Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Truth About Penis Enlargement Pills


A reader recently asked me whether penis enlargement pills really work. You won’t see his question in this blog because he wrote me off the record—which points to how sensitive we men are about our our size. It’s also why it’s time to blow the lid off the secret behind the ever-proliferating array of penis enlargement pills out there.

Here's the trick with penis enlargement pills. Technically, certain combos of herb-based drugs can enlarge the penis... when it's flaccid. These herbs trigger a temporarily flush in the body. One side effect is more blood flow to the penis.

But that has zero effect on erect penis size, except that the extra blood flow may make some men harder when erect, and therefore makes them seem larger. But actually, they're no larger than they'd be without ejaculating for a few days.

That's similar to how Viagra works: triggering extra blood flow in the penis. But Viagra's much, much better at it than any herbal pill. And Viagra doesn’t claim to make you larger—only harder.

Think about it for a moment: drugs that make a man grow larger? The last time I saw something like that it was green and in a Marvel Comic. Nevertheless, these companies can legitimately claim growth because they’re not legally obligated to tell you it's flaccid growth. Guys are easily taken by this because it's like any con: it only works to the degree ‘the mark’ wants to believe.

That coveting-factor blinds the mark to the inevitable illogic in a con-artist's story. Every confidence story has a far-fetched element that, if examined closely, just doesn't hold up. But the con artist relies on the human tendency NOT to examine too closely what we want to be: If we look our gift-horse in the mouth, we might wake up from the dream.

That Viagra is that dream, that wish-come-true, only makes the penis enlargement pill story more seductive. Suddenly it seems viable in an, “If that works, why not this?” kind of way.

I suspect there’s a placebo effect going on here too. When a guy pops a P.E.P. he wants it to work. That anticipation creates excitement (“Gee, in only minutes I’ll be larger than I’ve ever been before!). Excitement tends to engorge the nether regions. I guarantee, half an hour later every guy’s at the mirror with his pants down, checking out the goods. And when he sees that he is flaccidly larger, he’s in. He’s a believer because he wants to be.

Armed with this new confidence, he then pops a P.E.P. before sex and, excited by anticipation, finds himself a little more erect than usual. And, voila, the pill has worked!

Of course this doesn’t happen with every man. Some are more skeptical going in, and so the pill doesn’t work for them. But I surmise there are just enough men out there enjoying this apparent miracle that the myth is verified and continues to sell.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Dimitri The Stud


A group of workplace gal pals in San Francisco are hanging outside a bar in The Marina, trying to find a cab. One of the girls, Olga, is approached by this guy, Dimitri, and they talk for at most 2 minutes. He asks for her number and she hands him her business card.

So he calls her. And calls her again. To hear his voicemails, click on this youtube hyperlink (courtesy of woemnco.com) and prepare to be blown away.

What’s most remarkable about this call in the annals of sexual politics is how completely the man misses the mark. It’s a veritable a how-not-to-meet-women manifesto. When will guys figure out that the way to meet a woman is simply ask her about her (and shut up about yourself unless asked)?

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Dating 101: The Politics of Plan B


Everyone knows dating sucks. But few know how to recognize and negotiate its biggest suckage: Being someone’s Plan B. By definition dating is a pool. More like swimming blindfolded in a community pool. Amid the flab you’ll inevitably bump into someone who feels right.

But you have no idea who they may have bumped into right before you (or after, for that matter) and how right they may feel in comparison. And no one’s telling. So at first you have to assume that a date-of-interest is also feeling out some other bloke or blokes elsewhere in the pool.

If they are, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The key is to depth gage the pool to your advantage. Dating men are particularly good at playing Marco Polo— women, less so. But the signs that you're in someone's shallow end are basically the same:

Sign 1: They only go out with you on a weeknight [and daylight dates- forget ‘em].
Sign 2: They communicate almost exclusively via text.
Sign 3: They plead a life of events they can’t invite you to.
Sign 4: They only date-commit within 48 hours of the alleged happening.
Sign 5: They’ve broken more than one date at the last minute.
Sign 5.5: They offer a limp do-over, like “Let’s meet between these other things I’m doing.”
Sign 6: Despite any of the above, they still act like they want to see you.

Taken individually, these ‘tells’ mean almost nothing. Quality daters do lead busy lives and do tend to text more than most. But if you hit any trifecta-combo of the above, you can be pretty sure you’re in a wading pool with at least one other prospect mucking around in there with you. So what to do now? If you’re someone’s plan B and want their A-game, how do you get in? The answer is actually quite simple: Behave like they’re now your Plan B.

That sound’s pretty juvenile, doesn’t it? ‘Just so much more tit-for-tat game playing. In a way it is. And the motto “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” doesn't help either. Better to consider the art of dating as a dance, not a game.

The mating dance exists across all manner of creatures on earth for a reason. Without it there’d be mating by rape and, consequently, a lot of bad DNA muddying the genetic waters. Only in species where aggression is the number-one survival trait do you see it missing. For all the rest, the mating dance enables the widest range of genetic choices, and therefore, statistically, the best gene passage. This is nature, and we’re stuck with it because its wisdom is immutable.

So then it becomes a question of how to dance better than the next bloke or babe. And the answer is, when in doubt dance away, then see how your intended reacts. If they let you go, then you never had a shot. But you’ll be surprised how often that once-distant dater starts calling you to “hang out.”

Look at it from your crush’s perspective. If you’re their plan B, they’ll expect you to act like a back-up: always waiting in the wings. But the A-player has their own back-ups in the wings. Even if you really don’t, act like you do. There’s an old AA saying that applies. ‘Fake it ‘till you make it.’ It means our behavior does more to change us and how others view us than anything else… including our hearts and minds.

There’s a subtle, but equally important benefit to this too. Romanticizing another too early in a relationship leads you to lose yourself to a dream. If something real develops between you, you’ll have plenty of time to focus on each other. In the meantime, concentrate on making yourself the best you can be. The rest will follow.

Friday, April 18, 2008

New Neurological Discoveries in Orgasm


According to traditional neuroscience, paraplegics rendered numb below the waist shouldn’t be able to achieve orgasm. But rehabilitation medicine professor Dr. Marca Sipski-Alexander’s research in 2001 and 2006 found that 50% of men and 44% of women studied with extreme spinal cord injuries achieved orgasm in a lab with the aid of genital stimulation and adult movies.

The Los Angeles Times’ Regina Nuzzo has written a great article on what such studies are revealing about orgasm. The upshot: we used to think orgasm only happens when genital stimulation sends signals up the spinal cord to the brain, where the impulses build in intensity until tension is released in a sneeze-like explosion. But now scientists are discovering another neurological route that explains Dr. Sipski-Alexander’s findings.

This route bypasses the spine entirely through the vagus nerve network. Named after ‘vagabonds,’ these nerves extend from your brain stem to connect with your major organs. The key is that they don’t go through the spine, but instead fan out from your neck to spread through out your body.

Rutgers University psychology professor Barry R. Komisauruk (co-author of “The Science of Orgasm” book in 2006) is currently expanding on this discovery by studying women at each end of the orgasm spectrum: those unable to achieve orgasm and those suffering from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS). In both cases Komisauruk believes these women’s brains are stuck in a pattern that can be altered by neuro-feedback.

In Komisauruk’s experiments, the women lie in an MRI scanner to view a real-time computer display of their brain activity while conducting mental exercises (such as counting or imagery) designed to inhibit the neural pathways to orgasm in PSAS women and to open new ones in anorgasmic women. So far the research has concentrated on the former group. And already it indicates that PSAS, a rare disorder thought by many scientists to purely psychological, is more likely biological— displaying itself in unusually high brain activity in areas known to be connected with genital stimulation.

If Komisauruk is right, the neural pathways to and from the brain are far more adaptable and opportunistic than once thought, enabling us to develop new pathways and/or redirect nerve impulses to pathways heretofore underused. For the estimated 10% of women unable to achieve orgasm, this could well lead to a breakthrough. The thinking is that impulses traveling from clitoral stimulation to the brain might be somehow blocked somewhere in the spinal cord in these women. Says Komisauruk, “We want to see if [] that blockage is susceptible to a change in mental activity.”

My own research into male multiple orgasm suggests this adaptability. Across two test groups of men aged 19 to 59, 70% and 90% of them achieved multiple orgasms respectively. The 20% increase resulted from improvements in teaching the technique, gleaned from first group and applied to the second. These improvements entailed teaching men to increase their arousal in the lead-up to ejaculation via biofeedback-oriented creative visualization. In other words, once I honed the bio-feedback element of the instruction, significantly more men were able to retrain their bodies to achieve non-ejaculatory multiple orgasms.

Of note here is that the remaining 10% in the second test group were all men who professed significant difficulty achieving orgasm (which corresponds to a host of studies that indicate that around 10% of all men are such). But while these men were unable to ‘multiple,’ most experienced increased pre-orgasmic arousal during experimentation. So my research is ongoing toward developing specialized instruction for these men. After all, the human body is far more neurologically flexible than once thought.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Lessons from a College Callgirl


Given the impressive number of comments on her blogs, this will be old news to some of you. But for the rest, check out Confessions of a College Callgirl. A reader recently tipped me to it in reference to my last blog’s comment about how we men could fool ourselves that even a robot loved having sex with us.

CCG’s Feb 22 blog, Anatomy of a Blowjob, observes this from a professional’s POV as she writes, “…as a callgirl, you act like dropping to your knees and blowing your client has you instantly turned on, a facade that feels even thinner to me than it usually does. But the amazing thing is that guys don’t seem to question it. Just a little bit of moaning and smiling while you look up at him and earnestly intone something like 'Oooh, I love your cock' is all it takes to convince him that you’re having a great, sexy time, when in all honesty, you’re basically indifferent. You don’t like it, you don’t hate it; you're pretty much just getting through it, like eating granola for breakfast when you’d rather have bacon.”

Lest you think from that snippet that CCG’s blogs are all sex and sin, her writing is a frank and often heart-rending insight into how easily women— in particular attractive women— can become lost in their sexuality. Indeed, in her latest blog, Sick and Sad, she writes, “One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.”

Heady stuff. And it gets headier from there as she confesses to insecurities most men couldn’t imagine beautiful women suffering. But suffer they do, ever aware that it’s their bodies, not themselves, that men immediately value. Worse yet, these women become addicted to the attention in a way that CCG admits is “sick and it’s sad and I can’t get out from under it.” And while sexuality research bears this out in spades, nothing could paint it as real as this blog.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Sex and The Robot


It’s a fantasy I’ve had since adolescence. Weirder still, somebody’s written a book about it, ‘Love and Sex with Robots’ by David Levy. According to Levy (who recently appeared on Comedy Central’s The Cobert Report) in the not too distant future sex-robots will be programmed to please both men and women in fantasy ways. Levy envisions these robots as lifelike androids that will interact with us both sexually and verbally. But I wonder…

What we fantasize about reveals a lot about us. In The Stepford Wives (the 1975 movie version—forget the 2004 knock-off), a diabolical robotics genius convinces a Connecticut community of Rich White Men to replace their wives with androids that look just like their originals but act like malleable, doll-eyed, child minding, house cleaning nymphomaniacs.

In the film a wife cracks wise to her friends about her husband’s lackluster cocksmanship. The very next day she’s heard screaming in coital bliss with said hubby, “Oh, Frank you're the best, you're the champ, you're the master...!” And that’s when we know that hubby’s replaced her with a robot. The sequence is so dead-on man’s fantasy world it’s actually funny. Men want to be the ultimate providers. And we want those we provide for to be eternally grateful. More, we want a wife who’s encouraging despite our faults and would never betray us to her friends.

You’d think that women’s fantasies would similarly entail an android with such desire and loyalty. But you’d be wrong. A woman’s ideal sex robot isn’t even an android. It’s a disembodied machine. Such sex machines exist today and they usually entail a motor that cycles a phallic plunger back and forth at adjustable speeds. Since women are so emotional, the faceless machine fantasy is freeing and forbidden, like a one-night stand with a stranger or the wrong guy.

So a male android doesn’t rate nearly as high for women because their robot fantasies are more about receiving pure sex (versus the affirmation men seek). Besides, in real life women can get android sex any time they want in a one-night stand, where men are basically robotic already.

It’s ironic that a man’s robot fantasy entails receiving emotional fulfillment in the form of accolades, while a woman’s is about receiving strictly physical fulfillment. Maybe that’s because we men could fool ourselves that the robot really loved having sex with us. Women couldn’t make that leap. As a woman friend of mine put it, "An android couldn’t emotionally ever know me. It might know how to please, but it couldn’t ever give or receive real love."

So the interesting question becomes, why would man seek love from an android? The obvious answer is that it wouldn’t challenge or question him like a real woman. In that way The Stepford Wives got it right. Guilty as charged. But on a deeper level I think the answer can be found in how a man feels loved.

Fantasies aren’t random. They salve our deepest insecurities. Man seeks to be thought “the master” by our sex partners because we fear being seen by our lovers as inadequate providers. Where women find love-affirmation more in caring words and deeds, men find it in sex. Man’s infamous obsession with sex has long been discounted by womankind as simple horniness. But psychology has revealed that in love relationships a woman’s sexual desire for her man communicates love better than anything else she can do or say to him.

This is important intel for women. While man well knows that romance is the way to a woman’s heart, most women don’t know that sex is the way to his. Sure they know that sex (and sometimes the withholding of it) is the way to catch him. But they discount how effective it is at keeping him. And I don’t mean keeping him satisfied. I mean that expressing raw, wanton desire for your man is the greatest way to keep him feeling loved.

Friday, February 8, 2008

You Don’t Complete Me…

Come February, as a sex columnist for Hollywood's h Magazine, I’m pretty much obligated to comment about Valentine’s Day. This is the problem with the day. We feel obligated to do something about it. And that doing is often measured against some image of what-should-be-done.

If you’re in a relationship that image is a romantic evening. Singles often mark the day with an affirmative act of reverie in their singledom, usually taking the form of a protest night: either out trawling with pals or in sinning with comfort food.

But always there’s that Vday image looming. So this Vday I’m going to try something different. I’m going to tackle the image of romance.

We all imagine what romance should be. Note how the word ‘image’ is buried there in ‘imagine.’ So I want you now, as you’re reading this, to pause and create a picture in your mind of a romantic moment. It can be anything from sensual to sensitive. Let your mind fantasize for a moment…

Got your image yet? Only when you have one should you read on. Don’t cheat. This could get interesting.

Now that you have it, is your fantasy about you doing something for a lover or more about a lover doing something for you? If you’re like most people (including me), it’s about the latter because in our dreams we are sought by a seeker of love or passion. We are the answers to someone else’s question. And so the other, that lover, becomes the answer to ours.

So in our romantic fantasies most of us are passive, the one receiving, the one fulfilled by another. It’s not by chance that the most memorable line in modern romantic cinema is Jerry Maguire’s “You complete me…” Who wouldn’t want someone else to look at us and say that? It’s perfect.

…Except for one minor detail. Romance doesn’t really work that way. In real life nobody completes anyone else. True romance isn’t some jigsaw puzzle where we walk around bumping up against one another until we find someone whose edges fit ours (though you wouldn’t know it by the way people act).

Real romance is more like a mirror in which we come to see ourselves as we are. And that happens through our lover’s eyes. Therein lies the beauty of true romance. To the wise looking to get wiser it’s a chance to learn and become better as you both transcend image to find the awful (in both senses of the word) truth below.


I’ve discussed this idea with lovers in my life. Sure enough, more than a couple of women saw this as a handy-dandy green light to mold me to fit their jigsaw image of what a man should be. But the best of them were like a mirror: helping me see my flaws and leaving the fixing to me. They too let me hold up the mirror for them. And hopefully I too was able to accept them for who they are.

Finding this kind of romance is rare, I grant you. It’s so easy to objectify another, especially when passion enters the picture. We all want to find someone who fits an image. But I submit that behind the images we all attempt to portray to lovers, we are all so much more the same than different. We’re all scared children looking for acceptance.

So this Vday, I posit a suggestion. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, ask yourself how you see love. Is it a puzzle or a mirror?

Friday, November 30, 2007

Women Can Have 200 Orgasms a Day?!


The News of The World reports that 24 year-old British woman Sarah Carmen suffers from the rare Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS). “It started off in bed where my sex sessions would last for hours and my boyfriend would be stunned at how many times I would orgasm. Then it would happen after sex. I’d be thinking about what we’d done and I’d start feeling a bit flushed, then I’d become aroused and climax. In six months I was having 150 orgasms a day—and it has been as many as 200.”

Now it takes very little to set Ms. Carmen off. In her job as a beautician the vibration of a hand held hair drier can set her off. “If I start coughing and run to the loo, the girls know to fetch the client a magazine or a cup of tea.”

First diagnosed in 2001, PSAS is so rare that some experts disavow it and currently there’s no scientific explanation for it. Some think it’s biological, others think it’s psychological or emotional. But all agree that it only happens in women. Ponder that for a moment. Why only women? We men experience orgasms too. Why doesn’t PSAS happen to men?

No one knows for sure. My theory is that it has to do with the key biological differences between male and female arousal response: ejaculation versus multiple orgasms.

Most men think ejaculation is the same thing as orgasm. But actually orgasm triggers ejaculation about a second later. Once the sperm is ejaculated there’s no further biological need for orgasm. So a man’s climax wanes far more quickly than a woman’s. Most men’s desire for sex wanes too because the body needs more time to manufacture more sperm. No sperm. No purpose.

A woman’s orgasm lasts longer than most men’s (on average 5 seconds longer) because hers has a different purpose. Whether clitoral or vaginal, her climax triggers muscular spasms that cause the cervix (as the opening to the womb) to tamp down on the vaginal wall. It does this to literally sop up sperm. The more the cervix tamps down, the great the chance for sperm to swim up into the uterus on its journey to the egg.

This means women have multiple orgasms to biologically maximize their fertility, especially with a man who really turns her on—like the one with the best genes for her egg. This also means that the absence of orgasm may lessen the chance of pregnancy: which is nature doing her natural selection thing again. If the man behind the sperm doesn’t trigger orgasm, chances are he’s not Mr. Right.

Now PSAS in women-only begins to make sense. Since women don’t have ejaculation’s kill-switch, one orgasm leads to further arousal, which can build into another and another. But what if there were a way to fool Mother Nature? Men are made of the same muscle, bone and nerve impulses as women. If women can sometimes ejaculate vaginal fluid during arousal, might it not be possible for a man to multiple?

The biology of why it is possible and why it’s in the grasp of an estimated 90% of men is the subject of my next blog, “Man’s Secret Orgasm.” Stay tuned…

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

‘Tell Me You Love Me’ and The Sexless Marriage

If you don’t get HBO, ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ is a slice of life series about three couples struggling to fix themselves in committed relationships. In this week's season finale episode, Katie and David (played by Ally Walker and Tim DeKay), the only couple with kids, finally have sex after a year of self-imposed marital abstinence. This highly anticipated moment happens with a fit of anger, prompting the couple’s first passion all season long.

The lead-up to this is a stalemate. Both want to have sex. But neither of them wants to make the first move. Katie loves the good family man David has become but wants to be taken by the bad boy David is not. David feels her disgust and expresses his resentment in withholding.

Only when Katie finally says “Then leave me, Dave. Just leave me” does David come out of his hole (as it were). I don’t want to ruin the climax for those who haven’t seen it, so I won’t go into further detail. What’s more interesting anyway is how this loving couple got into this mess and why it happens in marriages everywhere.

Marriage is born of romance. And romance at its best is wordless, isn’t it? If the two of us are meant for each other, we will practically read each other’s minds and complete each other’s thoughts. Since the best of romances result in marriage, this is often the ethos that rules.

But it turns out that if you’ve never had a fight before marriage, your chance of divorce is even greater than average. Creating a family creates problems far beyond those of romance. Couples who’ve established fighting’s rules of engagement turn out to be better prepared to handle those conflicts. And then you have the couples on the other end of the spectrum who fight all the time. Mistrust is usually the source of this kind of infighting and these couples think the bond of matrimony will magically end the war. But instead, it ups the ante.

Marriage is supposed to be this perfect union. When it turns out to be just more of the same imperfect communication and conflicting needs and behaviors, folks get frustrated. And the first complaints get lodged in bed. Here one can make a dramatic statement without having to say a word.

The bed is the bell weather of all love relationships. It’s the early warning sign of how things are going. Amid the many demands of marriage, it’s easy to forget this. But couples who put their sex life on hold are sewing seeds of destruction.

There are only three ways out of this. One. Have sex now. Two. If you don’t feel like it, too bad. Damn well let your spouse get you in the mood (at worst you might have an orgasm—poor you). Three. If your partner is the withholder, grab your proverbial gonads and talk to him/her about it. Ask the dreaded question, “Why don’t you want to have sex with me anymore?” Sure, the answer could filet your heart. But that’s better than the long slow torture ‘Tell Me You Love Me’s' David and Katie are suffering. One way or another, they’re going to have to have “The Conversation.” Everyone does.

People put off The Conversation because they’re afraid its conclusion will be to part ways. If you’ve got kids, that’s a particularly onerous conclusion. But the fact is the longer you wait, the more entrenched the mutual resentments become, and the less your chance of staying together. No, this is a boil that must be lanced quickly and, yes, painfully. Only then can the sexual healing begin.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

What Shook at The Ball




The Saturday before Halloween, the Cow Palace in San Francisco was swarming with over 10,000 revelers at the Exotic Erotic Ball, and the imagery boggled my imagination: a Saint Paulie Girl’s bosom swelling from her translucent white blouse… a nude tiger man spray-painted orange and black right down to his flanks… a platinum blonde space cowgirl with silver chaps and little else but a big ole’ Texas smile… a pair of catholic school girls with double-D breasts straining from rope coiled around their bodies and into the grasp of their nebbish headmaster.

At its best, the event was a celebration of all things sexy. Between two islands of live music and dancing seathed a sea of erotic costumes. Sure there was a VIP room, but the real action was on the dance floor, in the halls, and out at the smoking lounges where people variously posed for pictures and laughed at how trippy it all was. Here one could let one’s freak flag fly without fear of judgment or threat to safety.


The only sour note in the festivities was the occasional perv. These guys shared the bright idea of going commando with only face paint to conceal their shame. They’d kneel in a corner, tugging their little willies as they gawked at the T&A passing by. But even they seemed almost harmless beside ‘Mr. Death.’ This super-perv looked to be 7-feet tall behind a hood and skull mask. He’d turn to follow a passing beauty, pulling his semi-erect penis from a hole in his robe to masturbate after his prey.

To be fair to the event, the security staff was fanned out this way and that to catch these sickos in action. But their existence is a reminder that sexual predators are an estimated half-a-percent of our male population that does immeasurable harm to their victims. Less obvious is the harm they do to all men. These days, it seems a guy can’t help a lost child find her parents in a mall without being suspect.

The media are increasingly outing the worst predators- the pedophiles- into a ratings-rich limelight. While more parents are teaching their children how to ward off these criminals, the problem is you can’t tell who they are just by looking at them. So, until they strike, they blend into the populace.

But the predators at the ball tipped their hand. Emboldened with a false sense of security behind their costumes, they were caught in the act and hauled away. I can’t say for sure how many were actually arrested. But just the thought of them getting fingerprinted and ID’d as sex offenders did my heart good. Knowing that only 3% of sexual predators are ever caught (mainly because their victims remain silent), I can't help wishing they were that easy to nab in regular life.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Having an Exotic Erotic Ball

I thought going to an erotica convention would be like going to a sex shop, only bigger. I’m embarrassed entering a sex shop. Inevitably, the only woman there is behind the counter, and as I slip by I imagine her thinking ”Ugh… Not another dog.” But the reality of these ‘sexpos’ is quite different.

My first convention experience was this year’s Erotica LA. G-stringed sirens beckon you to their booths with a glance. Big screen monitors present rounded-assed bubble-breasted porn stars on a platter. Dildo displays, sex harnesses, love dolls, naughty lingerie, fetish wear and every kind of sex toy, game and sex aid imaginable flash before your eyes. As you make your way through the labyrinth, a strange thing happens. It loses its shock value. And you can’t be embarrassed anymore because, amid the sea of visuals, nobody’s looking at you. A face in the crowd, you can spy and smell the roses, as it were.

Maybe this is why a new trend is emerging at these events. Women and couples are showing up in droves. This changes the whole feel from a porn-oogling sausage fest to a wonderland of sensual curiosities. Because the couples are there to learn, more folks like me are there to teach seminars and inform one-on-one at our booths.

So other conventions are catching up to what San Francisco's Exotic Erotic Expo & Ball pioneered: a handy-dandy forum to get all your sex related questions answered by a real person vs. risking said questions on the net (and the attendant cookies from acme premature ejaculation cream dot com in the bargain). If you’re curious about vibrators, here’s the ultimate comparison shop. If you want the latest turn on in sex, here’s everything from sex organ colognes to tantric vidoes. If you ever wanted to role play in bed or enjoy glass sex toys like a porn star, here’s where to find the tools.

This is why I’m appearing at The Exotic Erotic Expo & Ball this weekend to teach a couple of seminars on the secrets of the male climax and how women can benefit from knowing them too. And I couldn’t ask for a better audience. But I’ll admit a hidden agenda. Word is, The Ball on Saturday night is a party not to be missed.

They say it’s become one of the sexiest Halloween parties in the world, this year featuring Snoop Dog, Peaches, DJ Donald Glaude and a coterie of live acts cocked & ready to roll at the Cow Palace. If I’m right, 10,000 sensual adventurers partying in one place on Halloween weekend are going to create a surprisingly fun fest where one might otherwise expect a debauch. So tune in, friends, for my next blog and I’ll let you know how it all turned out. In the meantime, if you find yourself at Cow Palace this weekend, do stop by booth 50 and say hi.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

The Question of Seduction


Most single guys don’t know the best way to get action. The secret is to introduce yourself to a woman by asking all about her, while volunteering as little about your self as possible.

To many men this sounds counter-intuitive. I mean, doesn’t a guy have to display his worth to interest a woman? The answer is no. If you don’t believe me, guys, next time you approach an attractive stranger, start with a question about her; something that suggests you perceive a deeper meaning in her. But keep it simple, like “You got style. Are you from around here?” Whatever she replies, act amused, then use it as the platform for your next question-- and the next.

Keep the questions about her, what interests her, and how she feels about it. What will surprise you is how rarely she’ll ask you anything back. She’ll just keep talking about herself. While this is going on, a wise man won’t interrupt her. At most he’ll nod agreement or playfully challenge her to elaborate a point now and again. Soon she’ll think you’re the most interesting guy in the room. More, since you’ve volunteered nothing about yourself, she’ll fill in the mystery that is you with everything she’s looking for in a guy.


This is why questions are so effective. When most single women first meet you, they don’t really want to know you. They’ve got their radar set for a guy who fills that certain shopping list of traits they’re looking for. And, inevitably, right at the top of that list is a guy who wants to discover her and how wonderful she is.

At a local joint here in LA, I recently had a “conversation” with a woman who knew nothing about me but that I asked questions and listened. After twenty-minutes she leaned in and touched my arm, whispering, “You’re so interesting. Why don’t I ever meet guys like you?”

Of course, this isn’t a one-way street. Ladies, if you want to hook a guy, you’ll likely find this equally as effective. Everyone digs attention. But for the guy-gets-girl hook up in particular, it’s the mystery a man creates around himself that seals the deal.

Women do want to really know their man. But that comes later – if there is a later. At first, she’s got a picture in her head of the guy she wants. And while it’s a visual picture, it’s one that entails a strong vision of personality too. If she hasn’t found that personality in a while, you can be him – at least for a night.

Here’s how it works. Her talking and you listening is the stuff of female fantasy. This opens a door, partly because it’s very Prince Charming, and partly because so few men know how (or even care) to listen to a woman. Be that rare man, and she’ll go from wondering if you’re Mr. Right to wanting you to be. And if you’re smart enough to maintain this pretense with your silence she’ll fill the vacuum with her fantasy.

If perhaps you’re looking for more than a fantasy night, asking interested questions gives a guy a true feel for a woman. The guy who blathers on about himself misses valuable intel. How a woman talks about herself, her life, and her views can be extremely revealing. Most revealing is how long she’ll do it.

In my own dating life, I’ve been stunned by the amount of women who’ll wax on about themselves without missing a beat to ask even one question back. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these women. Often they’re just over-excited at meeting a man who listens.

But what I am saying is that, guys, if you run into that rare woman who asks you questions back, who won’t take vague responses for an answer, and who therefore shows true interest in you too, then, gentleman, you’ve got a tiger by the tail-- and don’t let go. A woman who at this early stage is willing and interested in engaging in a real back and forth dialogue is a real dame. Indeed this is a woman worth taking seriously. And you’d never have known it unless you behaved like a real man.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Man, Sex, and Silence

I’ve spent over twenty years studying sex, not as a doctor but a participant. It started with studying how to please a woman… given my shortcomings. Yes, I was a three-second wonder. Hi, my name is Brandon and I am a premature ejaculator. Early emission is a hard admission. But one I make to highlight how rare it is for a man to publicly admit a sexual problem.


Most men build their lives around sex. Choosing our jobs, homes, friends, clothes, cars, hell, our very lifestyle - one question always arises. Will this help me get some? Sex inspires man’s greatest inventions and achievements. Edison’s wife was allergic to lantern gas and Thomas liked to do it with the lights on. I just made that up, but there’s a reason you believed it for a moment there.

So it’s strange that, with all this energy directed at attaining quality copulation, we men do so little about getting better at it. If a woman has a sex problem, she confides in her confidantes, buys a self-help book, joins a group, takes a class, or sees a doctor. What do men do? We soldier on.

When it comes to our sexuality every man has an inner Clint Eastwood. Inside our head, we’re strong, tough, virile, and scary to women. But above all, we don’t have to talk about it. Our gun does the talking. Even as we know we’re not really Eastwood in the sack, we ask ourselves, “What would Clint do?” The answer. Get the job done.


Right or wrong, men feel responsible for sex’s success or failure. After all, we own the tool that has to function. If it peters out, goes soft or, worst, never clears the holster, we’re dead. Women know this is a guy’s worst nightmare. But what women don’t know is the specter of failure that pervades our every act in bed. And it takes very little to spark it. Just one go as Mr. Premature Ejaculator made it a self fulfilling prophesy until I finally realized I was psyching myself out.

Women don’t know this stuff because we don’t want them to know. We don’t want anyone to know. So, like Clint, we chew on the cigar of silence. We’re so damn silent about our performance we don’t even talk to ourselves about it. Since men don’t talk about our sexuality, few of us know the truth about it; that virtually every man struggles with his penis. And we don’t know this because we’re like a kid with a Rubik’s Cube. It’s solitary work. There’s only you and those damn colors. And the only way through it is to keep twisting away until you can at least pretend you got more yellows in a row than the guy who came before you.

Since the feminist revolution spawned such great works as Our Bodies, Our Selves; A Book By And For Women (1972), women’s sexuality has been explored ad infinitum. And bravo. It needed to happen. Women needed to know they can express their sexuality without shame. But somewhere along the way male sexuality took a back seat. And we men helped ourselves back there with our silence.

While women advanced, man remained a primitive species that objectifies its females. And we do. Gladly. But what women don’t realize is that we objectify ourselves too. It’s how we think. Man is a tool. On a very basic level we truly seek to become the right tool for the job.

Don’t believe me? A man could scarcely say worse to a woman than “I just want your pussy.” But, women, tell a man you just want his cock and he’s on cloud 9. But what’s a man to do if his tool doesn’t work right? Women liberated their sexuality by creating a movement, but it appears men never will. Unlike women we’re less prisoners of social mores or the opposite sex or anything else outside of ourselves. We’re prisoners of our function. At least, that’s how we feel. An Eastwood in our minds, a Lebowski in our pants, the dude abides, the dude abides.

The Maxwell Multiple Climax Trailer

Monday, September 10, 2007

The Immaculate Orgasm




He was on the brink of climax when someone knocked on the bedroom door. “Can I come in?” asked the roommate. Hips urging him deeper, his girlfriend replied at the door, “Don’t come in!” But the “don’t” got lost in her panting, and the door swung open.




The lovers were caught doggy-style in the roommate’s gaze. Reaching for the covers at his ankles, the boy fell off the bed, orgasm sprinting into thin air. The roommate fled, slamming the door behind her. As the boy’s climax subsided on the floor, his girlfriend peered down at him, giggling from the bed, “You okay?” He looked incredulous “I came.”

She eyed the empty tip of his condom, “I don’t thinks so, sweetie.” But it was true, twitching member and all. Looking back on it now, I can scarcely believe the accident. It must have been shock that triggered it. An immaculate orgasm at the tender age of 20. I climbed back into bed, ears still ringing, penis still engorged, a strange new sensation enveloping me. At first I couldn’t pinpoint it.

Crap. I was still high. This didn’t make sense. An orgasm’s a two-second deal, then a trip to the fridge. Sure I’d tried to impress her with a round 2 before. But this time I hungered to take her again. Needed to take her again. “What’s going on…?” I mumbled, mounting her for the best sex of our lives.

That was the first time I’d ever lasted intercourse more than 30 seconds. Ten minutes later we lay spent and giddy on the sheets. It took me two years of trial and error to recapture the magic of multiple orgasms at will. But once I did, premature ejaculation became an ugly memory. And I discovered more than just mind-blowing climaxes. I discovered the joy of sex in the moment. Worry-free sex does something to a man. It empowers him beyond the act. Life takes on new meaning.

If the scientists are right and the average male thinks of sex every five seconds, imagine the feeling of moving beyond fear-tinged sex so young. It starts out as a feeling of confidence. If I can defeat this I can do anything.

Then it becomes a sharing. Unchained, you become attuned to your lover’s rhythms. As you rise and fall and rise with her again her orgasms are freed as well. It’s the difference between standing on the shore and watching a wave crash in versus surfing it yourself. Which one of you is the wave and which the surfer becomes blurred in the sharing.

So life became an exploration. I quit my job at the bank and became a writer. Like multipling, it took years to master. Unlike multilping, it’s a struggle still. But multipling taught me that exploration is struggle and then a light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually I married the two abilities and made a film about multipling. It’s called 'The Maxwell Multiple Climax’ and in it I teach men how to achieve in days what took me years. Like what I learned, I made a film that’s both floor wax and a desert topping; a parfait of eye-candy and humor to see you through learning’s labor.

That’s what this blog is going to be. We’ll wax a floor of sexual issues together, exploring the nooks and crannies under the fridge. And with any luck you might even find it tasty along the way.

And don’t worry, I promise never to interject myself so grossly into the narrative again. It’s just that practically no one knows who I am. So in this first installment I wanted to introduce myself and introduce why this blog explores our struggle with each other and ourselves in bed.

According to The Kinsey Institute, men and women have scant idea how the other struggles in bed. For men it’s a matter of performance, while women struggle with inspiring performance. So we dance around each other in bed, pretending too much, experiencing too little.

Hopefully, here, the masks come off with discussions that’ll embarrass some and titillate all… kind of like great sex.