This bator proudly and lovingly, privately and publicly, calls me his “maker”. We’d met on Xtube.com and I introduced him to BateWorld. Just as I’d felt upon discovering BateWorld, he felt that the world of bating had shone a light upon a previously hidden part of his sexual self. His connection to his phallus became core to his being, and this connection seeped into the rest of his life. An artist, he would send me drawings, self-portraits of himself as a satyr, those mythical half men, half goat creatures said to sport constant erections. Excitedly, one day he texted me about a book he’d discovered, a book he told me I had to read. The book is called The Secret of the Golden Phallus: Male Erotic Alchemy for the 21st Century.
With an introduction by the inimitable Joseph Kramer, the book is written by Bruce P. Grether, the originator of the phrase “Mindful Masturbation.” He had me at the opening of his preface, in which he writes This book is about only one thing: your relationship with your penis.
His book speaks to the experience so many bators have of connecting to something divine during bate, connecting to all things, all times, all men who have ever masturbated, past, present and future. Bruce puts his adulation for masturbation in a larger context, especially in the way masturbation and love of penis have informed mythology, including those aforementioned satyrs.
Supremely well researched, Bruce manages to capture how a man can merge his eroticism with the sacred. All my life, I sought to grasp a way to do just that – to honor my sexuality and see it as a gift that bespoke of wisdom, of connection, of love, for self and for my brothers. For too long, I did internal battle with a strict Judeo-Christian thinking that seemed at odds with my burgeoning sexuality. If only I’d read Bruce’s book 20 years ago, to enlighten me to the fact that the power of my penis was not my foe, but rather, my link to the universe, or to the Source, as Bruce puts it. As I write these words, I’m thrilled beyond reason to have come to this stage of realization. And I thank Bruce P. Grether for getting it down in words.
Jason Armstrong
