The Pub Discussion Board

Advice to Writers on Smells and Tastes

What I best remember about the 1958 bestselling erotic novel "Candy" (by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg) is that the euphemism used for Candy's vulva was "Honey Pot." Her Honey Pot. Sweet as honey! I couldn't wait to taste one for myself, though I had to wait another four years. To my disappointment, it wasn't sweet at all.

You would think that writers of erotica would write what they know and not merely what they fantasize about, but while few of the writers here refer to a Honey Pot as tasting "sweet," some do! I suspect that some of the writers have never actually had sexual intercourse, except with themselves, and some are mostly guessing. That's okay! I won't tell! But wouldn't you like to get the details right?

First, a matter of definition. A vagina is NOT the same as a vulva. If you are actually referring to the vagina, call it that. If you are referring to the vulva, don't call it a vagina. It isn't. Call it some nickname if you like.

The names are often interchanged, but they shouldn't be. A vagina is the corrugated and slimy tube leading up to the cervix, which is at the tail end of the uterus. Vulva is a synonym for the female genitalia. Lots of the stories here call the vulva a pussy or cunt. Some call it a kitty—which I actually prefer. In his novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls", the hero Robert Jordan a lover he call "Little Rabbit"—that would be "Conejita" in Spanish, and novel is set in Spain. At the time that was Spanish slang for a vulva. How about calling a vulva, in your writing, a little rabbit, or a rabbit, or a bunny, or a bunny cunny? Cute and furry and soft.

But a pussy is not a vagina. A vagina is PART of it. The vulva INCLUDES the vagina, the clitoris, the mons pubis or mons veneris (pubic mound or mount of Venus, in poetic language). It includes the labia majora (major lips) and the labia minora (minor lips—yes, minora is pronounced like menorah, but the labia minora have nothing to do with Chanukah, except for being a cause of celebration). It includes the urethral orifice, out of which pee squirts, right above the opening of the vagina. The urethra is a little tube that leads up to the bladder. The vulva also includes the perineum, between the anus and that vaginal opening, as well as the anus. The urethra runs, surrounded by muscles and spongy tissue that can swell up a bit like an erection, though not as hard, just above the vagina (if the woman is on her back). The clitoris is a bit like a tiny penis in shape, covered at the top by the clitoral hood, which is a bit like a man's foreskin in a way and looks a little like Robin's hood. While the clitoral head, like the head of a penis, can be very sensitive, especially right after orgasm, it has a bundle of nerves that runs south of it, then splits, with lots of nerves running below the labia minora and labia majora. Those nerves also go on through the perineum to surround the anus, which is why massaging those areas with lube can be orgasmic, both for men and women, or at least feel good.

There is a lot of variation between vulvas. Describing these variations can help you make your writing distinctive. Here are a number of examples. Some women have intensely hairy pubic mounds and labia majora, while some have relatively little hair. Sometimes it is coarse, sometimes curly, and sometimes fine. (East Asian men and women tend to have the least hair, and it tends to be fine. Fat people have Pubic Mounds where the skin is stretched out more, so the hair follicles are farther apart, so it can look like they have less hair. Pubic hair also turns grey or white with age, often, and can thin out, as if balding.) Some women, even if thin, have fat labia majora, and some women have skinny labia minora, and young women often have labia majora pairs about the size of a tennis ball cut in half with a slit in it. Some women have labia minora so small they are hard to isolate, while others have labia minora that hang down below the labia majora like butterfly wings and will stretch out six inches. These are fun to suck into your mouth, by the way. Many women in their forties or older have labia majora that are thin and hang down, especially if the women are thin all over.
Sometimes the head of the clitoris is so little that it is hard to find. It may only show up when a woman is very excited, if at all. Other women have a large clitoris and clitoral head that looks like a penis the size of your thumb. Sometimes the urethral opening is clean-cut and easy to see. Sometimes it is hidden in a mass of swollen wrinkles.

There's also a big variation in vagina sizes and details. This is not always a function of age. Many women in their early twenties easily accept a Penis the size of the cardboard tube at the center of a roll of paper towels, while I've known women in their sixties who can barely accept a finger. Sometimes women who have had multiple children have large, stretched out vaginas, but not always. Many women have C-sections, and if they have vaginal childbirth, the obstetrician often cuts what is called an episiotomy with a pair of scissors. This is a slit at the entrance to the vagina meant to let the baby out with less change of vaginal tearing. After the delivery, it is sewed up, and many times doctors sew it up very tight with several layers of sutures, and this, combined with scar tissue, can make a vagina very tight for a lifetime. (If the doctor doesn't do an episiotomy, the muscles between the urethra and the vagina can also tear, and this can lead to a lifetime of drips and dribbles of urine or worse. It can also lead to a vesico-vaginal fistula, with urine draining into the vagina. Very smelly and hard to repair.) Now you can add some of these details to your stories.
There is also a big variation in what the anus looks like. It can be light pink or dark pink or even black (like nipples, for example among women from India or many Hispanics). It can be hairy or hairless. It can be beautiful or far from it. It can have hemorrhoids protruding in one area or all around, and these affect the pleasure of anal sex and also cleanliness. These are all things you as a writer can describe!

I once spent several fun hours with the late Betty Dodson, who wrote the first how-to book about Female Masturbation, "Sex for One" (1987). She died in 2020. For years, she and her partner, Carlin Ross, taught women how to masturbate. The women would lie in a circle on pads on the floor with bolsters, without clothing below the waist, and with mirrors between their legs, and learn to masturbate. Betty taught that all vulvas were beautiful in some way. She called attention to the variations. Her web site used to have a gallery of close-up photos of vulvas submitted by hundreds of women. Viewers were allowed to describe and praise them. It was fascinating to see the variations, all normal. Many women, young and old, think their vulvas are ugly. Instead, their diversity should be noticed, described, and enjoyed. Write about the variations!

In my experience, while most writers of erotica include oral sex, it's rare for any to mention the scent of a vulva, yet there are many variations in scents, and those variations are worth describing, even if they are being made up. Different parts of the vulva have different scents, and those scents vary widely in the same woman, depending on what she has been doing. Some men really enjoy strong scents, and others don't. I'm squeamish, and I don't usually want to smell it, though it sometimes has a scent that really excites me.

I read a lot of erotica in my teens, not only Candy with her Honey Pot, but dozens of more explicit novels. (B. Dalton back then had the top shelf of the Literature section devoted to erotic books by Anonymous, such as "The Pearl", a collection of many issues of a Victorian journal of erotica, still available on Amazon, as is "The Romance of Lust", which also influenced me.) Based on what I'd read, I was very much looking forward to tasting a sweet vulva, whether like honey or, say, apple juice, or perhaps cinnamon sugar on hot buttered toast, which I would have found irresistable.

My first sex partner tasted like melted butter. Yum! If you want a woman in your story to have a bland-smelling vulva, you would do well to write into your narrative the opportunity for her to be freshly washed. She doesn't need soap, just water. It can be from a shower, a warm bath, a hot tub, a swimming pool, a bidet. Wherever she can get her hands into her uncovered vulva and swish things out a bit.

The opposite to this blandness in a positive way is called "musky" in some stories, but we can go farther. Musky is a very common scent for a vulva. Just as bland is easy for kids to like (think chicken nuggets), and stronger flavors are acquired tastes (like, say, mutton or a steak dry-aged for sixty days), there are scents of women that put some men in the mood. (Most men won't even notice, of course, and a large percentage of husbands have never even petted a rabbit, much less eaten one. This is a substantial cause of divorce.)

You know how you can smell a steak on a grill, or frying bacon, or barbeque and immediately take a deep whiff of it and feel hungry as your appetite builds? There is a small range of related smells that a vulva can produce that are like aphrodisiacs. When my nose is a few inches away, the scent forces me to drag it deep into my lungs, nostrils flaring, and it immediately makes me almost roar with lust. It puts me in that mood. (That's something an odorless vulva doesn't do, even though I prefer them unscented.) On vulvas with this special smell, I have to suck the scent in to intensify it. A slight sniff won't do. It's related to an Umami flavor. It's musky, earthy, meaty, like a good bowl of "boeuf bourguignon". Like fresh-grated black truffles. Somehow, it's the odor of sexual readiness. It's a bit like gorgonzola cheese—not far from fetid, but so good. (This may be why these foods are so much desired, though perhaps the eaters don't realize it.)

It's not pheromones, but it's perhaps as close as humans can come to pheromones. It doesn't carry like pheromones—you have to be pretty close to be affected unless it's being wafted out to you with a breeze. (For a useful scholarly article about why it's not pheromones, read Chapter 19, "Human Pheromones: Do They Exist?" in Richard L. Doty's book "Neurobiology of Chemical Communication", available online from the National Library of Medicine. Also read, "Sexual Chemosignals: Evidence that Men Process Olfactory Signals of Women's Sexual Arousal," by Arnaud Wisman and Ilan Shrira ["Archives of Sexual Behavior" (2020 Feb 5; 49(5):1505-1516], also available online from the National Library of Medicine. The article says experiments show that men can often recognize female sexual arousal from sniffing armpit sweat. That's pretty amazing, as armpit odor would mask the sexual arousal smell.)

While many men do not find this odor off-putting, there are also some smells from the vulva that are not part of sexual attraction and are more likely to be objectionable. Some of these smells could be expected to be common among characters in your stories, so you should be alert to where they would be likely.

Both the armpits and the groin have apocrine sweat glands. This sweat has a lot of protein in it. It is pretty much odorless at first, but the bacteria breaks down the proteins, sort of as if it were rotting. At some point it can be arousing for people who have learned to be aroused by it (like Stilton cheese), but if not washed regularly, it can get worse, and it can be worse on fabrics as the bacteria continue to work.

Have you sniffed your day-old sweat on the armpits of your t-shirt? Quite a few people have learned to be aroused by the smell of armpits (with or without deodorant) or genital hair. (The smell intensifies where there is hair.) The smell can be more objectionable between the thighs of fat people because the areas tend to be pressed tightly together and not get air flow.

(There are of course people with a fetish for these scents that goes beyond being somewhat drawn to it, and they have their own erotica available several places. I used to know a biographer of the great Irish novelist James Joyce, who wrote "Ulysses" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", both serious novels long banned as pornographic. He told me that Joyce had a dirty panty fetish and would write in the 1930s to several female friends asking them to send him their dirty panties, wrapped to hold in the odor.)

There is a subcategory of this where there has been sweating inside the underwear, perhaps combined with lubrication from the upper area of the vulva near the clitoris, but it has dried rather than staying moist (which allows bacteria to work). The smell is dry, powdery, evaporated, desert-like, almost spicy. I sort-of like this, at least a bit.

Farther south from the clitoris is the area of the urethral area, and it is not unusual for this area to smell like stale urine or ammonia. I find both the smell and the taste deeply objectionable, but I know there are some who like the smell. It is not usual after a woman pees for there to be anywhere from a few drops to a squirt of urine. It often comes after she has pulled up her underwear. Women may wipe, but the pee may not come out until they stand up, then sit down again. The pressure squeezes it out. Then it sits in there and gets stale. This is especially seen in women who have had children or who have weak urethral muscles. Doing Kegel exercises can help one avoid it.

Men have the same problem. Urine odors on men's underwear or genitals is not unusual, especially in older men. Women should not be subjected to it. Cleanliness is important! If a woman has had a bath or shower and stayed naked, legs spread, until thoroughly dry (or used a blow dryer on those areas), and has not peed since the shower, this urine scent should not exist. Once she has peed, though, the scent is more likely. It is an ammonia-like smell or simply a urine smell. I had a girlfriend a couple years ago who always washed well before getting naked and jumping into bed with me to watch Netflix, but then before we played she would go pee so she wouldn't risk squirting. The result was that she tasted like pee, but I was too polite to mention it—though it did mean she didn't get licked as thoroughly. By contrast, the girlfriend before her was 74 but had the body of a very sexy teen, and her vulva always tasted fresh and clean. Of course, we tended to spend time in the hot tub before going to bed.

Contrasted with the rest of the vulva, the vagina has its own odor which varies from unnoticeable to objectionable. The pH level of the Vagina is quite acidic (while urine is basic), and it has active "lactobacilli" growing on the walls and gradually flowing out with the vaginal secretions. The smell is often sour or tangy or fermented, like unflavored Greek yogurt or strong sourdough bread. I love good sourdough bread, but I don't like yogurt, and I really don't like the smell or taste of vaginal secretions. The other secretions from the vulva don't bother me as much. It's rare for a writer of erotica to mention this smell. Perhaps you can use it.

We move now farther back to the anus, the back end up the vulva area. I really don't like the smell of feces. It can make me want to vomit. I've had sex doggy style with women who didn't adequately wipe their ass, and I have to just sort of hold my breath or squeeze my nostrils shut. On the other hand, the anus doesn't always smell like crap. Many of us enjoy the 69 position for oral sex with the woman on top. Wiping yourself after taking a crap isn't good enough. However, thorough washing in a bath or hot tub or washing it with soap during a shower will usually solve the problem. During 69, your nose may be actually pressed against the woman's anus. If it is clean, there is a slightly sweet smell, not unpleasant, but different from any other skin on the body, and the taste during rimming is also slightly sweet and not at all like feces. If the woman were to pass gas or worse, however, that would bring for me an immediate conclusion of activities, even though accidental.

A number of writers include anal sex, and I admit reading about it turns me on, perhaps because it is so often forbidden. I'm not always sure everyone writing about it here has ever tried it. A couple writers have been careful about cleaning the penis after anal sex (one writer by magic!) Most pay no attention to the smell. Perhaps they should.

When I was nineteen, I had a delightful girlfriend the same age who loved sex in every hole, as often as possible. (She still does, over fifty years later.) I remember a time when I alternated strokes between ass and vagina dozens of times. No scent at all. No problem. We both loved it. She had many orgasms. (I could give her an orgasm by licking the inside of her elbow or her armpit or sucking on her fingers or toes.)
On the other hand, in my fifties, for a couple months I had a girlfriend my age who could only have orgasms during anal sex or fingering and who loved to have me give her enemas, using a half-gallon of warm water. I enjoyed giving her enemas (though I left the bathroom before she emptied out in the toilet), and I enjoyed the anal sex.

Except. The first time we got together, I brought her a big new silicone dildo and fucked her with it thoroughly. Then I fucked her with my cock. She had given herself an enema before I arrived at her house. What sometimes happens, though, is that anal sex or a big enema or eating a lot or the pressure of someone on top of one can make the ileocecal valve between the small intestine and large intestine open, allowing a dumping of the small intestine's contents into the large intestine—in liquid form. The result was that while I was plunging in and out of her, something like diarrhea was flowing out. After we came, we discovered to her embarrassment and my hidden disgust that we were both covered with feces, as if painted with it. It was utterly disgusting. It was also all over her sheets. We shared a shower and scrubbed with soap, multiple times. When we returned to the bedroom, we discovered that while we were in the shower, her large boxer, which had been watching us, had, chewed and swallowed most of the dildo that had been in her ass. As the saying goes, "There's no accounting for taste."

We met weekly at a little motel halfway between our towns for a big warm water enema and anal sex. Before I'd leave, I would thoroughly scrub my cock and the toys with soap. After leaving, I discovered that my hands still smelled like crap, and I suppose my cock did, too. I stopped at a convenience store and bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I found that didn't remove the smell, either. I took to wearing condoms and using them on the toys and wearing surgical gloves, but the smell went right through.

I know it doesn't always work this way, but I've gone into so much detail because at least some of the time, anal sex can impart a really bad odor, and no amount of soaping gets it out, and it can go through a condom at least sometimes, even if sperm cannot. So, if you are having characters do anal, make a big deal out of immediate and very thorough washing with soap. You could even have them decide to not have more sex that night because they couldn't get past the smell. It seems to eventually dissipate.

My understanding is that in porn studios, anal or ass-to-mouth often follow several days of minimal eating, multiple deep enemas, and lots of lube. It's not spur-of-the-moment. I read one story here were the preparation involved twenty minutes of multiple enemas until the water came out clear. Well-done! A Fleet enema in a little plastic bulb is fine for constipation, but for anal sex it's not enough.

Pre-cum has no smell that I'm aware of, and the taste is mildly buttery. Male ejaculate has essentially no scent at the time when it squirts out (though it does have taste), but within seconds to minutes the scent changes as it oxidizes and smells bad until it is washed off or until it dries. When semen and vaginal fluids combine, the smell can be even worse—as I said before, like fish. Rotting fish!

Yes, cum has fructose (fruit sugar) in it, and it's said one can adjust the flavor by drinking pineapple juice (stay away from asperagus, though, and also coffee, alcohol, garlic, and red meat, just because you love her). It is also said it has a high protein content. That is true. Proteins are amines. There are a great many amines in the body and in nature and man-made. It contains the amines Spermine, Putrescine, and Cadaverine. Really! The smell of sperm itself, of rotting food, and of rotting corpses! In a minute or two, on a Kleenex, you can smell them. (By the way, there is an invasive flowering tree in this country known as Bradford Pear that has the same chemicals when its blossoms are rotting. There was one planted outside one of the women's dorms where I went to college. We guys called it a Cum Tree because of the scent. The women didn't know what they were smelling, I think. If they had mentioned it, I would have asked them out on a date at once, knowing they were women of experience.)

Body odor gets sort of a bad rap as "B.O." Showers are a part of lots of the erotica on here. That's great. This often includes mention of body wash, soap, and shampoo. (Oddly, rarely any conditioner. Must be guys writing.) Television advertising for decades has conditioned us to believe we need to scrub all skin surfaces with body wash when we shower. This is fine for hair and places with apocrine glands (armpits and groin). However, on the rest of your skin, that body wash strips away natural skin oils that keep your skin smooth and soft. Then lots of women replace those oils with moisturizers (water and chemicals and oils), which have their own smells and often objectionable tastes.

The article "Sexual Chemosignals," cited above, suggests that the natural odors on skin can lead to sexual arousal. Those odors are removed by soaps and body wash, and that can decrease arousal. You might consider having characters shower regularly but refrain from most body wash and explain why. Even armpits can have arousing smells. To test this, when you get up in the morning, before you shower, pull your elbow up to your nose and inhale deeply. Drink it in. Can you smell your body? Yes. But is it a bad odor? Perhaps not! When you shower, just scrub yourself down under the hot water with a rough washcloth. That will get rid of the dirt and exfoliate dead skin but leave the essential oils.

I fell in love when I was seventeen and living at a co-ed boarding school. We never had sex, and I never even got my hand into her pants, but we had a special hidden room in the gym where we would meet Sunday afternoons, and she would let me remove her sweater and bra and expose her lovely breasts. I've never forgotten burying my head between her breasts and drinking in the warm body fragrance of her breast skin. This is the kind of detail you can use when you write.

To be honest, though, my preference is for clean and scent-free. I don't want to smell soap, in general, particularly Irish Spring, which is the essence of chemical phoniness.

One thing I've only rarely read in erotica is the use of perfume, possibly a little on the neck, or the armpits, between the breasts, or on the pubic mound (never on the mucus membranes, please, as it can burn and it generally tastes bitter). You need a perfume that is sexually arousing. So, you don't want some supposedly "sports" smell or "sailing" or "fresh laundry" or "citrus." That's just advertising garbage. It should be musky, spicy, flowery, woody, with a hint of sweetness. That cuts out most perfumes. I recommend two. First, have a woman use Calvin Klein's Obsession. For me, it's the most arousing of all for women. It immediately puts me in the mood. I also recommend Creed's Royal Oud. While supposedly for men, it checks all the boxes, and for women, a squirt near the genitalia can lead to great oral sex. Add details like this to your writing, and readers are more likely to think you really know what you are writing about.

Tastes are not the same as scents, but they are adjacent to scents. Some things that smell good may not taste as good, and vice versa. When a character is tasting a vulva or a penis, the nose is close to the mouth, and the scent adds or detracts from the taste. A forest of hair is likely to hold in aromas and intensify them, and those aromas may not be very good. (By the way, the scents around the penis can be exciting for some but unpleasant for others, especially if the guy has been going about his day. You can write about the guy showering before sex and getting rid of the bacteria grown during a day of sweating in the close quarters of underwear.

Giving oral to a man who has been dressed all day would be distressing for many women unless they are already very aroused. Many stories talk about women giving oral to a man who has just cum, and it's nice to see that they often mention the woman being able to taste herself and the man's cum on his penis. Some can't stand that and some love it. Mentioning it, at least, is a touch of reality.)

I wish a vulva tasted like, oh, whipped cream and peaches, or strawberry jam, but it doesn't. It doesn't taste sweet, so stop writing about it tasting sweet, ever. There are some women who seem to usually taste clean and fresh, even after a day's work, but that isn't common.

Most women can taste clean and fresh if they have just taken a bath or used a bidet. Some unfortunate women seem to have a naturally unpleasant taste, like brussels sprouts or broccoli. In my experience, this is most common among women with naturally coarse and heavy pubic hair (which may mean they have more testosterone in their bodies). It can be rather like the smell or taste of some armpits with lots of hair. I'm talking about a small percentage of women with this taste, though.

While I've had some good experience in decades past with smothering a vulva in, say, chocolate syrup and licking it off, doctors say this isn't healthy because the extra sugar can lead to yeast or bacterial infections or urinary tract infections. So, alas, I've given it up. But really, would it be so bad if one then washed it off well, unless it is put in the vagina and messes up the pH?

The vulva has different tastes in different areas, and this is related to it having different modes of lubrication and sweating. The apocrine sweat glands are most likely to make sweat that develops a strong, unpleasant odor as bacteria grow there. Having no pubic hair is a great way to diminish this smell, and it makes washing much easier. It also makes it easier for sweat to be soaked up by clothing, so it has less chance of smelling bad. (Freshly waxed Kitties are delightful, but stubble leads to whisker burns on the face. Really, though, I guess a man's stubble can also lead to whisker burns on the Kitty, but not if it is already furry.

The labia majora and pubic mound are regular skin, like your arms and legs. However, the clitoris and labia minora are covered with mucous membrane. The head of the penis and the inside of the foreskin are also mucous membranes, but the rest of the skin on the penis is not. Just as the head of the penis (excluding any pre-cum or urine) is soft and not self-lubricating (except with some skin oils, unless it is uncircumcised, in which case the oils become smegma), the head of the clitoris is not really self-lubricating.

This means that of the many parts of the vulva, the head of the clitoris is the part least likely to have any taste or smell. If a character wants to provide oral sex but finds the natural odor of some woman's vulva hard going, have the person begin by licking the clitoris or around it, gently, or pressing it with the tongue. Have the character let the flow of saliva run down between the labia instead of swallowing it. This fresh saliva will dilute the older fluids that are a bit strong. Usually, within a few minutes, the taste farther down is no longer a problem.

There are two little glands, Bartholin's glands, at the opening of the urethra that provide fluid and keep the urethra end from drying out, and they also provide some lubrication during sex. Around the urethra itself farther up, are Skene's glands that disperse a special lubrication right through the urethral walls into the urethra and lubricate it. This fluid is a bit like the pre-cum a penis sometimes leaks. More on this soon.

The labia minora and the mucous membrane below the head of the clitoris and above the opening to the Vagina secrete plasma through their cell walls. This is like sweat, but it has a different taste, more like pre-cum. It is clear and runny. (Plasma is the liquid in which blood cells float. It can be separated out by centrifuge or other methods.) Some women secrete quite a bit of this when they are aroused, but it doesn't squirt. It's more of an all over ooze, like when you break a stalk of aloe vera in half and the juice oozes out.

Young women tend to secrete this more than older women, and some can drip a lot of it when they are aroused. This is a big reason why women wear underwear—to soak it up. This plasma, which comes from the cells, is a lot like the fluid inside a blister. It provides a lot of lubrication during arousal. This is why reaching a finger between the labia and dragging some of the lubricant up over the head of the clitoris makes it easier to masturbate. This fluid tends to not taste too bad, especially if it is fresh. If it has seeped out and dried, it can smell a bit spicy and it tastes a bit stronger, but it is water soluble and easily diluted with saliva.

You know how a river has fresh water and the ocean has salt water, and when the river runs into the sea, the two mix, and for a while, the sea water is less salty? That's sort of the way the vagina works. The fluids coming from the vagina are designed to be quite acidic, and this acidity kills off certain kinds of organisms and maintains the health of the vagina and protects the uterus. The vagina grows lactobacillus, like unflavored yogurt, so it tastes sort of sour, pungent, and fermented. (Think sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi.)

The vagina is a different flavor zone from the labia minora. Some vaginas taste stronger than others. Taking a bath and washing the vulva does not necessarily also wash out the vagina unless it's swished out with water and the fingers, so the flavor of it can remain. The vagina is not designed to be easily washed out. The healthy vagina is sort of self-cleaning. The secretions from the walls of the Vagina gradually run down and clean it out while leaving the lactobacillus behind. This is why most gynecologists don't recommend vaginal douching. Douching can kill and remove the lactobacillus, making it easier for the vagina to get a yeast infection, which is smelly and can cause serious health problems.

Running fingers or toys or a penis in and out of a vagina tends to introduce other natural lubrication and dilute the flavor. If your character likes yogurt, feel free to have the person recognize that that is a lot like how a vagina tastes. Too bad it isn't blueberry flavored.

It is common for writers of erotica to have lovers insert their tongues deeply into a vagina. Well, think about it. Some people, thanks to their genetics, have tongues that spread wide when they are extended (me), and some have tongues that can curl (me), and some have tongues that are more penis-shaped when extended, but very few can extend their tongue more than an inch beyond their nose and chin, or perhaps an inch and a half. The average unstretched Vagina is around four inches long. This means characters can't lick very deeply into vaginas unless they have extraordinary tongues or are human-anteater hybrids, so if that is the case, you can explain it, but don't have all your characters be able to do that. Reaching the G-spot with a tongue is unlikely, ever.

(Speaking of vaginas, I remember several stories where supposedly women are so thoroughly fucked by men with large organs that it seems that their cervix opens up and lets the penis go inside. No, not going to happen. The cervix is made of tough connective tissue, collagen, and muscle, and it doesn't spread easily apart from the time of childbirth.

However, if you can slide your finger around behind the cervix in the vagina, you find a pocket of flesh called the "cul de sac". That is to say, the Dead End. As in No Exit, turn around and go back. A long penis can sometimes force itself around the cervix and on into the "cul de sac". However, a lot of women do not like men battering on their cervix with a penis. It's a bit like squeezing around a trash can to get into an alley. It can bruise the cervix. Many women say it hurts. So, don't write that the cervix is opening to receive the penis.)

Rimming a woman who is very clean can be exciting, and most women seem to love it. It has a slightly sweet taste, a bit like ripe persimmon (the hard kind, not the soft kind, which is much sweeter and more delicious). When clean, it does not taste like crap. The anal sphincter is usually very tight, and tongues don't easily enter. However, someone who is used to receiving anal sex knows how to relax the sphincter, and that can let the tongue slide in an inch or so. This can have a different flavor profile that can sometimes be quite unpleasant.

When women pee, the urine squirts out of their urethra, which is between their labia majora and adjacent to their labia minora and their vagina. It's quite common for the that area about two inches around to get wet. This is then wiped with toilet paper, though not always thoroughly. Even if it is thorough, it's a bit like peeing on your fingers and then wiping them off instead of washing your hands. Would you consider that clean?

Furthermore, it's not uncommon for women to squirt a little urine when they laugh or are tickled or squat or jump or tighten their muscles, especially as they get older. Thus, any time a character licks a kitty, unless it is known to have been recently washed, the taste of pee can be expected near the vagina, along with the musky, acrid, ammonia odor of it. Do you like tasting pee? Do you like getting little wads of pee-soaked toilet paper in your mouth? I don't. Certainly not all vulvas taste like pee, but plenty do unless washed. Having women in your story excuse themselves to wash before sex isn't a bad idea. The smell and taste definitely make me turn away or limit myself to licking the Clitoris.

When as a teen I read the Victorian erotica called "The Pearl", I noticed that many of the women in the stories "Let down their tribute to Venus," as it was often called, and it was assumed in the stories that this was "female ejaculation." I was quite puzzled by it and wondered where it squirted from. It seemed it was usually described as "sweet," but I didn't know whether to believe that. When I became sexually active with women, I expected them to have orgasms like this, but they didn't. I was disappointed that when I gave women orgasms, they didn't cum.

What about squirting, though? I first experienced it twenty-five years ago. I had a new girlfriend, in her mid-fifties and overweight. Before we had sex, she put down on the bed two thick bath towels folded in half. While I was giving her a powerful orgasm, I felt a prolonged gush of fluid running over my cock and balls and legs, almost like pouring water out of a pitcher. And this was with me on top. When we were done, I was astonished to discover the towels soaked and the sheet and mattress below them soaked, as well. I would have sworn that two cups of fluid had landed on them, but how would that be possible?

I assumed it was urinary incontinence, that she had lost control of her bladder. That can happen to women with weak muscles in the pelvic area. When I mentioned that, she was offended. She assured me that it was not urine. I came home and looked it up on the early version of the internet available then. Many writers insisted that it was not pee but something else, and it seemed that lots of women were doing it. That came as news to me. It was as if it became a fad within a couple years. So, I wrote to me friend and told her she seemed to be right.

When I joined the swing lifestyle, I discovered that lots of women squirted, and I learned how to make them squirt, whether they were used to squirting or whether they were unused to it. It was always tied in with what for them were mind-blowing orgasms, often with screams and shouts involved. It usually happened when I used my fingers as that's how I knew how to make it happen, but not always. I remember one party where I made one new partner squirt all over the place, and it was not an accident on her part. What's more, she was lying on top of the pillows of the bed in the master bedroom to raise her ass, and she soaked the pillows, then left them. And it was not her house. An unpleasant surprise for the owners.

Squirting is mentioned by lots of writers of erotica, and many seem to know pretty much how it is done, but what is it? I've made perhaps fifty women squirt—most for the first time, and many without their expecting it. Often with first timers this was perhaps five to ten milliliters, enough to fill the palm of my hand once or twice. Sometimes, though, it squirted one, two, even three feet. Other times, it gushed out instead of squirting.

In my experience, it is easier to make heavy women squirt, perhaps because their abdomens are under more internal pressure. Even among those who aren't first timers, many hadn't squirted in several years.

I've found that women seldom squirt until they have had two or three big orgasms. When this has happened, I can feel that their anterior vaginal wall (the top side when they are on their back) is swollen. When they are swollen, they are ready. Then, when they are close to another orgasm from my fingers, I use one of two techniques. One, I press on their G-spot on the anterior wall of the vagina behind where the pubic bone is and use a "come hither" motion with my index and middle fingers. If the vagina is roomy enough, I press down on the bladder and jerk two or three fingers up sharply on the anterior vaginal wall at around half-second intervals, when they are having an orgasm. That's when they squirt.

(When women have tight vaginas, it isn't possible to use that "come hither" motion, and it's important to not scratch their vaginal wall with the fingernails, so keep the nails very short and well filed. If the vagina is too tight, I reach the G-spot by bending two fingers about as much as curly quotation marks and pulling and pushing the entire hand, though it is hard to do it fast. Or I turn the two fingers sideways and press the G-spot with the side of my index finger.)

The G-spot can bring orgasms, but I don't think it causes squirting. It just happens that the urethra and adjacent tissues are in that same area and can be massaged. (Similarly, during a prostate massage through the rectum, it isn't possible to actually touch the prostate, but the side of it can be stroked or pressed during the massage through the intestinal wall, and that can lead to extremely pleasurable orgasms or even orgasms without touching the penis.)

As I've written earlier, surrounding the urethra are Skene's glands. These gather fluid in them rather like in Cowper's glands (the bulbourethral glands) in a male, which is the source of pre-cum. These leak fluid right through the walls of the urethra, where the fluid drips out and lubricates the vulva. This is where the usual "female ejaculation" comes from. It is usually just a couple milliliters forced out during orgasm, and generally using the fingers in the vagina makes the tissue around the vaginal muscles swell, perhaps with blood, perhaps with some other fluid. More fluid may also make Skene's glands swell and fill, which could lead it to squirting more.

I've participated in water sports on occasion, but I'm sensitive to unpleasant odors, and I don't drink pee and don't like to accidently smell it. However, urine can have a number of different smells. If you have been drinking a lot of water all day, once your kidneys have filtered out the impurities that make pee yellow, the pee will be clear and may not have much odor. Coffee is a diuretic, so if you pour down a couple cups of coffee, you will soon need to pee, and that urine will smell like coffee. If you eat asparagus, your next pee will reek of asparagus. A number of foods or fruits can affect the smell of urine. If you've gone all night without peeing, the first pee of the day is likely to smell nastier than usual.

(I've often been told that drinking pee is safe because it is sterile. Well, it is sterile for the person producing it because it doesn't usually have live infectious organisms in it. However, it isn't like sterile saline. The kidneys filter out many sorts of things from the blood, such as dead red blood cells, white blood cells, and killed bacteria and viruses and toxins. Also, clearly, some proteins and other things that have their own scents. Drinking dead things may be toxic.)

Over the years, I've had a number of women squirt a lot while I was eating them and they were on their back and I had my hand in their Vagina. I'd close my mouth when it happened, but it often got on my face. It had a variety of odors and tastes, but it wasn't sweet. It varied from relatively bland to quite acrid. It was distinctive and different.

Then five years ago I had a girlfriend who loved to squirt a lot. I'd take her to parties where people enjoyed making her squirt. She was 65 and an excellent golfer in great shape. So, one night after I'd taken her to dinner, we were lying on her big soft bed, and she was riding me in a 69 position. She got so excited that she squirted massively, directly into my mouth, filling my mouth and nearly drowning me, in my mind's eye. It was like being waterboarded. The taste was not strong, but it was unpleasant. Frankly, it ruined our relationship, as I couldn't trust her to not squirt in my mouth. If you are a woman, imagine if you were giving a guy oral and instead of coming in your mouth, he started peeing in your mouth. Similar.

If you've ever tried to pee while you have an erection, you realize that it is difficult. You have to learn how. The internal urinary urethral sphincter closes tight to keep semen from getting into the bladder and to keep urine from getting into the semen and making it coagulate.

Peeing is a learned activity. If you've ever had a urethral catheter in you during and after a surgery, you know that after the catheter is removed, you have to learn to pee again, as it messes up a series of almost unconscious steps that leads to urinating—steps you are used to making without thinking about it. You have to deliberately relax certain muscles in a certain order.

Yet, you may have seen porn videos where men with erections pee. How do they do that? It's not by pushing harder. It's by learning to relax that sphincter that has always stayed shut tight during erections. Most men in these videos have to work at it for awhile.

I've often gotten women to squirt for the first time by telling them, "You've been trained to not pee during an orgasm, but this won't be pee—it will just feel like it. So, when you are about to cum, release your tight muscles in your pelvis and bear down as if you are peeing. That will make you squirt." It works!

But what is being squirted? Some is ejaculate from Skene's glands, and sometimes that's all it is, but that won't be much, even if they are engorged from stimulation and arousal. If it is a lot of fluid, it is far more than what Skene's glands can provide.

Now we know. "International Journal of Urology", Vol. 29, Issue 11, pp. 1368-1370. "Enhanced Visualization of Female Squirting," by Miyabi Inoue, Yuki Sekiguchi, Noriko Ninomiya, Tomoko Kobayashi, and Motoo Araki. Published 24 August 2022. The researchers studied women who were used to squirting a lot during sex. The researchers put urinary catheters into the bladders of five women, ages 30s to 50s. They injected up the catheters and into their bladders 40 ml. of saline and 10 ml. of indigo-carmine dye. Then they pulled out the catheters, and the women were sexually stimulated until they squirted, and some of the ejaculate was collected. (Three squirted while being masturbated and two during penile insertion.) In every case, the fluid was blue from the dye, but four of the women also had PSA (prostate antigen) in the fluid, indicating that there was also fluid from Skene's glands, which aren't prostate tissue but are related to it.

So, there you are. When a woman squirts hard, it is mostly urine, and it comes from her urethra, not her vagina. This means that when you have your characters drink that squirting, they are drinking pee. Do you want to get that detail right, or will it lead you to rewrite some passages, or does it not matter to you? It's a different kink than what squirting is generally held to be. If you have your characters talk about how they love it and drink as much of it as possible, perhaps you should then have them drink pee.

As for male cum, remember what I wrote earlier. "It is also said it has a high protein content. That is true. Proteins are amines. It contains the amines Spermine, Putrescine, and Cadaverine. Really! The smell of rotting food and rotting corpses!" Putrescine, as in "putrescence," a putrid odor. While the taste varies, before it is exposed to air, it isn't too bad, but when it oxidizes, it gets worse. Leave lots of cum lying around in your bed, rubbed into your skin, in your mouth, where you breathe, and expect corpse breath and a room that needs a lot of airing. "Smells like teen spirit in here!" In any case, if you have a lot of sex in a room, the room will smell like sex. You may not smell it yourself, but everyone else who enters the room will smell it. (This has been used in a number of stories.)

Another thing about cum is that the proteins in it immediately coagulate in water. If you didn't realize that, trying masturbating in your bathtub or swimming poor or into a glass of water. One of the proteins in both sperm and vaginal fluids is albumin, sometimes called serum albumin. Egg white contains a similar protein called ovalbumin (albumin from the ova, or egg).That's why egg white also coagulates in water, especially salted water or water with ammonia in it—like urine. Have you noticed that the consistency or pre-cum and cum is a lot like fresh egg white? (Try squirting fresh sperm into a hot frying pan. It will fry like egg white. Or if you like Chinese food, make egg drop soup with cum, instead. Just shoot it in and it will coagulate and look pretty.)

These proteins are not just in what comes out of testicles. They are in the ejaculate of men who have had vasectomies, too, even though they don't have any "swimmers." You can't tell if someone has had a vasectomy by looking at the sperm with the naked eye.