How do you slip into a gooning trance? 

I think it boils down to focusing your attention away from your ego.

It’s easier said than done. We have to be conscious of ourselves and things around us most of our lives. Doing the opposite isn’t something we practice. However, the bator community has created ways to do just that. I wish to explore them in this article.

First, let’s talk about consciousness and attention. 

I like to think about the mind as a big dark room. Our attention is the light we use to get around it. Whatever we are currently paying attention to becomes our conscious mind. Our attention will go to whatever is calling for it. Usually we wield our attention like a candle, lighting up the things around us including ourselves.

Falling into a trance requires us to wield our attention like a flashlight. To focus our attention on specific things and away from ourselves. The light may bounce back to us, but isn’t the main focus.

Then, how do you make your ego still?

You need something that commands your attention and holds it. You need to feel safe enough that your inner monologue doesn’t command your attention. There’s also substances that heighten sensations, weed and poppers are popular among bators.

There’s the alone way. 

The porn way. Find yourself a calm place, shut the lights, put on your headphones and put on a video. Gooner porn is designed to grab your attention by sensory overhelming, visual and auditory. If you do this at home, usually you are safe enough that your ego doesn’t get in the way.

The alone way has its dangers. It can frame sexuality in the realm of images and away from the body’s lived experience. It can make sex about consuming images and not about connecting with other bodies. It can also be isolating. Some people fall in Dom/sub relationships where porn is their master. Becoming a sub without a Dom, falling in without a security net. This is dangerous. Sex should always be a boon, never a shackle.

It is easier to follow this route. Doing it by yourself means you aren’t exposed to rejection. However, taking the risk of sharing ourselves with others pays off big time. Recognition brings healing.

There is the together way.

Inner monologue plays a bigger role here. We stop feeling safe when we feel at danger of being judged or rejected. These fears command our attention. But the community has organically created a path. The way of validation.

We can see it in the way we talk to each other. In the language itself.

A good example is the term “beautiful penis”. When talking about dicks, mainstream culture usually focuses on size and performance. A “big hard cock” is sought after, the rest deemed unworthy. A person cannot change the size of their dick. The fear of your penis not being “good enough” and thus being discarded entirely as a person is a real one in a community that gathers around masturbation. Yet bators tell each other they have a “beautiful penis”, an aesthetic appreciation, validation regardless of size. 

Bators call each other “brothers”. Part of it is creating a feeling of belonging, of being surrounded by people who have your back, among equals. This goes against the paralyzing fear of not being accepted in a group. This also plays into performance anxiety. If feel like you belong, you don’t need to perform to “earn your place”. You are in a safe space.

“Getting dumb on cock” is another big example. The fear of being ridiculous, of making a social faux-pas is ever present in our everyday interactions. When we start the interaction saying we’re gonna get “fucking dumb on dong” these fears melt away. It’s okay and even encouraged and celebrated to be ridiculous. You don’t need to control or consider the way you’re presenting, you can focus on feeling.

Then there’s the validation. When someone’s gooning, usually other bators say things like “such a dumb gooner” or “what a monkey” as celebration. Others are enjoying it. The gooner’s attention is brought farther away from fear and “deeper” into feeling “dumb”, into experiencing and riding their body sensations without control. Gooners often fall into these feedback loops and reach the sublime. You just need someone to show you how to do it and give you permission.

It’s not contained to gooning. Validation and compliment giving is part of bator culture. It’s common to hear people telling each other to show off their body and then giving them compliments about it. It’s not about being the fittest, it’s about appreciating how hot it is to see someone feeling sexy and confident. You can hear “yeah buddy!” and “you’re so sexy, bro” in almost any Zoom room. Thanking people for “fueling your bate” is commonplace. All these things make us feel confident and accepted in our bodies and in the community.

Finally, phrases like “up and down your dong” and “how’s that cock feeling bud” show some ways that bators focus their attention into the sensation and away from self analysis. Even when your penis feels good, being asked and saying it out loud focuses your attention on the sensation. Often the person asking is also feeling the same thing, knowing you’re both sharing the experience of pleasure is a big turn on.

These practices of gratitude and validation are embedded in the culture. They were not planned. They are the natural evolution and integration of things that worked for different people and then were shared and proliferated. Gooning together.

The gooning state, the pleasure trance, is a room with many doors. Gooners usually mix two or three ways together in order to fall in. I hope to explore some of the specifics in the next issue. Until then!