To celebrate International Fisting Day, we’ve decided to share a famous fisting story. It was originally published in April, 1982 in The Body Politic, a Canadian queer liberation Journal, and was met with backlash from the police and community. The Body Politic survived intense scrutiny from the authorities and it is from this history of fighting for sexual freedom that Squirt.org came to be. We’ve decided that International Fisting Day is the perfect day to share this story. Here is “Lust with a Very Proper Stranger” by Angus Mackenzie.
Lust With a Very Proper Stranger
Angus Mackenzie
The Body Politic, Issue 82
April 1982
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My New York friend Luke is a distinguished and admired man in the fraternity of fisters. One hears insiders say as a compliment, “He’s an actor’s actor,” or “He’s a writer’s writer.” Well, Luke is a fister’s fister. He’s handsome and rugged with a solid, well-defined body and a firm rounded ass, even though he’s well into his forties. Walking with him down Christopher or West Streets is like walking with a prince. Step into the Ramrod and crowds yell, “Hi, Luke!” “How’s it going, Luke?” and you hear regulars say to newcomers, “That’s Luke, he’s great.”
Luke is European, charming and outgoing, and his response to this appreciation is an attitude of noblesse oblige suitable to his station. Behind the smile and the direct eye-to-eye contact there is an unspoken reserve. Admirers know that this fister’s got class.
I’m not into fisting but I am curious – as intrigued as anyone else – and, since I was staying with Luke over Christmas and New Year’s, I had an opportunity to ask questions. Even before I did, I had already picked up on the fact that protocol was stringent and the etiquette of proper fist-fucking was as refined as a fox hunt.
New Year’s Eve provided the occasion to observe the preparations attendant to an important fisting party. Luke had to accept an invitation for one the many fisting clubs to be found in Manhattan. Only sixty people had been invited; they would be a select group and proper decorum would be observed. The invitation read, “White jockstraps only.” In that case, Luke said, he would wear his white mother-of-pearl cockring. Bien sûr.
From the time we got up on the morning of December 31 until Luke left for the party about ten that night, all his actions were geared to the party. (I had a date in the Village with a snowman, but that’s another story.) For breakfast Luke had orange juice and consommé; he was to eat nothing else all day.
We were planning a casual tour of places and things Luke wanted to show me, but before we set out, he went upstairs in his building to get the requisite drugs for his party. His dealer was closing shop, so to speak, at noon and had warned his customers. Luke returned with little packets which included a muscle relaxer and some uppers and downers.
We stepped out of his Park Avenue apartment building and headed first to the Museum of Modern Art. He was keen on my seeing the Atget exhibition of photographs of rural France in the 1920s. Afterwards we walked over to the St Regis. The old King Cole Room in this celebrated hotel had been transformed into a stunning Thirties nightclub – the wonderful Maxfield Parrish mural had been cleaned, and one expected Jean Harlow in white fox to walk in. Instead, a suave gentlemen in London tweeds swept in with an aging beauty swathed in sable. She was his mom, it turned out, and he, all smiles and festive greetings, was a fisting brother of Luke’s. We declined an invitation to lunch with them and went instead to the Oak Room at the Plaza. Luke knew people there, too, but the introductions and Happy New Year greetings were perfunctory. We slid into a small table in a corner.
“When you were first fisted, did you plan it?”
Luke played with his spritzer. “No, no. I was with a big, handsome German in a bath in Seattle. He had a huge cock. When he entered me slowly and carefully, I thought, ‘My God, his cock has grown even bigger!’ I was astounded when it turned out to be his hand.” He smiled nostalgically. “It was wonderful. I’ve never looked back.”
He quickly went on to say that this is not the way to go about it. He is, in fact, rather contemptuous of people who get into fisting with little or no idea of what they are doing. He spoke with distain of “tourists” who go to the Mineshaft stoned, drunk or both who climb into a sling. Or worse, those who fist somebody without finesse. “A friend of mine saw some idiot about to fist a guy with his college ring on. Jesus!” He knew of two people who’d died last year of injuries from careless, or maybe vicious, fisting.
My eggs Florentine arrived. Luke ordered a San Pellegrino. “Did it hurt?”
He laughed. “Yes. Well, you know pleasure/pain… yes, it hurt, but only at first and then the pleasure overwhelmed me and I still didn’t know it was a fist.”
He went on to talk about the finer points. First, he said a fister must also be a fistee. No one is accepted into the certified world of fisting who is not prepared to play both roles well and willingly. More people have a preference for being the fistee (understandable, I guess) but selfishness is not tolerated. In establishing an encounter one may ask, “Are you wide or deep?” “Wide” can mean two fists; “deep” can mean up to the elbow.
I had heard many references to the length of time fisting sessions took – “He went on for hours” said with great satisfaction and admiration of the fister. Luke explained that there is, in happy fisting, an intense relationship established between the partners in a
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session. If that relationship does not appear to be working within the first few minutes, both partners, without rancour, will stop and move on to find a partner with whom a simpatico relationship can be created.
Eye contact is important and constant between partners. The fister is aware, too, of body language and of verbal signals indicating pleasure or discomfort. In a long session, neither is apt to have an erection. In fact, according to Luke, multiple orgasms are possible for the fistee without an erection and without ejaculation. “It must be the closest males can get to a female orgasm.”
The fister gets his pleasure from the expert way he probes with his hand “into that silky, smooth passage,” and from his ability to bring the fistee to ecstacy a number of times. One of Luke’s favourite partners finishes their sessions by pushing his cock in as well and jerking off inside Luke’s ass.
The Oak Room was beginning to fill up with a British rock group and their boisterous groupies. Luke had expressed surprise that I had never seen the Tava murals on the huge disintegrating fuck pier on the Hudson River. So, since the sun was still high, we took a taxi down to West Street, just opposite the Ramrod, to see them. We walked through the gloomy debris of the pier shed, stepping over garbage and avoiding holes through which the black waters of the river could be seen. Out at the end, we stepped into the sunshine and stood as far back as possible on the crumbling concrete apron to look at the mural. Facing the river, looking intensely toward each other, are two sixteen-foot-high studs, jerking off. One is black, the other white, and they are separated by a doorway to the shed, perhaps twenty feet apart. They are both spilling forth gobs of creamy come. Tava is an honoured artist and his work is seen by all the tourists who take the boat trip around Manhattan. The wall, I was told, has been purchased in its entirety by the Museum of Modern Art.
It was late afternoon when we got back to the apartment and Luke began his preparations. I was in the living room reading the last (alas) column by architecture critic Ada-Louise Huxtable in the Times. Luke came from the bathroom, nude, with an impish grin.
“Do you want to know what I’m doing?”
I was struck once again by his splendid body. “You don’t look like you’re doing anything.”
“I’ve got Nair on my ass,” he said. “In a few minutes it’ll be as hairless as a baby’s.” He disappeared again. Later he came back and repositioned himself in a chair under a Luxo light. He had French nail clippers, a nail file, a pumice stone, a buffer and an emery board. (Certain fuck bars in Manhatten give away emery boards stamped with their name.) He clipped and cleaned, buffed and polished, checking for smoothness with his tongue, licking all the way around each nail and cuticle. I was staring at him and he looked up and grinned. “It’s rather like checking someone’s teeth before a blow job.”
This went on for almost an hour while we talked. I took the opportunity to ask him about Michael, an attractive young man whom I had met. Luke identified him as a sometime lover.
“Do you and Michael get into fisting?” I asked.
“Good heavens, no!” His response was explosive, as though I had asked about cunnilingus with his mother. “Michael is a lover. We kiss and cuddle and suck and fuck – we make love.” It was then that I became aware, in his case anyway, of the total separation between his active sex life and his carefully planned and ordered fist life.
“It makes no difference what a fist partner looks like or whether he has a sparkling personality. We are interested in each other’s asses and hands. That’s all. Fisters tend to be in good shape and sometimes they are good-looking, but that is of little consequence. What counts is their technique and their sensitivity with their hands.”
I asked him about the set up of the club he was going to and he described it in some detail. The entrance fee is $25.00. It is in a converted industrial building in Lower Manhattan – somewhere near 8th and 18th. Money has been spent on its design and appointments; one large room is a lounge with attractive sofas and chairs upholstered in velvet. Lights are low and the colours are rich but subdued. Another large room is the fisting room, with some slings and a number of firm mattresses covered, he told me, in fine quality cotton contour sheets. Lighting is again low and indirect, and the floor is carpeted. Elbow Grease is provided, preferred to Crisco in this place. There are no partitions because fist-fucking is, of course, a public recreation. Once you are admitted, privacy is not part of the code.
Off the fisting room is a large bathroom with multiple showers, toilets and douche equipment. Ivory liquid soap is de rigueur. Everyone douches thoroughly before
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arriving. Should any hint of shit appear during fisting, both partners repair to the bathroom to clean up and redress the situation. Another absolute is that a fister does not go from one ass to another without first thoroughly cleaning his hand and arm; the bacteria from one ass can be found inhospitable by another. All clothes are checked on arrival, leaving everyone nude except for jockstraps. Introductions are casual. A large punch bowl filled only with the juices of fresh fruit is available. Liquor is not permitted, but Coca-Cola is – it’s thought to give the drug combinations the right hit.
It was about seven o’ clock when Luke started douching. He has one of those chromed enema tubes attached to his shower. The whole process took two hours before he proclaimed himself to be “as clean as a whistle.” He took me into his bedroom to show me his gear laid out: there were the little packets of pills, the $350 black leather jacket complete with gleaming chains and studs, the clean, torn and faded jeans with the red hankie in the right rear pocket, the parachuter’s boots, the sparkling white jockstrap, the leather thong with the silver filigree popper container (non-spill) and the black leather biker’s cap.
“It looks very S/M,” I said.
“We have nothing in common with that crowd,” he answered firmly. “Our relationships are based on absolute equality.” He allowed that some S/M people he knows are into fisting, but that scene is totally different, with its own dynamic, its own rules and standards. It obviously didn’t interest him at all.
He set off.
Half an hour later I was in a cab heading for the Village. I was thinking of Luke’s clearly stated objective for ringing in the New Year: “I will have twelve partners and be home in the early morning.” My thoughts shifted to my anticipation of blowing a little coke and, maybe, the dealer. I felt like an aged babe-in the woods.”
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*Angus MacKenzie is the pseudonym of a Toronto writer who, for professional reasons, chose to author this article anonymously.
