The world just became a slightly better place

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I saw the following article online today:

Potential new vaccine blocks every strain of HIV

http://www.sciencealert.com/potential-new-vaccine-blocks-every-strain-of-hiv

A new drug candidate is so potent against all strains of HIV, researchers think it could work as a new kind of vaccine.

Developed by researchers from more than a dozen research institutions and led by a team at the Scripps Research Institute in the US, the drug is effective against doses of HIV-1, HIV-2 and SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) that have been extracted from humans or rhesus macaques – including what researchers consider to be the ‘hardest-to-stop’ variants. It worked against doses of HIV that are way higher than what would be transmitted between humans, and works for at least eight months after injection.

This is great news for everyone around the world.  As someone who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and now works in the sex industry HIV/AIDS has been an ever present fear (for good reason), so news that there may be a way to block HIV entirely with a vaccination is fantastic.

The reality of that solution is still a way off though and of course that only covers one of a range of STi’s that are out there.  Safe(r) sex is of course the very best thing that we can do to protect ourselves, but the thing that often isn’t mentioned is testing.  Many people carry STI’s without knowing it and while it may be uncomfortable to get tested and wait for results, at the end of the day if everyone was tested regularly during their lives, then the risk of STI’s would be cut almost to zero.  If there is a problem, then you can do something about it.  This is why I am tested regularly and why I recommend that everyone (whether you book a date with me or not) should get tested too.

Knowledge is power.

John.

My favourite hotel in Sydney

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I just noticed this article in the Herald …

http://www.traveller.com.au/shangrila-sydney-hotel-renovation-first-look-at-8-million-revamp-12kcyz

Looks like my favourite hotel in Sydney has had a makeover!  Seriously though, for the best harbour views from a hotel in Sydney I can’t recommend a better choice than the Shanri-La.  They also do an excellent breakfast.

The staff are also extraordinarily professional.  I once arrived (in fancy dress – painted blue from head to toe and wearing a kilt) for a book launch and the parking valet didn’t even bat an eyelid.

John.

Orgasmic Meditation, orgasm from penetration, and your vibrator

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It’s time to write the post that needs to be written.

My first post about Orgasmic Meditation was on the whole positive. Since then I have attended one of their training courses (fun) and come to realise that the concepts behind OM are powerful, beneficial, and something that every woman and man should know about and understand. And preferably practice! I have used orgasmic meditation (or variations of it) with a number of my clients with success. My partner has declared that it is “ridiculously enjoyable” and that it has been transformative for our sex life (you are never too old to learn new ways to enjoy sex!).

So, orgasmic meditation gets a big tick. I highly recommend that you learn about it, perhaps attend one of their courses, join their online community if you need to find someone to do it with. And start enjoying being stroked!

There is however, in my opinion, one thing that you need to do first: THROW AWAY YOUR VIBRATOR!

Why? It’s this simple: vibrators are too powerful. They train your brain to be LESS sensitive to clitoral stimulation. They take away your ability to engage with and enjoy your body and the most specific pleasure that you can enjoy, that is stimulation of your clit.

When you try orgasmic meditation you will understand why. The whole technique is based around the lightest, most gentle touch possible of the woman’s clitoris. By contrast using a vibrator is like putting too much salt on your food. In the end you can only taste salt and you lose the ability to enjoy the subtle flavours and variations of unsalted food. Like wise, your vibrator is destroying your connection with your clit. Let me explain how. I read a recent study summarised here:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(14)01487-0

It showed that regular fine detail work with fingers – including playing musical instruments, or using a smart phone – resulted in greater brain activity in the areas of the brain related to sensing touch. I.e. when you use your finger tips to do something that requires a delicate touch, your brain responds by ramping up it’s sensitivity to the signals coming from that part of your body.

Your clitoris has upward of 8000 nerve endings, all packed into a tiny space. It is exquisitely receptive – more so than even your fingertips. But what you “feel” is dependent up whether or not your brain is “listening” to the signals properly. Extrapolating from the finding of the study mentioned above, it is reasonable to expect that using a vibrator, especially a powerful one for clitoral stimulation will allow your brain to become less attuned to the signals from you clit. After all, if you were extremely sensitive, then it could actually be painful to have that level of stimulation, so your body dials down the sensitivity progressively.

So. Orgasmic meditation – through the use of very, very gentle stimulation of the clitoris with the finger tip – should, I believe, result in an increase in brain activity and hence sensation and pleasure that a woman feels, in the same way that smart phone, or instrument use increases the sensitivity of people’s finger tips.

Practice orgasmic meditation enough, without undoing the good work by using a vibrator in between and I believe that it may actually allow almost any women to reach orgasm via penetration. I haven’t been able to test this theory yet, but I am seriously intent on finding out!

John.

Christmas and a thank you

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It’s always a surprise when Christmas rolls around again.  It’s out there in the future, then it’s right up close and suddenly everything is tinsel, presents, food, parties, and holidays.  It’s also time to look back and take some stock.

This year has had some challenges for me (including back trouble that cost me almost two months of mobility).  But I have also had the chance to meet many new people and to continue to enjoy the company of many more.

I want to say thank you to everyone.  It is a pleasure and an honor to know you and your support and trust is greatly appreciated.  I have the best job in the world and I will continue to do my best to live up to that.

I hope that everyone has a great Christmas and New Year.  I am taking a couple of weeks off for a serious rest, but I am looking forward to getting back to work in January.

John.

Rain!

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image

It’s been raining on and off most of the day here. The garden is loving it! And both of the water tanks are just about full. A good respite and preparation for a long hot summer to come.

John.

The fallacy of “female viagra”

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Today I saw this article in the Sydney Morning Herald that discusses the race to create a “female viagra”:

http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/multimillion-dollar-race-to-find-a-pink-viagra-20141121-11e1b6.html

There’s a saying that goes … “to a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

Therefore it is no-surprise-at-all to me that pharmaceutical companies (who as a matter of course make drugs and sell them to people) would like to have a convenient pill to sell to women to alleviate their “sexual dysfunction”. Hammer/nail.

There are so many things wrong with this conversation about why women don’t want, or don’t enjoy sex that it’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps the most pertinent place is with “male viagra” and to define what it really is, as opposed to what this article (and popular culture) think it is.

Viagra is the brand name that Pfizer gave the drug sildenafil. Sildenafil is a vasodilator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasodilation). In short, this means that it increases blood flow, particularly arterial blood flow (that conveniently carries blood to the penis). This is VERY, VERY useful if you are male, older, less fit, have poor circulation etc. It can make getting and sustaining an erection much easier. But it doesn’t create arousal.

So, viagra gets your blood flowing. But it does not create arousal. Let me say that again: viagra does not create arousal in a man. This is a common misconception, and one embodied in the title of this article. No arousal, no erection, no-matter how much viagra you have popped.

As implied by this article, men rarely suffer from a lack of desire and arousal for sex. What some men lack (due to age, and perhaps less than ideal health) is the blood flow to get and keep their penis hard. Women on the other hand often lack the arousal. Therefore it is pointless – in my opinion – to talk about a “female viagra”. Viagra works perfectly well on women as a vasodilator. The obvious problem is that this doesn’t do one damn thing to increase a woman’s level of arousal. It probably won’t hurt, but it’s not going to change a woman’s perception of someone who she don’t feel like having sex with.

What people who talk about female viagra are really talking about is developing a drug that makes women aroused (or some facsimile of). There is at least one very obvious problem here, so lets address it first: this is sounding seriously shady to me. We usually call these sorts of things “date rape” drugs. You know, things like rohipnol (who’s effects include: disinhibition and impaired judgment). If a woman can pop a pill to become aroused, then what is to stop someone else slipping them a pill to do the same?

I am sure that the pharmaceutical companies would be horrified to hear me characterise their work in this way, but at the end of the day making a pill that alters women’s state of mind to increase sexual arousal is a dangerous and very slippery slope. There is of course a common drug that already does this sort of thing. It’s called alcohol. Used in moderation it can be socially beneficial. Used inappropriately it can be disastrous – and people think that a more powerful version would be better?

A second problem is that, if you are trying to develop a drug that creates the physical responses of female arousal (like vaginal lubrication etc) then you are again missing the point. Having the physical indications of being ready for sex in no way guarantee that a woman will actually want to have sex with the man in front of her. Being wet, or having an erection doesn’t always mean that you want to have sex. Just that your body is ready to do so. Granted, for women who have issues with a lack of lubrication (as many women do post menopause for instance), then this could be a good thing. However that’s not really what the article, or the pharmaceutical companies are focusing on.

So, lets stop talking about “female viagra”. Lets instead have an adult discussion about why so many women don’t want sex. Or lose interest sexually in their partners as relationships age. Lets talk about how the concept of the “nuclear family” (and the social and physical isolation that causes) effects women’s libidos. Or about long work hours (for men and women), stress, debt, consumer culture, social dislocation, negative body image messages, hormonal contraceptives, lack of skill and interest from male partners, social pressure for “conventional” relationships, monogamy, and plenty more.  All of these things play a part in women having sex lives that are unfulfilled.

And that’s where the answers to the question of how to arouse women lie. Not in pills. Not in miracle cures. The problem of how to make a man’s erection last longer and be harder is trivial by comparison. Answering this question requires a revolution in both our thought and behaviour. It’s little wonder that people and business just want a pill! This stuff is hard, bordering on impossible to address. However, if we look hard at our lives, work out what really matters to us as people, then we can start to work on changing our lives to support those things. It’s not an easy thing to do for most of us, but that’s the reality of life. It is incumbent upon us all to find our own path.

John.

Orgasmic Meditation and the 15 minute orgasm

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Ok, I admit it, the title of this post is click bait, but the title is important, as is the subject. I was recently shown an article in Sneaky Magazine, here that talked about a growing movement (?) from a US organisation called One Taste that teaches people (men and women working together) what they call orgasmic meditation.

From the One Taste website:

“Orgasmic Meditation (OM) is a practice embracing and utilizing the sexual energy we all possess.

Courses at OneTaste teach you how to acknowledge the energy flowing through you, and then channel it into all areas of your life. The result? Your sex life improves, food tastes better, your connection to yourself and others deepen. Being TurnedOn means feeling the electricity of being alive.

Practitioners experience benefits similar to other mindfulness practices such as sitting meditation, as well as the well-known health benefits associated with orgasm. It’s deliberate and structured with repeatable results.

OM is profound, yet simple and you can have it whether you are single or coupled.”

So far so good. Mindfulness is a good thing. Being aware of one’s self, your emotions, and the sensations that you are experiencing here and now is an excellent foil to the noise, stress, and discord that modern life assails us with virtually all the time these days. Adding orgasm to mindfulness sounds extra good!

So, reading through the article, this is what I discover …

Orgasmic massage is basically clitoral masturbation of the woman (of course) by a partner (usually a man, perhaps its an American thing, but they don’t really talk about women performing the “stroking”, but I can’t see any reason why they couldn’t). For just 15 minutes. And according to the One Taste explanation, the 15 minutes is central to the whole concept.

Now this is where the click bait comes in to play. A session lasts for 15 minutes, from laying down and the woman spreading her legs so that her stroker can begin stroking to the hands off moment when you have to stop. No ifs, no buts. Now I know a few women who could probably reach orgasm in that time from just clitoral stimulation, but that’s a vanishingly small minority. And fair enough, with practice, perhaps you could learn to experience a version of orgasm that is long and slow and deep and last the whole 15 minutes. But this definitely doesn’t qualify as an orgasm as most of us know it. There simply isn’t time for most women to build to the required level of arousal and then peak in what we call orgasm.

In fact, I know plenty of women, who, if they could achieve orgasm within 15 minutes, would be pushing the stroking hand away straight afterward as orgasm leaves their clitoris overly sensitive and further touch is almost painful (much like most men don’t enjoy strong stimulation of their penis straight after orgasm and ejaculation).

So, the name Orgasmic Meditation is misleading. This isn’t about orgasm. It is about sexual pleasure. It is about mindfulness. It is about empowerment for women and taking control of their sexuality. All of these are very good things. But it’s not about orgasm.

So, slightly dodgy name aside, I think Orgasmic Meditation is a REALLY GOOD THING. If you are well in touch with your body, comfortable in your sexuality, and happy with your sex life, then it could be fun and may be useful. However, if things aren’t so great, then orgasmic meditation may be of real help to you. Here’s why:

The structure of the process (15 minutes, very specific touch, no sex, no expectations, total focus on the woman) means that the woman can let go of all of the stresses and expectations that she has learned or had imposed on her around sex. This is her time. It’s all about her. It’s about pleasure (from a sexual source), but it’s not about sex. She doesn’t have to worry about pleasing her partner, or really doing anything at all besides enjoying herself. Perhaps it’s like getting a manicure? Time when you are just indulging yourself and no-one else – and it feels really good too!

And the fact that there (probably) isn’t a recognisable form of orgasm involved for most women has another benefit: having had someone play with your pussy for 15 minutes will leave you “turned on” and wanting sex. That’s completely natural, and it’s no surprise to me that the energising effect of unresolved sexual arousal would flow through to other areas of your life.

At the end of the day I think that orgasmic meditation is a great idea. I can’t see how it can hurt anyone (unlike medication, alcohol, and extreme life changes), so why not try it out? I am planning on attending a course in the near future to get the training (although the instructional video on the One Taste website makes it look pretty simple really). I will make another post to describe the experience.

John.

The life erotic

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The year once more is escaping us and I find that I have been away from my blog for far too long. It is the problem with a busy life that time for writing such as this – with its own importance – can be limited.

I look back now on many years in my profession with more clarity about the world and the human condition, and how I may be of service.

I enjoy my work as a male escort for women more than any other job I have ever had. A statement that at face value (given the assumptions that society makes about men and their appetite for sex) may seem obvious. And it is true that I enjoy sex and the female form deeply. However it goes much further than that.

To the sense of satisfaction that comes from helping a woman, who thought that she could never enjoy intimacy again, to realise that she is still a sexual being, who can enjoy her body and that of a partner. Or for the women who come to me from relationships that, while fulfilling in many ways, lack the joy of sex that makes life so much sweeter to live. Seeing confidence and happiness blossom, fear and pain fade away to be replace by transitory yet lasting pleasure that brings an understanding of self worth.

All of this and more, like the sweetness of a smile when all is done and rest is what is needed, to be held and to hold. No words required.

It comes of course with a cost to me as well. Of time away from home and my partner, of travel in weather as variable as one can expect in these times. But it is a job that I choose to do and while I may take more time for myself one day, it’s not a job that I want to stop doing. As long as I can give something of value then I wish to continue to do so.

John.