Rabbit v. Lizard

Yesterday I said…

I’m not allowed to ask for or refuse orgasm. But it’s how I’m feeling. I wish they didn’t need to happen. I feel like enough “plumbing” issues are taken care of with the occasional expression of fluid when I’m allowed to penetrate Belle. I just really, really, really don’t want to come.

…and based on a few comments, I think that was misconstrued. Totally understandable since it deals with the most difficult to understand and explain paradoxes of enforced chastity and orgasm denial.

There are two aspects to what drives us to orgasm (and I’m talking about men since while I’m very familiar with how to make a woman orgasm, I’m not an expert in how they work internally, and this is entirely my take since I’m also not a doctor, sex expert, Holiday Inn Express patron, etc). The first is biological. Hormones and brain wiring and stuff that’s buried very deeply into our evolutionary source code. It’s an animal force and in my previous writing I characterize it as the Lizard. It’s less something we consider and more something we feel. It’s the thing that in most people works together with the second aspect that leads to orgasm. The higher brain is where imagination and emotion and logic and fantasy and all that stuff live. I’ve called that part of me the Rabbit. It’s the part that has allowed me to enter into this dynamic with Belle, to consider what it means to be a sub, a bottom, and to act upon those things. And while I think of this lower brain Lizard and higher brain Rabbit separately, actually they’re fused into what constitutes my sexuality. Within me, they wrestle and the Rabbit stays in control (most of the time), but they’re like two halves of a single thing.

An attempt at an example: sometimes guys jerk off in the morning right after they wake up. Their cock is hard and they’re groggy and they feel a tickle in their balls and the next thing they know they’re squirting on their stomach. It’s almost mechanical. That’s the Lizard. Other times a guy will be in a situation that’s hot and get hard. He’ll think about that later when he’s jacking off. Thinking about the person or the situation and fantasizing and playing with his cock until he explosively shoots his load. That’s the Rabbit. He stokes the flames the Lizard provides. Except in me, the thing that makes the Rabbit super hot is to not let the Lizard get what it wants. The concept of not coming is hotter than coming. Of wanting to feel like I want to come, but not doing it. In me, the Lizard and Rabbit are not friends. They’re in constant tension.

So when I say I “really, really don’t want to come,” that’s the Rabbit talking. Because it’s the Rabbit where all the emotional, psychological stuff resides. I think being in long-term “lifestyle” denial invariably creates a lot of conflict between the Rabbit and the Lizard. The Lizard wants to stick the penis into things and squirt seed all over and fulfill evolutionary destiny. My Rabbit couldn’t care less about that stuff and wants to be the best Rabbit it can be. But they need each other. The Lizard rages against its imprisonment and the Rabbit is constantly trying to do the right thing. To not let the Lizard influence it too much. To be a fucking rabbit.

As an aside, it’s kind of funny since my Thumper nickname was given to me by Belle when we started our relationship because she thought I wanted sex as much as a rabbit supposedly wants to fuck. And that morphed into Thumper because I also have this weird tic where my feet tap and wiggle when I’m really turned on. And it’s true rabbits have a promiscuous reputation and I truly do want to have sex quite a bit, but rabbits are also the bottom of the food chain. So even though they’re apparently ravenously sexual, they’re also constantly the prey and they need to balance that out. Without really knowing it, the nickname works for me on many levels. 

Anyway. The biggest thing that’s changed in the past couple of years and that’s perhaps accelerated in the last several months is that the Rabbit/Lizard power ratio has shifted dramatically towards the Rabbit. The Lizard has gotten quite lazy and doesn’t fight as much as he once did. The Rabbit has him pretty well locked down. He still stirs and pulls on the chains like the old days, but not as often. When I’m feeling Belle squirm and moan under my fingers, he’s there. Then the penis gets as hard as it can and the craving of feeling it slip into her is the greatest. And yes, at those times, I want to come. At least, the Lizard does. In the past, the Rabbit might be swayed by the power of the Lizard’s insistence, but not anymore. He knows orgasms are like cupcakes on the counter. They look good and will be fun to eat in the moment, but after won’t feel that great. After, there will be regret.

Long way to get around to saying “really, really don’t want to come” means the Rabbit doesn’t want me to come. I actually do have the craving to come that ebbs and flows and is impacted by life like everything else. And that’s the paradox of denial. The chemical Lizard craving for orgasm lives on while the Rabbit higher brain’s desire not to keeps it all under control.

Then I said…

I reject the old trope that being locked up and denied for longer and longer periods makes one hornier and hornier forever. That’s simply not how it works.

…which was not to mean being denied doesn’t massively increase one’s level of horniness. Of course it does. But there’s an element to some hawt chastity porn that it’s an ever-increasing line that stretches off into eternity. In reality, it builds up well past normal in the course of a week or so and continues to grow more slowly over a two to three week period but then it kind of plateaus. I find it can actually drop after that and slowly go up and down like long, rolling waves (while still remaining well above normal for a guy who comes whenever he wants). It can even drop way, way down. That’s the funk I was in last week and before. Where the desire to come and have sex is actually really low to zero. That’s the worst part of denial. It’s not common, but it happens.

The thing that’s not usually mentioned is how carrying a load of unreleased hormones around can cause super quick swings in desire. I can go from zero to packed tube in seconds in the right conditions. And then it can go back down again just as quickly. I also have pretty extreme swings in emotion, though I’ve gotten better at controlling those. I can be quick to anger or on the verge of tears very suddenly. I don’t think men are accustomed to or designed to have so many hormones in their system.

But like anything else, the body adjusts. The hormone load becomes the new normal and their absence the oddity. Not coming for three or four months at a time for years dramatically changes how your body works.

Right now, I am super horny. Which is my preferred state, though it can be massively distracting. I bet it’ll stay this way for a week or so more before leveling out and moderating some. What I do not want to feel is something below what’s normal for most people. For the Lizard to go to sleep entirely. Because for me, that’s death warmed over. When that happens, it’s like a light goes out somewhere. But right now today, the light is a roaring flame and the lizard is back to plotting his escape.

Hacking

The other day, I was IMing with Dev (formerly of Devastating Yet Inconsequential) and the notion of chastity and orgasm control being a kind of life hack came up. According to the Wikipedia, a life hack is “any productivity trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase productivity and efficiency.” Seems to me that denial and chastity definitely do not increase the “productivity” of a very specific thing, but work with me here.

Cast your minds back to the beginning of our journey into the life of male orgasm control. We, Belle and I, had been through a hard time in our relationship resulting from the fact that we had pretty much stopped having sex. I went outside our marriage to find the kind of intimacy I wasn’t getting at home. I suppose it would be an easy thing to then draw a line and say I cheated, therefore I ended up in a chastity device and, as punishment, rarely get to have any orgasms. But that’s all wrong and kind of backwards.

Our problem wasn’t that I cheated (though, yeah, that was a problem all right), it was that we weren’t connected to one another sexually. I loved Belle. Never stopped loving her. Never wanted to leave her. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere but with her from the moment I realized I loved her. But we were not intimate with one another anymore, emotionally or physically. We were roommates running a live-in day care center. As I suggested yesterday, kink of any kind, when successfully executed, is the result of and the catalyst for emotional and physical intimacy. It’s only done well after a lot of communication and honesty with one another. The fact that we have kink in our relationship now is because we were open, communicated, and all that. The kink helps keep us that way, but kink is definitely the egg in this model, not the chicken.

The hack part, for me, is the denial aspect. Remember, my problem was that Belle and I had disconnected sexually. I relied on myself for pretty much all my sexual satisfaction and I resented it. She didn’t seem to care. I craved intimacy with another person, not just my hand or a sex toy. By slaving my orgasm to Belle (using the non-D/s definition of “slave” — a component controlled by another machine or component), we have essentially produced a situation where we cannot ever find ourselves in a disconnected place again. This isn’t about quantity of sex, mind you. We don’t have sex as often as I’d like. We have sex as often as she likes. But it forces the issue of emotional and physical intimacy. She controls when I come. She controls pretty much all my sexual activity. One of my primary sexual releases is her orgasm. We can’t move too far outside of one another’s orbits before the issue becomes evident and then it can only be corrected together, not by me slinking off to the bathroom after she falls asleep to jack off in the sink. I used to worry that we’d slip back to the old way. The disconnected way. In exchange for her controlling my orgasms and access to sex, I got security.

Sexually, we are one. That’s deeply intimate. It’s hard to get more intimate than that.

Another part of the hack is how it fucks with my hormones. I’m about to be 46 and, in the greater scheme, that’s not that old, but biologically, shit’s not as easy as it once was. Even if I wasn’t being denied orgasm, it would take me a lot longer to bounce back from one than it used to. When I was 17, I could fuck four or five times in a day and come each time. (I recall one day in particular when I did something like that and the last orgasm, which was maybe the sixth or so, was dry and hurt like a motherfucker…but I digress.) By not coming and leaving all those hormones in me, I feel as close to 17 as I’m likely to get again. Yes, the trade-off is huge. I rarely get to feel the awesome five to ten seconds of real, uninterrupted, unqualified orgasmic rush. But in exchange, I feel like a total raging sex god. Sometimes. At least when we get to fuck (and there’s been an awful lot of that this past week since the kids have been away).

I’m not saying we’ve discovered the key to marital bliss. We’ve discovered a key to marital bliss. And we’re hardly the first to use some flavor of male orgasm continence. I don’t know how what we do would work for a guy who didn’t want to be dominated or wasn’t all that into the bondage aspect of chastity or was just too wrapped up in his own masculine bullshit to even consider limiting how often he came. But it is a hack of the male sexual circuitry and it does work. At least for us.