TMN: But you were fighting
it. IK: At first my problem was that of the average
teenager – early sexual encounters led to over-excitement.
I tried to deal with PE in all the usual ways: masturbating
before going out on a date –
TMN: The Ben Stiller approach. IK: Yes, or letting myself come during foreplay
and then postponing sex until I could muster another erection;
downing beers and wrapping my cock in double, even triple
condoms. But honestly, you could have had my cock laminated
and hermetically sealed and I still would’ve had a hair-trigger.
In college I graduated to herbal remedies, topical ointments,
and miracle creams advertised in the backs of porn magazines.
TMN: And it wouldn’t
behave? IK: It got far, far worse. I was experimenting
on myself like Dr. Mengele. One experiment led to acid-burn
and near-disintegration of my penis in the men’s room
of a Japanese restaurant. And once I put the ‘Errol
Flynn method’ to the test – a dab of coke on the
tip of glans, which led to my implication in a campus-wide
drug bust, complete with photos of me dipping and rolling
my cock in a bag of coke like it was a piece of chicken getting
Shake ‘N Baked.
TMN: How did they get pictures? IK: It was an interrogation tactic –
they threatened, I caved.
TMN: Do you still have
these pictures? IK: Anyway, later in life, I learned from
my study of pioneering sex-researcher Alfred Kinsey that the
typical male sustains penetrative thrusting, on average, for
about two and a half minutes. That provided some comfort,
but at the time I felt terribly alone. Throughout the many
years of quiet desperation I felt that PE was my tragic fate.
I thought I’d been cursed with an Achilles cock.
TMN: And the whole time
you were my boss, you were a premature ejaculator? I’m
seeing that year in a different light, now. IK: Yeah – lots of initial enthusiasm,
no follow-through, a whole lot of starting and stopping. The
whole internet economy was nothing more than one big premature
ejaculation. I was well suited to it.
TMN: So, your own issues
with PE brought you to sex therapy. IK: First, it brought me to cunnilingus.
I was a sexual cripple, and oral sex became my crutch. If
I couldn’t satisfy a woman with my penis, then I’d
sure as hell satisfy her with my mouth. I can still remember
all the fears, preconceptions and blunders of my early experiences
in college. I learned through trial and error, but eventually
came to realize that cunnilingus was much more than just an
arbitrary, or optional, aspect of foreplay; it was ‘coreplay.’
TMN: Like foreplay, but
with a ‘c,’ which stands for… IK: It’s my attempt to get people thinking
past the ‘foreplay, then intercourse’ sexual strategy.
Coreplay is an essential process – with a beginning,
middle and end – for leading a woman through the many
stages of arousal that eventually culminate in climax. Cunnilingus
allowed me to pleasure a woman, and allowed me to stop worrying
about sex and start enjoying it. It certainly saved my sex
life and, when I think about all the depression and heartache
I suffered as a result of my battles with PE, it’s not
so far off to say that it saved my entire life.
TMN: So premature ejaculation
can kill you. Readers, be warned! IK: PE is a huge issue in this country that’s
swept under the carpet. Kim Cattrall said in her book Satisfaction
that premature ejaculators were the bane of her existence.
It’s the no. 1 male sexual dysfunction in this country,
and is a very under-researched field. The numbers are huge.
Probably one out of three men deal with ‘involuntary
ejaculation,’ at least from time to time. Maybe even
two out of three. But no one brings it up. Impotence affects
far fewer people, but there’s more money in it, so thanks
to Pfizer, to the pharma industry, we hear about it constantly.
It’s hip to be impotent. But premature ejaculation…
TMN: Why so many? IK: Bad masturbation habits. You learn from
a young age that sex is quick, furtive. Porn reinforces this,
it teaches guys to focus purely on their own orgasm, not on
mutual gratification. Even if they know it should be different,
many men can’t fight their own training. It goes incredibly
deep.
