I have friend in San Francisco who has been dubbed, by many grateful men, the “Avatar of Ass”. These days his hair may have greyed and his belly relaxed, but his passion for the anus is undiminished.

Chester Mainard first honed his skills in a Master of Science degree, then taught the “art and science of male pelvic exams” to medical students at the University of Wisconsin for some 14 years. He combined this work with private practice in massage and psychotherapy. In the mid-eighties he moved to California and began to teach at the Body Electric School of Massage, merging his expertise in the anal area with Joseph Kramer’s “Taoist Erotic Massage” – which focuses on breath, genital massage and full-body orgasm. This deepened and enriched Body Electric’s healing and transformative work, and anal work soon became a crucial part of the movement’s more advanced courses.

I remember a summer evening during one of Body Electric’s extended retreats. It was a balmy night in the mountainous area north of San Francisco, and about 40 gay men were listening with rapt attention to Chester give a talk that all of us had needed for years, but that none of us had ever heard. (Apart from information about safe-sex and prostate exams, who has ever seriously talked, in depth, to gay men about our anuses?) Chester’s presentation was frank, witty, respectful and so transparently honest that any embarrassment or awkwardness we felt was gently dissipated, leaving us free to really listen and learn. As gay men, most of us had stumbled into discovering that our anal area could be a locus of pleasure, but that discovery was often accompanied by shame, tension, pain, ignorance, and the kind of secret, smutty guilt fostered by a culture that coined the term “the abominable crime of buggery” to describe some of the most intimate, intense pleasure male humans can experience.

The anus, Chester informed us, has as many nerve endings as the tip of the tongue, the eye, or the glans of the penis, and so it is an area of exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness. For the same reason, this place of pleasure can also be a place of pain, a place where our bodies and psyches quickly shut down if physical or emotional abuse is experienced or sensed. From an early age, he pointed out, all of us had been taught to react to our anus as being dirty, smelly, unclean and disgusting – the one part of our bodies that was truly “untouchable”. Not surprisingly, much of the unhealed, unacknowledged, shame-filled, rejected parts of our emotional, psychological, spiritual selves had come to be associated with, pushed down towards and “held” in this anal area. The good news was that release, healing and ecstatic pleasure were possible – but only through dealing honestly and creatively with our assholes.

Over the next couple of days Chester and the Body Electric team led us into an extraordinary exploration of anal pleasure. The preparation was gentle, thorough and sensitive on both physical and emotional levels. Clear and careful protocols were established so that, with hygiene responsibly taken care of, we could relax into the process and open ourselves – both figuratively and literally – at new depths. Just as importantly, there was time for reflection, group process and personal support, so that our emotional needs and boundaries could be honoured.

What became clear was that for many men the whole anal area carries a sense of deep vulnerability. It is that part of our body-selves that we cannot see, and that we rarely allow others to see. We have learned to regard it with disdain, to keep it “private” and to hide it from “polite” company. Paradoxically, the kind of lusty anal play that many gay men enjoy can be a way of by-passing the more revealing, vulnerable kind of seeing and touching that truly conscious anal work demands. For some men it can be easier to be fucked than to be truly seen, easier to be rimmed than to be tenderly exposed and opened, easier to be roughly fingered than to surrender to intimate, delicate pleasure in this most vulnerable part of themselves.

Over those few days on that mountaintop, many of us discovered that when we allowed ourselves to fully receive this kind of conscious anal touch, all kinds of emotions, memories and yearnings rose into awareness. Along with new levels of profound pleasure, new levels of self-knowledge and healing became possible. All this was done with a lightness of touch, a gentle sense of humour and a respect for the plain, earthy realities of being human. At the very least, we all became aware of our arseholes in more realistic, honest ways, and developed a simple, healthy acceptance of this much derided, much neglected dimension of ourselves. That experience, in itself, is remarkable in our culture.

For myself, the whole experience was deeply affirming and healing, especially given my religious background, where “incarnation” was spoken of in reverent tones that only hid unacknowledged fear of the body and sanctified rejection of the messiness of ordinary humanity. If the “Glory of God is the human person fully alive” – as the Churches love to say – then that human person has an arsehole, and until this plain reality is integrated with reverence and delight, the Glory of God cannot be manifested and I cannot be the person God intended me to be. The path to emotional, psychological and spiritual healing and wholeness lies in and through our arseholes – with all the blessing, anguish, joy and learning they hold for us.

For all that, one of my favourite memories of this journey into anal pleasure, led by the “Avatar of Ass”, came towards the end of the retreat. Chester was making the point that we could no longer refer to difficult people as “assholes”, since we now knew our assholes were sacred places of delight. What to do? After various suggestions, we hit upon “haemorrhoids” as the appropriate word – painful and pointless irritations that get in the way of anal pleasure. I know a few – I suspect you do too – and the best way to deal with them is to have a healthy, holy, happy anus.

And I can offer you, dear reader, no better blessing.