Depth.

Gather round, dear readers, for tonight we venture into the depths unseen…

Topics in this article:

1. Depth = scary!
2. The bottoming experience (8 points to remember)
3. Depth technique for tops (10 points to remember)
4. Extended reading for those who are interested

1. Depth = scary!

I’ve been fisting for 8 years, and for the first 5 I was too afraid to develop my depth. An early ffriend gave me my first long dildo, a nice thin flexible one, which is definitely the right way to start (a hand, though sensitive, is a lot bigger). Whenever I tried it the feeling was weird and I couldn’t leave behind the idea that I was going to injure myself and have to go to hospital for multiple operations and wear a colostomy bag for six months and explain to everyone I meet how it happened. I would give up very easily and opt for riding on plugs instead, and with my play partners all I wanted to do was get punched, which I was always talented at. It wasn’t until a few years later that I whipped out that old thin dildo again, dusted it off and started properly practicing on it, literally one millimetre at a time. 

Depth is scary for a lot of guys. Many accomplished guys I’ve played with don’t want to even try it. For anyone who doesn’t have a natural aptitude, there’s some processing to be done both for your ass as well as your head – it’s a bit like beginning the fisting journey all over again. Nerve endings are fewer deeper inside, so it’s rather a feeling of pressure instead of the regular direct sensations we are used to feeling from our skin. (The truth is it isn’t your asshole anymore, so some people have trouble connecting the pleasure to it. But then again, your asshole isn’t an inherently sexual area; as gay men we make it so by training our brain to connect the feeling with sexual pleasure. We can do that with our deeper insides as well, and why not? There’s so much more surface area in there to work with!)  Anyway, it’s not easy play. The path ahead is often unclear, and there are no street lights to guide the way. Also, the wall of the guts from the sigmoid junction onwards is often thinner and more prone to injury, so movements need to be more careful, and technique needs to be specific. It’s a challenge for both top and bottom. However, as in many things in life, greater challenges lead to greater rewards…

Have I planted a seed in your mind yet?

2. The bottoming expereince

Once you are able to accept the sensation and calm your mind, you become open to a lot of strangely wonderful and mostly indescribable feelings that depth play allows. There’s a whole new world in there waiting to be discovered, and you’ll be singing like Princess Jasmine on a magic carpet ride. It’s an equally strange and pleasurable sensation, and is generally slower and more sensual, for safety reasons. Often my top doesn’t even need to move at all for me to just totally explode with feelings while his forearm is two thirds into my ass.

It’s difficult to compare depth with width or punching, so I can’t say that it’s more intense as such, but it certainly is a more complex experience in terms of how you receive your partner, leading potentially to more intimacy due to more focus, tenderness, vulnerability and trust. It occurs to me that depth play is the art of fisting, whereas width and punching are more like sport. And as an artist myself, it was only a matter of time until this aspect of FF really began to intrigue me. Now I’ve been hooked for just over three years, and I’m now getting into combining depth with width, depth with punching, and depth with width as well as punching in a fantastical threeway that lives thus far only in my imagination, at least as far as my own ass is concerned. I’ll let you know in 10 years how my progress is going on that front.

My recommendations for bottoms keen to get into depth play:

1. Watch it. Seeing how guys in porn enjoy depth will ignite something in your mind. I prefer to watch porn that is made by individuals on xtube, justforfans etc. Their feelings and connections are authentic, they play more extremely, and it just has a hotter result. Get into it, and see how the idea of depth develops in your mind. 
2. Every little movement down there feels incredibly intense, so take it slow. Play with dildos and patient tops. 
3. It ain’t gonna happen overnight, and you need to measure your success in millimetres. You’ll have good depth days and bad ones, and you will build your endurance for depth over time, starting with it only being able to go in once or twice; each time something goes deep down, it’s an experience, almost like an antarctic explorer dangling from a rope down into a crevice, with no guarantee he’ll ever see the light of day again. Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. But take your time, and don’t be afraid to stop and be curious about next time. It’s not a race. 
4. Be with your fear, but don’t panic. Take all of the precautions like making sure there is plenty of lube poured deep inside, and keep reapplying it if in doubt. Make sure your top has cleaned his hands and clippered and filed his nails, and is wearing gloves if that makes you comfortable.
5. Oh, almost forgot this one: for many people (like me), the second ring is an absolute bitch. It’s the kink where your rectum ends and your sigmoid begins, and it can feel very tight and fixed. It is made of involuntary muscle, so it needs to be coaxed open by convincing yourself to relax. It can also contain hard tissue like collagen, which needs to be broken down over time (I played with a doctor friend who told me I have collagen rings). Take time, focus on playing and pleasure, and try to picture your hole relaxing, giving way, and taking whatever big thing you are trying to put through it. 
6. Breathe!!!!!!!! The breath is actually a fairly profound subject, but for now: deep, slow breaths help you to relax your body, which is essential for depth play. Your body relaxes as you breathe out. This makes us feel good, and is also ideal for withstanding discomfort. Have your top penetrate you deeper as you breathe out. You can play a breathing game while you do it, where you as the bottom actually control when the top goes deeper simply by controlling when you breathe out. 
7. Position is essential. Over time you will find which positions you like best for depth, and some that started out being difficult become easier. For starters, take it on all fours, on your knees and with your chest all the way down on the bed/floor. If you feel comfortable spreading your arms out, do that. We call it the Jesus Christ. Because depth is a heavenly feeling. Also something I learned from my doctor friend.
8. Oof, I’m getting carried away. So many things to recommend! Enough for now.

3. Depth technique for tops

Now that the pesky bottom talk is out of the way, let’s look at it from the other perspective. 

Here’s a helpful diagram of the colon. Imagine the bottom is lying on his back. This is a view from the front.

The rectum is the first bit, pretty simple. Up above that you have the sigmoid colon, which is called that because of that crazy S bend you see (Greek Sigma = the letter S). It’s a convoluted tunnel that can feel very unclear. Your job as depth top is to negotiate the second ring mentioned before: that transition, or aperture, between the rectum and the sigmoid (it can be pretty tight), while simultaneously getting deeper into the sigmoid. Look at your hand: it’s got fingers, a thumb, knuckles, thick bits of muscle that make up your palm, a bony back side, and nails. The hand is super fucked up for this kind of work, so you’re going to have to rub a lot of brain cells together to get all those awkward parts in. Thankfully the colon is flexible, and you can kind of bunch it up over your fingers while teasing the aperture with your knuckles. Think of it like the sleeve of a sweater, or a sock. You can get deeper into the sleeve with your fingers before putting your knuckles through the opening. The aperture between rectum and sigmoid is actually designed to open and close in order to regulate the flow of waste, kind of like a traffic light. If you work your magic well enough, the light will go green and the heavens will open up. 

Here are some useful steps for tops:

1. Go into a ball when you first come into the ass. That feels comfortable for the bottom. Turn it to gradually find where the aperture into the sigmoid is, usually 15-20cm in so not deep at all. 
   
2. Slowly stretch your fingers out while maintaining a turning motion. Depending on how open the second ring is, you may only get two fingers through at first.
   
3. When some fingers are through to the sigmoid, tickle slowly, don’t force. Your fingers search by caressing and waiting. If it feels good, the bottom will relax and his involuntary aperture will open, and the sigmoid will also start to show you the way forward. You’ll feel it and can then stretch out the fingers a bit. 
   
4. Maintain a turning motion whenever you want to go a bit deeper. Don’t actually go forward, go instead in a circular motion, clockwise and anti-clockwise. You can alternate the turning with some slow tickling again, almost pulling the guts down over your fingers but without any force. Read your bottom well the entire time, so you can swap to something else if he isn’t enjoying the sensation. 
   
5. You might not be able to feel the way forward; it might seem blocked off, like it doesn’t go anywhere. That’s normal. Remember that the whole process is a massage, and you wait until the bottom signals to go deeper. Someone once told me it’s like knocking on a door: you knock and wait. The bottom will open the door when he’s ready, and you proceed. Then you knock again and wait. It’s amazing how if you maintain consistency, very literal doors along the way are opened and suddenly the way is clear, and you can proceed slowly further in.
   
6. The aperture between colon and sigmoid will at some point need some concentrated stretching. Do this by using the same turning motion to stretch it with your fingers and later your knuckle area, which is wider. Eventually you’ll feel that it’s ready for a little push into the sigmoid, which sometimes needs a forward motion instead of a circuilar one. It might feel very tight and extreme for the bottom, reminiscent of taking a fist through the asshole for the first time.
   
7. Once your hand is fully in the sigmoid it’s like reaching a save point in a computer game. The aperture can relax around your wrist and you can concentrate simply on the circular motion, negotiating the road deeper in. 
   
8. Bear in mind that coming out through the second ring might be a challenge too. Doing it slowly makes sense to me, and is the best way to ensure you maintain care, though some guys love the feeling of having it taken out quickly, regardless of the odd look on their face. One fun way is to get him to shit your arm out himself, and it’s all over before you can say “Fuck that’s the deepest anyone’s ever been inside me!”
9. Lastly, a further look at the anatomy. You will recognise the spine pretty early on, as it makes a nice curve inwards at the lumbar area. Avoid touching it too much or putting any weight on it. I have a little bit of experience touching it myself, and the bottom had some extraordinarily strong pleasurable feelings, but my better judgement said to leave the area alone, as it is the highway where all the nerves of the lower body converge to connect to the brain and you don’t want to go messing around with that shit, lest you paralyse your bot
   
10. Lastly lastly, remember all the common sense things that apply generally to topping. Apply heaps of lube, this time deep down (get him to put his bum up so you can pour it in). Give him plenty of body contact, helping him to relax and feel the intimacy between you two lovebirds. Check in with him a lot, making sure that he’s feeling good. Tell him if he starts to bleed. Don’t tell him if he gets a bit of shit coming down. You know, the usual stuff. 

4. Extended reading for those of you who are particularly intrigued and want more information

The brain rewires itself.

As mentioned, the asshole has a million nerve endings, which is why it feels good to get touched there. Your colon doesn’t have those. You sense pressure, just like you do when you know shit is coming down so you should go to the toilet, and over time your brain rewires itself to identify this pressure as a source of pleasure. For me this took a good three years of practice, and is often still a challenge. In this brain rewiring, you also develop a more acute sense of what is happening inside you, judging the pressure to determine how deep something is, whether it is a bearable discomfort taking place (which is often an indicator of imminent pleasure!) or if the object needs to move back out a bit. A really expereienced depth bottom can give instructions to his top about how to go further because he can more or less “feel” the layout. Know your anatomy, combine it with the feelings, and you will develop. 

My number one depth technique for bottoming

If it is feeling somehow awkward, try the following: move the dildo/arm back out of you slightly to a point where it is comfortable (bear in mind that for depth you should already be able to hold a fist comfortably in your rectum for several minutes, making it feel like it belongs in there, which puts you into the right relaxed state of mind for further comfort once going deep). Let the arm remain at that comfortable depth, count to 20, and then slowly push it deeper again, to a point where it feels awkward again, hold for 10, then come back again to where it is comfortable. It should work that your comfortable position increases in depth as you repeat this exercise. The 20 seconds resting are like a rest between sets at the gym: they let your body recover in preparation for more exercise, and also towards the end of the rest you are totally horned up to do it all again because the rest has helped you notice that you feel good. You have your intimacy with your top whose arm is deeper in you than any man has been before, and you are experiencing success and pleasure hitherto unknown. What more could you want from sex?!

Come into my bedroom

Here’s how it feels for me these days as bottom. You go in, you make a ball, and let it sit there while I relax myself around you. It already feels pretty sexy, and I want more. The idea of your forearm inside me turns me on no end, and my aperture already starts to relax at the thought. You start to turn, and feeling you do that calmly and with purpose makes me even more turned on and relaxed because I can feel you know what you’re doing. My ass belongs to you already, and I’m ready for you to explore my depths. You knock at my aperture and it feels tight; a few fingers can go in and they don’t hurt, but you’ll need to massage the ring a bit, moving in a circular motion to coax me open. The awkwardness subsides as you play around slowly, and I’m having a good time feeling you, watching you in a mirror we’ve set up. I push back a little on your arm, showing you I want it, and that gives you more confidence to play around and encourage my ass to open up. Before you know it you’re up to the knuckles along my second ring, and it’s slowly but surely giving way as you flex your hand, to make it nice and wide. For me the sensation is awkward as well as pleasurable, and I focus on the pleasure and let the awkwardness slowly fade away. As it fades away the pleasure increases, and I’m able to take more of a stretch, and with a bit of force from your straightened arm (leading from the shoulder), you get your hand through my second ring. It feels like a lot! I get you to let it just sit there for a while as I get used to the feeling. At this point if your hand is small enough I will let you continue further in, which suddenly is a lot easier. You keep turning from side to side as you explore my depths, and I’m more and more turned on as I feel your arm getting wider and my asshole expanding around it. This is bliss, and it’s a lot of fun connecting with you in such an intimate, relaxed way. I kind of wish we could do this all the time. 

Some final words

Don’t worry if it doesn’t feel right. It’s a matter of development. I went deep in a lovely guy last weekend, and it didn’t feel great for him; however, he got a good stretch down deep and next time it will be easier. I know what that’s like, as I’ve experienced it like that as a bottom myself a number of times. I went slowly in him and provided encouragement, and the main thing is he already finds the idea super hot, so we were able to do some work on his depth. If you’re topping in this instance, just take it slow and relaxed, and don’t go in with a goal to get anywhere. It’s just a bit of practice, and the brain fills in the gaps afterwards. It helps to start with something shallow that the bottom will enjoy, before moving on to something deeper.