How one person’s journey of self-discovery in the bedroom led them to reconsider their practices in the kitchen. Listen to an audio version of this piece above or on our podcast (and in your usual podcasting app). By Jay Gee | Narrated for audio by Pericles Santis I’m new to bottoming. As a self-identified slut, it surprises me that I’m only now learning how to bottom, somewhat late in life – in my oh-so-dreaded thirties. In gay years on the Chicago scene, I’m now An Elder. It’s like I’m learning a new language, one peppered with references to douching, poppers, fibre supplements, toys, and specialty diets. But beyond following prescriptions to avoid dairy and drink enough water, I’m also seeing myself in a totally new light.  In my twenties, I spent my most promiscuous years identifying as a vers top: I would bottom on occasion but never really enjoyed it. I indulged in regular hookups with a mix of guys where we would explore what turned each other on, but I tended to go for guys who preferred bottoming. That was just what got me off. In those years, I never really considered my gender identity: I thought I was cisgender at the time. I was a homonormative cis-gay vers-top. I enjoyed frequent hookups with guys in the Chicago area. I exclusively topped with my most recent ex and the other guys we would mess around with. I prided myself on being the one others thought to be in full control. Everything changed when I met my current partner. We encountered the usual way — via the apps — and I was overwhelmed by his charm. His confident smile instantly won me over. He identified squarely as a top and knew what he liked. He had never been penetrated and certainly wouldn’t be any time soon. When we started talking, we laughed about both being tops, joking that we would endure taking turns bottoming or saying we would need to invite in a third to make it work.  But as our relationship deepened, something shifted within me.  I felt comfortable relinquishing power to him and allowing him to take the lead. To take control. My sexual preferences, my world, flipped upside down. *** To bottom is to let go entirely — physically and mentally. For me, though, letting go has never before been an option. Until now, the contours of my selfhood were always defined by control and restraint. Even my own emotions were no match for the dominion I had over myself. I ignored or reigned in inconvenient feelings of remorse, jealousy, and grief. I steered conversations so that the spotlight would shine over my head. I manipulated, and I hurt those closest to me. To let go, then, would be to lose myself.   I remember it well. On the pallet-supported bed in his spacious but bare-shelved studio, face dug into a pillow, knees flush to the chest, hands clasped, arms extended along my back. A position reminiscent of the amateur porn littering the seedier corners of my Twitter feed – motel cumdumps, darkroom gangbangs, winsome college lovers. Except I didn’t have the bird’s eye view. I was the one who now lay writhing, self-consciously adjudicating whether the wetness I felt was lube or s**t, feigning moans on a cacophonous scale climbing from minor pain to — dare I say — major pleasure?  Here, balled up in a reverse fetal position, fumbling in the dark trying to align his cock with my a*****e like a mid-air jet refuelling operation, in total awe of his girth and my a*****e’s elasticity, I learned to unfetter from my reign of self-imposed control. I’d always imagined it happening differently. *** With my current partner, I'm now only bottoming. And I’m loving it. I’m revelling in the feeling of releasing, of letting someone else take the wheel. It’s the feeling of every cell in my body suddenly vibrating at the same frequency, a sensation so powerful that my mind, which never shuts the f**k up, finally falls silent. All I feel are the corporeal markings of pleasure. Have you ever been dicked down so good that