The Slow Discovery of a Fetish

I only just learned yesterday that my own private fetish is shared by other people, including thousands of people on a FetLife discussion board. It has its own Wikipedia entry, called "erotic sexual denial." I've been into this since I was a kid, you could say, but it's only yesterday, at age 46, that I learned the name of the thing.

I did figure out maybe 16 years ago that I'm into being the dominant one. And I had been sexually active for many years before I figured that out. But I have too many other distractions -- playing music, reading and writing about politics, working, and actively pursuing relationships in the real world, without taking the time to read about relationships, or sex, almost at all. At least not since I was a teenager, and had more time on my hands, and less actual sex. But since then, becoming a professional musician has turned out to be an effective sexual strategy, as the biologists would say, so I've been pretty busy, and not inquisitive enough to look into this until now.

When I figured out I was into being dominant, I tried to experiment with different things dominant-submissive people are supposed to do together. A lot of it I found boring. Women needing to be punished in order to do what they're supposed to do. Whips, paddles, restraints, none of that did much for me. Over a very long time I eventually figured out that there are lots of subgroups of dominant-submissive people out there, and my thing, it seems, can best be summed up by erotic sexual denial. But more specifically, my favorite thing is when my lover wants to do whatever I want them to do. When their desire to do my bidding is so strong, that it overrides their desire to do other pleasurable things, such as fuck, or have an orgasm.

There are lots of people out there willing to play along with someone's fantasies. It's different, however, when you meet someone who really shares them. I've had scores of lovers over the decades, mostly really wonderful, memorable people. But the small handful among them who really shared my obsession -- who wanted to submit as much as I wanted to dominate -- are the ones that really stand out. I've recently gotten into a relationship with someone like that, and the experience is stirring up lots of memories.

When I was a kid, I was really turned on by other kids who had to pee, but had to wait in line in order to do so. That's how it started. I'd sometimes find plausible reasons why some kid should have to wait another minute or two before peeing. I'd tell them it would feel good. I don't know where I got that idea, but I knew that it felt good to me to watch them squirm a bit. I think I realized early on that this sort of play was inappropriate, and I kept it under the rug, a secret I suppose.

Once I was a teenager, and becoming sexually active to some extent, I discovered that premature ejaculation was really boring. I read a good book that addressed that subject (Cultivating Male Sexuality by Mantak Chia), struggled with that stuff for a couple years, and learned how to cum only when I want to.

In order to learn how to sustain an erection indefinitely, I had to learn how to circulate the energy, as Chia would say, which basically entailed breathing and imagining the energy moving, and not getting stuck somewhere. That's the basic idea. For me, though, learning to master this practice also involved inevitably dealing with the thing that turned me on the most, and sort of keeping that at bay in order to avoid cumming before I wanted to.

What turned me on the most was a woman who was extremely aroused, but couldn't, or wouldn't cum. So when I was busily mastering the practice of not cumming myself, I had the good fortune to hook up with someone who loved to fuck, and had a constant stream of vaginal orgasms while doing so. This was good, because the fact that she was constantly having orgasms didn't turn me on at all. But the fact that she was a gorgeous young woman who constantly wanted to have sex with me was attractive, so especially at that age, getting turned on wasn't a problem. The problem was not being too turned on, and so that all worked very well for me, and we had lots of marathon fucking sessions, she 19, me 20.

It was many years later, years into a relationship with another woman, when I was right around 30 years old, that I was starting, for the first time ever, do get a bit bored with the sex life I was having in that relationship. Generally, prior to that, if my lover wanted to have sex with me on a very regular basis, that was enough. I was also a bit shy, I guess, and a bit hesitant to make any suggestions that seemed too out of the ordinary. But after she and I had been together for several years, I was ready to go out on a limb, and one night I asked her if she would play a game with me.

She was a trained actor, and was older than me. She had also had various interesting lovers in her life, both men and women. She probably didn't share my particular fetish altogether, but she was very willing to go along with it.

"If you're about to cum, tell me to stop," I instructed.

With her, this game was very straightforward, in a sense, which was good because it was the first time I played it with anyone. She didn't cum from intercourse, only from me eating her or fingering her. So I'd eat her until she'd tell me to stop. Then, with her writhing with desire to have an orgasm, I'd fuck her as long as I could stand it without cumming myself.

Just the night before, I was sometimes losing my erection because sex with her was starting to lack something for me, but from the next day forward, this stopped being a problem altogether. The only challenge for me was not that of losing my erection, but cumming before I wanted to because I was so turned on. So I'd make her cum, after stopping her three or four times, not because I really wanted her to cum, but because I had to find a bit of release myself, through her release, in order to avoid cumming sooner than I wanted to.

But even if I could handle the pressure of being so turned on, I'd still let her cum now and then just out of guilt. I didn't really want to torture her, and after she had been denied orgasm several times, she'd tend to start to get a bit cranky. She'd say that if I stopped her from cumming more than four times, she might not be able to cum after that. This didn't bother me at all, really, but it bothered her, and I cared about her, so I'd let her cum eventually, each night, though it was always a bit of a letdown for me when she did.

I'm capable of enjoying all kinds of sex, but always tended to like more submissive types. If they're extremely interesting and good-looking women, I can enjoy them being more dominant, but it's never really been my thing. I like to at least try to be flexible, but as I've gotten older I've shied away from getting involved with women who aren't in great physical shape, simply because if they're not, I often can't maintain an erection without great effort.

So it was with some hesitation that I got involved intimately with an organic farmer named Maya. Maya was quite a bit older than me and a bit overweight. But on every level other than physically, we really hit it off, and, like me, she was an avid practitioner of polyamory.

I would come through town now and then, on tour, as usual, and I'd visit Maya now and then. One time I was coming through in October. October then became a time of year that I would make sure to visit Maya, for one simple reason.

October, I discovered on that first October visit, was the month that Maya practiced a sort of restraint, kind of a pagan version of Lent or Eid. In October she wanted to go without her favorite things, in order to build her own character. Her favorite things were sex, chocolate and I can't remember what the third thing was.

Now, because she lived with her primary partner, and had another one down the street, and felt strongly about keeping them happy, she didn't feel it was appropriate to make their lives more difficult along with her own, by forgoing sex for the entire month of October every year. So she devised an alternative, which for her was almost as challenging, but not so hard for her lovers. She decided that in October, rather than forgoing sex, she'd just forgo orgasms.

I don't think Maya had the same fetish as me. It was more like they just happened to match up nicely. Really nicely. The thing was, most women would at least entertain my tendency, and would at least make some effort to ask for permission before cumming, in order to humor me. Mostly, they'd just "forget" and cum anyway, thus indicating to me that they really weren't interested. Maya would play along in months other than October, not because the whole thing turned her on so much, but because I liked it, and she liked me. But in October, she imposed this thing on herself, and I had no choice but to go along with it.

With other women, I would tell them to tell me to stop if whatever I was doing was about to make them cum. Often they would. I would tell them that if I keep doing something that's about to make them cum, they should keep telling me to stop until I did, or they should physically move in such a way that prevented orgasm. They rarely got to that point, though. If I insisted, even mildly, they'd give in.

Not Maya. The difference with Maya, though, is that she was trying to go without orgasms for the month of October, by focusing more on fellatio or sexual positions that didn't turn her on as much as others. I would have none of that. I focused on turning her on as much as possible, knowing that she'd have to stop me if she got close to orgasm, every time. I was merciless, and I loved every minute of it. I knew what turned her on, and I did all of it.

She was very disciplined. With her other lovers she could do whatever they wanted to do, and avoid cumming herself, just by controlling herself mentally. That didn't work with me. She had to tell me to stop. Which of course was what I wanted her to do. She'd get into a position that didn't normally make her cum, but if it was getting close to the end of October, she'd have to tell me to stop even then.

I remember one of the last times I saw Maya, when she was so close to orgasm for so long, she had this permanently shocked look on her face, like she was staring at a ghost. Telling me to stop wasn't helping relieve the pressure for her, and she had taken to laughing loudly every time she was close to cumming, which seemed to help her avoid orgasm for a minute or so. Eventually she couldn't take it anymore. Her face was totally red.

"I think I've had enough," she said.

Normally, if a woman in this position says she's had enough, it means her pussy is getting sore. Normally in fact it might mean that, or it might mean she's had so many orgasms she's getting dizzy, or she just needs a break for some other reason. Not in Maya's case, though. "I've had enough" meant she was absolutely at her breaking point, unable to stop herself from cumming, but totally committed to not cumming.

After extricating herself from me, without missing a beat, the red-faced pagan farmer asked me, "Shall I eat you?"

I have been eaten by some amazing, well-practiced fellatio artists in my years. Including women who loved me very much, and ate me that much better as a result. But none of them quite compare with Maya, who ate me as I imagine only a pagan priestess could. (I've never gone out with any other pagan priestesses, so I don't know, but I'm certainly curious.)

I knew that I didn't particularly care if I came, and I knew that Maya would never get tired of eating me anyway, so I just relaxed and let her please me, which she did, so well and for so long. What brought me over the edge, though, was thinking of her swollen pussy, which had been fucked most every day since the beginning of the month, but hadn't cum once, and wouldn't, until November 1st.

It wasn't until years later when I hooked up with an actual, dedicated submissive, who more or less shared my peculiar fetish, which was an absolutely revelatory experience. It was, in a way, the first time I felt like I wasn't alone in this particular way -- and to some extent, in general. But certainly those October visits way back when were a pretty good introduction to the possibilities that were out there.