Lust Life: Uncontrollable Horniness

When It strikes, a wild arousal springs from the foundations of your sexual being, attacking you with uncontrollable horniness. You haven’t thought about it in months, but suddenly it’s there and you have to do something about it; you have to indulge it in order to purge it. You’re not alone.

The websites devoted to the practice of this bizarre kink are proof that other people do it,  too. But you still feel like a freak. And even though you consider yourself above and beyond guilt in all other matters of sex, this fetish cripples you with shame. You’ve never told a lover or even a therapist about it and believe you never will, obviously because you fear judgment and scorn, but mostly because you fear that if you were to completely come out and own it, you would become addicted to it: What if I can’t enjoy “normal” sex anymore? Yet, as long as it ebbs and flows, as long as you’re “normal” most of the time (threesomes, group sex, S&M don’t count), you don’t feel so bad about it. In fact, you accept the pleasure as divine. At least I don’t eat shit, you think.

This was far from my mind when my girlfriend Jasmine and I went to the Museum of Sex last Tuesday evening for a book party—Suzanne Portnoy’s New York celebration of her groundbreaking memoir (The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker: An Erotic Memoir), which I read and enjoyed while wondering, “Who is this woman who writes so frankly about cocksucking through glory holes and yet remains invisible to the public eye?”

Photos of the author are nowhere to be found in the book, and the single image on her website looks like an anonymous Warhol lithograph. After we met and congratulated Ms. Portnoy, who is a vivacious middle-aged, glittery woman, our attention was diverted to the exhibit that surrounded us, Kink: Geography of the Erotic Imagination. That’s when it hit me—the awareness that something dangerous was lurking in this room. Here lies a trigger for your own suppressed fetish.

On a television behind the bar, an obese woman globulated in bed, ecstatically engorging herself on cupcakes and various pastries, with whipped cream and chocolate dripping down her massive cleavage. Disgusting, yet fascinating. The idea of gaining weight, the feeling of becoming full and expanding, is not unlike a growing erection, or the building pressure of sexual tension. As we explored the rest of the exhibit, I thought maybe Cupcake Lover was also getting off on the mess she was making, like the “sploshers” who find it erotic to douse themselves with baked beans and other messy foods, or the “adult babies” who become aroused when they pee in their diapers.

“I don’t have to pee in a diaper to feel hot down there,” said Jasmine. Me neither, I thought, but I understand why people do it: warm bodily fluids uncontrollably spurting and moistening the crotch area is exactly what happens when we cum, so anything that simulates that process may be arousing. There’s logic in every sexual aberration. We watched a video of a masked man strapped to a table while two “nurses” catheterized his penis. The poking and prodding of his inflated scrotum is not my idea of erotica. But being trapped and helpless at the mercy of authority, having no control over one’s body, I can relate to that.

Now for the anthropomorphic part of the exhibit … Furries! Aren’t they cute? People who get off on wearing animal costumes make me giggle. I mean, come on, it’s not like they’re having sex with stuffed animals. Wait—some people actually do have sex with stuffed animals—they’re called Plushies, not to be confused with the rapidly growing population of Ponygirls (and boys) who indulge in equine role-play, donning real ponytails and receiving sugar cubes and carrots when they please their “trainers.” Sick, sick, sick, you say?

The sickness is on the surface: What does cutting yourself have to do with sex? Or: That’s wrong, stuffed animals are for children. Stop! Let us contemplate the nature of a fetish. Where does it come from? When does it begin? Why are bandages and blood the sexual catalysts for some, while others pulse at the sound of someone pissing? The little girl who had to wear a back brace felt comfort in her confinement. When the brace was removed, the release thrusts her back into vulnerability. Now she has a thing for braces and casts. And the boy bed-wetter who discovered that he liked the warm, wet feeling against his skin becomes the man who gets hard between the sheets whenever pressure mounts in his bladder.

These childhood experiences and associations are the foundations of our sexuality. A fetish is really nothing more than a fixation rooted in metaphor. Nabokov understood this: If Humbert Humbert didn’t lose the girl love of his youth, there would be no Lolita. I prefer to keep some of my fetishes in the closet, as Ms. Portnoy prefers to keep her image apart from her literary exhibitionism. You don’t need to display everything to make an impact. But if you look beyond the weirdness of a fetish, you may even find a piece of yourself.