The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (23 page)

Finish the harness by tying off the ends right there or by bringing both tail pieces back around to the back of the body and tying them to each other .

When you’re done, you can untie the rope harness. Because it has touched genitals and possibly bodily fluids, you should clean the rope after
use; you can put it in a lingerie bag in the washing machine on the gentle cycle with a mild detergent and some bleach (color-safe bleach if the rope isn’t white). Dry it on a line in long loops.

You can purchase a leather butt plug harness at specialty leather and sex toy shops and websites (see illustrations 19 and 20). It looks very similar to a dildo harness and has a strap that runs between the buttcheeks; some designs have a piece attached to the strap that holds the base of the butt plug. Because they were designed to keep a butt plug in place, these harnesses are perfect for the job. They come in a variety of styles, and the two most popular are the plain front (ideal if the plug wearer has a pussy) or the cock ring style (for those with a cock, of course). Most come with adjustable buckles. A butt plug harness is the easiest of all harnesses to put on and take off by yourself since you don’t need any assistance. There is also a locking style, where each buckle has a small metal ring for a small lock.

So exactly how long is it safe to leave a butt plug in your ass? The literal answer is that you can leave a butt plug in for the amount of time from one bowel movement to another. This can be several hours, half a day, twenty-four hours, or more, depending on the person, so taking the question literally is not necessarily practical.

As I said before, you should work your way up to longer time increments. If you get experienced wearing butt plugs for longer periods of time, you can probably safely wear one for about six hours. Make sure to relube it periodically, and if you feel any discomfort, take it out. If your goal is to warm up your ass for something sizable there is such a thing as wearing a plug for too long. If you keep it in for several hours, when it comes out, your ass may have had enough stimulation and penetration, and the evening is over.

 

NOTE

1
For other genital rope harnesses (as well as great information on bondage), see
The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage
by Midori (Oakland, CA: Greenery Press, 2001), 131-134, and Jay Wiseman’s
Erotic Bondage Handbook
(Oakland, CA: Greenery Press, 2000), 227-236.

Anal fisting, also known as handballing, is the gradual process of fitting an entire hand in the ass. The term itself can be misleading—you don’t just make a fist and stick it in someone’s butt. In fact, there may not be a fist at all: depending on your hand position, your fingers could be straight out or overlapped, but not curled down at all. People who like a feeling of fullness and pressure in their tushes and like to play with big toys may also dig being fisted. Fisting takes a
large
amount of everything that anal sex requires: desire, patience, relaxation, communication, trust, and, of course, lube. Fisting requires time, practice, and experience, and should not be attempted until after you have mastered the basics of anal penetration. When done safely and properly, fisting can be an incredibly intense, pleasurable experience for both partners.

It is believed that people have engaged in fisting for decades before the sexual revolution, but the recorded history of it in Western culture dates to the late sixties. In the late 1960s and 1970s, gay and bisexual men popularized the practice of anal fisting, especially in bathhouses and sex parties in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Because
these particular communities were doing it, teaching it, and writing about it, fisting became associated with gay men, especially leathermen, or those who practice BDSM. Anal fisting was represented in the infamous S/M hanky code by a red hanky (worn on the left by fisters, on the right by fistees), making it easier for fisting fans to find one another as well as solidifying fisting’s association with BDSM.
¹

While anal fisting can be incorporated into BDSM and many consider it an intense exchange of power between two people, it does not have to involve BDSM nor is it done exclusively by people who do BDSM. Queer kinky guys pioneered anal fisting and passed on their experience and wisdom to younger generations; however, lesbians and straight men and women have also had their hands in the mix. Many of them learned about techniques and safety from gay male friends and erotica. Today, while not as common as other forms of anal eroticism, anal fisting is practiced by kinky and nonkinky people of all sexual orientations from all walks of life. In fact, the majority of folks who come to my anal fisting workshops are heterosexual men and women.

In 1999, I was invited to co-teach a workshop on anal fisting with a gay leatherman who has written and taught about the practice. This guy has been putting his hands in men’s asses for many years, and he wrote a book on the subject. He is one of the godfathers of ass fisting. We communicated by email before the conference, and planned to meet over breakfast to discuss the class together . But, as often happens at conferences, we each got pulled in other directions, and couldn’t connect before our scheduled seminar. So, we arrived at the class, each with our own outline for a fisting workshop, ready to go with the flow . Since he was older and wiser than me, I let him take the lead. He began by saying that he usually liked to smoke a joint to help him and his partner relax for a fisting scene. Wow, I thought, if there is any smoke involved in my fisting, it’s probably incense, to set a sensual mood. As we continued, our differences became more and more obvious.

“Then, I like to play some deep trance music,” he continued. I’m more a fan of the mellow , ethereal music of Jane Siberry.

“We’ll have a glass of red wine….” Bottled water, noncarbonated, I suggested.

He brought out a large tub of Crisco, his lubricant of choice. I had my super-size bottle of thick, water-based lube with the pump attachment.

Then he moved on to poppers. Poppers, also known as amyl nitrate or butyl nitrite, are illegal (but relatively easy to obtain) drugs that you inhale. Old-school fisters swear by poppers, and consider them not just a step in their own process but one of the steps they teach. (See sidebar on fisting and poppers.)

In terms of our theory and practice of fisting, we were night and day. The workshop could have been a disaster. But it turned out to be a true meeting of the minds and asses, a unique bridging of different perspectives, genders, and generations. I learned a great deal from him, especially about techniques and the spirituality of fisting. He is a fisting legend and he represents a community of gay leathermen who were the first to put fisting on the map; they created sex clubs and other spaces in which to do it, they wrote about it, they documented it on video. Theirs is a rich, layered history, an old-school style of fisting learned, taught, and passed down from generation to generation by gay men. That history obviously informs mine.

I learned anal fisting from dykes, and I primarily teach it to queer and straight women and straight men. I have developed my own methods for over ten years. In writing about the experience, I coined the term
New School Fister/Fistee
to describe my own personal philosophy about the subject. I believe that fisting can happen without using anything to alter our minds or bodies—I like to start from a place of being fully present and sober, since the act itself is mind- and body-altering. I’m not saying that my way is better than old school or any other way, it’s just my way. As with everything else in sexuality, I encourage you to take what works for you from all different sources and experiences, and create your own path.

Over the years, many people have asked me if they should change their diet or fast before being fisted. I don’t recommend that people fast before sex of any kind, and especially not anal fisting, which can take several hours. Fasting can disrupt many of your body’s natural processes, throwing everything out of whack. Besides the fact that it’s never ideal to have sex while lightheaded and hungry , fasting can cause a drop in blood sugar levels, headaches, nausea, and other symptoms that will leave you feeling sick—the exact opposite of how you want to feel going into a fisting session.

So you should not refrain from eating, but should you change your eating habits? Everyone’s digestive system is different, so there is no universal rule of thumb. When it comes to how
your
gastrointestinal system works, you know your ass, your bathroom schedule, and your regularity better than anyone else. However, there are a few general guidelines that apply to almost everyone. You should have a bowel movement before anal penetration in
order to empty your bowels and “clear the runway” for anal play. Eating a big meal before a hot anal sex date is probably not the best idea since it’s likely to stimulate digestion. In addition, if you have a particularly sensitive system, then avoid foods that are spicy or especially hard for your body to digest. You may want to also steer clear of foods with small seeds—like strawberries, raspberries, seeded bagels, and breads—since they are not digested in the upper intestinal tract. When they enter the rectum during a bowel movement, they can linger there, causing discomfort during penetration.