April 2016. A friend’s 70th birthday party. In front of a beautiful campfire under the stars, a few friends shared a sincere discussion on the topic of sex. And although it looks like most of the people that were present (myself included), wanted to open up and talk freely, we were all just skimming the surface of the subject.

And my desire to live in a world in which sex is merely another natural topic to discuss, same as politics or the weather, has started to bubble inside me.

A year later, I now have a website dedicated to sex. I feel much more comfortable talking about sex, with pretty much anyone. And I have decided to approach one of my friends from that campfire-side-conversation to ask if he would be willing to share his experience of sex with my readers. Seeing his responses to my recent Facebook posts about slow sex, I assumed he had some experience of slow sex himself. Although we have never been lovers, I always felt a little more comfortable talking with him about sex. And like that campfire-side-conversation, our private conversations about sex were never truly revealing and open, but rather, very general and vague. Until now.

We meet at a lovely Cafe on the edge of a little Sydney bay. After a catch-up on what’s been happening in our lives lately, we start our “interview”. My levels of feeling comfortable are fluctuating a little, but all in all, the conversation flows naturally, and I’m very proud that I managed to relax and enjoy our first real intimate, personal talk about sex.

I first ask Peter what is his understanding of Slow Sex.

“That’s a good question, I was actually going to ask you… I was wondering if I actually do do it… I think I probably do fit into these words – having something different than the biological ‘quick’. Biologically we were programmed to doing it quickly… …and [when we’re going slow] we’re doing something that is a lot more… highly evolved. It’s probably anything that doesn’t fall into the biological type, very quick, urge-based sex. It’s everything else.”

When I ask Peter how he came across this approach to sex, he tells me how a woman that he was seeing introduced him to the concept. “She wouldn’t have called it slow sex – but [she] practiced a form of sex which was different to that I was used to, and [it was] very alluring.

“It is very different than the way I did sex before. There was no orgasm, there was no male ejaculation because that was not the objective… The focus was kind of climax without the actual orgasm. For me, that took the pressure off: I don’t actually have to come. I can just enjoy it. I still have a climax of sorts… …I can enjoy the sensation, [the] build up. It doesn’t resolve, and it might continue later. It’s a really good reason for men to do it. Because you can keep doing it for ages.”

Do you actually focus on trying not to ejaculate? Does that become your new focus?

“No. I have developed the ability to actually not go to that zone so I can relax into that space. [I can either] ejaculate really quickly or I can just not and continue enjoying pleasure for hours and hours. Pleasure can go on for longer for both people. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t pleasurable.“

Peter was mentioning a phenomenon that I haven’t written about yet. It is the experience of the genitals being “drawn” to each other, as opposed to a penis penetrating a vagina. When we do things with a lot of awareness we find that at times, we don’t really need to make any effort in order for penetration to happen. It simply happens by itself when we leave our bodies to do what they need to, instead of forcing them to do what we think they should be doing. Peter described how he and his lover have resolved not to have penetrative sex, but found that their bodies had a mind of their own: “We were lying together in bed naked. We had made a mutual agreement that there is no penetration, and we wake up in the middle of the night and we are almost having sex. And it’s like “Oops, that is something that we are both not wanting to do”, but we were kind of drawn to each other. I wasn’t penetrating but I was being drawn in, and that was very very interesting and very exciting. And that feeling brought me back to that space again and again and again.”

I asked Peter if he prefers having slow sex or conventional sex:

“It changes. Some days I want to do that and some days I don’t, I think every experience of lovemaking seems to be a new thing. For me, every time is different.”

My last question to Peter was what would he say to men so that they try slow sex:

“There’s a lot to be gained from it because…  …if you can learn to have a sexual experience that doesn’t necessarily require you to be an erect male that achieves an ejaculative orgasm, your sex life will go on forever.”