Ask Beastly: How to Douche Like a Champion

My name is Alexander Cheves. Lovers call me Beastly. I write about sex, culture, and the thrills of homosexuality for a few magazines.

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So how do you maintain and keep it clean for anal sex? I’m normally a top and my boyfriend is a top but I agreed to be more versatile in our relationship. He complained the other night that I’m never ready or clean… so how can I make it more pleasurable? How can I keep it clean? Is it safe to douche often? I just honestly don’t know how to maintain it and we certainly want to have a lot more sex often. 

Hi top,

Has your boyfriend also agreed to be versatile? If you’ve agreed to this, so must he. I assume you two are monogamous, so finding a third guy — a bottom or versatile guy — to come play is out of the question. That’s too bad, since non-monogamy would fix this problem, and there are many bottoms out there who’d love to play with you two. But if you are monogamous, that means you are both equally entrusted to meet each other’s sexual needs, which means he must bottom sometimes too.

His complaint is a bit silly. No one walks around ready to get fucked. No one is naturally, effortlessly clean. You can clean out really well and then not eat for several hours, during which time you can walk around ready to get fucked, but that’s the best you can do. Contrary to what some guys say, you cannot clean all the shit out of your body, and it’s dangerous and unhealthy to try. So at some point, you will eventually have a bowel movement, and then you’ll have to clean again.

If you don’t care about shit, you can fuck in the heat of the moment and clean up after. If you do care about shit, you (or he) will have to hop in the bathroom and douche a bit before you fuck. Depending on your diet, this can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours (or more). If it takes longer than that, you should stop, because you’re just irritating your gut at that point. It’s not going to happen and you should do something else.

The number one piece of advice I tell everyone about douching — pros and beginners alike —  is that you should probably douche less. If you’re having unsuccessful results, you’re probably douching too much and going too deep. I get fisted regularly and I still only clean the first “chamber” inside my hole, and I don’t play much deeper than that. (If you’re a fist pig into deep play, there are ways to clean for that, but those cleaning methods are overkill for regular penis fucking.)

Here’s what I do: first, have lukewarm water. Second, keep the water at low pressure (this only applies if you’re using a shower shot or attachable hose — if you’re using a douche bulb, don’t worry about water pressure). I hold the nozzle in my butt for five full seconds, then immediately expel it. This “declutters the runway” — gets all the major bits just inside my rectum out. Then I hold the nozzle in my butt for ten to twenty seconds and hold it in. I don’t clench — I just don’t push it out. I do this for about a minute (I count sixty seconds in my head), then release. Holding the water in my butt sends a signal to my brain that there’s something in me that needs to be pushed out, which will, in turn, activate the deeper parts of my gut and push things further up the pipe down and out — though it takes a bit for things to make their way down, so I take breaks between rounds, squatting in the shower or on the toilet. One round is: 5 seconds – expel, 10 seconds – hold. I do between three to five rounds total — that’s my golden window, though I imagine it will be different for everyone. The whole process should take between 10 and 30 minutes.

This next bit does not really apply to you, but it might be of interest to the fisting guys reading this. If I am douching for a fisting night and expect to go a little deeper or do intense punches or something more advanced like that, the “10-seconds inside me, one-minute hold” doesn’t quite work. I hold it in for 30 seconds, counted quickly in my head and usually out loud, too. So for more intense fisitng, the sequence becomes: 5-second, immediately expel, 30-seconds, wait a minute, then expel. I do this around 4 times. After that, I’m usually good.

After this first round in the shower, I find it really helps me to relax, get off my feet, meditate, or do something calming for about 40 minutes (or more), then I hop back in and do a quick check — one or two rounds at most — and by that point, I should be fine.

Before ever starting this process, I’ve almost certainly taken an Immodium pill or two, usually an hour before, which I recommend if you have a typically cranky tummy like mine. This seems to have the effect of halting the activity of one’s bowels for a while (and for that reason can lead to a crampy tummy and gas later on). Using Immodium this way is not its prescribed use and is probably not good for you in the long run, but I’ll be dead in thirty years. Nothing matters.

The most “work” in douching doesn’t happen when you douche — it happens every day. If you want to bottom regularly, you should take a fiber supplement twice a day. I also recommend taking a decent probiotic — douching can interrupt the good mucosa in your gut that you need to process waste, which can cause intestinal issues. Reinvigorating your gut with healthy cultures from a good probiotic is necessary for people who douche regularly.

The most important part of my douching regimen involves what I put in my mouth every time I eat. You simply can’t out-douche a bad diet — a diet heavy with processed sugar, saturated fats, heavily processed food, and so on. Eating clean has been the most important element of my sex life as a bottom, and is certainly the hardest — I have the world’s biggest sweet tooth. But I know how good my body feels — and how much better my douching regimen goes — when I’m diligent about my diet, and remembering that helps me stay on it. I still have splurge days and pastry days like everyone should, but overall I consume a pretty good diet of non-processed, whole foods that are naturally high in fiber. This helps tremendously.

As far as fiber supplements go, some people take Metamucil two to three times every day. You can find Metamucil in any pharmacy or drugstore. Metamucil comes in loose powder, which is mixed in water, or in capsule form. I have also had luck with Pure For Men, a fiber supplement marketed to gay men. Metamucil is cheaper, and for years I maintained that it was just as good as Pure For Men — I claimed the latter was just an overhyped marketing gimmick — but I’ll confess that in recent years I’ve been a little converted to PFM. I now take two to three PFM capsules twice a day, morning and evening, and my douching has become faster and easier.

Fiber (obtained either through fiber supplements or fibrous foods) collects your poop together and cleans out your colon and rectum, so when you use the bathroom, everything goes, leaving little left over to clean out later. This makes douching much easier.

If you’re eating lots of heavily processed junk food, you’re still going to have problems douching. Thankfully, a bottom-friendly diet is mostly just a healthy diet. Eat lean meats and veggies. Avoid excessive sugar. Avoid fried and fatty foods.

If I’m getting fucked by one or two guys, I use a hand-pump bulb. If I’m going to a sex party or fucking in public, I’ll use a shower hose attachment and clean a bit more heavily. Do what works best for you. Everyone has a different clock — a different number of seconds to hold the nozzle in, a different douching sequence and rhythm — that works best for them. Make sure the water is lukewarm (not hot!) and at a gentle pressure. Count the seconds in your head and learn, through trial and error, what length of time is best for you and your body.

Everyone has their own douching technique that forms after years of practice — a goldilocks regimen created through successes and failures. Failures are good! Be gentle with yourself, go slow, and don’t beat yourself up when it doesn’t work. Remember that you can’t fully control the body, and certainly not your own GI system, and attempts to muscle over it — to clean heavier and deeper and starve yourself — will hurt you rather than help you.

For more on ass cleaning, read part one and part two of my bottoming guide in Them.

Finally: be less afraid of shit. You’re playing in the butt. Shit is going to happen. Even with the best diet and cleaning method, your body will still surprise you, and there will be moments when you have to run back into the shower.

If your boyfriend is a good one, he’ll be understanding when you have to clean again or simply can’t get clean and have to call it a night. Better yet, he’ll bottom instead.

Love, Beastly