[sebbie]

Being a guy can be fun! Tapping into what it means to be a guy and get the most out of all of it is often not that intuitive or easy to understand. Sure, the sheer pleasure of first getting an erection and then enjoying a powerful orgasm involving wonderfully involuntary muscle contractions that at the same time push the buttons on all the wonderful pleasure centers of the brain is something that guys all learn at puberty and shortly thereafter.

But at some point, guys may come to realize that sexual pleasure and getting the best out of one’s own body is much more complicated and interesting than that, even if an orgasm is powerful, intense and mind-blowing fun.

Part of the complexity of all of this is how relationships with another person that somehow involve sexual feelings might enter in or not. One could think about this as creating a situation whereby another person is affected or impacted by what is going on with you.

A dorm room situation like the one Shawn and Randall are in is actually a very complicated situation. But so was the one that Josh and Dylan have been in. In both instances, all of them considered themselves to be perfectly ordinary straight males, and perfectly ordinary straight males are only supposed to find sexual pleasure after falling in love with an appropriate female partner. Or, at least that is how the vast majority of young males are conditioned to believe is true.

For gay males the story is little different, the only difference being that a gay male is expected to first find (no small task) and then fall in love with another gay male and then find sexual pleasure via that route.

All of this stereotyping of proper sexual behavior is interesting but unfortunately not accurate, at least not accurate for many if not most guys. Another part of growing up for “normal guys” is the realization that all of the stuff (well, nearly all at least) that makes sex with a partner so appealing can be realized without even having a partner for sex. But guys are not “supposed” to admit this to themselves let alone confess this to anyone else lest whoever is told will think of the guy as sexually abnormal. After all, guys are supposed to be sexually-driven to find love and have sex with another person, even if they are in a situation where that is not feasible.

Besides, with all the sexual openness about orientation etc., sex with yourself (aka solo sex, masturbation) still has a very bad name, something done only by people who are somehow screwed up or socially challenged because for some odd reason they lack the requisite social skills necessary to find and then fall in love with a partner which then leads to real sex.

In counseling partners, sex therapists talk about something called “simmering” as a potential path to sexual happiness. Simmering involves maintaining a degree of sexual arousal along with your partner (who, with some luck, is also in the same state of mind and body) but simply staying there for long periods of time without ever getting to a point where semen is ejaculated nor any bodily fluids exchanged. Maintaining the sexual burner at the low-medium range for a significant period of time is not something that a lot of guys grow up knowing how to do—it’s a learned behavior.

Think of a teenager out on a date at a drive-in movie with a pretty female. Many actual movies have captured variations on this same theme—the old first base, second base, third base, home run idea whereby both the guy and the girl are trying to maintain an arousal level that is highly pleasurable to themselves and each other but does not reach an orgasm stage where everything is quickly over. Besides, even if the guy “hit a home run” so to speak under these conditions, guys also know that afterward many females may have regrets over what they let happen and whether or not this was in any way a forced situation. So then simmering, and only getting to third base, so to speak, is still fun but with far fewer risks of various sorts.

Now think about the characters in the story, and realize that a guy doesn’t necessarily need to have found a sexual partner in order to simmer. Think first about Randall and Dylan. Both Randall and Dylan like to engage in solo simmering a lot, and by that meaning getting to the point where they maintain a degree of sexual arousal that is quite pleasurable, but also can be maintained for hours if not most of a day without getting to the point where a guy’s only choice is to get off ASAP. This is what the sexual therapists mean by simmering as well, if only in a slightly different context.

Somehow, both Randall and Dylan had developed some skills in solo simmering long before they entered college. At some point, both of them discovered a version of what I would call assisted simmering, meaning that they discovered that this was much easier to do with the aid of certain snug-fitting items of clothing. The sex therapists might conclude somehow that this is a clothing fetish of some sort, and in some way abnormal or somehow wrong, but the sex therapists on this subject generally do not understand this and how it works for guys and see everything in the context of the partner.

Random male college roommates are normally going to pair guys with unequal understanding of this type of simmering, and given that this is all quite pleasant to do, the guy with the superior skills is not going to want to abandon what he enjoys doing just because he is stuck living with a roommate in a dorm room.

So, Dylan managed to teach Josh stuff that Josh now enjoys doing very much, and Randall has taught Shawn a few things as well. For example, remember the great fun Dylan and Josh had ordering a bunch of swim briefs for each other with the idea of picking suits for the other that would clearly send the other into a really fun place to be. And Josh has been grateful to Dylan for what he was able to learn about himself.

But keep in mind that Randall also enjoyed taking Shawn through a learning phase that Randall was already well aware of, and Randall looks forward to giving Shawn more information. It was fun for Randall to get to see Shawn buy his first Speedo and then to watch Shawn struggle to get himself into it for the very first time.

Of course there is a lot more to the things Randall has been doing that Shawn is only vaguely aware of yet, and how Randall chooses to reveal some more of this to Shawn will be interesting to see. Randall now realizes that being the watcher is a situation whereby another guy is horny but struggling to keep his mind and body from ejaculating can be as much fun for the watcher as for the guy being watched, and further, whatever is happening to the guy being watched can be “catching” for the watcher.

Is this all somehow gay? Why does the answer to this question even matter if both parties are consenting adults? I suppose one way of looking at this is that this is a weird version of partner sex without the risks associated with partner sex. Randall and Shawn are friends but not sexual partners or lovers in a gay context. Same for Dylan and Josh. The two pairs of roommates enjoy each others’ company albeit in a private way, but that is where it all ends.

Complicated stuff I am telling you, all of it.

To be continued…