Read The Best You'll Ever Have Online
Authors: Shannon Mullen,Valerie Frankel
Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Sexuality, #Fiction
P-Spotting
Chapter 5
Even if you’d never found your G-spot, you
must have at least heard of it before reading this book. The P-spot, on the other hand, is a new one for most women. What is the P-spot? How do you get there? Is it like the G-spot, only farther down the alphabet? First and foremost, understand this: no matter how far you delve into yourself—spiritually, intellectually, physically—you won’t find it. It’s not possible. But why, you ask? The P-spot is not located in you.
It is found, exclusively, in men.
What Is It?
The “P” stands for prostate gland. In Salons, I’ve seen more than a few women look very tense, afraid, and nervous when I bring up the prostate, or P-spot. Maybe they think I’m rehashing the bit about the sensation of having to pee during intercourse (“pee,” “P,” the spoken word can be so confusing). Or maybe they’d only heard “prostate” connected with another word—“cancer.” Hence the wincing. And then, as if the association with peeing and cancer isn’t cringe-worthy enough, most women do have a vague sense that one accesses the prostate by putting a finger up a man’s rectum, as if they’ll need a proctology degree to find it. Barring that, they’d have to go exploring without credentials, a lab coat, protective headgear, or a sterile surgical environment.
What we do in the name of pleasure, I’m telling you.
The truth is, regardless of where it is, the prostate (otherwise known as the male G-spot) is an extremely sensitive heat-trigger for men, most of whom don’t even know that their seminal fluid–producing gland is an explosive erogenous zone.
Gland to Meet You
Why is the prostate gland a well-kept secret of lust life? Of course, our culture is anally retentive. Americans are, as a people, very mum about the bum. The ass is the final frontier for sexual adventure and a no-man’s land for casual conversation. Until age 10, fart and poop jokes are socially acceptable and for the most part, that’s the extent of talk when it comes to the tush. The very idea of talking about the tush is unappealing isn’t it? The thought of tush talk raises fears that something gross is about to be said.
Clearly the reticence we have about our nether regions includes the butt. In the next chapter of this book, I’ll take on that subject in detail. For now, suffice it to say that since the prostate is in the butt region, it is clouded in mystery, cloaked in the hush of tush.
Despite the under-the-radar PR on the P-spot, the prostate is a well-documented joy button throughout history. According to Stefan Bechtel et al., authors of
Sex: A Man’s Guide,
World War II American military medics would give prostate massages to service men who hadn’t been with women in months to release “pelvic congestion,” an apparent euphemism for “unbearable horniness.” At the turn of the century, women were urged to buy prostate massagers (small steel rods) to service their husbands during intercourse. Thanks to the dozens of books on Taoism and Tantra I’ve read, I can trace prostate play back to the ninth century.
Whoever said “There is nothing new under the sun,” was right. But rediscovery can be the mother of invention. Just because men have always had prostates (just as women have always had clitorises), doesn’t mean that we should stop searching for innovative ways to capitalize on their God-given pleasure production.
Prostate Overview
The prostate is the key to male ejaculation.
The nerves that surround the prostate are essential
for male erection.
Massage the prostate and even jaded men will be
blown away.
As you see in the illustration below, the prostate is a walnut-sized nugget of gland and muscle that is surrounded by nerves and erectile tissue. The bladder is right above it, and the pubococcygeus (PC) muscle floor is below; the prostate is behind the pubic bone (just a little further back than the G-spot is in women) and just in front of the rectum. It’s at the center—the epicenter—of a man’s internal sexual organs. Sperm travels from the testicles through the vas deferens tubes to the seminal vesicles, where 50 percent of the ejaculatory fluid is produced before moving through the prostate. A micro-factory, the prostate produces an enzyme-rich milky substance that completes the semen, and then, thanks to its muscle, contractions release the finished product. Otherwise known as ejaculation or, the technical phrase, spurting love juice.
Without the contribution of the prostate (the milky enzyme-laden fluid), the sperm from the testicles would be clueless about locating eggs. One prostate-producing enzyme, PSAP, helps the semen clot so that it can stay where it’s deposited, deep in the vagina near the cervix. Once the clotted semen is in place, the other prostate-produced enzyme, PSA, kicks in to dissolve the surrounding fluid, setting the sperm free to plunder the cervix. In addition to these clotting and dissolving enzymes, the prostatic fluid contains essential minerals, including calcium and zinc (the jury is still out on their exact role).
The two nerves that surround the prostate are the last link in the chain reaction of messages from the brain to the spine to the erectile tissue in the penis that needs to “get hard” at the same time it needs blood to flow into the erectile tissue to make it happen. If anything happens to those nerves, brain to penis communication is in jeopardy as is the necessary blood flow for erection. The chance of harming those two essential nerves during prostate surgery is historically very high. Which is why, when oncologists talk about removing a cancerous prostate, men beg for other options. Actually, they needn’t worry as much as in the past. A new surgical technique has been developed in the past ten years whereby surgeons can remove the cancerous organ and still preserve the nerves around it. While we’re on the subject, prostate cancer stats are similar to those of breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one in six men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetimes (one in eight women get breast cancer). Prostate cancer, like breast cancer, is not contagious. You can’t catch cancer from a prostate, whether healthy or unhealthy. Touching it does not put your partner at increased risk of prostate cancer, just as his touching your breasts is not a carcinogenic activity. Okay? Okay.
Now that I’ve dispatched with those concerns, let’s move along to other worries, like, how do you get to the prostate and those sensitive, fabulous nerves, and once you’re there, what do you do?
The P/G Connection
The P-spot and the G-spot have a lot in common. I’ll start at the beginnings, the very origins of humanity. Remember way back when you were an embryo? You don’t? Well, while you were otherwise occupied, sucking down amniotic fluid and splitting cell nuclei, your reproductive organs were taking shape. All embryos start out female, with the same basic infrastructure, nerves, and tissue types. They all look exactly the same. Embryos with a Y chromosome then morph into the sex organs you can plainly see on the guy next to you in bed at night. It may sound like late night on the Sci-Fi channel, but it happens every day in pregnant women all over the world. The clitoris becomes the penis. The ovaries become the testicles.