Good Vibrations Magazine

One of my regular tasks at Good Vibrations is touring new staff around the store to familiarize them with the toys and products we sell. Merchandise occupies separate areas: dildos here and vibes over there, lubes across from massage oils, so it’s easier for customers to consider their choices and find what they want. A couple of the groupings have a touch of arbitrariness: There’s a selection called Men’s Toys, for example, even though men can use and enjoy any toy in the store; and there’s a selection called Anal Toys, emphasizing a particular selection of products as particularly ass-appropriate. The anus and vagina are both orifices, of course, so that anything shaped for one could conceivably go into the other — in fact, we often recommend small anal plugs to women who’ve had vaginal surgery or who suffer from vaginismus, because they’re even smaller than small dildos — but the anus and rectum have some special qualities that make toy selection a safety issue. For one thing, as my partner Robert’s registered nurse mom used to tell him, “Don’t put anything into your anus that is sharp, has splinters, or can break.” Now that’s a sensible mom! (Having her in his life must have given him an early start towards his induction into the Anal Hall of Fame.)

Those sorts of things aren’t very safe for the vagina either, though the vagina is stronger, more muscular, and has thicker walls than the anus. But there’s more: the Get Lost factor.

“Here are the anal toys,” I announce to the trainees, “mostly beads, butt plugs, small and slender dildos, and vibrators with flanges. Many people really love anal vibration — anuses are richly endowed with nerves, are very sensitive — but you have to use a vibrator with a base to avoid it slipping all the way in.” I hold up a Tiffany Mini Smoothie so they can compare it with the anal vibes. Its size and shape are similar, but it has no base. “When I worked in the store, I got to the point that I always asked people buying this vibrator whether they intended to use it anally. Nine times out of ten they’d look at me all surprised, like I’d read their mind. But this vibrator is one of the most unsafe things you can use anally. It’s small, slender, and tapered, and it has no base. I warn people about it and they say, ‘Oh, I’ll keep hold of it.’ They forget they’ll have lube on their hands and that with orgasm, the anus contracts and can pull objects in. And if a vibrating object slips inside the anus, it’s a medical emergency. Do you know why?”

By this time the trainees are pretty wide-eyed themselves. Mostly they hadn’t considered that coming to work at Good Vibes would put them in the ballpark of medical emergencies. Isn’t solo sex supposed to be safe? If anyone ventures a guess, it’s usually to say, “Because they won’t be able to get the vibrator out by themselves.”

“That’s part of it. The rectum doesn’t end, like the vagina does, and it’s possible that the vibrator will continue to move up into the persons’ body so that they, or even a friend who tries to help, can’t reach it. But the real problem is that the vibrator is on. They’re designed to shed heat into the surrounding air so they won’t get too hot. Inside the rectum, there’s no place for the heat to go. A vibrator could conceivably get hot enough to melt. The nice hospital personnel will triage you right up with the knife wounds.”

Their eyes are really big now.

“Of course, this is just another variation on an interesting sexual theme. Have you ever seen the web sites dedicated to listing the things emergency room personnel have removed from people’s anuses? Anal horniness must have a special quality to it — some of these people just did not think things through. I mean, quick-dry cement? A guy went to the hospital because the cement dried and he couldn’t get it out.”

Nervous laughs and a gasp.

“Robert’s dad is a doctor in rural Ohio. He’s seen guys with juice glasses up their butts. Light bulbs. And a coffee mug.”

“A coffee mug?”

“I guess he thought since it had a handle on it, he’d be able to take it out when he was done. But then, of course, the handle slipped in too. See what an important contribution to sexual safety you all will be making? You’ll be able to tell everyone how important it is to use only anal-appropriate toys. Keep people out of the emergency room. Even though the emergency room people have seen it all before.”

It’s true — of all the sexual emergencies that need quick hospital treatment, anal mishaps are among the most common. Partly, this has to do with those special qualities possessed by the anus and rectum: its tissue’s relative delicacy, the fact that it can expand greatly and contract suddenly. But I think there’s more to it than that. Good Vibrations has declared Anal Sex Month partly to speak up against the conditions that create such anal mishaps, and the number one problem is the social taboo that leads to secrecy about one’s anal desires.

I remember this well. When coming into my sexuality I got almost no information about anal play, even though it was part of my masturbation from the get-go. I never spoke up about any desires I had to be touched or penetrated — and when it finally happened, with a guy I’d picked up at a Texas biker bar, I was grateful for only a split second, because we didn’t have any lube. Vaginal dry-fucking was bad enough but this was excruciating. I was out of there like a shot. It was at least a decade later (with no more anal play — the pain of that one brief attempt at penetration scared me to pieces) before I even heard a mainstream reference to lube: that you should use it with condoms. Well, who knew? It wasn’t on the shelf in the drugstore, although you can find it in most drugstores today. Thinking back, I can only assume my biker pal hadn’t seen Last Tango in Paris — or maybe he didn’t like to butter anything, even his bread.

This lack of information about all things anal changed with the advent of the HIV epidemic. Suddenly we needed to talk about anal sex, though I don’t remember any acknowledgement in the early safe sex brochures that people might masturbate anally and that there would be safety considerations even for those who played solo. When they talked about “safety” they only meant disease transmission anyway, not accident or mishap. Further, for many in the mainstream, anal sex meant anal intercourse by definition; it was something gay men practiced because neither partner had a vagina and they had to make do. Not for years did we hear that more heterosexual women than gay men had had anal intercourse — many people have probably not heard this statistic even now — nor that plenty of bisexual and heterosexual men, not just gay men, wanted anal penetration and prostate stimulation. Even I was surprised when Bend Over Boyfriend became the biggest-selling video at Good Vibes, though I really should have expected it. Homo, hetero, bi, male, female, and everybody else — “What I like about assholes is,” purrs a transgendered character in my erotic novel The Leather Daddy and the Femme, “everybody’s got one.”

But you sure wouldn’t know it to look at most sex ed materials, which still mainly focus on warning people away from the dangers of anal intercourse. Given that everybody’s got one, it’s richly endowed with nerves, and it’s capable of such hunger that people suddenly think it’s a good idea to sit on their gearshift lever (I only hope they don’t elect to do this while driving, but you never know), don’t you think we could manage to give everybody the basics?

So I think the key to strange sex mishaps, particularly anal ones, is this lack of acknowledgement and information. It’s the fact that so many people have misinformation and shame about their anal desires that even people who are partnered don’t tell — until they have to explain to their lover why a favorite coffee mug is missing and there’s an emergency room charge on the credit card. It’s what makes us think the nice doctor will believe us when we say, “I was driving home from the Farmer’s Market when a car rear-ended me, and the next thing I knew that cucumber had lodged itself in my rectum.” (Meanwhile, the doctor puts a tick mark on the emergency room chart: one more check next to “cucumber, rear-end collision,” which is listed along with “mopping floor, slipped, penetrated by handle” and “using hairbrush, startled by doorbell” and “coffee mug left on sofa by mistake.” The chart is surrounded by X-rays taken of odd items found in peoples’ butts.)

What are these people thinking? For one thing, that anal masturbation is rare; that they’re just about the only person who ever did something like this; that the nice doctor hasn’t seen dozens of lost cucumbers, deodorant bottles, and flange-less vibrators.

In my perfect world, we’d have public service announcements on radio and TV: rock stars and ex-presidential candidates declaring, “Two words: Anal Beads!” or “Lube it!” Ordinary household objects would come with labels: “Sure it fits, but can you get it out?” Hemorrhoid relief commercials wouldn’t sell ointment, they’d sell butt plugs (just like in England — only there they call ‘em “pessaries” and I’m sure they come in tacky colors, not like our beautiful silicone jewels. On the plus side, the National Health Service pays for it).

The secrets of the anus are out — it’s among the most common of the guilty pleasures. Just about everybody has one, and a lot of us want to play with them. It’s high time the anus came all the way out of the closet. We deserve safe, pleasurable stimulation for any part of our body that craves it, even where the sun don’t shine.