Men Should Be Touched by Audra Wist

photograph by Brooke Frederick

text by Audra Wist

“I love to be caressed,” he said to me, my hand on his chest. Color me impressed. As I get older, I continually notice the need for men to be touched. I’ve been a long time proponent of strip clubs, sex work, and so forth – physical sites designed for and marketed to men for sexual pleasure – even before I could really justify it legally or intellectually. I always had a hunch that something was going on there that was good for women and for sex, and that the usual bad mouthing on the grounds that men were sniveling tit-obsessed cretons was ill considered and lacked any constructive thought about the potential of these venues for sexual progress. For me, porn has always felt like a fall-back to these other privileged spaces in my mind, and for good reason. Though direct, quick-and-dirty and getting the job done for the most part, porn lacks something essential to desire, to sex: touch. These arenas I describe provide a context for touch and a real time one-to-one interaction that is becoming increasingly more important and unavailable. 

Spending time in strip clubs across the U.S., I find something interesting yet not so surprising happens: people quickly open up. The awkwardness of being seen in a place like your local strip club melts away in an instant behind the closed doors, and an intimate ease comes forth. The low lights and typically recessed seating below the stages stake off a specific arena for erotic play with clear-cut boundaries. I’ve eavesdropped on numerous conservations between strippers and clients, men and women of all sexualities, and they are remarkably docile and cheerful, very inquisitive, albeit sometimes a little shy. Women seem to have a refined understanding of pleasure and people of all creeds are drawn to our innate knowledge of carnal ambiguities. In discussing the pornographic nature of the strip tease or naked body, people also want to talk with these women about their bodies, interests, and peculiarities in relation to their own, ultimately gaining a better understanding of themselves and others in the process. When women facilitate touch, touch facilitates acceptance and understanding. Porn cannot necessarily answer your burning questions on how to please a woman, but a woman probably can. 

To be able to see and converse with a real person in a sexual context with distinct boundaries is an important interaction – and one I feel should be encouraged and coveted as a sexual savior amidst a sea of pornographic images. Touch, or the possibility for touch, makes all the difference.

Although I encourage all genders and sexualities to touch more, I focus on straight men here because they tend to reject the idea of being touched as it goes against the prescribed masculine position of assertive doer. To be touched could be likened to being held, being acted upon rather than in pursuit of action. I see an inconsistency here. The drive to participate in any sort of sexual spectatorship comes from a desire to get off, to be connected, to be with someone and that “with” denotes a want to touch them – someone, something, to be in unison, 1+1. Touch is the literal connection between us and unifies our experience. Touch is also reciprocal. When I touch you, you also touch me. I’ve felt the power in someone’s casual graze of my arm or playful grab of my side. It’s unparalleled – incredibly exciting and comforting to feel someone’s body come in contact with mine. I’m there with them in an instant. I find I surprise men when I touch them before they touch me. They like the change and surrender to being touched, a passive appreciator of my invitation to intimacy.

In a recent conversation with a sex therapist friend, we were discussing porn’s bad rap. I told him I never felt bad about porn, just that it sometimes made me feel gross afterwards. I wondered why. He asked when those gross feelings came to the surface and we deduced that it was after a period of continual porn watching with subsequent masturbation. He summed up the “is porn good or bad” controversy in a neat way that I liked and that I frequently share with my clients and friends dealing with sexual loneliness and/or heavy porn consumption. Think about porn like your go-to delicious greasy food and eating as masturbation. The occasional treat yourself moment can be tasty and it certainly won’t ruin your body if practised here and there.

"Strip clubs, massage parlors specializing in extracurriculars, professional domination sessions, escort services, physical smut – these are all ways in which sexual urges can be evenly distributed, demystified, and depressurized."

In a similar vein, eating is essential and keeps us alive and alert, it can even be fun and exciting, relaxing sometimes. However, if your entire diet becomes that delicious greasy item, then you are likely going to run into some problems, mentally and physically, during your slow build binge. Use your common sense and don’t overdo it. Though, do have as many sexual experiences (including masturbation) as you wish. Remember, I liken this to eating; it is healthy and good to do so.

There are small seemingly innocuous ways to do this. Annie Sprinkle and her partner Beth Stephens have coveted the term ecosexual and are currently making work based on “intersections of sexuality and ecological relations.” In my own similar experience of collecting erotica, I find the simple act of touching the magazines, the books, even seeing the typeface contributes to the objectness, the sexual nature, of the material itself. To touch the image, to touch the thing that contains the words is a sexual experience that I would liken to a modern day sexual encounter. Touch is inherently fetishistic as it signifies objecthood which gets me off.

Strip clubs, massage parlors specializing in extracurriculars, professional domination sessions, escort services, physical smut – these are all ways in which sexual urges can be evenly distributed, demystified, and depressurized. Varying a sexual diet assists in understanding our desires, and talking with like-minded folk helps to normalize our experiences with our bodies and others’ bodies, as well. Instead of having a one-to-one relationship between yourself and a screen, these other arenas offer up the benefit of having another person present that you interact with and casually discuss your likes/dislikes, fantasies, and so forth. While I do not disparage porn or its performers, I do privilege seeing a body before me under lights, on a stage, sitting next to me, on top of me, below me, kissing me and touching me as an absolute sexual essential.

Audra Wist is an artist, writer, social commentator and provocateur - she is also an avid collector of erotica and erotic ephemera. She is also a professional dominatrix based in Los Angeles specializing in all sorts of punishment and humiliation. As Autre's sex editor at-large she will be covering all sorts of naughty content in the realm of sex and sexuality – from masturbatorial musings to photographic editorials. Follow Autre on instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Being a Witness: On Voyeurism and the Erotic Thrill Of Watching

photo by Audra Wist

My sexuality has never been a mysterious force guiding my life in one way or another. My sexuality has always felt natural yet systematic — a product of an intellectual curiosity. This may sound anti-glamorous, but in my experience, by investigating the systems that are at play during a sexual encounter we are able to better understand our own likes or dislikes and we are empowered to voice those things in a constructive way. In tinkering with our naughtiness, we are figuring it out, its complacency or fervor, impulse or calculated-ness, and so forth. In general, I’m a watcher. I like to observe and get results — figure out what is happening. A form of active voyeurism.

When Autre asked me to write about my own experiences with sex and BDSM, my first thought was “this might be boring” or at the very least come off as overzealous like some three-ring sexual circus diary of a sex fiend — something unsavory. I get in a bind over sex because I care for it and want to do right by it, not exploit it (though, note to self: write about exploitation soon). Of course, sexuality by nature is a generally un-boring topic, but in my experience discussing the often cold ways I see sexuality functioning can be less than sumptuous. What is at stake for me is agency. I’m interested in how we occupy sexualities, why we do things, and how we do things — where we hold power — but also in the unabashed letting-it-rip quality of the encounter. It’s a delicate balance. Despite my need to analyze and pick apart topics, I find that we never make it fully back around to desire, the squirmy thing that can’t be contained. I am never quite able to pin it down or put my finger on it (so to speak) and that is the real beauty of it. 

I wrote to a friend recently, I feel like a scientist at times, with my work and sexuality — I am running tests, recording results. Not literally, of course, but playing with bodies and ideas and desires and seeing what sticks, what I like and what I don’t like — the ultimate overseer of my own sexuality. Over the years, I’ve found that a constructive way for me to examine my own interests is to be the active voyeur.

"Flipping my roles, cuckolding is a favorite. To have someone watch me fuck is an honor and a privilege yet enormously humiliating and/or exciting for them. I am enjoying myself thoroughly while you watch and pine."

Sometimes at night, I hear my roommate next door fucking her guy. I’m lying in bed reading or just falling asleep and I wonder: “Is she pegging him or is he fucking her?” I doze off with a grin on my face. They usually crack the door open just a bit, letting sound leak out without any real visibility of their encounter. It’s a delightful experience of hearing and not seeing and I encourage their semi-public fucking.

When I am able to view an otherwise private show, my natural task-master comes forward and I direct the production, enjoying white-hatting the affair. You suck his cock, you lick her nipples, you fuck her like this, and so forth. I have the figurative clipboard and they are playing by my rules. I’m the coach, intimately engaged in the game by standing on the sidelines watching the blissful win, my players scoring big.

Flipping my roles, cuckolding is a favorite. To have someone watch me fuck is an honor and a privilege yet enormously humiliating and/or exciting for them. I am enjoying myself thoroughly while you watch and pine. I could certainly do the whole hot wife thing, but I favor the role of hot-Domme NSA who will never call you again.

I frequently joke with friends: invite me over, I’ll watch you fuck. They nervously laugh, but they know I am serious and that I will bring extra lube, a towel, and a bottle of Blanc de Blanc for the event.

I like to refer to each player in the voyeuristic scene as such: the victim, the tyrant, and the witness (terms borrowed from Wayne Koestenbaum’s Humiliation). As the witness, we can be the person on display who is being objectified with an arena staked out for us. We have freedom in visual pleasure to soak up what is before us. If we are the tyrant, we get the dual pleasure of watching our doing unfold and watching someone's reactions to us. The victim is well, self-explanatory. The victim has all the fun.

But somehow I’m always fond of the watcher, the witness. The titillating experience of the demonstration — when we hear that we are about to watch something — is that we feel excitement of what’s to come. The thrill of occupying the position of the voyeur and being able to watch others engage. I’ve always had an interest in watching or looking too long. We all have that sort of impulse to watch. When we pass a car crash on the highway, it is difficult not to crane our necks and watch as the medics reach into the crumpled vehicle to pull out a real body — our everyday peep show. While I would argue that there are good things to watch and bad things to watch, the common titillation of watching somebody's sexual something right before you is a powerful experience. Maggie Nelson talks about this in The Art of Cruelty — “when do we look and when do we turn away?” Perhaps it’s that in between uncertainty that is the most palpable feeling derived from being a voyeur, being involved but also not too close. Or perhaps, the question in the context I’m describing is how and why do we look and how and why do we turn away? What are we being confronted with in a particular context that affords voyeurism, and why is it that we are intrigued? Sexuality should be interrogated.

Audra Wist is an artist, writer, social commentator and provocateur - she is also an avid collector of erotica and erotic ephemera. She is also a professional dominatrix based in Los Angeles specializing in all sorts of punishment and humiliation. As Autre's sex editor at-large she will be covering all sorts of naughty content in the realm of sex and sexuality – from masturbatorial musings to photographic editorials. Follow Autre on instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE