t want water, I wanted cunt.

Finally, it was fully dark and I decided to find a private place where I could relieve myself.

I wrapped up in my towel, leaving my bag where it was. Off to one side of the beach were some big rocks, which had alcoves. I felt like I was roamaing around on another planet. I said out loud, “You’re searching for a place to orgasm.” This seemed to strech time, as if it was taking forever, I needed the perfect spot.

Then I was near the boundary of the nude beach. I found a place to the back that seemed secluded and where there were no fires and no people, veiled in shadows. I sat down and dropped my towl and was naked.

I felt as if in my own private cosmos, surrounded by rocks and sitting on the hard packed sand. Voices and music floated in from the distance. As I melted into myself and admitted my feelings, I felt a new surge of the musrooms. My penis pointed toward the water. I moaned and touched myself. Then as I began to touch myself, two women were standing looking at me, about 10 feet away.

One of them said, “Eew! He’s jerking off!”

Her friend replied, “He just wants to feel good. You do it too.”

They stepped toward me. They were both wearing shorts and bikini tops. I knew I had a choice right then. I could cover myself in shame, or enter the pleasure of the moment and let myself go.

“So disgusting!”

“Hush! Go with it,” the other said to her friend.

Then to me: “You can do it.” This was like having hot water thrown on me and then suddenly melting. All at once all the desire I was holding in the whole afternoon pushed itself into my dreamspace, and I could barely believe what was happening was real. Then I was masturbating freely. I was looking right at them but could not make out their facial features.

Then out of my mouth, I heard the words, “I want…”

“What do you want?”

“I want my cum in my mouth.”

“Dis-gus-ting,” the mean one said.

“I’m thirsty….” I was crying. Pleading to the universe…knowing I was thirsty for cunt and at that moment could only have myself.

The friendly girl slipped out of her bikini top, leaving it clinging to her ribs, revealing the shape of her luxurious breasts. She unbuttoned her blue jean shorts. I think she knew this would set me free. I started making sounds, little grunts, and I was entering my orgasm. My voice echoed against the rock. Now I did not care who heard me.

I had the presence to put my free hand near the tip of my penis. She caressed her breasts and lightly pinched her nipples. I heard myself snorting and grunting as my body heaved and became a semen pump. I wanted to be seen and felt in this state…and I was.

I looked right at the silhouette of the disgusted girl, was drawing energy up from the Earth in the form of my hot living liquid. My hand filled up with semen. Then I was sitting there on the beach and in the dark with two women looking at me and the desire to drink myself fleeted away and suddenly I was embarrassed and disgusted.

“I can’t do it.”

“Do it now, right now.” Then the desire came back with fury. The sky behind the women lit up in an orange glow. I was licking my palm, desperately, filling my cunt-thirst and my self-cum thirst, showing them both, slobbering my hand and mouth and wet face.

“So disgusting.”

“So good,” her friend said, as she slipped back into her bathing suit top. Then they walked away like nothing had happened.

One of the issues with Miracle Manor was how sexually stilted the place was. It was not like there was any overt prohibition, just a lot of people in their heads who were not open to any sexual conversation (much less contact) and some who were hostile to it. This sometimes had a spiritual pretext; the New Age and all forms of Christianity have long made their living on denying sexual reality. The underlying assumption of sin is that it’s connected to guilt and therefore to paying for repentance.

Further, what was called ‘politics’, meaning the news in any form, was treated like it didn’t exist. While I lived at Miracle Manor, I was a news reporter and into sexual experimentation, so there was some tension. It was largely unspoken. I did my best to brush it off. Yet it’s not subtle being around people who suspect that sex is in some way unholy and best avoided.

As for the setting. Miracle Manor was a short-lived (two years in duration) residential community in central new Jesey for people studying A Course in Miracles. I was there the second year of its existence with my girlfriend Ginger, from August 1986 through August 1987, age 22 to 23. At the time, about 16 other adults lived with us.

Miracle Manor found its home on a 16-acre property along the Raritan River, in a building that was formerly a convent for itinerant nuns. The ground floor included a big multipurpose room with an institutional kitchen. This opened to a phenomenal yard that was bounded on one side by the river and another by a road.

The second and third floors were residential. The second floor also had an office, a lounge and a chapel along with some dorm rooms; the third floor was all dorms, about 16 singles.

There was also an apartment tucked into the building, inhabited by the community ogre, Rosalie; she held herself as Mother Superior. Being a formerly Catholic facility, there was a confessional. Behind the chapel was a vestry, the room where vestments and sacred objects were previously kept, and where the priest would hang out and prepare for mass. The place had not been owned by the Catholics since the late 1970s, when it had been deconsecrated.

Ginger and I had the last two rooms on one side at the end of the third floor. We must have held the world record for sex in the building. She was as sexy as all the other women combined, though a few of them were friendly and some had unusual spiritual gifts: channeling angels, communicating with plants, visiting the space brothers, and that kind of thing. Nearly everyone was a devoteé of the guru Hilda in Manhattan. In truth, there was not much happening with A Course in Miracles, though I worked through the whole program in self-study mode that year.

The men were an interesting lot, and among them was George. I guess he was about 35 at the time. He seemed a lot older than I was, and he was gay. He was the only gay person in the community that we knew of, and I don’t recall that he had a boyfriend who visited. The fact that he was open about his sexuality made more room for Ginger and me to be open in that environment.

In one late night conversation with George, I said I was bisexual but had never had sex with a man. When I went back to her room, I mentioned this to Ginger, who I knew had a fascination with male homosexuality. She suggested that some time I let something happen with George. That’s all you need to do — let it happen.

One Thursday night I didn’t have a late meeting to cover, and nearly everyone in the community was taking class with Hilda at St. John the Divine in the city. It was pretty much me, Ginger and George in the building. Ginger was absorbed in a work-related project. I tapped on George’s door. The door opened and he invited me in. We both knew where things were going. The room was dimly lit with a candle and a colored light bulb. We sat down on a carpet in the middle of the floor.

After a few moments of silence, he asked, “Would you like to play?”

I nodded yes.

“Would you like a hit of weed?” I nodded yes.

He packed a little glass one hitter and handed it to me with a lighter. I took a hit. Technically the place was no-smoking and “drug free” but nobody much was home and anyone who might care didn’t ever leave her apartment. With one drag I was suddenly very dreamy. I had tripped the day before in the city and that has a lingering affect for me; with just a little weed the whole world became morphy.

Ginger’s words floated back to me: let it happen.

By the time he slipped me out of my pants and undies at the same time, my penis was stiff and eager. I felt my teeshirt come off. George was not a big man but I felt small and feminine. I knew I had to do nothing, so I focused on breathing. My eyes were closed. I felt my balls pulled up and he licked underneath them, pushing my legs wide. His tongue painted me right where my vulva would be if I had one, in broad, delicate strokes. I could only moan and relax my legs and let them drop open wide. It was if I suddenly had a vagina and he was eating me out.

Then he sucked my penis into his mouth and took me all the way in and I was penetrating him. But that delight was short lived, giving way to something else.

He rolled me over onto my belly and pulled up my ass a little, spread my cheeks and began to swirl his tounge around. I had never been naked with a man before and now I was fully under his control. I could not have resisted if I wanted to, and I did not want to. He knew just what to do. I’ve had my ass licked out a lot. Ginger did it all the time but this was different, bold and direct adn his scratchy cheeks were different from those of a woman. And then…he fucked me deeply with his tongue and I felt his heat inside me. My whole consciousness was focused on what was happening and my breath. He clasped my hips with his hands, gripped me and took me. I grunted in the rhythm to his penetration.

Then my mind caught hold of what was happening to me. I was naked with a man, being deeply pleasured by him. I knew that some time soon I would orgasm with a man and there would be no going back.

I wanted him to strech me open and fuck me with his cock, but I could not say anything. He could have done anything to me and I would have loved it. All I could do was grunt and moan in acceptance of the gift he was giving me. All I could do was vocalize my acceptance of what was happening in that moment and not know what would happen next. I felt his tongue plunge deeper and deeper into me as I melted into myself and allowed and invited myself to be taken. His strong hands felt so good holding me.

Then he sat me up and leaned me against his bed. I looked around. The room was a sphere. I thought of Ginger down the hall, who must have figured out what was happening. Then I caught a little glipmse of my face and my naked body in the mirror hung on the back of the door. I felt like masturbating myself, so I did. He looked at my face and smiled and just said, yes.

Then suddenly my penis was in his throat again. His hands clasped my hips and he pulled me into himself and encoaurged me to rock and fuck his mouth. I looked up and was looking at my face in the mirror, which I could barely stand and barely recognize but I pushed myself to do it for a moment or two, and saw George, still dressed, taking my cock down his throat. I had never been sucked off like this before. Women were so gentle and delicate about it. This was neither.

Then I could feel that his full intention was to swallow my orgasm. I delighted in the truth that there was nothing I could do about this. I remembered something I had read about a lesbian initiatory experience: your body knows what to do. With that, one of his fingers slipped up my ass and my orgasm seized me as I both throbbed around his finger from my core, and pusled down his throat. He grunted as he swallowed and pulled me all the way into himself. My ejaculation must have been enormous because this sensation of being penetrated and spurting into him and his swallowing seemed to last forever.

Then I seemed to black out. I could feel him lift me onto his bed as I lay in half-dream, drifting in the pleasure of my surrender, half-in, half out of consciousness, laying on my belly. I felt his tongue plunge into me again. Then he rolled me over and sucked me off and I thundered and cried out in surrender and he swallowed me…again...letting me feel his thirst for semen…for my semen.

Then I drifted off to sleep and at some point awakened. He was sitting calmly on the floor, smiling.

“I think Ginger is waiting for you,” he said.

“I think you may be right.”

I sat up and he handed me my clothing in a little folded bundle.

I needed to walk through the corridor naked, wishing to be seen in this state. But nobody did. I entered Ginger’s room, where I usually slept, slipped into bed and found her naked. My mouth went directly to her vulva and I licked her pussy and her ass and swallowed her through several orgasms. Then with both of us in half-dream, I told her about what happened with George. Deep in the night with that truth open between us, she sucked me herself and swallowed me gently like she had so many times.

Tracy and I were in the basement room of my mom’s house on E. 34th St. in Brooklyn. Tracy’s mom Alana had come over with she and her two little sisters, Gaia and Ava. My mom and little brother Marcus had gone out with them to a flea market. They said they were also going out for lunch and would be out for about three or four hours.

Being the older kids, Tracy and I were allowed to opt out, and Marcus was happy to get the two girls to himself. I suspect there was also a plan to let Tracy and I have a chance to be alone. She was more than a year older than me, which is a lot when you’re 15; she was a mature 16, she was very beautiful, and the notion of even kissing her was beyond the range of what I imagined possible. She was an active subject of my masturbation fantasy life.

The basement was finished with knotted pine wood paneling and a Formica bar where I had my stereo. Over the couch — the ancient thing that I had lived with from age one — was a huge promotional poster for the movie Manhattan given to me by a girl in my school whose father worked for a public relations firm.

Tracy and I sat facing one another on the couch, sitting Indian style. We also knew one another from summer camp the past couple of years, a place called Camp Indian River in Pennsylvania, where our moms stashed us for a month or six weeks. All the boys were gaga for her.

Today she was wearing a yellow miniskirt and a tank top with no bra. She had breasts, very nice breasts, and I could see their outline and the shape of her nipples.

“There’s something you’re not saying,” she said. “Usually you talk a lot.”

“It’s true,” I said.

“You know you can say anything to me, right?”

I knew that was an invitation. I was quiet for a moment. I wanted to tell her. I looked at her face and her eyes. She seemed patient, with a look of anticipation.

“It’s about a dream.”

“Okay.”

Still, I was quiet. “Is it embarrassing?”

“A little.”

“I understand.”

“I dreamed it again this morning. It happens a lot.”

“That kind of dream?”

“Mm hmm.”

She said nothing. I continued. “I dreamed that I was sucking myself.”

“I see,” she said, and paused. “Do you want to say more?”

My penis was getting stiff, and pressing up against the thin cotton of my shorts. She pretended not to notice.

“It seems impossible. I’m leaning over myself, and I want my penis in my mouth, and think it can’t happen. I know I can’t reach. But this voice in my mind says just relax and trust. And then suddenly I’m sucking myself. And then it happens.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I fuck all the way into my mouth and into my throat, and then I’m cumming and swallowing over and over. In real life I orgasm and spurt semen all over my belly.”

“A wet dream,” she said. “A special kind.”

My penis was fully erect; there was no way she could not see this.

I asked her: “Have you ever done it?”

“To a boy? Sucked and swallowed a boy?”

I could not believe we were having this conversation, but we were.

“Yes, that.”

“Just between us?” she asked.

“Mm hmm. Of course.”

“Three times, this past summer. During evening activity when everyone was busy playing Capture the Flag in the upper field, I slipped off with Flash. We went back to the woods behind the mud pond and…”

She paused. Everyone knew Flash. He was the only black kid in the camp, after his brother Sam was too old and graduated.

“…and I told him to undress. I really wanted to do it. I lifted my shirt up and showed him my breasts. Then I sucked him until he ejaculated and I swallowed him.”

My heart was thumping and I had a lump in my throat.

“Did you like it?”

“I kept doing it, silly. Of course I liked it. I told him that I really wanted to do it and he invited me. The third time I wanted to be naked. That felt so good, outside, in the woods. That time we did it twice.”

I had no idea what to say or think.

“Is there anything else?”

“I want to do it in real life but I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I just lose the desire. After I cum. But I still want to. It keeps happening.”

“I see,” she said. “Would you like to try?”

“Right here?” I asked.

“Mm hmm. You can. I’ll keep you company.”

“Really?”

“You should start by undressing.”

I slipped out of my shorts and undies and my teeshirt, dropping them to the floor.

“You’ll feel better if your feet are naked too.”

I pulled off my socks, and sat in front of her, exposing my skinny little body with my penis extended outward and my breath heaving. She was so calm, mature and womanly.

“Turn so your back can relax against the couch,” she said. “Let’s talk about what you want to do. Tell me again. Don’t touch yourself yet.”

My mind and feelings were a swirling funnel of water.

I looked right into her sweet face. “I want to masturbate and drink myself.”

“Like you do in your dreams.”

“Yes, like I do in my dreams.”

She then got up from the couch and sat on the coffee table, facing me directly, her legs open. I could see her bright green undies. Her nipples were very erect, pressing into the teeshirt material.

“You have a nice penis,” she said. “Give me your hand.” She leaned in and licked my palm, leaving a thick coating of her saliva. “Show me how you masturbate yourself. Slowly. And think about how much you want to drink yourself.”

I wrapped my hand around my penis, slick with her spit. She seemed to study me with intense curiosity. She was sweating. I could see her face was glossed and I could smell her delightfully.

“It’s OK. I drink semen too,” she said. “And you can drink yourself.”

With this, she cupped my balls, and placed her other hand near the tip of my penis. We kept eye contact. She was, this was all, so unbearably beautiful.

“When the time comes, just relax and let it happen, OK? I’ve got you.”

Then with her fingers, she tickled back behind my cupped balls as she looked right into me. All at once my body spasmed. It was like a sudden shock went through me, a jolt of total bliss and surrender like I’d never felt, as the room went black. I was throbbing and I heard my voice cry out my pleasure.

“Good boy. Good. Open your mouth.”

I did. My eyes were closed, but I pushed them open in time to see her hand rise to my lips as her eyes penetrated me. She poured my semen from her palm into my mouth. There was so much. “Don’t swallow, just feel,” she said. “Easy, easy, just feel.”

As I heaved and throbbed and breathed, she wiped her hand on my face, then leaned in and held me. “Hold it, don’t swallow.” I did as she said. Then she leaned back.

“Show me.”

I opened my flooded mouth.

“Very nice.” Then she hugged me again, and held me, and said, “Okay swallow,” and I did, I gulped myself down as she squeezed me.

Again she leaned back and studied me, naked and sweaty and bedraggled and my hair matted and my face cool and sticky with evaporating cum.

Then she dropped her green panties to the floor, nearly tore off her tank top and hiked up her skirt right in front of me, revealing her vagina and a little tuft of pubic hair. She pulled open her lips with the fingers of one hand, slipped a finger in, and masturbated with the other. Her breasts were covered with sweat and her nipples seemed to reach out into the room. In a moment she was grunting and her pretty face melted into a very strange expression and then in a low voice, she groaned shamelessly.

Then she breathed deeply a few times and did it again, showing me, masturbating hard and fast with no tease whatsoever, and moaned in little bursts until she came staring into my eyes and my wet face. The room was thick with her scent. Her hands were soaked. I licked my lips. She held her hand out to my mouth and I leaned up and licked her fingers, tasting a woman for the first time, sniffing her deeply.

Then she hugged me again and whispered into my ears, “That was so beautiful. Now maybe it will be easier to drink yourself when you’re alone.”

She was right…

After a while, we dressed. “Let’s go outside,” she suggested. We went outside holding hands. I took her to the water across from Marine Park, where no one ever went. Then we walked once around the bicycle path.

When we came home, our moms and younger siblings were there and dinner was underway. Tracy and I set the table, acting as if nothing had happened. I don’t know if anyone could tell, but I didn’t care.

I am aware of the inherent contradiction between deep self exploration into some solitary place, with the concurrent desire for witness and companionship. My need for attention directed at my selfloving. It’s not just me! I love to do this for people and it’s so so good. I’m so curious about you and you and your mirror. I offer you your mirror masturbation, i do, i do

anyway…this, the above, so self intimate…summoning attention for the ecstasy of being known and understood…

nyjacks originated in the ‘safe sex’ era of the early 1990s, an all male scene where mutual handjobs were defined as masturbation. i attended as myself, mcelfcum wanting to feel surrounded by male release. and maybe be noticed. m’be felt. scene was ~150 men in what looked like an empty office space midtown manhattan…hideous strip lights…scattered shabby furniture, and a wide, tall wall mirror blocked by a huge rolling coat rack. somehow despite the mob i had a little couch to myself, covered by my towel, legs akimbo, my leather bag next to me. as everyone around me socialized, amidst the low din of voices i quietly fucked my ass - eye gazing me in a little handheld spattered and smeared one…my rule is, i watch my face and eyes in my moment of selfpenetra. often through a film of foggy cum. sat back straight deep up gazing around the room. and then i notice the black frame mirror. suddenly i experience its daring allure, a pool waiting to be dovinto. i know i need to do this and dare myself. with no way around my embarrassment, i go in. to be seen there…I stood, holding the dildo in my ass, took my towel and lube and,,,waddled across the floor and…spread a picnic blanket betweeen coat rack and mirror. then above the hum of blended speech i heard a man moan out a little. in tasting the pleasure of hearing, my voice let out a soft cry, which he heard and replied…in the anonymous space behind me. in the black frame i saw myself knees wide with one cock plunged deep into me and another taut and protruding toward the wall mirror…another moan. now i am sincerely masturbating myself, and cry back. the room has dropped to hush, hearing us communicate and cycle our pleasure. then i could not help but vocalize the truth of mirror masturbating into my eyes, i said out to me, you’re a mirror masturbator, we were soaring on our voices and pulses of giving…crying out…i am ejaculating into my palm…my palm is full…then i could see in mirrefiction that i was gathered around and with seeing eyes who had just witnessed my crying out climax and plunged my tongue into my right palm slurping and grunting still in the ripples and tides of my orgasm as they watched.

i leaned toward the mirror and opened my full mouth for as long as i could stand it and swallowed heaving and free.

step by step…speaking with selected peole, and asking them to sit with me in the mirror and kinda help me do it. Jenny Singer and her seashell! in my miani hotel,,,

Here, tonight @ paris…I’m alone, and that’s the experiment: can i lick alone? did i do it? I don’t remember! Ooh that’s happened before. There is no picture…of my wet mouth that is, it does not mean i didnt. i can complete the scenario either way. i drank a lot of my cum in that studio, alone & with pretty pretty pretty…

Mmmmm, though…the idea of this photo is simply, ‘i’ve ejaculated into my palm’. that’s the only way to see it. my penis is hard and twitching too sensitive to touch.

so much right in that. and then…implied is the question: can I lick? eew what have i done? do i love myself right now? if you did, you’d do it…i love the relaxation on my face…my barely open eyes…

Debra Sho, the sexologist making the rounds, was describing the change in hormones instantly after a man ejaculates. It’s a whole emotional drop, it’s so intense…her phrase was 100%…plunge to nothing in libido…and it can turn deep self lust into self disgust. so the thing is…the moment i have fresh semen the disgust sets in. the desire sprays off and its memory feels really weird

can you imagine the delicate agony,,,the cumulus frustration? in paris was born the cumirror. the game being this: if I am in a thirst frenzy and orgasm to either drinking myself or surrender to mirror celibacy, i cry out and spurt and i cannot lick. so first i stop the guilt about that and reticence disgustish i just stop and i know i’ll take myself back some other time when i’m hot and horny.

in the photo below, the diagonal swoosh is a tongue streak in fresh cum, and which then dried that way. the little sperm cell or fetus on the left is residue from a long prior release; those are scattered everywhere. that’s the delicate mess…my delicate mess…

the gorgiousness of this photo to me is connecting with the deep moment of self acceptance when i licked like that. mm hmmm.

then somehow the cum mirror becomes the expression of surrendering yoni…

the symbol, upon which i drag my tongue when i’m thirsty. its gradual transformation to yoni, my female expression, seen and experienced in the smeared reflection. there’s a lot here and we’ve explored my reflection in every light.

the image below is a kind of easing in. the woman is iris, the celibacy goddessgazing into the mirror, her hands concealing the view of her vulva: she never showed me, allowed me to see. and if she’s looking at herself, i can show you my delicate face with my cummy mess in my palm, teetering on the edge of licking…

…that’s the look. my gorgeous moment of uncertainty. insecurity, self-infidelity,,,and over time - alone, with mirror, with women and with men - i’ve learned to discovered how to…get my cum in my mouth because i want me, if i have to propel myself by the sensation of revealing to [he/she/they/you]…

…and also when im selfucked that suspends the tension of orgasm and i discovered teases out my thirst…sitting on it, seated, facing a large mirror, and right there ive delivered and offered myself to my thirst. are you following me…my quest to fulfill myself. my whole self embodiment of submission to who and what i am. right there i pause and explore delicious degretation decay of my maleness to another form…

i love and long for cunt. thirst for yoni water and soaking in her scent.

it helps to say that to you who know and accept me for that.

so so sweetly natural for me, to be at home, to smell her deeply, delight in her scent for our mutual delight but mostly for mine. i think i could survive mirror celibacy on scent of the yoni alone; that would be within my understanding.

the Thresholder said, you may, if it’s easier for you.

oh delight. o pretty pretty pretty

i mean…oh my dear. so lovely so cosmic…

and what rachel said, i’m back in this conversation because you’re a mirror celibate self semen drinker. celibate with yourself, your cum and your reflection in your cum, iam. fantasies of sluping her or bukakke with them are just that.

her idea of being fucked is the massage therapist comes over and stretches and relaxes her whole body. he lubes her ass, massages her asshole and cute little butt, stretches her, and then fucks her and ejaculates into her becaause this is what she wants.

&her idea of being fucked is to spread her legs laying on her back and masturbate in front of him at her pleasure. when she is ready to orgasm, just as she’s cumming, he (a man with a large penis, always african) plunges bare into her orgasming vagina & fucks her, pounds her, until he comes. at the depth of her naked vulnerability experience his orgram from right there.

&she wants her mouth fucked, it’s her other cunt, she wants to be deeply taken and gagging out of control as he cums into her as she swallows without even tasting him because she’s allowed him to fuck her throat.

&she braids her long dark hair against the sides of her head when visiting her lover because she knows he will find her irresistable. he is invited to undress her and have her any way he chooses.

&she goes out to a bar and spots a man she knows will violate her and is strong enough to subdue her and sets up a situation where he thinks he’s raping her but what she wants is to be taken by force.

&she wants her asshole licked deeply whilst she masturbates herself and cums with his tongue swirling inside her, squeezing him as she throbs

&she fucks a man and goes out again and meets someone else and invites him to unknowingly fuck her pussy already wet of her previous lover’s semen

&she &her female lover take turns fisting one another

&she loves her twat and waddle sucked long and slow

&she

&she

after photographing them play three hours, small midsummer festival, six apex goddesses, telepathically sniffing cunts in every image and every moment with them, song after song, pheromones spraying in the august moisture

estrogen surfing rocknroll

after all the gear was loaded out…i was the last to leave, since I was staying on-premises & drove to my room, in a little plywood motel-style building off to the edge of the resort…one other room was occupied just upstairs

i got really high, and masturbated good

my room had a walkin closet with some shelves and large mirror. i pulled in a stool, turned on my soflite and that’s where i did it…i brought in my fuctoys cumirors coconut and cunthirsty craving. full eye contact for whole moments at a time in delicate drawnout fullup selfuc still drenched in yinshakti yonirock groovy basdrum

now withself within this compact space, within this little closed door, smokfilled guitarspace vibrating the building out loud i confessed my need to sip snatch and slipped into out loud cuntthirst and surrendered to my selfcumthirst and mirorlict…said the words out loud wanting to be heard…fucked and thanks for ur' drycym.

i have discovered the profound pleasure of calling out myself musical fullthroated with details…

when i sing out to myself truly im’selflov, say it to nobody but me

hearing selvoice watching selfeyes onto spattered cumiror again to selfcel and then in the half second before my soulbody freely heaves and spurts, I say out loud ‘accept that you thirst for the semen of other men’

i see and hear myself say that where my truth is unmissable and I have little choice but to love accept relax forgiv…

and then imbibe

my mouth and make a point of

swallowing.

no denial possible.

night of wispy sleep welcome breeze

at the same early hour, sun just arising, leaving to go, we had synched into the morning silence, two women in Les Petites, from the other room…we paused in the dim cool air and gazed she and she tomyeyes…i want to knofeel ever delightful truth of understanding…

my female gaze…