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Hey Alex, I'm writing about everybody's favorite topic: poop. We all know where we are playing, and we've all had an unpleasant surprise. The best top I've ever had when an accident happened said, "Looks like we hit pay dirt. Let's hop in the shower real quick." I really loved that. He made it something "we" had done, not something I had caused. The statement and the pause were collaborative and supportive, mutual. I want to know more good, non-shaming phrases like that to use, whether on bottom or on top, so "we," whether playmate or partner, stay in it together. Do you have any phrases like that? KR
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Hey KR,
I keep some back-pocket phrases for sex, but not many. My big one: Regardless of whether I want to fuck or get fucked, I ask my partner, man or woman, if I can kiss their feet.
It feels worshipful and works regardless of whether I want to be submissive or dominant. I start slowly, ask, "Is that OK?" and take my time, kiss each toe, then the underside of each foot, press my face up to it, then the top, then slowly work my way up the calves and the knees, and then, baby, we’re in it.
But that’s not a phrase; that’s a rite. I think we all steal good lines from partners (and, sometimes, from films). One of the best lines I’ve heard, and since used, comes from a friend, a cis woman, who was dancing with a man in a Berlin club. The man gently said, “Hey, let me know if you want me to kiss you.” She melted.
Another, taken from a stupid film I won’t name, works well, but only in slutty gay spaces like sex clubs and bathhouses:
Me: “Can I make an observation?”
Him: “What?”
Me: “I want you to fuck me so bad.”
"Looks like we hit pay dirt" is great. It says poop is a potential reward of being in the sandbox, playing together, and having fun. That’s all sex is.
Why does "we" work so well, sound so generous? Forgive me if this is too literary, but I'd answer that with my favorite poem, "The Gas Station" by C. K. Williams, in which the poet describes his first real sexual experience. Years later, as an adult, he looks back on those years when he was still a boy but almost a man, that thrilling and frightening middle time between childhood joy and the harsh reality of being grown up, and muses that sex, the experience of it, is the hinge.
It is the loss of innocence, but one steps into it innocently, clumsily. If one is lucky, one’s first sexual experiences happen somewhere between childhood fantasy and adult reality, between innocence and experience, and what Williams names the "right words" are two things that are required to make those first sexual experiences good: “Complicity. Wonder.”
I'll extend his idea further and say that these two things make all sex good and rewarding: You need complicity and wonder. Sex that feels forced or, worse, nonconsensual and harming, has no complicity. You both must be equally implicated, equally guilty, sharing the blame, mutually eager to do this fun, dirty thing. You must feel like thieves robbing a bank and getting away with it: Look what we did! Look what we can do! That's complicity.
And you need wonder. I've had complicitous sex absent of wonder, absent of "Wow, look at that!" and it was lackluster. You need both. "We hit pay dirt" touches both; it means you're in this together, hatching this plan, and have run into a hurdle, but wow, look at that! Pay dirt! The spirit of it suggests that if you're both still committed to the plan, still eager, you'll just shower and try again. The line frames sex at its best: A shared, devilish little endeavor between two people to experience "wow" together.
I've had bottoms go into panics when they make a mess on my dick. When they do, I try to hold them, tell them to look in my eyes, and say something like: "Babe, your body is beautiful, all parts of you are beautiful. I'm playing in your butt, and it's beautiful too. I'm not afraid of what's there, and you shouldn't be either. But if you'd feel more comfortable cleaning up, that's fine. I'm happy to wash off and try again."
That’s all it takes, and that is the bare-minimum love we should show each other. Guys have almost cried with relief when I remove shame; I’ve felt their panicked bodies relax, and in those moments, I see the trauma in my community, and I curse porn and all the companies and brands selling douching products and butt scrubs, all the bullshit capitalizing on our fears.
I’ve written elsewhere about how I believe the explosion of gay cleanliness products on the market in the last 40 years is an extension of AIDS-phobia. One hallmark of the disease was diarrhea. If you ask any top who played wild in the 70s, pre-AIDS, he’ll say everyone just shrugged over shit. No big deal. But after AIDS, a manic cleanliness took root in the gay collective consciousness, spurred by an explosion of online porn depicting shit-free anal sex and teaching everyone that that’s how it should be.
Sorry boys: Real gay sex involves poop. You might try to minimize it, or douche most of it out, but there will always be small particles and micro traces of fecal matter in buttfucking. You’re playing in a rectum.
Years of post-AIDS messaging and LGBTQ-targeted industries have taught generations of men to fear their bodies' natural processes. Ken Howard, a licensed clinical social worker and certified sex therapist who has worked with gay men for over 30 years, writes that hygiene anxiety is one of the most common fears he sees in his practice: "What I see clinically is that the fear becomes much bigger than the reality. Men start to feel like they need to be 'perfectly clean' and even then, it doesn't feel like enough. At that point, the issue isn't hygiene. It's anxiety."
As Vice put it in a piece on bottoming (one I did not write, though you can read my bottoming guides here, here, here, and here): "What does all our anxiety about douching say about gay culture? That we need to chill out."
I know many men who are so afraid of not "being clean" that they have to get high to bottom. In fact, I count our community-wide poop-phobia as a driving force behind gay drug abuse, and I partly lay the blame at porn, alongside brands like Future Method and Pure For Men profiting off this fear.
No matter what you say in sex, "we" is best. Once, I had a regular fuck buddy who kept bleeding. He struggled to relax and clenched when I tried to fuck him, so after a bit, I'd pull out, and there was blood. After a while, I felt scared of hurting him and wasn't sure what more I could do to help. The battle, truly, was in his mind.
Even so, I cared about him and avoided "you" statements, because those don’t help: "You're too tight, you're not relaxing, you need to relax" would make him feel more anxiety, and we’d get nowhere. So I said, "Maybe we should start with toys." And: "Maybe we should take you to see a doctor to make sure there's no fissure or hemorrhoid." Or: "Maybe we should pause anal for a bit while we figure this out, and try some other fun stuff."
Sex is complicitous. It's on us. It's not his or mine to fix; it's ours.
Here, I speak to tops: I used to write for Grindr’s Into, and it has a good piece (one I didn’t write) called "So You've Sh*t on a D*ck” that opens with this scenario: Your partner, "in his infinite kindness and generosity, allowed you to put your dick in his butthole. He may have eaten nothing but ice cubes all day. This is not a time for shame."
I love that. It acknowledges the work bottoms do for sex (more than tops do) and says the bare minimum reward for that is to not shame them if it’s not perfect. The right response is gratitude and grace, not disgust.
Remmy Duran, described in a 2019 Out piece on poop and anal sex as one of New York's "legendary tops," shares my experience with "traumatized bottoms," men who’ve been shamed by past partners and over-apologize the moment things get messy. He says tops who respond negatively operate from "toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia." He's right.
You asked for phrases, so here are some. But note: I generally only tell bottoms about poop if they ask; otherwise, I keep going, with the exception being that if it's a lot, and there's risk of damaging my sheets, I say something. No matter if I'm topping or bottoming, I say beforehand: "Hey, let me know/I’ll let you know if another wash is needed. I don't panic about this stuff. I've been having sex for a long time." The implication I want to convey is that pros don't stress over poop; amateurs do.
When you're the top, and something happens:
"My love, don't panic, but since you asked, yes, there's some poop. Let’s hop in the shower?"
"Darling, it's fine, it happens to everyone. Let's clean up a bit."
"This is what showers are for. Come on."
"No worries, I do it all the time. Nothing we can't handle."
And, of course, the gold standard from your guy: "Looks like we hit pay dirt. Let's hop in the shower real quick."
When you're the bottom, and something happens:
"Hey, you're being sweet, but I think I need another pass in the shower. Nothing we've not encountered before."
"Wow, you hit that hard-to-reach spot! OK, give me a few minutes.”
Don't linger. Say the thing, hit the shower, then try to rebuild heat. If you're forcing the heat but it's clear your partner is still stuck in fear and anxiety, don't try butt stuff right away. (After a rinse, it’s always best to wait a bit, to let any trapped water come out.) Kiss. Cuddle. Do blowjobs.
And when in doubt: Kiss feet. That's my magic entrance into sex, because it's hot and there’s a slight religious implication, like the woman in the book of Luke washing Christ's feet with her tears (believers all over the world still kiss the feet of relics and statues). It feels holy. It says, "I revere you.” And it says: “Yes, I’ll eventually work up to your dick.”
Hey there! I’m Alexander Cheves. I’m a sex writer and former sex worker—I worked in the business for over 12 years. You can read my sex-and-culture column Last Call in Out and my book My Love Is a Beast: Confessions, from Unbound Edition Press. But be warned: Kirkus Reviews says the book is "not for squeamish readers.”
Here, I’m offering sex and relationship advice to Out’s readers. Send your question to askbeastly@gmail.com
