Part 5
Gerard, God
Somewhere in time and space
He watched the passers-by as they moved about, following their daily routines, unaware of the fate that would shortly befall them. This was the time that fascinated Him the most. The moments before they finally understood that The Threat was here.
It was a sort of last hurrah, He thought. They didn't know it, but Gerard could nonetheless sense a sort of joi de vivre, a liveliness that simply didn't exist in prior times, and couldn't possibly exist in future ones. He watched mothers dote lovingly over their children, watched children hurl themselves into play with abandon, watched addicts take in their drugs like a drowning man would gulp for air. They might not known that there was no tomorrow for most of them, but they nonetheless seemed to put just a little bit of extra effort into everything.
Eventually, it came to an end, of course. It always did, no matter how many times He watched it. He saw happiness and mundanity give way to pain and suffering. Laughter was replaced by the screams of the dying. Life was replaced by death. The world replaced by destruction.
He sighed, leaving this timeline. He never watched the arrival of The Threat twice in the same timeline. There was nothing for Him to learn that way. His power was immense and total. He only had to witness The Threat once in each timeline to understand it.
Worst of all was the knowledge. The knowledge that He would only be able to save a single timeline. That all others would fall into ruin, destroyed and left to rot away. Only one could survive; the one that He chose. He could stop The Threat only once, for doing so would require Him to remain. Ever vigilant, ever ready to stop any recurrence.
He had to choose which timeline. That task was less than He feared, for now he knew that there were an infinite number of them. He could choose one with the right qualities, one whose nature would aid Him in His work. He realized then that He would, once He had chosen the proper timeline, finally watch The Threat come twice. Once, when He reviewed that timeline prior to choosing. And again, when He would stop it.
And stop it, He would. No other outcome was acceptable. He had already sacrificed too much. His mortality, His life, His happiness, His very soul itself. He had wrought Himself into a weapon, to strike down The Threat, and He would fulfill that purpose, no matter what.
----
Jerry Williams, Godslayer
Nibiru
We were sharks, swimming and darting among a school of fish. Gods and devas fled, screaming in terror as we flew through the swirling, chaotic energies that should have driven us -or at least my wife and daughter- mad within seconds. They had thought that their realm protected them.
Little did they know, we were already mad.
Inanna and I flanked a group of fleeing gods, preventing them from leaving this world, extending their essence into manifested bodies somewhere in one of the countless material worlds, or simply crossing the energy that was the core of their beings into the Spirit World. Here, in Nibiru, our divinities and demi-divinities gave us access to unlimited power. We seized it and wove nets with which to entrap those minor gods who could not find escape elsewhere, and had huddled here in fear of our coming.
As the group fled, we sped up, curving our course, which caused them to curve theirs, fearful of drawing too close to either of us. We moved slowly, carefully, angling them where we wanted them to go.
It wasn't long before the gaping maw of the Grandfather of the Gods came into view. Ixlublotl, the primordial god, the originator of divinity. The gods we herded realized their peril and turned to flee back the opposite direction, but there they found Aaina, burning towards them, screaming in rage and bristling with offensive energies.
Trapped, they had no choice. They attacked us. Emotions and thoughts, energy and matter, all of it flew at us in an orgy of sudden violence that churned the substrate of this world into a screaming chaos. All three of us linked our magics into a shield; a half-sphere of anti-magic that absorbed their attacks, sending the energy of which they were made back into into the swirling chaos around us.
They threw everything they had at us, a desperate last stand, driven by necessity and panic. All of it crashed against our defenses, the resulting streamers of magic filling the space around us with an all but impenetrable cloud. Hidden by that cloud, Ixy closed in.
By the time they realized that it was too late, it was over.
Ixy's physical body, that cloud-wrapped cacophony of maw-stalks, eye-stalks, spider-like legs and whipping tentacles, currently the size of a skyscraper, swept in, mouths snapping up the energies that were the cores of our quarry.
We came together when it was done. Inanna created a haven for us, allowing us to release the magic that held our bodies in stasis and protected us from the wild magic all around. It was a copy of our house, something she'd come up with a while back and shown to me with great pride. I had loved it, of course.
I sank into the loveseat with Inanna next to me as Aaina took the recliner.
"That's most of them," Aaina said.
"About thirty more," I replied. "And then we can start the next phase."
"Do either of you have any doubts about what we're doing?" she asked. I could see the indecision in her eyes. She was so young, and such a good girl. My heart broke at having dragged her into such dirty business.
"No," Inanna answered, her voice hard and confident.
"Yes," I added. "But at the end of the day, this is what needs doing."
Aaina looked back and forth between us, then nodded. None of us smiled.
----
Emily Windham, Wizard, Artificer
Fremont, Nebraska, at the corner of E 4th Ave and N Main St
Emily turned just in time to see the massive troll hit Jim Carmichael with a shoulder, sending the trooper flying before angling at her with no change in speed.
Acting on pure instinct, she conjured a wall of force between them. The troll slammed into it, shattering the magics that held it together with raw force, but the wall did its job, stopping the warrior in his tracks.
Emily snatched the rune-engraved knife off her belt and surged forward, jumping at the last second to put her in range of the troll's huge neck. The blade plunged in, and she released a quick burst of magic that made her legs and off hand sticky, allowing her to cling to the thing, too close for it to use its battleaxe on her.
She ripped the knife out and plunged it in again and again as the barbarian roared in pain and indignation at being hurt so badly by a foe so tiny. Emily grabbed his beard, yanking hard to bring his eyes to hers as she slammed the knife in and twisted, the magic in the blade telling her when it found his windpipe and carotid artery.
Blood sprayed, coating her face and shoulders. The troll's roars were cut off in a gurgling, breathy hiss. He stumbled, then fell. Emily rode him down, her eyes locked onto his, watching all hopes of victory, or even survival, fade from them. She lost herself in those eyes, in the mystery that was this troll's life, ending right before her. She saw the regrets, the crushed hopes, the shame of defeat and wondered at the context.
The impact as they hit the ground broke the spell.
Emily released the magic and stood up, instincts trained into her by the security troops and war wizards making her search for more threats before she could even process what had just happened. But there were no more threats. That had been the last one.
Greg Ramirez walked towards her, his rifle barrel pointed down, hanging from the sling in front of his armor and all the various attachments that he and the security troops referred to as their 'battle rattle'.
"Nice work," he said, eyeing the troll, who continued to gasp for air, the sound of his labored breaths reminding Emily of a pig squealing. She looked down, searching for that orgasmic feeling her bio-dad had so desperately wanted her to share with him, but not finding it. All she found was a sense of satisfaction, yet even that was too much.
Years of therapy, of telling her story to trained clinicians and listening to and internalizing their advice. All of it had helped her make friends and move among the normal people, but it had never erased that feeling of satisfaction. This was the fourth time she'd killed a sentient being, and each time, she felt the exact same way. It was a victory.
Her maudlin thoughts were interrupted by the bark of Greg's rifle. The troll's head jerked and deformed, a splattering of blood coming out as a .277 fury round drilled a hole straight through his temples. She glanced up to find Greg still eyeing her.
"You did good," he said, his expression showing some concern.
"I liked it," she said quietly, her eyes turning back.
"You liked killing him?" Greg asked. Emily nodded, wondering if she'd always be fucked up.
"I killed him," Greg said. "And I damn sure liked it."
Emily turned back, eyeing him with some interest. Greg was, in many ways, the opposite of her. Cool, confident, charming and just all-around well-adjusted. She hadn't ever imagined that he wound enjoy something like this.
"It means I won," he explained. "It means that big, badass motherfucker showed up here trying to bully us, and take whatever he wanted from us, and little old me stood up and said 'no', and when he tried to force the issue, I took his life away. It feels like justice. It feels like one less motherfucker trying to kill me and my friends. Damn straight I liked it."
Emily smiled. She didn't realized she had smiled until Greg smiled back.
"I read your psych eval," he went on. "I know you think you're fucked in the head, but I'm gonna tell you right now, you're not. You're a warrior, that's it. Bloodlust isn't a bad thing, if it can be controlled. Enjoying killing isn't a bad thing, if you're killing the people that need killing. Give yourself a break, girl."
He clapped her on the shoulder, then took the back of her head with his free hand and pressed her forehead to his.
"I'm gonna recommend you be allowed to join the war wizard roster. You're all trained up, you're prepared for it, and from what I've seen today, you're a fucking natural."
Without waiting for a response, he let her go and turned away, grabbing the radio fob on his armor and squeezing it.
"Black Lead, this is Black-Two Actual. All raiders at the target site are neutralized. We're commencing a sweep now, will report back in thirty mikes."
Emily smiled at his back as he walked away. A part of her reflected that he was a natural leader, knowing exactly what to say to her in that moment. Another part didn't care, because it worked. She glanced down at the troll again, and didn't see a victim.
She saw a victory.
----
Kathy Evenson, Professional
Somewhere in the ruins of an ancient city in the Seventh World
Kells shifted nervously as Kathy continued to cut chits from the electrical panel lid with the magical laser emerging from her fingertip. He held his machete, really a short sword, in one hand, and his dagger in the other.
"We really shouldn't be much longer, Kath," he said. Kathy had explained to him the difference between Kath and Kathy, and even hinted at the things she'd done while possessed by Pissface and calling herself 'Kath', and even gone into some detail about how much she hated the nickname. Kells hadn't cared. He simply agreed with her, then continued to call her 'Kath'.
And the truth was, she really didn't mind that much.
She wasn't quite sure why, though she could hazard a guess. The man was disarming to a great degree. He presented himself as a dirty wanderer, a simple, violent man who shouldn't be trusted as far as you could throw him. But within just a few minutes of meeting him, she'd seen the intelligence in his eyes and words. She had seen the integrity in his negotiations with her, and the ethics that had turned him protective when the Searchers had appeared.
And despite that protectiveness, he still managed to avoid being patronizing. When she'd told him how she planned to get his chits, he had warned her of the dangers, then agreed to come along without hesitation when she didn't change her mind. Kells was a good man, she thought, and if a good man wanted to call her Kath, she supposed she could let him reclaim the name from the hell it had once represented.
"It won't be much longer," she said. She already had over seven hundred, and this plate would bring her to eight hundred. She only needed five or six more. This deep in the ruins, there was an untouched electrical box on almost every building. Some had been corroded, but most were surprisingly intact.
As she cut the final strip into chits, a roar sounded. It was a gurgling, rasping roar, unlike anything she had ever heard before. Or rather, the first one had been unlike anything she had ever heard before. This was the third time she'd heard it, and it sounded closer than the last two.
"That's no good sign, right thur," Kells said.
Kathy finished, dumping the little squares of galvanized steel into her bag and standing up.
"Come on," she said. "We'll go a couple blocks away from whatever that was before I cut the next one."
"Aye," Kells agreed, his head swiveling on his shoulders as he followed her down the alley. Kathy took note of how spooked he was. He seemed more nervous here than he had with the Searchers right in front of him. She supposed that might have something to do with the nature of the threats. The Searchers were, regardless of power and reputation, mere humans. Whereas whatever was making that roar was clearly some sort of monster.
She led him six blocks in a direction away from the roar before she stopped to examine the buildings. They had moved into a downtown area, which was one of the reasons she had stopped. The buildings here were closer together, which should make the rest of her task quicker. She found a good cover and ripped the little padlock off, then pulled it open and off its hinges.
A mass of spiders rushed out of the electrical box. She jerked her hand away, but they ignored her, scurrying down the wall and vanishing into the cracks between the bricks, safe once again in enclosed darkness.
She began to cut as Kells again stood watch.
She hadn't even made it halfway through the panel when another roar sounded, even closer than the last, and from a different direction.
"Call it," Kells said. "Call it now, Kath. Better ye collect some more later on than deal with the beast makin' them sounds."
"What kind of beast?" Kathy asked. She kept cutting, but glanced up and around, not seeing anything but filthy, dilapidated alleys.
"Walkers, they call 'em," Kells said. "Like great spiders, but rottin' away, with bones stickin' out an' flesh hangin' off th'legs."
"Great spiders?" Kathy asked. "How big?"
"Bigger'n a building."
"You've seen them yourself?" Kathy asked.
"Only once," Kells said, his voice growing quieter. He seemed to be done speaking for a moment, staring around. But after a few seconds, he continued.
"Friend o'mine, name o' Gil. We used t'work together, he an' I. I were real new to runnin' a caravan crew back then, about ten years back. Gil were an old hand at it, though. Took me under 'is wing and taught me th'roads, as it were.
"Anyways, we'd taken a pair o' contracts. Rough ones, with a tight timetable. Merchants needed t'get to Freeman's Port post-haste. One faster'n th'other. Gil took that one, left me with the easier one, though that weren't t'say it were an easy job.
"We was in Craster's Holdfast at th'time, an smack in between there an' Freeman's Port were an ancient ruin. Big one, 'bout the size o' this'un, in fact. Normally, it took about a week t'travel between the two places, but if one were brave or foolhardy enough, they could cut through th'ruins an' make it in five days.
"Well, old Gil had that in mind. We left together, an' at th'place where ye normally would turn north t'go around the ruins, he led his caravan on straight. I prayed fer their safety that night, but never really believed anything would happen. Gil were an experienced caravaner, an' tougher'n anyone else I'd ever met.
"Two days later, we was walkin' this ridgeline north o'the ruins when somethin' called out t'me. Not sure what, exactly. I started lookin' south, scannin' the ruins, an' sure enough, I found Gil's caravan, walking down a wide road between th'largest buildings. They was movin' at quite a clip, I hav'ta say.
"I were tickled pink, at first. Because we'd made near as good a time as they had, despite movin' almost a day's north to skirt th'ruins. But as I watched, I realized that they weren't just travelin', they was runnin'."
Kells sighed, his eyes distant and full of old regrets.
"That's when I saw one. A great Walker, striding out o' th'deepest part o' th'ruins. The way it moved were like nothin' I ever seen before. It crawled along th'sides o' the ruins themselves, like a spider almost, but always with two or three feet on th'ground.
"It came fer th'caravan, and fell on 'em in a slaughter. I watched it breathe fire down on 'em, stompin' men flat with its feet an' scooping 'em up with its great claws."
He sighed again, then looked down. He tucked his sword under his armpit and used his hand to rub his eyes for a moment, before taking the blade up again.
"Killed 'em all, it did. Erry single one, as I live an' breath. An' when it were done, it went around, stompin' th'bodies flat. Never ate one, jes did all it could t'make sure that not a single survivor lived t'tell the tale. I were shook something fierce, I tell ya. Took me own caravan down off the ridge, t'avoid bein' spotted. We ended up arriving a day late, but to this day, I thank me lucky stars we made it at all."
Another sigh came, and Kathy heard the cracks in his voice as he continued on.
"Not Gil, though. Nor any o'them what worked for him, or th'merchant what hired him. A few years later, I worked up th'courage t'take a couple o'men into the ruins, t'find the bodies. I found bones dressed in Gil's clothes. I took his sword, which had survived, an' is th'one I carry to this day. I think Gil'd be pleased to know his blade had saved me life, quite a few times since."
Kathy finished cutting the cover up and stood to put her hands on Kells' shoulder.
"Thank you for telling me that," she said, her voice gentle. "I can tell it's an important story to you."
Kells nodded and sniffed once, then jerked his head in the direction away from the most recent roar. "I still think we should get out o' here, Kath," he said. "I'll face down the Searchers an' be happy o' a good death, should they take me. But them Walkers... They ain't warriors ye can face an' die with honor. One o'them things finds us, there ain't no fightin' it. We jes' die screaming, th'only consolation coming when it's all over."
Kathy weighed his words carefully. Kells knew this world far better than she did. And while she knew her own abilities far better than anyone here, she had to be mindful not to be too arrogant. Kells had told her how a single Walker had slaughtered an entire caravan of experienced fighters, led by an experienced leader.
"Okay," she said. She handed the bag to Kells. "There should be about eight hundred and fifty chits in there. You can count them out later, and I'll trust your count. After I find what I'm looking for, I'll collect the rest and we'll settle up."
"Good call," Kells said. He tied the bag off to his belt and walked to the corner of the building, peeking around. When he was satisfied, he nodded. Kathy joined him, and together, they made a beeline to the edge of the ruins.
They had made it about halfway out when another roar sounded, this one right on top of them. A rumbling crash sounded from her right, and Kathy turned to see rubble falling to the ground as something massive rose off the ground, two blocks over.
"Stars an' stones," Kells swore, then shouted "Run!"

Alright, so the other night I had an experience I don't know what to do with. I guess I am trying to create meaning out of it, while being aware that there might not be any meaning at all.
I always sleep with the spotify sleep playlist running. It helps me fall and stay asleep. I have never had any odd experiences at all with this.
A couple of nights ago this happened:
I awoke around 4.30 am and it was literally like this particular track was floating around my body and it felt like I was vibrating with the music. Another way to describe it was as if my aura was the music or that my being merged with the sounds. Not joking, but the energy kind of felt orgasmic, but the orgasm was outside of my body. It felt and looked orange/yellow/pink and as if I was being "injected" with this energy. While being semi asleep I was aware of it happening and wanted to stay in it because it was really beautiful and peaceful. I was also highly aware that it was the music that made me access this state. I then fell back fully asleep and woke up at my normal time with a clear memory of it happening.
I've had sleep paralysis before - about a decade ago and I think I would describe this as being in a similar brain state as sleep paralysis, but the complete opposite emotional spectrum. It was really nice.
Has anyone ever experienced anything similar? Could it have anything to do with ascension or the solar flares?

I'm a bit bored, and it's gloomy and rainy here so I'm in a mood. Let's discuss some controversial opinions about our favorite band!

• "Carouselambra" is the single worst song the band ever did by a long shot.
• The orgasm section of "Whole Lotta Love" should never have been played live. It works in the song because the theramin effects are layered with one another and Plant's moaning as well as bouncing around in a very tight space in the mix. In concert, however, they're just weird sounds echoing in concert halls or arenas. The effect is different and, in my opinion, rather silly.
• The best version of "Immigrant Song" is on the BBC Sessions. Plant's hoarse voice sounds like that of a warrior; I love how he just starts caterwauling rather than finish lyrics -- "On we sweep/With threshing oaOur only goal will be the Western... GAH!" and "Baby baby oh whoa oh-oh-verlowas."
• The band should have broken up after Presence. Although In Through the Out Door has a few classic songs ("In the Evening,""Fool in the Rain" and "All My Love"), none of them are so great that the album is stellar. Had they taken a break then, they might have been able to confront the problems plaguing the band: Bonham could have dried out, Page could have gotten clean, and Jones and Plant could have gotten space from the madness of the band. Perhaps it would have led to better reunions and even better albums in the 1980s. Imagine how good Plant's albums or Page's Outrider could have been with all four band members working on them.
• "Tea for One" is better than "Since I've Been Loving You." Although "Loving You" is considered Page's showpiece, I think it's a little too melodramatic for my tastes. "Tea for One" has the same chord changes but better evokes a mood of longing and loneliness.

What are your unpopular opinions?

so this happened a couple of months ago.
i started talking to this guy we hit it off thought he was really cool and nice seemed to care about treating women right etc.
one of the things he told me in conversation is that he has to masturbate because nothing else fixes his back problem. has tried every medication out there etc.
my alarm bells started going off unfortunately i did not listen to my intuition because i liked him although i thought it was a little unique.
long story short we ended up sleeping together. i am an empath and wanted to help him out i felt bad for him plus i had not had sex in like 2 years
well of course afterwards he disappeared so i knew immediately he was trolling me just to get in my pants. i was hurt because i was struggling and he knew so it made it even more fucked up.
i ended up relapsing and was just angry the entire time on the way to that happening. he knew about my struggles.
i have called him out on the internet for his bullshit story but im wondering if im the ass hole, mostly because im wondering, is that a real thing? masturbating because the orgasm helps you with chronic back pain?
i have never heard of that in my life and it sounds like an excuse a dumbass would make.
i feel like an idiot for falling for it but i want opinions.

I’m talking guns you love to shoot just because you love the sound it makes. The type of gun where you waste ammo just to hear that orgasm sounding noise. The type of gun you take every opportunity to fire just hear that noise.
For me, it’s the Sparks.

Hi, I'm Alessandro from Colombia, and I'm still in the fight.
A couple days ago I relapsed. And I posted the following in PornAddiction during my guilt phase. I deleted it later in the day. I got lost out of focus in telling my story, but my main reason to go online was to seek for help about relapsing. After the post, I didn't actually continued reading the book. After some days whitout using, I relapsed again, I've had about 7 relapses since my fight started. Today I did it again, and opened the book just after doing it. I went to the ¨nature¨ section and reviewed ¨A pleasure or a crutch?¨... ¨Porn isn't pleasant¨... That is the only thing I do not agree with the book, and this doubt has cost me several of my relapses. Today I reviewed that part, comparing porn with food, and the book says that they are exact opposites. I read it again, and again, asking myself, analizing the arguments, but it just doesn't seem correct. Actually, the hackauthor doesn't say it isn't a pleasure, it just says that it's sabotaging happines mechanisms. So I went to science direct and found this: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.004 . And thought ¨ok, it is correct that porn is in fact, a pleasant cue. But it is also correct that is the kind of pleasant stimulli of a heroine injection¨. Then I read this: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.06.005 . And found that it's an pleasant stimulli not only for addicts, but also for normal people. So my biggest argument against the book rings true for me. So today I just did a desperate google search: ¨is porn enjoyable?¨, and that led me to find this subreddit. I read a few posts and felt saved, this is the kind of community I need, PornAddiction disappointed me. I'll keep reading you and the book to learn what to do with that question: ¨is porn enjoyable?¨.
The following is that post:
______________________________________________________________________________________________________,
Why did I fail? My story, let's talk.
I spent almost 1 month reading Easy peasy. Long ago I realized I'm an addict, this wasn't a problem for me, I'm very self-conscious, kind of a hobby writer (obviously not in English as you can tell by now). The day I "clicked" while reading the book I spent almost 12 hours in a row writing something like a biography, focused in how porn have changed my life for over 11 years of addiction since I was 8yo. That "click" moment (maybe you know how it is, if you've completed the book) was in January 2024.
Just after completing the book I lived a couple weeks enjoying what is like to remember how to live a human life of freedom. But this surely wasn't the end of this illness. Back in the day I tried all methods. Willpower, streaks, even paid a subscription to app-block just before I gave up and threw it all, all my life, career and aspirations to thrash. After that I accepted I needed help, and then discovered the book (more than discovering it, because I discovered it in habitica in a time before the first suicide note and academy failure, I accepted I have to give it a serious try, not like the first time). Then, after for once in my life trying to be open minded in something, in my most beaten, broken spirit, soul naked moment, I took a learner role with the book, and I could manage to understand it. I understood the things I understand today, this sounds funny but you may know what I mean, those sort of things you simply can't un-understand. Like how you were thinking before how you thing now, discovering that you aren't alone. That old mind was like being a monkey living in a desert island, didn't know how I got there, didn't know how to get out of there, just making poor, illusory conclusions to survive, like: "I'm feeling depressed and hollow inside because of the death of my brother", the sad truth being that, I wasn't even capable of feeling something about it, because the fog in my brain. Used a lot of things to fill the void, not only porn, but also collecting videogames, thinking that playing games is my purpose in life (that, sadly, isn't an exaggeration of my way of thinking back then) That was the life before the mere act of understanding. That understanding is the same click I'm talking about the click that marked the end of a live of making up false realities to cope with existence, all by myself.
But hear me out, just understanding is not everything. That I realized after living a couple weeks of remembering what living a real life is, like the one I was living when I was a kid, before all of this shit.
The most hearth and mind braking thing was beggining to happen to me. The unavoidable relapse. Even when feeling the most hard trained mind, after feeling one of the best stories in the sea of life of war stories versus this monster, this begun to happen to me: forgetting. I thought forgetting was impossible for things that you just understand. But that's a lie, another made up conclusion of the monkey, now you understand me how it works? Subtle logical ideas that you just have and you don't question. Thruth is, you can un-understand things.
I started to forget how the life was before, that literal hell in this world. Despite of how vastly low my life got in those times, the way I felt in real time how my brain was literally rotting, like the room that all week long, contained my endless cycle of waking up, jacking up, feeling like shit, have to study, don't study, feeling like shit, jacking up because I'm feeling like shit, and playing games in the night because the night is for playing games and rest for the arduous work day, even that literal hell I could forget.
I started to forget it day after day of joy and happiness.
Until the day that it just seemed no so bad to me to watch just one peek, it was by waiting for the ads of an anime page to load, knowing exactly what this pop-up page will show. That day I booked a date with a psychologist (right before starting to read the book I was getting to the neuro psychiatrist) and she told me to keep writing as I was doing for necessity in my most anxious days. But after everything just kept going downstairs. Even after reading the book, before this announced and hyped relapse I wasnt doing it right. I couldn't have a date with my girlfriend, which I told all of this process, making sex and orgasms uncomfortable for her, without having sex. Saying to myself that sex and orgasm with a real woman is ok, but knowing deep inside, that I just don't want to do it right know, and even if this is real, it feels like it is triggering the cycle again, even if it doesn't, I personally feel like it does.
So after finishing the book for the first time, yes I enjoyed freedom, but it wasn't for long. Even before the relapse, every single sex session with my girlfriend seemed to harm my mind. I felt guilty.
Why I failed?
After reading the book one time, I started to have the capability to read other books. I started reading a bunch of them at the same time. "Un día en la vida de Iván denisovich", "la república", and digital minimalism by cal Newport, because I knew that the second problem in my life, born because of and also being a backward feedback to the porn addiction, is internet addiction. So I thought the right next step to take is reading a book to help that addiction too.
I think that was the mistake.
I hate social media, but today I'm posting this because I truly want to know the opinion of people that have the same or more knowledge that me. Usually I write this things for myself, and sometimes I share them with my girlfriend and close ones. But this time I want real competent minds in this field to give me it's opinion, it's the first time I write this kind of things in other language, but I read easy peasy in English so I'm thinking genuinely in spite of "translating" my thoughts.
Today I did the thing I think is the correct step that I didn't saw the first time I read the book. Mainly because of one sentence at the end of it, of one guy saying "some people go on in a eternal cycle of re-reading easy peasy" so I understood ok doing so is bad, then I started reading about digital minimalism, not even the recommended lectures by the hackauthor like the addictive voice recognition technique. And after even watching some coomer meme archive (I know is a good movement, but being realistic, those memes are made by a wide range of people, not everyone of them are psychologists like Allen Carr or the hackauthor, not even people with the introductory science based knowledge of the ones who read the book, and besides of the few memes that cleverly show deep and hard to digest realities, like the ones that helped me realize that even though sex with my partner might be good, I'm acting like a depravate thinking of sex everytime I se her alone with me, the majority of memes are made by people that make memes, not artists, I saw a lot of people still thinking about streaks, and a lot of Christianity, and above all of that, what am I doing watching memes to help an addiction man... )
So after reaching that point I had enough. "I'm walking a long ago twisted path, it's time to go back by the road I've been walking, and pause, and think, and solve... " And today I decided to just read the book again. And I have a number of conclusions to share.

1. This is an example by me, a medical student: what I did the first time reading the book is like reading one article for the exan and getting to the next one just after finishing the last sentence of the previous one. The day of the test, and the test is stumbling across accidental peaks some day, like a pop-up, a social night (don't underestimate this shit like me, even if like me you are poorly social, and while reading those sentences in the book you thought "that advice is not for people like me", one day you'll have to socialize, and damn... That's some relapse factory), or being alone and late in the night, that real life test situations, will ask for your knowledge, and if you just studied it one single time, without the most important thing in learning, which is recalling and "repasar", you are most likely to fail that exam, like I did.
   
2. The information in the book never ceases to be enough for me. Even for the most stubborn, egocentric mind, this book schools. I'm not a newbie, one big chunk of the book is focused to helping people lose the fear and accept the addiction, a lot of time ago I'm not longer in that step, and I understand a lot of the brainwashing pillars and went deeper in those, bun even though, finally reading it again makes me feel like the first time. It feels like there are new words between each paragraph that wasn't there the first time. It feels like there are some ideas that are only readable for people that have live that success time, encountered new traps, and failed.
   
3. This time I'll take my time for this. I've been addicted since 8yo, more than 12 years. Even if I spend another 12 years working on this, it's fine for me as long as I'm free. I felt like I beated the game, and that I'm no noob that have to go back to the tutorial, that the next step would be other books, treat other problems in my life fast, but this is not like a game that you beat, actually you beat the game at the very time you open the book for the first time.
   

A long time have past since I finished easy peasy for the first time, after that I went to the psychologist, relapsed a couple times, touched deep ground, fought multiple times with my values, had a lot of tests, had some peaks, have been heavily concerned about the subject of the relationsheep between the addiction and having sex with my partner, surely the most frustrating and difficult doubt to resolve. But certainly, above all of that, I'm much better that I was that first time finishing easy peasy. And that doesn't end in just comparing me with myself to feel optimistic about the progress in this, that means I'll use this new learning abilities gained for focusing in mi career for one time in my life, failing and living new traps and ideas that always were in the book but I didn't understood the first time, to keep working on this.
What do you think? This is my story in a nutshell, that text I wrote that day after the click, was a 12 hours long, this was just 1, that is the impact of this book in my life, and this post is the new way of feeling that I'm not alone in this, and you can help me, and I can help you, than I'm trying. I thing that text is valuable to share with you, because it can help you, but I'll have to translate it and censor it, maybe one day. The psychologist told me months ago I should share everything I write online, but again, I'll have to censor it, so I kept doing in for me, this is the first time I follow her advice, let's see how we do.
I'll keep reading, keep living, keep working on this, actually I have a decent streak, but I would hate being counting days like my prehistoric times. Hope you don't hate my poor writing so much, hope I'll read your opinions, see ya

Tapas Part 3 - Bliss Upon Bliss

Recap
Part 1 covered the concept of tapas, or spiritual austerities, and how you can use tapas to magnify and enhance the sexual energy created through semen retention into tejas, an "inner radiance, fearlessness, majesty, and authority".
It also covered the concept of syntropy, which is how a system is able to conserve, increase and synchronize energy within itself, which is the reason why you get so many benefits from semen retention. Yoga, meditation and tapas all increase syntropy as well.
You can find Part 1 here.
Part 2 detailed how to use tapas to overcome craving, both for the urge to masturbate and for all cravings in general. It detailed some of the science behind why yoga and breathing exercises are just about the most syntropic things you could ever possibly do, by regulating both the endocrine and nervous systems, and activating and clearing out your energy body, called the pranamaya kosha in yoga. Then I introduced some new yogic techniques to introduce more prana and tejas into the system.
You can find Part 2 here.
In this post, we will cover :

• A quick section on "limbic friction";
• How to make good use of the power of resolves, or "strong determinations", in order to boost confidence in yourself, to become the one person you can always count on, and to strategically release dopamine and testosterone in order to rewire your brain to be oriented towards resilience and success;
• Why proper meditation is even more syntropic than the postures and breathing exercises of yoga;
• The process by which meditation purifies the nervous system/mind/consciousness;
• How deep states of meditation, known as jhanas, create the highest level of syntropy within the body-mind system, as well as unbelievable amounts of bliss;
• The relationship between the energy gained from semen retention, the bliss and syntropy of jhana, and how the two relate to tantric sex.

Part 4 will cover :

• How tapas trains circuits within a primitive part of the brain, which, when strengthened, allow you to have built-in, automatic discipline;
• The importance of disciplining oneself with ethics, how it benefits your semen retention practice, and how it is both foundational to success in meditation, as well as a powerful form of tapas;
• A type of meditation on fire itself that quickly builds powerful levels of concentration and can even lead to some trippy experiences. And of course, it greatly increases syntropy and tejas.

Giddy up!

Limbic Friction

Tapas will take your semen retention practice, as well as the rest of your life, to entirely new heights. Tapas involves overcoming limbic friction - the uncomfortable feeling your nervous system creates to try to convince you to stay in your hazy comfort zone, to avoid doing the difficult things.
You know, the things that will allow you to grow.
Limbic friction will also pop up when you try to not indulge in the thing you’re craving.
Limbic friction just keeps you trapped in your tidy little box of comfort. While it may be comfortable and familiar, no real growth can occur inside this box.
Everything you’ve ever dreamed of is on the other side of fear and discomfort.
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult." - Seneca
The goal of tapas is to simply feel that limbic friction, to fully accept it, and then proceed ahead anyway. That’s it.

Gain Confidence and Boost Testosterone with Resolves

While we’re on the topic of pushing ourselves, let’s discuss the power of making resolves. In the 3rd post of the series on overcoming craving, Becoming a King with Equanimity, we discussed how they make great use of “strong determination sits” in Goenka-style meditation retreats.
This simply means that when you sit for meditation, you make a vow to sit perfectly still for the entire hour of your meditation session - you can’t move your hands, your feet, or open your eyes once the sit begins.
Not only does this up the level of discomfort, forcing you to either develop equanimity or die trying, it also increases your confidence in yourself. You say you’re going to do something tough and you prove to yourself that you can do it.
Strong determination sitting is a powerful practice, but the real point is making a resolve to do something difficult and then sticking to it no matter what.
This practice is called adhitthana, and it is one of the Ten Perfections of Theravadan Buddhism that a person aspiring to awaken must master in order to bring about awakening.
For a beginner meditator, the resolve should be only be to sit every day, with out fail - even if it's just ten minutes.
It’s easy to see why this practice goes hand in hand with tapas. Let's say you are a beginner meditator, and you make a resolve or "strong determination" to sit every single day, for at least ten minutes. For someone who has never meditated, that's actually a pretty tough thing to stick to.
But then, one fine spring Friday afternoon, you meet up with your buddy and grab a couple of beers (or insert whatever your temptation is). You get home and look at your meditation cushion and even ten minutes seems like too much.
This is your mind being a little bitch!
But you're a retainer practicing tapas, and having made this strong determination to sit for ten minutes every night means there is no backing out. To back out is to admit defeat, to let yourself down, and to prove to yourself how unreliable you are.
Barring utter catastrophe, you will do your evening ten minute sit.
So you sit, and even though the meditation drags on and on because you’ve had a couple, you make it through and viola - a big check is deposited in your “confidence and dependability” account.
Making resolutions and sticking to them is a powerful method to make progress fast, not just with your semen retention/yoga/meditation practice, but in life in general.
In a world of uncertainty, when people seem to get more and more flaky and unreliable, be the one person who you can always depend on.
It’s a promise you must keep in order for it to pay off, otherwise you’re just reinforcing the habit that it's ok for your mind to take the easy way out.
Start with small resolutions, resolutions you know you can hold yourself to. You want to set up a positive feedback loop of winning. These successive small wins lead to more wins, as each win increases dopamine and testosterone - a phenomena known as The Winner Effect.

Scientists have found that when we win something, regardless of how small, the brain releases dopamine and testosterone, chemicals associated with confidence, attention, and mood. Interestingly, studies have shown that the brain can rewire itself for success over time.

It's a match against yourself - who will win? Your old lazy self, or the new and improved self?
Strong Determinations in Practice
Once you’ve proven to yourself you can rely on yourself, slowly start upping the ante. Don't try to jump immediately from a slovenly wimp to the Olympic-level athlete of austerities or meditation, because you’ll simply fail - and that's proving to yourself you aren't dependable.
And remember, you can make resolutions with anything, not just yoga and meditation:

• Resolve to not look at your phone for the next hour;
• Or to not get on Reddit at all tomorrow;
• Or to take weekends off of Discord;
• Or resolve to clean your entire room, top to bottom, in one stretch.

Or how about actually starting your workout routine and sticking to it? Or resolve to give up whatever your crutch is, and actually follow through this time? The smart man would be sure to build up with some smaller wins before you try to drop your big crutch.
The goal is simply to stick to your resolutions!
Start off making them small and manageable.
Each time you stick to your resolution will be a win, dopamine and testosterone will be released, and overtime this will rewire your brain towards badassery. Your confidence and strength will grow and grow. Only when there is no more limbic friction from the original resolution do you add another or increase the intensity of the original resolution.
Prove to yourself that you are dependable and watch your confidence skyrocket. I've included a video at the end of this post talking about the benefits of strong determination and resolves as they relate to meditation, but remember - these resolves can benefit you in regards to any behavior.
The late and great Anthony Bourdain

Meditation for Tejas

As we covered in Part 2, yoga, with its postures, breathing exercises, and energetic locks and seals, is easily the fastest and almost the most effective manner of increasing tejas.
What about meditation? Well, let's all be honest, for most beginners, meditation is a bitch. It's difficult to sit down, stop the constant doing, disengage from all that thinking in your mind and focus on one object to the exclusion of all others.
But once you're good at meditating, it is perhaps the most syntropic thing you can possibly do. Stilling the mind is the epitome of conserving energy - your body isn't moving and now, even your mind has reached stillness.
And once you get really good at meditation, a positive feedback loop occurs in the mind, magnifying energy in the body-mind system many times over - so much so that it starts producing an intense bodily bliss and mental happiness, respectively called piti and sukha.
When piti (rapture) and sukha (joy, mental bliss) start arising, you can be sure that you're on the precipice of what is known as jhanas in Buddhism, and dhyana/samadhi in yoga. These are meditative absorptions that are extremely purifying and endlessly praised by the Buddha, not only as one of the proper ways to meditate, but as the one and only type of pleasure to actively seek out.
And believe it or not, the pleasure of jhana can exceed even the pleasure of sex, and can last much, much longer.
You know how people with anxiety get stuck in a loop of rumination that just magnifies their anxiety? Jhanas are the opposite of this anxiety loop.

"Anxiety can capture attention, which can lead to more anxiety, which can capture more attention, and so on, leading to a physiological response (e.g. heart rate changes, sweating, in the extreme case a panic attack). Jhana meditators create a similar positive feedback loop between attention and pleasure." Jhourney - These are guys who led the metta retreat where I was first able to achieve jhanas

Once you can get to this level in your sits, then some real juice is added to your meditation, and tejas will start overflowing.
Thy cup will runneth over, as they say.
And as we'll see in an eventual post in the Craving Series, once you get to the point of reliably reaching jhanas, you can say bye bye to pretty much any and all cravings. Why? Because why would you want to masturbate, getting only 5-10 minutes of pleasure, when you can sit down and hang out in a much more pleasurable jhana for 20 minutes to 2 hours?
And that pleasure, ease and joy follows you around the rest of the day, coloring everything you do. It's difficult to crave when you're already deeply satisfied.

Purificatory Fire of Meditation

But that leaves us with the problem of getting good enough at meditation to achieve those states of bliss, and now that I've mentioned how amazing some of these higher states of meditation can be, I may have inadvertently caused you to crave them.
And you cannot reach jhana from a place of craving. In fact, jhanas are all about letting go. More on that in the Craving Series.
However, worry not! Just beginning on the path of meditation starts working wonders for the purificatory process, no matter how "bad" you may be at it.
Recall how in Tapas Pt 2, I mentioned how effective yoga asanas and pranayama are at cleaning out the gunk and detritus from the nervous system/mind/energy body?
Meditation does the exact same thing, even if you think you're doing it poorly.
So, as a beginner or someone who thinks they "can't meditate", understand that each time you sit down and do metta, or focus on the breath, or do vipassana, or recite a mantra, or whatever, even if you think you aren't meditating well, as long as you know your technique is proper, you're doing great, and it's having quite the purifying effect on the brain/mind/nervous system.
Recall in the previous post how I mentioned that once the gunk is cleared from the system, that it is like living life as a child again? Perceptions become crisp and clear, wonder and joy are always right around the corner, and things become "feather light and paper thin" - meaning things feel less solid, and more vibrant, vibratory, alive.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Here are a few key quotes from one of my favorite books on meditation, The Science of Enlightenment : How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young. I highly recommend this book, especially for science-oriented types. The "fixating forces" he mentions in the following quote are our deeply ingrained habit patterns of chasing after the pleasant and running from the unpleasant (tanha, craving) and the word kleshas refers to the three defilements#Three_poisons) of craving, aversion and ignorance.

"So if, as many believe, we really are imbedded in spiritual reality, why don't we see it? Why isn't every vision beatific? It's because of fixating forces deep down in the subconscious. And our job, according to a plethora of self-help paradigms, is to become free from these forces.
"In the Buddhist, Hindu, and Abrahamic contemplative traditions, the process of becoming free of those limiting forces is sometimes referred to as purification (vishuddhi in Sanskrit; catharsis in Greek). Purification could be described as the process that breaks this material up, digests it, metabolizes it, and (pardon the metaphor) excretes it. Purification is what it 'tastes like' as we are getting free from those limiting grooves. It's a sort of immediate reward. You sense that the limitations of the past are being metabolized and a bright future is being created because of the way you're experiencing a certain something in the present. Once you learn the taste of purification, your growth goes exponential. The ability to taste purification is the sign of a mature spiritual palate.
"From a Buddhist perspective, that old material gets worked through by pouring clarity (mindfulness) and equanimity into the experience of the moment. That clarity and equanimity percolate down into the subconscious and give the subconscious what it needs to resolve/dissolve its issues."
"Through meditation, we smelt away the kleshas (craving, aversion, ignorance). We refine the ore, and we are left with what always was - the pure gold of consciousness."

So three important notes to end on

1. If you're new to meditation, or even if you've had a practice, realize that there are no bad sits! If your mind wanders 100 times in 10 minutes of meditating, and you brought your mind back to its object 101 times, that means you've done 101 "reps". That is a successful sit!
2. Do not crave results! Just focus on the right inputs, and eventually the right outputs appear on their own. The right inputs here being that you sit consistently and with proper technique, in a relaxed and un-expectant manner. Focus on the inputs, the results will come.
3. That sense of struggle that you must overcome to sit on the cushion, plus the subtle (or not so subtle) struggle while you're actually meditating is the taste of purification! That feeling is the feeling of tapas itself! You may not enjoy the feeling (yet), but you can at least know that you're engaging with powerful, purificatory tapas each and every time you sit. Even more so if you start using resolves.

That feeling of resistance is none other than our friend limbic friction. When you feel that limbic friction pop up, and then you do the thing anyway, remember - that's gunk being burned out of the system!

Jhanas, Orgasms, and Tantric Sex

Now, there will be an upcoming post in the Craving Series that will be a deep dive on the style of meditation that produces this bliss and happiness.
If you guys are interested, I made a recent post on metta meditation, which is arguably the easiest way to get into these states. While I think the whole thing is worth reading, feel free to skip to the end for instructions. This was the style of meditation that finally allowed me to begin accessing these states of absorption and bliss, after 13 years of trying to do so.
On the other hand, feel free to skip my post entirely and head straight to one of the links I've included at the end of this post for guided metta meditations.
Metta is a fantastic method for jhana because the feeling of loving-kindness itself is inherently pleasant. Because it is pleasant, your mind will focus easily upon it; because your mind focuses easily upon the pleasant sensation, the pleasantness grows; the mind is able to concentrate more easily upon this increased pleasantness, which then causes the pleasantness to grow even more, on and on and on, until bodily bliss (piti) and mental joy (sukha) start arising and you're blasted into the first jhana.
The Joy of Jhana
What does "being blasted in the first jhana by bodily bliss and mental joy" feel like?
Well, the best way to describe jhana is somewhere between an extended orgasm and being on the love drug MDMA/ecstasy.
"Hold up - that sounds like it would be debilitating to all this energy we've been cultivating... Surely there will be devastating consequences to our semen retention practice, right?"
Orgasms drain you of energy, not just due to the release of prolactin which lowers dopamine and testosterone, but also because of the effect on your nervous system. As you get more and more sexually aroused, energy builds up in your nervous system. Once your nervous system can no longer handle the energy and stimulation, you orgasm, at which point prolactin is dumped into the body and the nervous system starts shaking off all the energy that has accumulated inside.
Toes curl in, eyes roll into the back of the head, and your nerves fire like off like its the Fourth of July, right? You get hormonal dampening, and a good portion of the energy you've been building up and conserving through semen retention, wise use of energy, tapas, yoga, pranayama and meditation gets literally shivered away and shook off.
Jhanas, on the other hand, allow for a very slow build up of energy within the nervous system, (one that doesn't involve your Johnson), but instead of that build up resulting in a big explosion of energy that the nervous system shakes off, it is all contained within and sustained for long periods of time!
This pleasure, which is simply a build up of energy, is extremely purifying to the entire system.
And when the jhana is over, you're left feeling invigorated and refreshed, not drained and depleted, because your nervous system remains supercharged with energy and bliss. Not only will you be radiating good vibes everywhere, but you will be supercharged with our friend tejas, that "inner radiance, fearlessness, majesty, and authority".
The Tantric Sex Connection
This is also one reason why tantric sex is such a powerful adjunct to semen retention. In tantric sex, you build up energy within the nervous system and don't release it - but in this case, the energy comes from sex, not from meditation.
And all of this is even more reason to have a strong yoga practice, because it is only through yoga (or qi gong/tai chi) that you begin to slowly build up prana within yourself, training your nervous system and pranamaya kosha to be able to handle higher and higher amounts of energy.
Through yoga, you also purify the channels, called nadis, through which this energy flows, as well as the chakras, the "power transformers" of the energy body.
If these aren't purfied and opened up, the energy will remain stuck and unable to participate in the feedback loop of jhana, nor of tantric sex. This is a major reason why guys are unable to make it very long with retention - their bodies can't handle the build up of sexual energy, so it seeks release and homestasis the only way it knows how - through orgasm.
Again, I refer you to Can You Handle the Power? if you'd like to read more about the concept of being able to handle more and more energy.
Better yet, skip the reading and get to practicing.

Resources

A quick note on guided metta meditations - you kind of have to shop around to find one you really enjoy. There are many different ways of doing metta, and when you multiply that by the way some teachers sound, whether there is music or not, and the quality of recording, well... Some are hits, some are huge misses.
My recommendation is to find one you like and either stick to it, or better yet, simply do the meditation yourself.
A 30 Day guest pass to the Waking Up app - Amazing resource with 3 different metta modules under the "Practice" tab - Compassionate Awareness is one module, Metta (loving-kindness) is another, and Metta for Everyone.
Shinzen Young on Strong Determination Sits
18 Minute Metta Meditation with Samaneri Jayasara - My favorite of the guided meditations here. She is a fantastic resource, and she has plenty of readings and guided meditations on her Youtube.
35 Minute Metta Meditation with Jayasara - I did not check this video out, so if it isn't great, well..
23 Minute Tonglen Meditation by Tara Brach - Tonglen comes to us from the Tibetan Buddhists, and combines metta with compassion.
14 Minute Guided Metta Meditation with Ayya Khema - This one is interesting.
Rob Burbea Metta Retreat - These are the recordings of a metta meditation retreat led by Rob Burbea, a phenomenal teacher. These include some theory and are all longer sits though - great for strong determination sits!
A great 3 month course for the seriously-inclined beginner meditator, with a section on metta.
A great interview with the guy I learned jhanas from, describing their benefits.

Just had another experience
Was in and out of sleep then decided to fully decline the bed, turn on my right side and go back to sleep for another hour or so before I get up for work. Suddenly, I felt a hand grab my left hip.... like I literally felt fingers and everything!! Then it felt like SEVERAL hands all at once all over me, each one making their own points of contact. I felt the usual accompanying paralysis but as always I'm fully conscious of the entire thing start to finish. My screams are even paralyzed! I can't move but I'm trying my hardest to. Im trying to say "God help me!! God help me!!" ... Nothing comes out. (As I'm writing this i get this unbelievable ringing in both ears. So sudden and intense!!) At some point of the struggle, I finally get a strained and incomprehensible cry out and immediately they stop, it all stops. A couple seconds later I can fully speak and I just yell "Oh God! Oh God!! Oh God!!" and I just lie there for another few seconds to process what just happened. Now I'm writing again to document it. Again, as usual, I feel my heart beating fast as if I've literally been fighting. I've never experienced it like I have today! Never have I felt so many at once! Never has it ever started at my hip. It either starts at my feet or my head or my back. And its not a single, localized area.... its my entire upper or lower sections then progression up or down my body. What is going on! Its not sleep paralysis. There is no presence lurking that I can sense. There's only the experience. At times I have addressed it out loud when I know it's coming and just say "No, not today. I'm over it!" Seriously, I have somehow sensed it would happen sometimes and sure enough, it did. Been experiencing this since I was about 20 yrs old. I'm now 43. And I won't even mention the unexplained orgasms I have been having since my late twenties, thats another realm of experience in itself. Im beginning to wonder if they're somehow related. Don't worry, I already know how crazy I sound and don't care....its happening and has happened for the last 20+ years and I'm hoping for some sort of explanation. Anyone else experience anything like this?

Just had another experience. This may not be the place for it but it literally just happened so I'm putting it here anyway.
Was in and out of sleep then decided to fully decline the bed, turn on my right side and go back to sleep for another hour or so before I get up for work. Suddenly, I felt a hand grab my left hip.... like I literally felt fingers and everything!! Then it felt like SEVERAL hands all at once all over me, each one making their own points of contact. I felt the usual accompanying paralysis but as always I'm fully conscious of the entire thing start to finish. My screams are even paralyzed! I can't move but I'm trying my hardest to. Im trying to say "God help me!! God help me!!" ... Nothing comes out. (As I'm writing this I get this unbelievable ringing in both ears. So sudden and intense!!) At some point of the struggle, I finally get a strained and incomprehensible cry out and immediately "they" stop, it all stops. A couple seconds later I can fully speak and I just yell "Oh God! Oh God!! Oh God!!" and I just lie there for another few seconds to process what just happened. Now I'm writing again to document it. Again, as usual, I feel my heart beating fast as if I've literally been fighting. I've never experienced it like I have today! Never have I felt so many at once! Never has it ever started at my hip. It either starts at my feet or my head or my back. And its not a single, localized area.... its my entire upper or lower sections then progression up or down my body. What is going on! Its not sleep paralysis. There is no presence lurking that I can sense. There's only the experience. At times I have addressed it out loud when I know it's coming and just say "No, not today. I'm over it!" Seriously, I have somehow sensed it would happen sometimes and sure enough, it did. Been experiencing this since I was about 20 yrs old. I'm now 43. And I won't even mention the unexplained orgasms I have been having since my late twenties, thats another realm of experience in itself. Im beginning to wonder if they're somehow related. Don't worry, I already know how crazy I sound and don't care....its happening and has happened for the last 20+ years and I'm hoping for some sort of explanation. Anyone else experience anything like this?

Today I woke up in the middle of the night and found out that I've ejaculated in my sleep. HOWEVER, I was asleep and even though I've wet my pants a little bit I managed to not ejaculate too much. It was ONLY A SMALL TAINTED AREA so am I still in the run if I was even able to stop myself while I was literally unconscious?? My sheets were clean and when I ran to the toilet there was nothing else. I literally managed to stop myself before orgasm.
Idk if this sounds weird, but I don't want to accept the fact that I stupid dream ruined my streak. I'm kinda pissed. What do you all think?

I'm trying out the new F7A and my god the boost sounds are orgasmic.
It has a distinct fuel cutoff noise to it that is punchy and airy at the same time and I wish more ships had different variations of this sound instead of more electricity-based sounding engines, ya know?
I'm really hoping when more ships get golden passes that the thruster sounds get reworked, especially the boost sounds cos holy shit if more ships boost sounds sounded like the F7A I'd never play anything else.

I (32M) have been dating this woman (31F) since January, so not that long.
We met on Tinder right after new year and got off really well. I've avoided commitment for much of my adult life, the last time I was in a relationship was almost 10 years ago. And for the past couple years in particular I've been fucking around.
For some reason this one felt different, over the next few months we got really close, she met my family, I met her family, we traveled together and talked almost 24/7. I legitimately think I've never fallen for someone like I fell for her.
The one issue we always had was a lack of intimacy. She would never start anything physical with me, if I kissed her she would kiss me back, and she would giggle and laugh if I playfully slapped her ass or something, but we never had sex.
She's neurodivergent and she also lost her virginity at 18 when she was raped, so I was completely fine with waiting however long it took for her to get confortable enough for intimacy.
About two weeks ago we traveled together again and since she had an implanon installed I asked if she thought she was ready, she said it takes a while for it to start working so no (I had condoms, but I didn't want to push her).
I know she talks to her therapist on Thursday evenings, this Thursday around the time she leaves the therapist she texts me saying we need to talk.
Here's how the conversation goes: - She tells me she thinks she might be asexual. - I tell her I don't know how to process that. - She jokingly says Tinder exists. - I ask her if she's breaking up with me, she says yes. - I tell her I'm willing to try it out and figure something that works for us. - She says sex is obviously important to me and that she would feel guilty about keeping it from me and that I wouldn't be ok with never having sex again, while she would. - I ask her if she's repulsed by the idea of sex or if she just doesn't have a sex drive. - She says she doesn't have a sex drive and that she never had an orgasm before, not even masturbating. - She then asks if we can stay friends because she likes talking to me. - I say I also like talking to her and agree. - She changes the subject to something else and I'm too dumbfounded to think about anything.
On Friday we don't talk the entire day, around 1am she texts me saying she went to a restaurant with her girlfriends and that the restaurant sucked. I was awake but ignore the message.
On saturday afternoon she texts me about playing with her nephew and saying her brother (who I got friendly with) was in town for mother's day. I tell her its nice that her brother could make it.
Later on saturday she sent me some more texts about something I don't even remember, I ignored them, I was feeling hurt.
Today after lunch she texts me again about some other irrelevant topic, I ignore her. A few hours later she texts me again asking if I'm ok.
I say I'm sorry for ignoring her and that I know it sounds passive-aggressive, but I can't lie that I'm okay, and I can't lie that I'm not angry.
She says she's sorry but she can't do anything to help me.
I tell her she can, she just doesn't want to. I tell her I'm sad because she was willing to throw our relationship away without trying any sort of compromise before, that I was sad she was fine with breaking up with me over fucking text and how non-chalant about it she was; and that I'm mostly angry at myself for not realizing she didn't give a fuck about me.
She says she's sorry and that its probably better for her to go away.
I tell her I hope she'll be ok but she already seems to be doing fine.
This was a few hours ago and she hasn't said anything back. At this point I've deleted her contact from my phone, but haven't blocked her.
I just feel like a completely unlovable piece of shit for falling in love with her right now.
I don't know what I want to accomplish with this post, I guess I just need to vent.

My boyfriend, bless his heart, says he isn't very good with dirty talk. I wouldn't consider myself all too great at it either but I've had some decent one liners here and there.
My boyfriend and I were having sex this morning and we usually finish in different ways, this time he wanted to stroke me to completion. As he was doing so, I'm getting close and things are getting intense so I tell him I'm about to cum.
He responds with dirty talk. Usually we don't dirty talk at all but he was in the moment. He said something that he thought was too rude and switched it up mid sentence. So just as I start shooting a load, he said "Give me your cum, you son of a gun".
I burst out laughing mid orgasm. So does he. Son of a gun?? Lol he was thinking "son of a bitch" but he's not typically that aggressive or crude, he just didn't know how to do dirty talk without sounding a little insulting. Which led to him switching it up to the now infamous line.
Just wanted to share.

Just a rant since i can't afford a therapist right now.
We have been together for almost two years and at first our sex life was great but now my bf doesn't seem to be interested in sex as much anymore. I try to initiate but he always turns me down so we have sex only when he decides to which is not often to me (like three times a month, maybe more, maybe even less). We have a great relationship outside of bedroom, we live together, I love him so so much but this thing just frustrates me. I did communicate it with him but he says he's fine the way it is and it's not gonna change in the nearest future. Btw, it was the same with his ex too, she would also cry for sex and he would turn her down every time. For context, we are 22 years old so I suspect testosterone issues since there are other signs as well ( for example, he suddenly gained weight but he was really skinny all his life).
Now, to my feelings. I just feel empty inside (no pun intended), like there is a hole inside me that can't be filled no matter what (no pun intended again). Like no matter how happy I am, this dissatisfaction just always follows me everywhere. I don't feel pretty and I don't feel desirable. It hurts me that he's not attracted to me as much as I am to him. I'm afraid he doesn't view me as a beautiful woman but more like a cute and funny gremlin next to him. To me, sex is what divides our romantical partners from our friends. Sometimes it feels like we are just rommates. We hang out, we cuddle, we cook together and watch TV but that's it. Sometimes I forget that I'm still an attractive girl.
When I was on an all girls trip we went to the club. Honestly, I don't like clubs and I don't support clubbing when you're in a relationship unless you are together but that was the only time and it wasn't intentional. It was supposed to be a bar and it Was for some time but then the people arrived and the music started and me and my best friend decided to just dance a little cause we also met two girls (you know, drunk friendship in a club toilet, one of you have some relationship problems, classic) and also we were already drunk. At the club several guys hitted on me I obviously turned down every one of them (I'm not really attracted to men unless it's my boyfriend, especially to men who go to the clubs to pick girls) but it felt shocking. Like man i forget I'm still young and attractive. Like someone still wants me for the way I look and for my body.
Long story short, I had issues with thinking people only date me because I'm interesting to talk to not because I am pretty. I wasn't really interested in sex until i met my boyfriend and lucky! those people were not that interested too. And after that I had people interested in me Only because of my body and not my personality at all. So my boyfriend loving both was some kind of revelation to me and him turning to just liking to spend time with me and talk to me wakes up in me that past trauma? i guess. Or better say insecurity.
My bf was the one who got me into sex as an enjoyable activity I can look forward to. I did have sex w girls before him and it wasn't bad but I didn't care if I had it or not, it just didn't cross my mind. If it happens, great, if not, also great. And later on when i started having sex w men I just had sex for the sake of it and didn't get any pleasure out of it. Yay! Penetration! But he made it great. Like I actually started to orgasm with him, I started to like it and want more of it.
I know I am attractive. I want to have so much sex while I'm still young and pretty. I want to explore different things (not like threesomes and sex parties but something I can do with my bf only). And it pains me that I'm wasting my youth.
It may sound silly but it just feels horrible. I have all kinds of self doubts on top of having general relationship anxiety. I'm devastated. I'm spiraling every day. Some people say it's better to just break up if you have sexual incompatibility, some say it's actually fixable (like if it's testosterone issues). I know he loves me, I know he's not cheating or anything and I just really don't want to bother him with my intrusive thoughts. But I really feel undesirable. I feel like I'm 13 years old again and no guy will look at me cause I'm not feminine enough.
I just want my boyfriend to want me. Anytime I read the post from the girl saying her bf want wayy more sex than her I think girl if only I could trade the situations with you oh my god. I shut myself everyday. I try to convince myself sex is not that important and the realisation that to me it is and I can't change it hurts so much.
I don't want to break up over it for now since I still believe there are ways to fix it but if they will be unsuccessful? I don't think I'm gonna be able to continue this. And I don't want that. For me, I believe there should be only one serious partner in my life and we would get married and live haplily ever after. Like I'm not living in a fairytale I know people break up and sometimes it's for good. I've also had relationship before but they wasn't as serious. And I don't think I will be able to trust another man in my life. I don't want to live with someone, make our home cozy, building the life together and then just become a strangers. Like I won't be able to handle it over and over again. And I have severe trust issues towards men since a lot of them are cheating and not over their ex. Yes, I used to date girls before and this is my first boyfriend and it feels like a Nightmate. I've never had trust issues in the relationship before. I've never worried there could be some girl they be texting or whatever. Just pure mindless happiness. So sweet. Well not until I started interacting with men and was introduced to all kinds of mischief, lying and all sorts of disrespectful things. I don't hate men if I sound like that but my experience with them was awful and the things I've read on the internet and the things my friends told me don't make it easier for me to trust them. For background all of my new friends in the past few years are guys and I always spend time in the all boys company (bfs friends, my girl friends live in different cities so we don't see each other often) and they are great people and i care for them so much but boy! some of them shouldn't go near a woman until they deal with their issues. I don't know why I'm even explaining myself I just don't want reddit people to jump on me for stereotyping. I do trust my boyfriend though mostly. We had some issues (kinda serious ones) but we resolved them and now I'm almost healed and he actually grew as a person too and changed. So I don't want it go to waste.
I just really really hope it will be resolved and I'm willing to wait. Not because I don't believe i won't find anyone ever again but because I actually do love my bf and I like that we are both growing in this relationship. I just realized how stupid i sound. Like i cling onto the relationship cause he's the first person to give me what i wanted 😭 It's not like that I promise I actually view relationship way more rationally than it may look like but I was just ranting uncontrollably. Yeah, I would be fine if we broke up but I don't want that and I don't see it as a solution.
Anyway, I hope it's not some kind of lesson to learn fron the universe but a strong bond between us developing.

Miran42:
Feb 09, 2021
Sharp stinging/burning when scrotal area is touched/irritated
Hi!
I did my vasectomy 25th January 2021 and i'm now on my 15th day post-op.
I had no problems up till day 11. Sex and masturbation felt exactly the same with no discomfort.
On day 11 i was receiving oral and noticed a slight stinging sensation in my scrotum and up the right testicle from certain movements.
Now, i first thought this was from my sutures.. the thread on the right side had almost disappeared into the wound, so i had to use a tweezer to slightly pull it out. Naturally this caused some irritation.
The day after, the same stinging/burning happened when i was walking or bending over.
The last days the pain has increased in intensity, and i noticed it happens when my scrotum receives pressure or the skin is dragged around. So basically whenever i walk or exert myself physically.
I also tried masturbating to see if the feeling had changed, and the best way to describe it was as if my penis was numb or under slight anesthetics. I came, but it did not feel the same.
I called my urologist and told them about the symptoms. The reply was they had never heard about stinging/burning in the scrotum after the procedure. They thought that sounded weird as the operation was not in the scrotum, but a bit down from the penile shaft on either side.
Any one on here know what the cause of this pain might be? Thanks in advance for any replies.
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/comments/lg363y/sharp_stingingburning_when_scrotal_area_is/

Pudendal Neuralgia, if it continues for awhile. I got PN from a vasectomy!

Thanks for the reply! Hmm could be.
I just left work after having extreme shooting pains from both walking and sitting. From 1 to 10 i would say a solid 8.. almost passed out and threw up after walking 20m. Seems lying down is all i can do without having much pain.
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/comments/lg363y/sharp_stingingburning_when_scrotal_area_is/gmpsz40/
Feb 11, 2021
Little update.. I talked to the doctor that owns the clinic with the most experience.
Most likely it was from walking around 15k steps on monday and then sitting down for 4 hours straight and getting my Jimmy's in a squeeze somehow.
She said the nerves will be quite sensitive for a while, and me walking that much irritated the nerves. When I then sat down for 4 hours it put the nerve(s) in a squeeze. This caused them go berserk when I stood up and started walking around.
Sounds about right.. my job is mostly physical and I'm dumb enough to not limit myself. Been 2 days off work now, and it's just a slight stinging sensation sometimes when the wound drags along my thigh.
Hopefully it will heal better now that I've learned a painful lesson lol..
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/comments/lg363y/sharp_stingingburning_when_scrotal_area_is/gmxglkt/

Wish they would give us more warning about recovery time as my boss isn't very sympathetic..

I feel you man.. I was told I could go back to work the day after, and within 2 weeks I would be back to normal. My boss isn't very understanding either. I said fuck this and took 3 days off now.
Feel like the information given by doctors was very lacking and they told me almost nothing about side effects. I had researched a lot beforehand and knew there was a slight risk of course. I've seen my girl try all types of birth control and she gets absolutely wrecked from it. This is nothing compared to what she went through 🤷‍♂️
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/comments/lg363y/sharp_stingingburning_when_scrotal_area_is/gn17rwe/
Mar 05, 2024

Hi, just wanted to ask how you are feeling now that a few years have passed since your vasectomy. Thanks!

Hi! I had mild discomfort/pain for about 6-9 months after the operation. Mostly when going for long walks or mountain hikes. Also had a bit of a wierd feeling/pain when getting orgasms more than once in a short time span.
Now all discomfort etc is gone and everything is back to normal luckily.
https://www.reddit.com/postvasectomypain/comments/lg363y/sharp_stingingburning_when_scrotal_area_is/ktf0cge/
Metadata:
ID: 3408fecd
Name: Miran42
Vasectomy Date: 2021-01-25
Source: self
First Seen: 2021-02-09
Last Seen: 2024-03-05
Storycodes: LTP
Months: 9
Resolved: Yes

I'll do my best to recount this, but I admit it's tough to reach back and remember the surprise that came with youthful innocence as you meet your own sexual experiences, and nothing is ever as it was described to be, expected to be, some things are worse, some things are great despite seeming yucky at a glance, and some things just don't matter as much as others said.
Best to describe "virginal me" as someone dedicated to her family's devout Christian faith. Never really questioning the faith itself, I didn't totally get how this stuff would work in a practical way as I started having urges and desires towards boys. And I thought I was just a-waitin' to be some homemaking wife, a baby factory... basically everything that I was told I wanted. I believed that I must want these things too!
I'll say this much - I'd made it to high school around this time, and this was a fairly average age for many women to try sexual things. Won't get more specific than that, just in case. And I became very aware of the sort of 'fresh meat' mentality that makes young girls practically competitive with each other -- you know, the things we'll do to keep a boys interest.
So, sure. I had a few boyfriends. My first real kiss, I remember praying for most of the night because I was afraid I liked it too much, and certainly would become a whore overnight, and what's up with these hormones doin' witchcraft without my permission, anyways?
Anyways, in a tale as old as time, I assume, a new family moves in up the street, I'm immediately crushing on the son of this family, and he seemed older, but not by much. I was wrong on this one, he was 22, but I didn't know that, and it certainly wasn't love, but it was at least lust at first sight. I could fin the sin boling inside of me already. Tried to ignore him.
And by trying to ignore him, I mean I'd get as gussied up as possible to simply take a walk around the block while he played basketball alone and shirtless outside, daydreaming about what I might do if he said hello.
Let's try to speed up to get to the parts that probably matter more to you. Oddly, I don't quite remember how we got formally introduced to each other, but we started spending some time together. We were the only people on this whole block under 30 so it just worked out this way. He (and his family) drank, smoked cigarettes, and some other inhalable things. Before him (and we'll call him "Alan"), I thought those were the direct paths to hell. Watching him consume? It felt grown up, mature, like I was living a taboo just for being nearby and able to smell the smoke and beer breath on him.
Before too long he asked me about guys at my school, I did the bashful "no one really notices me" response which was ultimately true but I also had made many concerted decisions and efforts to not get noticed -- I was seen as a goody two shoes church girl and was the butt of many, many jokes. He asked what types of guys I like, and I told him I didn't know, and that was true. Listed off some virtues like honesty, being funny, attractive, and he gave me a "well, that's me". We talked about the difference in age, I laughed it off knowing he couldn't be serious, but asked him the same in return. I got a pretty different answer from him than mine. His list was quite a bit more shallow, but I figured it just covered the surface. He went on about not believing me, that high school boys were dumb (and they often are), that I'm too pretty to be single -- that one sent me over the moon.
Time blurs a lot of this. What felt like weeks of coming up with excuses to hang out with him between when I got home from school and before my parents came home was probably less than two weeks. I'll just get into some nitty gritty now, this is a bit forward in the story, but I don't see much reason to dwell on the priors.
Alan was almost a foot taller than me. Had longish blonde hair, and had that very nice athletic build from working off the alcohol playing basketball alone in the front yard. I loved watching his hips with each jump.
A specific day where I "accidentally" walked in front of his house on the way to mine, which meant I basically had to walk around the block backwards and undetected after getting off of the bus, he was outside smoking, beer in hand. Motioned me over, I don't recall all that was said, but he was talking about how much it sucked to be single. I told him again I'd never been in anything serious with a guy before. I was invited in, but this was the beginning of something different.
He lived in a converted carport/garage attached to his family's house. Just gray cinderblock walls surrounding the possessions of a man-child with very little ambition. Skull bongs with candle wax dripped all over them, a dusty loveseat, a mattress on the floor, no bedframe. No need for curtains as there were no windows. Just a door that would lead outside, and a door that would lead to the rest of the house, which I'd never seen before. But there we were, alone, and he asked if I wanted to see what he really looks for in a girl. Of course I did! And in no time flat, a few clicks of a remote control, and porn was playing on his dingy TV screen from a DVD player.
I'd seen some porn out of curiosity, and some other exposure, but not exactly a large amount of it. Had a general working knowledge of the most common things one might see, and a mental idea of what sets of genitalia looked like, as well as what they produce/excrete. Does that sound clinical? It should. At the time, most of my sexual knowledge was either general functionality, and a lot of "things women did to land a man but didn't really like doing". One of those things I'd heard even from my own mom was happening on the screen with precious little notice: an impossibly busty woman was blowing someone. Of course I pretended like this was no big deal and I watched porn allllll the time.
He went on to tell me that "any girl of his" would be really into doing that for him whenever he wanted. I'd asked if that had been common for him with ex's. He'd said something like "no, and that's why they are ex's. If I could get blowjobs anytime I wanted, I would literally never want anything else in bed", and there was a laugh, but a bit of seriousness to it as he looked at me and waited for my response. We talked a little more about the intricacies - sometimes it'd be fast like what was happening onscreen, sometimes it'd be really slow so he'd lay back and enjoy...then the money shot happened, conversation ceased as the random busty lady got her face coated. This is why I asked the million dollar question about if he expected to shellac his next girlfriends face with each blowjob. He told me, no. The rationale was that women only did that in porn so you could see that he really finished. HIS girls would swallow it.
Listen, I know how insane this probably sounds, but the idea that you'd ever consume that stuff was just like science fiction to me. Figured that if it tasted half okay, no one would ever have kids, really.
He used the remote, went to yet another POV blowjob scene, kind of groaning in happiness as he'd say things like "yeah, take it girl" or "yeah, you know you love being a dickeater". I hadn't heard him talk like this. Also, my hormones were somehow excited by it all.
I thought about things quickly; my understanding was that blowjobs were a pretty submissive act, but most of the women in my church seemed to submit to their husbands, and since I didn't recall anyone in the 'scare you out of premarital sex' sermons saying that blowjobs counted (because I really was this naive), I started wondering to myself if this was something I'd be okay with doing. Seemed like a direct line from giving Alan head to being his girlfriend.
But next to me, he started rubbing the bulge in his shorts. Over the cloth, but with a thumb tucked inside, like he'd planned to go exploring, but remembered I was in front of him. Even my naive ass knew he was hard. This seemed like a good time to ask him if he wanted me to leave, and he said I shouldn't since we were enjoying "the show" together. I won't pretend my hormones weren't twirling like crazy, but it was also pretty scary to me then. I'd try to stay on topic but ask other questions. One was along the lines of "If you had a girlfriend that did that for you whenever, what else would you expect out of her", and his answer was basically "do what I like in bed, the rest works itself out, and I probably wouldn't care past that". How many times a week? "You mean how many times a day", he'd say with a guffaw.
Mentally, I was weighing things, did I want to be his girlfriend so badly that I'd jump right into the unknown? Did I want to be a girlfriend at all? My hormones said yes to the latter, but weren't immediately sure of the former. I responded with something I don't quite recall, but measured up to "if all you want are blowjobs. I bet I'd be great at being your girlfriend"
He motioned towards his zipper and asked something like " do you mind if I...?", trailing off. I genuinely thought he wanted to excuse himself to rub one out, so I said I didn't mind. It was that fast that he had his dick out, stroking himself, and asked with all the gusto in the world: do I want to try it?
This, I remember like it was yesterday.
I said I'd have to be his girlfriend for that! "Want to be my girlfriend, then?" I'd mentioned I didn't know how to do it. "I'll show you how" That's all it takes? "If you swallow, you're definitely my girlfriend"
This girl didn't have a damn clue how relationships began, were handled, and every old adage I'd ever been told about sex acts that "keep men happy" came flooding into my mind. Maybe this was how you get a real boyfriend? Technically this "isn't sex"? It's like my life flashed before my eyes as he guided my head down. I looked down until I got too close to focus my eyes, seeing his blondish-brown pubic hair while he stroked his cock next to me. With a sigh and more butterflies in my stomach than most forests, I said "where do you want me?" and just that quickly, his hand went away from his cock and just guided my head riiiiiight down to it.
As soon as his cock, damp with precum, touched my lips, I instinctively opened my mouth and let him slide right in. "Showing me how to do it" meant "putting his hand on the back of my head and using my mouth in place of his hand". Beyond the obvious, he actually wasn't too pushy. It felt like a lot at the time. I marveled at how much bigger the head of his cock seemed in my mouth than just looking at it. No idea if he was looking at the screen or looking at me, I heard him cheering me on, quietly: "good girl", "just like that", "move your tongue more... JUST like that" while he kept my head going at a steady pace.
When he said "it always takes me longer to finish when I drink, sorry", I was pretty confused - I realized I didn't know how long these even took on average. He paused at one point to swig from his beer can, letting go of my head, saying "keep going baby". I'd never been called baby. I'd never been called a good girl. My brain and heart loved it, and I started mentally assuming this was now my fiance because I genuinely was that naive.
He was good with direction, yes, but no real moans. I didn't know I was to expect them, but for this reason, I had no metric to decide how long I'd been doing this, how long I should expect to be doing it, or anything. Just... swallow when he's done. I got more into it as my heart got more involved, and showed some initiative by choosing to bob my head faster (I really didn't know my way around a penis back then, so I assumed speed was the key), which got him to say something like "damn baby, you really like this!", when I was thinking "I don't know about that, I just really like YOU", but it instead came out as a muffled "mmhmm" -- because I didn't want him to think I was having a bad time.
In the moment, I didn't know if I was "having a good time". Looking back, I'm fairly sure that I was thinking "I really want him to be my boyfriend and this is how to make that happen", and my faith wasn't really entering my mind much once I felt him push my head. He never went so far as to gag me, but did keep steadily guiding me. Also, in looking back, I'm not sure why I wanted a boyfriend so badly -- the inexplicable desires of a teenage girl, I'd guess?
Back to the situation?
His grip on my head tightened, and I only had a second to think to myself "I must be doing something right" before he shot spurt after spurt after spurt of cum into my unsuspecting mouth. He grunted with each shot, and it was only really as his orgasm subsided that I really started getting anxious about what I'm supposed to be doing. Was I supposed to swallow it and leave? Do I take his dick out of my mouth first and then swallow, or try to do it with him shoved against my tonsils?
That was mostly answered with him pulling my head up, telling me it got really sensitive. He looked happy and almost sleepy. And then... "you going to swallow?"
This might be hard to believe, but I wasn't even thinking about if I liked the taste or not. It was all so new, especially this texture. I nodded that I would, and had to fight making a face as I choked it back, it hit my bitter tastebuds, and I shuddered a bit, and the aftertaste hit me of the saltiest and most bitter concoction I could have ever imagined.
Until I went home, everything that happened for the next few minutes is there in my memory as a blur, but I do recall some very specific things. Most of all, the main question on my mind was "... well, what happens now?" - I'd just done something I'd been told I was supposed to hate doing, but I didn't hate it. I swallowed, which I was told was the worst and it made you a total ho, but I'd only done it the one time, and didn't feel like a total ho. Overall, I was shocked at how much I didn't mind it. Not only did I not mind it, I wasn't opposed to doing it again, and I felt that way immediately. Wasn't sure if this was me weighing if I was ready to do this again, but that's getting way ahead of the story.
When I gulped it down, I sat straight up and looked directly at him, assuredly waiting for some kind of cue about what the hell people do after a blowjob, you've swallowed his cum -- literally everything I knew told me he was supposed to be falling asleep now, and he very much wasn't asleep while he shoved his cock back into his shorts.
What came next was a negotiation that I didn't realize was a negotiation. After I said "how did I do", and he'd told me I did really well, but I'd learn more over time, and the best thing I did was "swallow like a champ". Asking him if most girls did that for him, he'd said "no, and that's why I'm single". Knowing what I know years later, that's arguably true! Just a creative way to put it.
But those questions started pouring out of him as the afterglow subsided, all of which I greeted with the same answer: "If you were my girlfriend you'd do that whenever I said?", "You're gonna swallow every time?", "Would you do it first thing in the morning if I said so?", "You're okay with me not doing that for you, I hate doing that for girls?", "Wow, you really liked that cum, didn't you?" is the last one he asked with a huge grin. I answered yes to all of it -- I didn't see a problem with those things, really. It was only when he talked about me "liking cum" that I was fibbing. I didn't hate it, but I didn't know what to make of it, and again, was mostly surprised that it was nowhere near as bad as I was led to believe it'd be. Besides, I'm getting a boyfriend!
He peck-kissed me after a hug, and led me to his door. Told me to not worry about knocking, to just come in whenever -- that kind of trust bowled me over, I must say. And of course, leaned in and whispered in my ear "but you know we got to keep this secret for now, a lot could happen, you're young..." and in the moment, I agreed. I had my own reasons for thinking that, but they hit me like a sledgehammer as I walked out the door and made my way home.
I wondered exactly why I was so hellbent on him. He had no job. No car. No license. If he had friends, I hadn't seen any of them (but he did, and that's a story for later). Breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to have to explain my brand new dating situation to my parents because we were going to keep it quiet. Also, I panicked that it'd somehow be very obvious to my parents when I got home that I was still a virgin, but had done something sexual. That was silly, and sure, I hid it, but probably because I started hiding myself away from them.
That was a Friday. I was in my bedroom just about to go to sleep, when an inebriated Alan tapped on my window; he wanted me to know that he wanted to be up around 10 AM, so I should probably make plans to go over and "get used to waking" him up that way. I smiled with wild ideas about the fun we'd have together after I woke him up and we got the blowjob situation out of the way. Oh, I was so naïve.
SO naïve. But I agreed, and he told me he was excited to see his good girl in the morning, and I melted.
I'll pick up from here next time.