I’m at a barbecue. Over the grill, my buddies and I talk about the NBA playoffs, girls and Roger Clemens. Manly stuff. Taking a swig from my Corona, I throw it out there:

 

 

 

“So. Do you like a finger up your butt?”

 

 

 

Silence.

 

 

 

“Do I what?” says one.

 

 

 

“Excuse me?” says another.

 

 

 

“I’m getting another beer,” says a third.

 

 

 

The subject is forbidden. Even in a post-metrosexual era where it’s okay for a straight guy to pluck his eyebrows, wax his chest and rack up rewards points at Sephora, it still seems a little gay-ish for him to insert a dick-shaped object up his ass.

 

 

 

We’re raised this way. We’re programmed. Locker room jokes about dropping the soap and prison rape make the concepts of homosexuality and butt play intertwined and inseparable. It’s one of our final taboos. And, like most taboos, it’s based more on myth than on reality.

 

 

 

“That’s ridiculous,” says Dr. Barbara Bartlik, a Cornell University psychiatrist and sex therapist with twenty years of professional experience. “It’s just another erogenous zone. A guy wanting anal stimulation is just like a guy enjoying nipple stimulation or having his testicles caressed. It’s just another form of sexual pleasure.”

 

 

 

Like the blowjob before it, straight butt play is emerging into the mainstream. Dr. Bartlik estimates that at least 10% of straight guys, more or less, enjoy regular anal play. The percentage is much higher for guys who’ve only dabbled but there are no hard statistics as of yet. (Paging Dr. Kinsey…)

 

 

 

Sometimes it’s just a flirty finger. Sometimes it’s with toys, lube and yes, even strap-ons. Babeland, a sex toy store, conducts the workshop “Bend Him Over 101” in their Manhattan location. Educational Coordinator Carolyn Riccardi leads the workshop: Her audience includes a few gay couples and some lesbians but the overwhelming majority are straight guys and girls.

 

 

“When I first started working here years ago, introducing couples to anal sex invoked boisterous protest,” Carolyn says. Now, she escorts nervous guys to a section of the store called “Anal Island” almost daily and soothingly introduces them to things like butt plugs. Do they turn gay? “No,” she answers. “Lots of gay men don’t like anal sex. Lots of straight men do like anal sex. There is no correlation between a sexual orientation and a sex act.”

 

 

 

Grant Stoddard, author of Working Stiff, has felt his share of fingers: The book chronicles his exploits as Nerve.com’s sexual guinea pig. “You can be on a first date with a girl, and she’s trying to get a finger up your ass,” Grant tells me. “And it’s happening with increasing frequency.”

 

 

 

Girls are starting to explore. They’ve discovered another way to push the envelope of an increasingly edgier sexual culture. “When it comes to fingering guys, women are the new teenage boys,” says Grant. “They’ve heard that guys like it and they are ready to mete out pleasure with maximum enthusiasm and minimum empathy.”

 

 

 

“I like playing with guys’ butts,” says Amy, a 30 year-old from Brooklyn, NY. “And if a guy is weirded-out by it, then that gives me pause. Is he close-minded? Is he just a tight-ass?”

 

 

 

This flips the issue on its head. To women like Amy, the straight guy who doesn’t like butt play needs psychoanalysis. The anti-ass contingent arguably carries a whiff of sexual hypocrisy. After all, traditional guy/girl anal sex is both accepted and celebrated as a sign of sexual conquest; the man is dominant, the woman is his bitch.

 

 

 

“Why does he think my butt’s okay to play with, but his isn’t?” asks Amy. “Is it because I’m a woman? Is he also going to assume that after dinner, I need to clean the dishes?”

 

 

 

But for every Amy, there’s a Jenny, a 28 year-old Manhattan grad student. “Unless he’s mistaking the finger for a very, very different body part, it doesn’t make him gay,” she says before shaking her head disapprovingly. “It just makes him dirty and disgusting.” Depending on whom you ask butt play is hot, disgusting, normal, weird, icky or yummy.

 

 

 

It’s possible that the tricky conversation started with a small, little-engine-that-could porno called Bend Over Boyfriend. The film’s writer/director, Shar Rednour, had a girlfriend (now his wife) who worked at Good Vibrations, a sex toy store in San Francisco. After years of selling anal goodies, she noticed that the store sold more strap-ons to straight couples than to lesbians. This knowledge prompted Shar to create and shoot an informative, clinical, step-by-step film that showed girls how to access the male back door.

 

 

 

There was nothing like it. “I think that 85 percent of couples have done the ‘let me try tickling you here’ or the reach-back,” says Shar. “A huge majority of people have at least tried something like this. But they didn’t know what they were doing.”

 

 

 

Bend Over Boyfriend stars sexpert Dr. Carol Queen and instructs couples on topics like selecting the proper dildo and finding the right lube. The advice includes gems like, “You’re not going to poke the finger in – never do that. You’re seducing a potentially interested, but possibly reluctant butt hole.”

 

 

 

Anxieties abound and the film addresses each in turn. When someone awkwardly asks Dr. Queen, “Excuse my bluntness, but what if it makes me all loose down there?” Note: It doesn’t. Anal play can actually strengthen the sphincter muscles, which control that type of thing.

 

 

 

The film hasn’t cracked the Netflix top ten – only about 25,000 copies have been sold – but mentions in places like Cosmopolitan, Salon and Playboy have taken Bend Over Boyfriend from borderline-niche to quasi-mainstream. UrbanDictionary.com uses it in one of the site’s definitions: “Bend Over Boyfriend: A boy that a girl fucks up the ass via some strap-on device.”

 

 

 

So maybe ass play doesn’t turn a guy gay or make him lose control of his bowels. But what’s the upside? Why bother? Aren’t two pieces of hairy anatomy that somehow, miraculously, lock right into place enough of a turn-on for heterosexual guys?

 

 

 

In sex, pleasure comes before practicality. The butt has the prostate and the prostate has nerve endings. Lots of ’em. “The prostate is an erogenous zone, just like nipples or testicles,” says Dr. Bartlik. “There are a lot more sensory nerve fibers in those areas, and they can be sexually stimulating.”

 

 

 

The pleasure of a stimulated prostate isn’t just confined to the butt. It spreads, dissipates and heightens the overall sexual experience. It improves the orgasm. In fact, stimulating the prostate is similar to stimulating a girl’s G-Spot. It’s called – wait for it – the “He-Spot.”

 

 

 

Arousing the walnut-sized He-Spot can give a guy a “Super Orgasm,” a term likely coined one by of the most popular toys for stimulating the prostate, the Aneros. What guy, straight or gay, wouldn’t want something called a Super Orgasm?

 

 

 

“When people think about anal sex, they think that the butt is in New Jersey and their penis is in Brooklyn,” says Carolyn from Babeland. “But everything is layered on top of each other. There’s inter-pleasure. So when you’re stimulating the butt, you can definitely feel pleasure throughout the body.”

 

 

 

There’s also the sheer naughtiness, the thrill of breaking a taboo and the added bonus of promoting prostate health. There aren’t many new things to experience once you’ve lost your virginity and figured out how this fits into that…until you discover a brand new body part.

 

 

 

“Psychologically, it’s a big turn-on for a lot of guys to give up control to the gal,” says Bend Over Boyfriend’s producer, Nan Kinney. “Normally, it’s usually on the guy to perform. For a lot of guys, it’s great to give that up.”

 

 

 

Okay, so the guy gets to break taboos, relinquish control and have a Super Orgasm. Great. But what’s a woman’s incentive for exploring some asshole’s asshole?

 

 

 

“You’re in control, the guy is submissive to you. When a guy gives you that kind of trust, it’s a huge turn-on for a lot of women,” says Nan. Aside from the psychological appeal, there’s some raw physical pleasure, too. “Women can get off and even have orgasms wearing strap-ons. It rubs against your clit.” Or she can buy a strap-on with a built-in vibrator: Everybody wins.

 

 

 

Then there’s the warm and fuzzy stuff. Butt play can result in the Kumbaya-esque benefits of enhanced empathy and intimacy – you know, the kind of stuff you talk about on a retreat with yoga mats.

 

 

 

Most of the anxieties associated with butt play are things you don’t actually need to worry about. But there are some legitimate concerns. If you don’t do it right, ass play can be as wretched as you initially feared it might be.

 

 

 

So let’s pretend. Let’s say we have a straight couple who have conquered their butt play hang ups. They’re curious. They’re horny. Before they bust out the dildos and choose their favorite anal beads, they should learn these ten rules of thumb, so to speak.

 

 

 

1. Mix the old and the new. Don’t focus only on the butt. Instead, combine a little ass play with something tried and true. Spice up a blowjob with a wandering finger.

 

 

 

2. Like money and good karma, there’s no such thing as too much lube. Look for something with the consistency of Aloe Vera or hair gel. You want thick and goppy.

 

 

 

3. Communicate. Check in. Do it verbally with dirty talk or nonverbally by holding hands.

 

 

 

4. Warm up. You know those porn star chicks who devour things the size of eggplants with their butts? They train for it. Behind the scenes of every porno, they spend time with lubes, toys and massages before any serious anal play. You should too.

 

 

 

5. Have the girl clip her fingernails. Maybe decades from now, sticking sharp objects up your ass will be the hot new thing but that’s a different article for a different generation.

 

 

 

6. Cleanliness is godliness. Shower. Wash your hands before and after. Enough said on this one.

 

 

 

7. “No pain, no gain” does not apply to anal sex. If it hurts, you’re either not doing it right or not using enough lube. Slow down. Rugged play can perforate the rectum or cause hemorrhoids. That is bad.

 

 

 

8. Start small. Literally. Start with a tiny anal plug, like the “Little Flirt.”

 

 

 

9. Practice safe anal sex. In news that’s not terribly shocking, the rectum has its share of bacteria. To avoid vaginal infections, Dr. Bartlik cautions, “Make sure you use separate toys for (anal sex). Don’t mix them with toys that you use for clitoral stimulation.”

 

 

 

10. Breathe. Breathe deeply. With all forms of sex, relaxation is key.

 

 

 

So, fellow straight guys. You have your ten tips. You have assurances that butt play won’t “turn you gay.” You have some fun family viewing. And you have the possibility of earth-shattering orgasms. Is it for you?

 

 

 

Back at my barbecue, I explain the He-Spot to my buddies. I suggest that butt play turning you gay is about as likely as anal sex turning a straight woman into a gay man. I talk about the Super Orgasm.

 

 

 

My friend Eric looks at me. He thinks. He chews on his hamburger. He thinks some more. Finally, speaking for millions of straight guys around the globe, he says, “I like my orgasms just fine, thank you very much.”

 

 

 

Fair enough. Maybe we’re a ways from seeing super-straights like Jack Bauer wearing t-shirts that read, “Real Men Take it Up the Ass.” Next holiday season, it’s unlikely that butt plugs will be the Number One Selling Gift for Him.

 

 

 

But it’s only a matter of time. At some point in your life, a girl will slip you the finger and maybe you’ll gag. But maybe – just maybe – you’ll like it.

 

 

  

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