Guest Author
One technique Shewey advocates for in the book is what he calls P-C-M:
“For me, a satisfying sexual encounter involves being mindful of three elements: your own Pleasure (P); your Connection with your partner or partners (C); and the Mechanics (M) – what goes up and down, what goes in and out. When there are difficulties, it’s usually because there’s too much attention on the Mechanics. You get busy fretting about your erection, getting hard, staying hard. It’s easy to get stuck in your head anxiously trying to read the other person’s mind, trying to anticipate what he wants. Or you can find yourself preoccupied with frantically trying to reproduce some porn scenario that was hot when you were jerking off alone but that isn’t so easy to manage in real life.
“Obviously, if you’ve booked dungeon space, you’ll want to have a conversation establishing with your partner what the parameters of the play session are, intentions, limits, safe words, etc. From there, I would encourage you to really pay attention to staying connected to your partner (not getting too caught up with gear or taking pictures/videos) and also taking charge of your own pleasure, doing what feels good to you or asking for what would feel good. It’s easy to fall into a kind of sexual codependency, where you’re both so busy trying to please the other person that nobody is really taking in what the partner is offering. This is where trust-building pays off. You have to really trust that if you’re having a good time, your partner’s going to have a good time. And you can’t measure a partner’s pleasure only by erections or ejaculations; those may or may not be present or even important.”
One of the most commented on sections of the book is Shewey’s exploration of the ‘daddy/boy’ dynamic, a role-play often undertaken in the fetish scene. Shewey jokes that if Carl Jung were to visit a leather bay, he would call this type of daddy/boy play “archetypal”.
“There are a lot of ways to have fun with the daddy/boy dynamic, and I recommend keeping playfulness in the picture,” Shewey suggested. “There are times when it’s appropriate to be serious and honest and intimate about what these roles mean to you, how the daddy/boy erotic or sexual dynamic interacts with your own personal history of fatherhood/boyhood/ masculinity, and so forth. But as with any kind of role-playing scene, it’s good to have agreements about ground rules, clear beginnings, and clear endings, which allows all involved parties to surrender to the play. I’ve seen guys get in trouble by trying to make daddy/boy roles work 24/7, which is very hard to sustain.”
Luckily, Shewey says having the kink community and our festivals and events available allows us to discuss and play this out more, in the same way that puppy play has moved from behind closed doors to being an intrinsic part of our fetish events and public gatherings. Giving space for our kinks in public helps us to think through what role they play and allows us to step out of porn fantasies and create those environments for ourselves and share them with others.
“The gay male kink scene has traditionally been very smart about the need for community forums, educational opportunities, workshops, and demonstrations as opportunities to transmit not just practical skills but also tribal values,” Shewey applauds. “Conversations and workshops about negotiating consent never lose their importance. As with the terms ‘fetish’ and ‘kink,’ ‘daddy/boy’ means something different to everyone who’s drawn to that dynamic, and it’s useful to have dialogue – in public and/or in private – about the range of meanings that we attach to these terms. Is it just about age differential? Is it about a look? Is it about discipline/punishment-as-love? Is it about playing? Is it about devotion? Is it about consciously reprogramming your psyche by doing something intentionally that was formerly done involuntarily?”
Shewey’s questioning reflects a key approach of the book. He is not so much trying to “solve” sex and the role of porn in our lives for the rest of us, but much more about leading us to the right questions so that we can create our own answers. And that’s the power and strength of his book, The Paradox of Porn. •
