It is ridiculous. They are underage and it is wrong. It just seems like someone who is really into that would be someone who has an abusive past, trouble socializing — I don’t know, things like that. Do you feel like I have any reason to be concerned?

Sincerely,
“Chris”

Chris, I started mulling your email by imagining that you were one of my dearest male friends (having already given you a made-up name, I felt at liberty). This was not only easy to do, seeing as you’re the same age as most of them, but it also made me feel comfortable assuming that you were indisputably a “Good Guy,” and being a “Good Guy,” you were fantasizing about a physically developed and emotionally mature girl of 16 (the age of consent in most U.S. states). If that had been the case, I might have teased you for being so damned normal and boring. Find a legitimately messed-up fantasy already!

But sexual desire isn’t so black-and-white, is it? That’s why I responded to your first email and asked you to clarify exactly what ages you were talking about. You responded, “I would say fourteen to seventeen. Thirteen seems a bit outlandish, but then again it is hard to tell with girls.” This is a bit more intriguing, so I figured it might actually be worth taking your question to Ray Blanchard, one of the world’s leading experts on “erotic age orientation,” for a professional opinion. Seriously, I took this to one of the world’s leading experts on the subject. What I wouldn’t do for one of my dearest guy friends!

Blanchard, a psychiatry professor at the University of Toronto, is the chairman of a committee currently tasked with revising the section on paraphilias in the next edition of the DSM, psychiatry’s diagnostic bible. I shared your original email with him to lay the groundwork and Blanchard said, “If he is more attracted to girls aged 13 to 14 than to physically mature females, I would say that he has a paraphilia” (read: not normal). However, if you’re primarily attracted to girls between the ages of 16 and 18, says Blanchard, “I would say that his preferences are somewhat problematic but not paraphilic.”

It’s crucial to note that in both scenarios, Blanchard is strictly talking about erotic preference, as opposed to the mere existence of attraction. That’s why I emailed you a second time to clarify whether you were predominantly attracted to teens (and you said no, that this is just one facet of your erotic imagination). This is important because even “normal” men who are primarily attracted to adults can be aroused by adolescents. We know this thanks to studies that use a penile plethysmograph, which measures blood flow in your junk. (Just try to imagine the unreliability of self-reports on a taboo subject like attraction to minors.) Based on clinical assessments of sexual interest, most adults are chiefly aroused by adults, but they are also, to a lesser but still significant degree, aroused by teenagers.

You don’t have to have access to a plethysma-thingy to figure all that out, though. As any Internet-porn connoisseur knows, there is plenty of interest in a girl’s “first time.” Now, I’m assuming you’re not looking at porn of actual underage girls, Chris, since you didn’t mention it (and as one of my dearest guy friends, I know you wouldn’t hide anything from me). That’s a relief, because child porn is supremely illegal, not to mention very much “reality” and not harmless “fantasy.” But perhaps you’ve indulged in some “barely legal” or “virgin” porn, in which case you are hardly alone. In his book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts,” cognitive neuroscientist Ogi Ogas analyzed millions of erotic Web searches from around the world and tells me, “Several very popular genres of male-targeted pornography highlight the male interest in women’s first time sexual experiences, including ‘virgins’; ‘first-time X’ where X can be a variety of acts including fellatio, anal sex, or threesomes; and the huge ‘amateur’ genre.” Ogas goes so far as to say, “Given the online data and biological evidence supporting this interest, I’d say it would be more unusual for a man to not be interested in hearing about a woman’s initial experience of various sex acts.”

You see, “normal” is so often subjective. That’s why they need a freaking committee of expert researchers to update the list of officially recognized sexual disorders — and even still, their recommendations inspire scalding criticism from their peers. It’s why there is no universal, or even national, age of consent. From a strict moral and social perspective, attraction to someone underage (however it’s defined within the context) is all sorts of messed up. In reality, though, such standards don’t dictate physiological arousal. Complicating things further, these supposedly off-limits desires are culturally reinforced at every turn: Just you try to keep track of the number of sexy schoolgirl costumes at your local Halloween superstore. Thankfully, it sounds like you are not even remotely tempted to turn your fantasy imaginings about high schoolers into reality. That is what’s truly important here — more so even than the fact that, yes, you’re probably in the range of normal. Meredith Chivers, another kick-ass sex researcher that I presented with your question, put it to me like so: “If he never acts on this fantasy, and is not significantly distressed by his fantasies or the role they play in his sexuality, then he can think about whatever he wants.”

“I wish I knew.” That’s Barry Komisaruk’s matter-of-fact answer, and he’s the leading expert on the science behind the female orgasm.

His lab at Rutgers University was the first to produce a video of the brain during climax in women — just last November. “We’re in the embryonic stage of understanding,” he says. “It’s not even in its infancy.” That’s in large part because it’s tremendously difficult to get funding for sex research — but that’s a story for another day (and you can bet I will be telling it someday soon).

Komisaruk, whom I’ve interviewed before, and his team have made huge strides, but still, he says nobody fully understands the mechanism at work here. Just to give a sense of the range of scenarios, Komisaruk explains, “What about people who used to have orgasms but now they’re on antidepressants or antipsychotics and they no longer can have orgasms? The blockage could occur in a part of the brain that’s different from people who, say, have had a traumatic psychological event like sexual abuse and no longer can have an orgasm.” There is no one thing that makes it difficult, or impossible, for women to orgasm.

It’s not unusual for a new partner to come with a change in your orgasmic experience. Recently, a woman who had never orgasmed called Komisaruk and volunteered to do a brain scan for his research. “I set it up and then a couple days before the scan was scheduled, she called me up and said she just got a new boyfriend and she had her first orgasm,” he says. “So, bummer — for me, not for her!”

What’s most interesting in your case, is that your experience of orgasm even during masturbation changed profoundly and, it sounds like, without a dramatic adjustment in technique. “It seems like it’s more of a psychological factor,” he says. “If somebody can suddenly start having orgasms, there could be attitudinal changes. It seems more likely that it would be an attitudinal change rather than a physiological change.” There’s also the annoying irony of getting what you want when you stop trying.

An important part of what’s going on here is that by no longer preempting your orgasm with fake ones, you were able to begin experiencing legitimate climaxes with your partner. I asked Komisaruk if it’s possible that you experienced a snowball effect: The more orgasms you had, the easier it became to come in the first place. In my supreme scientific in-expertise, I suggested: Maybe she, like, burnt new neural pathways? He responded: “We don’t really know; it’s possible.”

You see, there are many possible explanations. What’s important is that you’ve got ahold of your orgasm. Enjoy it, treat it well and don’t let it go!

I remember trying to voice my discontent about it to some female and male friends who said, basically, “That’s terrible, but hey, she’s making you look good!” Furthermore, there was an assumption (mainly by the girls, oddly) that being a “manwhore” was acceptable and brag-worthy whereas being a slut was not. I found that curious too.

It’s true, women are the typical targets of slut-shaming, but your experience proves that it can happen to men too. (For the uninitiated, the term “slut-shaming” describes any behavior meant to punish someone for their sexual appearance, behavior or reputation.) Your ex-girlfriend was hurt by your decision to break up with her and, possibly reflecting her own feelings about herself and her recent infidelity, she tried to use your sexual behavior (real or imagined) to insult your moral character and humiliate you. (You sure you wanted to end that? I kid.)

This isn’t to say that it’s the same for men as it is for women. Jaclyn Friedman, a feminist author and activist, told me in an email, “The difference is that the slut-shaming he experienced didn’t come with an inherent threat, the way it does when it’s targeted at women. It didn’t mean that anyone can do anything they want to his body without his permission, or even over his objection,” she says, referencing the classic use for slut-shaming: excusing sexual assault. “It didn’t come with the long history with which most women are intimately familiar, of friends, family, police, courts, churches, doctors, schools and reporters blaming any woman to which the word ‘slut’ can be even tenuously attached for felony violent crimes perpetrated against her body.”

Hugo Schwyzer, a gender studies professor, agrees. “Men can’t be slut-shamed the way women are slut-shamed simply because the word doesn’t have the same pejorative power in men’s lives,” he says. “If we want a word that shames men with the same force as ‘slut’ can shame some women, we have to look to terms like ‘fag.’ Accusing a man of being promiscuous just doesn’t have the same corrosive impact.” He’s most likely to be seen as a stud, a playboy, a ladies’ man — the flattering adjectives quickly pile up, and that’s just not the case for women who get around.

That said, “It doesn’t mean men always hear it as a compliment on their sexual prowess,” he says. “We live in a culture that sees male promiscuity as a developmental phase. The older a man gets, the more he’s expected by his peers to become discriminating in terms of whom he sleeps with.” After a certain point, it’s seen less as a passing phase and more as a personality flaw or romantic liability. “Just as men were said to do in the past, women today are likely to distinguish between the hot guys with whom they might hook up and the men with whom they might risk an enduring commitment,” Schwyzer says. “A woman who might be happy to go to bed with a ‘man-whore’ would never take him seriously as boyfriend material, as the presumed risk of infidelity is just too high.”

I guess you could call it the husband-manwhore dichotomy. Oh, equality.

I’d be interested in knowing two things: First, how common do you think this is? Equally important, do most women know about this attraction, or do they simply think “yuck” when they think about their underarms?

Underarm Fetishist

My first question about armpit attraction — and I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt, how serendipitous!

As you already know, you’re not alone. There are collections of hundreds of shots on Flickr and Tumblr of women in bras or tank tops with one arm (or, in the raunchiest cases, both!) raised above their heads. (Many of these are re-appropriated fashion shots, but I’m dubious of your theory that the models were posed this way just to display your favored body part.) Forums like Girlpits allow connoisseurs to debate the qualities of a good underarm (there appears to be a great partisan divide between smooth-ocrats and hair-publicans). Porn hubs across the Web feature countless lingering closeups of pits — hairy, smooth, sweaty, take your pick — and clips of underarm “licking,” “sniffing” and more.

It’s unclear whether you, sir, like your armpits PG or X-rated. You simply say, “I can be sexually aroused by the sight of a woman’s uncovered, clean-shaven underarms.” Well, now, the capacity to be turned on by the sight of a particular body part isn’t unusual in the least. “That he has an area of the body of a woman that he focuses on is not surprising,” says Chris Kraft, a psychologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultations Unit. “It’s actually called partialism when you’re fixated or specifically aroused by a very specific part of the body — typically, we see things like the feet, buttocks, breasts.”

Richard B. Krueger, a psychiatrist and medical director of the Sexual Behavior Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute, tells me, “I don’t even think it’s a fetish in his case. I would say it’s in the range of typical sexual behavior,” he says. “It isn’t deviant, it’s just a variant of normal — or within normal.”

You don’t indicate that you’re only turned on by armpits, after all — and even if you were, Kraft would be hesitant to pathologize it. “There are plenty of men who only like to ejaculate with their penis in a vagina,” he says. “Should we call that a problem?”

Basically, these guys are super-unimpressed by your armpit attraction. There’s nothing like talking to someone who routinely deals with patients who have all-consuming fetishes that ruin their professional and personal lives to feel normal, eh? It puts things in extreme perspective.

As for the “why” of such an attraction, I can really only offer you speculation. Kraft suggests, “The thing about the underarm area, similar to the genital area of women, it’s usually a covered, private area. To have it groomed and presented, historically, it would have been considered a taboo.” He adds that it’s possible hairlessness gives you a sense of cleanliness; maybe there’s a spark there for you.

Finally, getting to your two main questions: How common is this attraction and what do women think about it? It’s impossible to put a number on it. “We don’t have a lot of people presenting in the clinical areas of sexuality just to talk about it because most people are functioning fine with these types of things,” says Kraft. “That’s why we don’t get a real accurate number of the commonness of different types of fetishes.” In other words, people don’t talk to an expert about their armpit fixation unless it’s problematic for them. “It’s hard to study the happy,” he says.

As for women’s awareness of this kink, “I don’t think for many women it crosses their mind that this is an area of attraction,” says Kraft. “It’s not something that people acknowledge, since it’s taboo.” There are always exceptions, though: Any woman who spends enough time browsing online porn, or reading this column, will be aware of the extreme variation in human sexual interests and practices. And of course there are women who share similar desires, either for other people’s armpits or for others to worship their own.

I’m going to borrow the typical therapist move here and say: The real question is, “How do you feel about your kink?”

—————–

Send your question to tracy@salon.com.

I have asked her in recent months to recount what she told me 25 years ago about her sexual experiences. Not only will she not discuss it and gets angry about it, she now claims that she never did any of those things. Well, of course, I have some proof that she did many.

My question is why can’t I stop obsessing over her past sexual conquests (and that’s what they were — she seduced primarily married men), and why is she now denying and refusing to discuss her past?

I feel for your wife, man. You’re interrogating her about her sexual past after a quarter-century of marriage. There should be a statute of limitations on such things.

There must be a reason why this suddenly matters to you now. M. Gary Neuman, a therapist and author of “Connect to Love,” senses “some guilt or fear of the ‘what goes around comes around’ karma.” He says, “Maybe you now feel doomed to struggle since this relationship began through inappropriate behavior,” and adds: “It’s never too late to apologize to those you may have hurt in the past. Do what you need to in order to feel freer moving forward and allowing yourself to enjoy your marriage to the max.”

Listen to the man. He’s been on “Oprah,” yo.

Therapist Charles Foster, co-author of “I Love You but I Don’t Trust You,” says there are a couple of possible interpretations of what’s going on here. It could be that “after 25 years, their sex lives — so clearly in need of spicing up from the beginning — are developing rigor mortis, and his re-opening this can of worms is the best way he knows how to wake things up in bed.” Or maybe “for some reason, trust issues have reared their ugly head.”

Is your wife giving you new reason to mistrust her — based on her current behavior, as opposed to things she did when she was a young seductress? If not, this might be less about your wife’s actual trustworthiness than obsessive thinking.

Foster has little patience for this: “Come on, what is it you really want? Better sex? More closeness? More trust? Any of these could make you happy,” he says. “But satisfying your obsession will only stimulate the very itch that’s making you miserable.” Instead, he suggests that you “focus on your real needs, and work with your partner to get them met, and keep telling yourself that your obsession is just a sinkhole of misery.”

On a similar note, Diana Kirschner, author of “Sealing the Deal: The Love Mentor’s Guide to Lasting Love,” suggests that you start by simply listening to each other: Sit down and give each other 10 minutes to talk uninterrupted about whatever is on your mind. Instead of talking about past exploits, try talking about “sexual longings or fantasies you have right now and especially how you would like to act them out with each other.” She says, “Build a whole new relationship now that is so satisfying, the past just doesn’t matter.”

I have no idea why I feel this way. When I see their hands come together in applause, a smile on their faces and one or two bloodied, fallen men, I feel like I am speaking to God. I am filled with wild emotions of shame. My body shakes, and I feel a very deep burning in my stomach. This burning can be debilitating, almost like it consumes me, but it feels so good. Sometimes I can’t control myself. I don’t understand any of this. The burning feelings, the fetish itself, it’s all a mystery to me.

I’ve known about this since I was 8 years old. I know I’m not alone with this, I know there are other people with the same feelings, but never anyone I’ve encountered personally. Thanks and much love/respect.

What a hall of erotic mirrors your subconscious has built! Only you can successfully feel your way through this complex maze — but, with the help of some experts, I might be able to start you down the right path.

From the outside, your fantasy harkens to a primal scene of sexual competition. It calls to mind grunting cavemen clubbing each other over the head as a babe in a leopard-print bikini looks on; great works of literature built around a woman’s power to compel men into war; and any number of contemporary romantic comedies where protago-dude dukes it out to win the girl.

In that sense, your fantasy could not be more normal.

The specificity of your interest, on the other hand, is more unique — but it’s hardly unheard of. I managed to find a blog called — drum roll — “Giggling Girls and Bloody Violence!!” dedicated to similar imagery. It’s filled with raunchy photos of women paired with captions along the lines of, “He beat up my boyfriend to within an inch of his life? Well, sounds like I have a new boyfriend!” I also came across an online message board where women who are turned on by watching men fight, and men who are turned on by watching women get turned on by watching men fight, get together to swap erotic tales — yet more proof that there is someone out there for everyone.

What immediately sticks out about such desires is the symbolic worship of masculinity, which can be interpreted any number of ways. Eric Anderson, a sociologist specializing in research on masculinity, sports and sexuality, detects potentially repressed desires for other men. He suggests that maybe wrestling or fighting were ways you were allowed to watch men be physical with each other at a time when you were “sexually attaching emotions onto men.” Perhaps instead of identifying with the male fighters as a male yourself, the female audience members are an access point for you to vicariously enjoy male bodies in action.

On the other hand, Joe Kort, a therapist and sexologist, says your fantasy doesn’t necessarily suggest desire for men. He compares your chosen scenario to that of cuckolding, which is typically where a husband watches his wife with another man: “When the woman leaves the fantasy the two men are left cold, and maybe that’s the same thing here.”

Kort says the symbolism in such fantasies is often more complicated than it at first seems. ”I look at the man and the woman in the fantasy as stand-in characters, say from his childhood. Was his father weak? Did he want to fight his dad, and have his mom watch, and win? Was there violence in his childhood?” He adds, ”It may have to do with his masculinity, maybe he didn’t feel honored about his masculinity. Maybe he was shamed by some girls in school or a female teacher. Maybe he’s trying to turn [some trauma] into a victory.”

These are just questions, things to mull — like I said earlier, you’re the one who gets to do the work of figuring this stuff out, should you even want to. Ian Kerner, a sex and relationships counselor, tells me, “When I’ve worked with clients with specific issues like this, it takes a while to fully unpack what’s going on,” he says. “As long as it’s not causing him distress, let the game continue — of course if he’s seeking out bar fights to witness that’s another story.”