Usually try for the guy's boxers because I'm a dick." A 24-year-old woman had a similar, albeit crueler, system: "I use closest fabric or object to wipe it off. That often involves Kleenex or toilet paper, perhaps wadded up "as a tampon of sorts to catch residual junk," one 28-year-old woman reported. Many Mic readers (responding via Google form) fall into the "wipe that shit down" school of thought, to quote a 22-year-old female. "There are occasions when it generally stays put and is, like, absorbed into my system, I guess." The same goes for men who have sex with men, if various self-reports from male Mic readers are any indication, though the cleanup seems to require slightly less work, often little more than "a thorough wiping with a tissue," as one 27-year-old man put it.
The female anatomy doesn't function like an Oreck vaccum, diligently sucking up every ounce of baby-making juice, contrary to popular belief. Needless to say, it is totally normal for fluids to be expelled after sex. In fact, for a while, I assumed there was something wrong with me, and I even asked my gynecologist if what was happening was normal." "I didn't know to expect, that cum would literally be falling out of me (even though I'm familiar with the law of gravity)," she told Mic in an email. "Īmanda*, a 26-year-old woman, also reported being surprised the first time she had sex without a condom, with her husband on their wedding night. "Why is this part of sex never shown in movies or TV?" one 27-year-old woman told Mic. And yet the question of what to do after a dude comes inside you is rarely publicly addressed. It's a perspective that theoretically encompasses a good portion of the population, straight women and gay men included.
While O'Connor addressed the etiquette of where a male disposes of his semen, it didn't quite touch the perspective of the person into (or onto) whom the semen is disposed. "And while many negotiations are more fraught than where to come, few occur with such speed and urgency." "A successful sexual encounter will require many negotiations," she wrote. I found myself asking these questions this week, after writer Maureen O'Connor published an article in New York magazine discussing the politics of where to come. Do you shake it off, like a cat coming out of the bath or a Taylor Swift backup dancer? Or do you stand up and force it to seep out by jiggling around, like a preschooler at Gymboree? Do you wipe it down? And if so, who retrieves the towel? Do you do it in a house? Do you do it with a mouse? What to do after a guy comes? It's a question that comes up woefully infrequently during even the most candid conversations about sex.