Unprotected Sex Just Feels Better
The First Time I Felt Her Bare Flesh Around Me…
I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, like my lungs had disappeared and transformed into supermassive black holes, vacuous infinities stretching off into outer space, infinities continually expanding while swallowing all of the oxygen I pancikedly tried to force into them — to no avail. My legs were shaking, my body was trembling, my mouth wide open and my eyes closed, drenched in sweat. This was the first time I’d felt her touch without a condom. It’s crippling to be that overcome with passion and wrought with untamed desire, as we delve into the most intense juxtaposition of pleasure and longing for a slightly stronger touch than one can possibly fathom. It’s disorienting, at first, to ditch the condoms. One begins to lose themselves, swimming in the abyss of desire, a sea where the vision becomes tunneled and nothing outside of what’s right in front of you matters. That first totally bare touch kicks it off and sends shockwaves through my body that ripple out and render me helpless. Condoms blunt this effect and the power of two human beings coming together and touching one another bare, in the nude, and sexually.
It’s amazing how a small contact point on one part of your body, touching another skin-to-skin, can create such an overwhelming feeling, where your mind and body are soon both engulfed in the fire of desire, swallowed into the throes of passion. Your lungs mirror your skin receptors in the fact that you gasp for more air like you push and thrust closer and closer, but alas, nothing is ever enough and somehow, it’s always just right — to be suspending in that limbic purgatory indefinitely. It’s poetically descriptive of sex itself. In a hurry to get to the completion point where it’s all over. The pleasure is in the thrusting toward the moment where the pleasure subsides. A curious suspension between two worlds of being “almost there” and “just right” and the blurred experiencing of both of those things simultaneously. Once the condoms are gone, you can feel the labia stretch out and grab the base of your shaft as the vagina swallows you whole, a sort of swimming motion that takes place as the parts that were designed to be together finally meet and carry out the acts they were designed to do — without interference.
Glancing up at her widely stretched open mouth, I could sense that she was feeling quite the same. It was a pleasure to begin all pleasures. These are the moments when we become the most like animals. We stretch and moan and groan and allow our bodies to take over, shedding the self-consciousness that we typically inhabit in more polite hours. Our minds and sight disappear and our bodies act on impulse without thinking. We become guests in our own flesh, mere slaves to the ravenous and animalistic lust that fills us, afterthoughts of a sexual appetite that’s forgotten us. Sex is good with condoms, sometimes, but it’s not that good with condoms, especially for those of us, like myself, who sometimes struggle to achieve orgasm and feel a general lack of sensation with them.
There’s very little in the way of revealing moments like the moment that our genitals finally come into contact with someone else’s without a barrier. It’s in that moment that they do all of the communication, our bodies are mere relics and vehicles which facilitated the moment, a conversation of neurotransmitters rushing through our brains and down out of our bodies, speaking the language of touch.
Women and Touch
The brilliant Yael Wolfe said that, “In appropriate and safe circumstances, I will always choose to forgo a condom,” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s by far the most intimate form of sex and, honestly, I’m seeing a lot of shaming around the subject that’s completely unnecessary. Bareback sex is great and we should really be frowning on this weird, bizarre sense of entitlement that random strangers seem to feel when it comes to policing the sex lives of others online. It almost always comes from a place of ignorance — contempt before investigation — and it almost always seems like a way for someone to try and look morally superior while criticizing a sex life they know nothing about. I’m not sure why people do it. There’s nothing wrong with bareback sex, even risky condom-free sex, so long as the risks are consented to. When did our world become so insanely safe that two people couldn’t have natural sex together without some strangers poking their noses into their bedrooms? Isn’t this a covert form of slut-shaming? Make no mistake, I’m not advocating throwing caution to the wind and opening ourselves up to unnecessary risks, but I am criticizing the fact that people believe themselves entitled to become the morality police of the bedrooms of others. There’s a difference.
I think a lot of women out there are more reluctant to discuss their lack of sensation and how they long for the intimacy of bareback sex whenever they opt to use a condom. I applaud Yael for her outspokenness on the issue and I sense the reason so many find it difficult to be as open as she has is likely because women have the most to lose when things go wrong (men can’t get pregnant); as well as the fact that many women don’t want to be mistaken for saying that it’s okay to just eliminate the condom from the mix without their permission.
It’s easy to see how women might feel like if they speak up about enjoying sex without condoms, it might invite pressure to have sex without condoms when they don’t want to. But perhaps we should be striving to create a world where women don’t have to fear men overstepping their boundaries, a world where guys understand that women can speak about their sex lives openly without it being an invitation. But somehow, this has resulted in some people thinking that equality means policing the bedrooms of everyone equally. I’m here to heartily disagree.
Women understand this language as much as men, the language of bareback sex. We as a culture all too often focus our sights on men’s dislike of condoms, but so infrequently to we hear from women on the subject. This, too, is sex stereotyping.
“Condoms feel less intimate. I love the way the smooth, hard penis skin feels against my skin, but I can’t feel that with a condom. We use them anyway, though, because I don’t like the pill, and the intercourse still feels good.”
Says one woman who’s not ashamed to admit that she feels a marked decrease in intimacy and pleasure. The sensation is just totally different for both men and women. It should also be noted that women are much more likely to use their intuition and closeness as a guide in matters regarding protection:
“With condoms, I feel a difference. I like intercourse without a condom because I love the feeling of a penis inside me and our skin rubbing. I like the natural lube. But I do not have intercourse without a condom unless I am in love with the person or in a relationship (meaning I’m willing to get pregnant or willing to deal with his germs for a lifetime). I’d take condom sex over no sex any day.”
The Intimacy of Being Free
It’s difficult to verbalize the feeling of bare sensation in contrast to sex with a barrier. But there is a softness to it that’s unmistakable. When transitioning from sex with condoms to going without, we suddenly feel free, liberated, and closer in new and different ways. The initial thrust is complimented with a strong, hot exhale of relief and overwhelming awe. She wrapped around me and consumed me as we consummated what had for so long been building up.
There is a climax within the climax, several layers of the onion of sexual pleasure that are all unraveling and melting away at the exact same time. Tears of joy are very possible. The climax of the moment, the climax of all that had been built up until that point, the climax of the shedding of uncertainty, of feeling like there’s always a little bit closer, the climax of connection and closeness, and much more, all find their peak in unison the moment we touch each other while bare for the first time. It’s as if we say, “I want the entirety of you, unhindered, I want to be as close to you as I possibly can be, uninterrupted, with nothing else obstructing my sensations of you.”
I’m wholly convinced we put our mental blinders on, blinders which eliminate the peripheral experience so that we can focus with a greater intensity and precision, focus on the one thing that matters most in that moment — the person we’re with. I love the stench of sweat in these moments. It smells so unbelievably good and so undeniably human. Packed with pheromones, encoded with the imprint of the other, the zesty spritzes of the scent of the other call deeply to the natural and primordial human within us. The natural form of the other speaks to us on a level we cannot understand with words or language, for it’s the language of bodily chemistry.
I don’t think we should deprive ourselves of this unnecessarily. When did we become so puritanical? If sex positivity means that two consenting adults can no longer make their own bedroom choices without other people butting in, well, I’d hardly call that “sex positivity” in any sense. That’s just an inverted sexual shaming rooted in the will to control others. Let’s embrace our natural selves, so long as we’re safe and cautious about it and that includes getting regular STI tests and doing our bodily upkeep. There are other methods of protecting ourselves besides condoms and I think it’s rude and juvenile to assume that anyone not using condoms is somehow morally irresponsible.
And now, without further ado, I’ll leave you with Yael Wolfe’s article on the subject for further reading. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading, as always.
