Good Vibrations Magazine

by Diana Cage

Understanding your body and the body of your lovers is one of the most important aspects of a great sex life. While it’s true that there’s a lot more involved in truly great sex than just the parts behind your zipper, men and women of all orientations, genders, and bodies could be having a lot more fun if they were well informed about what’s going on down there. Besides, knowing the names of all the good parts will come in handy if you find yourself on Jeopardy! So study up on the body basics and know before you go.

There are no bones in your boner, and there aren’t any muscles either, at least not in the shaft. The shaft of your basic run-of-the- mill penis is made up of three columns of spongy erectile tissue and blood vessels that run down the length. Two of these columns run along the top of your dick and are called the corpus cavernosa. One runs along the bottom of your dick and surrounds the urethra. This one is called the corpus spongeosum, The corpus spongeosum is connected to the head of the penis, called the glans. When you get turned on these babies all fill with blood, and Schwing! And that’s the magic ingredient to a hard on.

The base of the penis extends all the way back into the body, practically back to your anus. So, in other words, some of the shaft is actually internal. The internal portion of the penis is called the root, or the bulb. You’ve probably heard of penis lengthening surgery, which involves cutting of two ligaments that support some of the penis shaft internally. Release of these ligaments allows more of the shaft to protrude from the body. You do not want this. Not at all. Your penis is perfectly wonderful, trust me on this. Under no circumstances should you consider getting a Frankenpenis. I like your penis the way it is and so does your boyfriend or girlfriend.

The head of the penis is called the glans. It has the highest concentration of nerve endings in your whole package, though considerably less than a clit, sorry boys! The glans is where your urethral openings sits and it’s analogous to the head of the clit. Though it’s the most nerve-rich, men sometimes complain that the head is desensitized after circumcision. Possibly because circumcision leaves the glans exposed to constant contact and the poor thing becomes overloaded and desensitized as a defense maneuver. There is a movement against circumcision for this reason. The ridge around the head is referred to as the coronal ridge or the crown.

The underside of the ridge, where the head connects to the shaft is called the frenulum. This is a sweet spot for tongue action or a place to pay some extra attention to during a hand job. Along the bottom of your dick, running from the coronal ridge, down the shaft and over the middle of the testicles to the anus is a raised section. Imagine running your tongue down the bottom of the shaft, or if you have a penis handy, go ahead and run your tongue along the bottom. That raised up ridge is called the raphe.

I think the most sensitive part of my penis is its pride -Ian, 34

Many men find the raphe is also an extra-sensitive area of the shaft. The internal portion of the penis, ends behind the balls and can be felt by pressing the perineum, the area between the testicles and anus. One of the reasons it anal sex feels so great is that it stimulates the root of the penis through the rectal wall.

The foreskin is the baggy layer of skin that covers the head in uncircumcised cocks; it’s what makes a cock look like a snake wearing a turtleneck. An estimated two thirds of American men are circumcised at birth, meaning they have no foreskin, though thankfully the trend is moving away from the automatic snip snip. The head of an uncircumcised cock is nicely protected and therefore, extra sensitive. Keep this in mind and use it to your advantage!

One more little thing about the foreskin: it functions as a fun moveable sheath over the dick so you can give yourself, your boyfriend, or your neighbor a lube-free handjob. But if you are cut, don’t sweat it! That’s what lube is for, right?

The testicles, or er, your balls, hang behind the dick in a fleshy sac called the scrotum. Testicles vary in size and are temperature sensitive; they need to be a few degrees cooler than body temperature in order to produce sperm; their job. In order to keep cool the balls move up and down in the scrotum in a sort of self-regulating AC system. And yes, this is the reason for shrinkage. When you get out of that chilly pool your balls pull up against your nice warm body.

Balls are very sensitive to pain, although a lot of guys get into CBT or cock and ball torture. You can buy all sorts of fun things for your balls including ball stretchers, cock cages, and weights and clamps to attach to your scrotum.

The vas dererens are two small tubes that connect the epididymis (a sort of storage facility for sperm) to the urethra. When you have a vasectomy, the vas deferens get snipped so that sperm is no longer carried out of the body. Then there’s the seminal vesicles, which sort of sound like something from catechism school, but really they are just glands that produce nutrients for semen.

Semen, or cum, or maybe come, depending on what dictionary you are using, is the fluid that squirts out when you ejaculate. The testicles make the sperm and when you get turned on the sperm move out of the testes into the epididymis then through the vas deferens and then into the urethra where they mix it up with a couple of bodily fluids to produce semen. This mixture is expelled through your urethra when you have an orgasm.

The prostate gland produces some of the fluid that helps transport sperm. It’s located behind the public bone, below the bladder and is analogous to the female G-spot. It feels good when you prod and poke it, one of the many reasons that boys enjoy getting banged in the butt.

Hard-ons
Sometimes erections just happen, this is your autonomic nervous system taking control. For instance, men get boners in their sleep. However, it’s really the on-purpose boners we’re talking about here. The muscles that control the blood supply to the penis are normally very tense, but when you get excited they relax and allow blood to flow into your dick, and bingo! you get hard. As the dick fills with blood, the surrounding membrane becomes taught, like an inflated balloon. This squeezes the veins that would normally allow the blood to flow back out of the penis creating a raging hard-on.

An erect dick can hold eight times as much blood as a flaccid one. But cocks do not expand in any kind of direct correlation to their non-erect size. In other words, you can be a shower not a grower but pretty much once it gets hard it’s about the same size as everyone else’s. For the record, Viagra works by causing the relaxation of the muscles and vesicles thereby allowing your dick to fill up with blood. Poppers do the same thing. Drugs of all kinds, both prescription and non, and even just plain old cigarettes, can affect your hard-on.

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Diana Cage is the author of Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus. Look for her next book Threeways: Fulfill Your Ultimate Fantasy due out Summer 2006 from Alyson Books.