The near-peg experience

I went home last week for a few days over the bank holiday. As always when I go home, I opened up Tinder and began to swipe. I mostly use it as a way to keep track of who from school is single, but sometimes use it to shark on hot students and locals.

I swiped right on a few people before I ran out of candidates (it’s a very small town). Being the very fussy Tinderer that I am, I only had two matches: Ben* and Adam*. Shortly, Adam messaged me.

“Wanna peg me?”

It was a charming message that really appealed to me. Such a careful message, so considerate of my profile, acknowledging that I was a woman with a brain as well as fantastic good looks. I was already enamoured with this Adam, but best to play it cool. In my classic girl-on-Tinder way, I didn’t reply. Having drinks with my best friend the next evening, I showed her the message.

“Oh my God,” she said. “You have to do it!” Instead of being put off by the forwardness of the message, she thought I should be keen.

Sure, I was curious. Pegging has always been something that I’ve wanted to do, but finding a man willing to let me peg them has proven nearly impossible. Pegging was the only thing that my last boyfriend decreed as a hard no, an attitude that seems to be all too common among men that I bang. And so here someone was offering me the holy grail of sexual acts, a fucking black swan of an opportunity. The chance was being presented to me to get this pegging experience under my belt so that we could all move on, no strings attached.

And so I replied.

“Do you have the apparatus?”

He did. We established more details on the situation. He lived a five minute walk away (really, a very small town), wasn’t a local (so hopefully the small town thing wouldn’t be a problem), and was willing to let me, a total pegging noob, fuck him in the arse with a strap-on dildo. I mean really, what could go wrong?

Well, it turns out, I could. Plagued with one of the worst coughs of my adult life, I knew there was no way I would be able to pound someone’s ass without collapsing into a hacking, choking mess on the floor. I needed to stall a couple of days.

So under the pretence of wanting to see if he was a serial killer, I asked him more about himself. Striking the balance between feigning an interest and really wanting nothing more from this man than to, as he so delicately phrased it, make him my bitch, let me tell you, is challenging. Honestly, I’m not sure I got it quite right. Maybe I used too many puns. Is there such a thing as too many puns? It wasn’t a complete boner-killer, but I can’t say it didn’t put a bit of a dampener on things.

Regardless, we agreed to meet the next night. The evening came around, and with rare warning before I have sex, I went to the effort to shave my legs and everything. I was feeling empowered; this was going to be the night that I lost my pegging virginity, and really it was going to be a metaphor for my whole life as I finally got to assert my dominance over a man.

As the time ticked closer, he stopped replying to my messages. What had been rapid-fire enthusiastic flirting became silence, and with our arranged time impending, he tragically unmatched me on Tinder.

My pegging dreams came crashing down around me.

Disappointment aside – what struck me most about this experience, beyond the fact that poor Adam was clearly kink-shaming himself for his desires to be pegged, was that my female friends were so taken by this idea – some went home to discuss it with their boyfriends, so enthusiastic they were about the idea. What is it about pegging that strikes the imagination of so many women, yet strikes fear into so many men?

There are plenty of men – straight, gay, or anything in between – out there who love to be pegged. Whether it’s the change in power dynamic or the stimulation of the prostate, once you get a taste of it, you’re bound to go back for more. A new experience can create greater intimacy – if you’re already in a sexual relationship – and switching up sexual habits can really stimulate the appetite.

But for a lot of men, whether it’s internalised homophobia, fear for their precious buttholes, or not wanting to relinquish power to the weaker sex, it’s a total no-go. Pegging is the ultimate feminist sex act: to make a man the receptive partner, whether it’s in a submissive or dominant sense, in our world that worships the phallus, putting on an artificial penis inevitably causes a shift in power.

So women, don’t be afraid to ask if you want to take control over a man, and men, open up your minds and anal sphincters to the idea of being pegged. It might turn your world upside down.

P.S. Sorry this is all so heteronormative but you know what, this peg-o-phobia is really only a straight person problem, queers have got it down.

*Names are not changed to protect the privacy of these men.