Talk Dirty to Me

When I log on to a porn search engine, I love to enter the word “verbal” and then click the search button.  If I am watching a guy in Alabama jacking off, I want him to talk to the camera and tell me to “suck it, ya fuckin’ whore”.  Guys who are good at dirty talk are gold.  But there have been times during sex that fear has clamped my jaw closed wire-tight.  Am I good at dirty talk?  Do I have the voice for it?  Does it seem authentic coming from me, or studied?

Not long ago, shortly before starting this blog, I posted a video of myself jerking off on Xtube.  (It’s a piss-drenched, cum-play jack off, with good old Rob Zombie playing in the background.  One commentator called it a masterpiece, thank you very much). On the video, I talk dirty.  But I was very self-conscious about it.  Thankfully, one commentator said that hearing me talk was hot.  I’m not so sure.  I have had well-meaning friends tell me that I have a lisp, while other friends have said that that was incorrect.  A lisp cuts to the heart of a gay man, since it makes him question the authenticity of his masculinity.  But what makes a man a man?

I have a dear, straight-laced friend named Kenny, and when we are talking about sex and he uses words like “cock” or “dick”, he says them in a funny voice, as if to put imaginary quotations about the words.  He seems uncomfortable verbalizing dirty words.  The polar opposite scenario played itself out in the movie “Sophie’s Choice”.  In the movie, the character Stingo meets a hot girl with a real filthy mouth.  She has no trouble verbalizing – fuck me, fuck you, fuck fuck fuck.  But when Stingo attempts to do what she verbalizes so well, she balks.  Nearly in a panic, she explains that her therapist has helped her with her fear of sex by teaching her to verbalize.  She can now say “fuck”, but she can’t actually do it.

As a society, we become completely tongue-tied when it comes to sex.  Sex is something we all do, but we are loathe to admit that we want – hell, need – it.  My colleague Jennifer was recently dumped by her girlfriend of a year.  She told me that friends and family had comforted her for losing a companion, but because she knows I write a sex blog, admitted that she could share only with me that she was deeply upset about losing their sex life (apparently so intense, they would weep afterwards.  I should be so lucky).  She felt that her friends and family would find such an admission as trite.  Jennifer felt the sex was so good, that it made the relationship worth fighting for in spite of their differences.  Whether that’s true or not is beside the point.  The point is that if we can’t verbalize how important sex is to us, how can we even begin to say a word like “cock” with conviction?

The path to successful dirty talk is the same as the path to Carnegie Hall – practice practice practice.  You don’t need me to tell you that the best way to try something new with a partner is to try it alone during masturbation first.  Nothing is hotter that saying the words “nut sac” while grabbing your own.

I recently decided to take this practicing of mine a step further by attending a workshop last week entitled “Talking Dirty: From Mild to Wild...and Beyond”.  Picture it: me and four straight women in a room at an upscale meeting spot downtown, a spot so upscale that we were advised to wear business casual.  Our host was the amazing Katrina McKay, the founder of Ohhh Canada (check out Katrina's website here).  At first, I felt horribly out of place, the lone gay man amongst four very beautiful women.  Part of the workshop would entail actually talking dirty and my throat began to clench tight.

But as the evening unfolded, I developed a rapport with Katrina and those beautiful women.  Having a gay man in the mix actually seemed to add a twist to the evening that wouldn’t have been there had I not come.  I shared my feelings that while it’s pretty acceptable these days in Canada to be gay, god forbid you should be gay and sexual.  It’s fine if you want to get married, buy a house in the suburbs and adopt a foreign baby.  Some gay men may see me as a throwback to the 70’s where sex was a central feature to being gay.  In these politically correct times, I’m an outlier.  But one of the women said she could relate.  She was a mom now, and she said that people tended to de-sexualize her, which she resented.  It was as if having a baby had rendered her sexless to some.  I told the group how I love to be called a whore during sex.  I wondered if they, as women, resented that term, but to my great surprise, they quickly shooed that concern away as they too loved the word in a role-play scenario.

These women began to dispel my notions about women not being as animalistic as men.  One type of sex talk could be referred to as “Exclamations”, and one woman offered “I want you to blow your load inside me!” as an example.  Other types of sex talk could include “The Tease” (sending a sexy text hours before the scheduled play time), or “Instructional” sex talk (“I love it when you suck both my balls at the same time”).  We talked about having prepared catch phrases.  Preparing for sex talk is actually the only way you can feel free to improvise when actually in the moment with a partner.  We talked about a whispered command sometimes being more powerful that the full-throated command.  We even learned that nervousness about talking dirty can be endearing (“You are so hot, I can’t even speak!”). 

 It bothers me that we call them “dirty” words, when in fact they are fucking beautiful words.  And yet the sense of the forbidden gives them a power that both tantalizes us and at times paralyzes us.  But the late, great comedian Lenny Bruce taught us that words are just...words.  He laced his act with strings of profanity to reveal that words only hold power when we endow them with it.  So tonight, when I masturbate, I’m going to talk dirty to myself, loud and proud.  I will own the word “cock” and “cum” and “suck”.  I’m proud that I have the mouth of a trucker when I masturbate and have sex.  Where’s the parade for that?