I mentioned the gooning state is a room with many doors. 

We’ll open two of them this time: bator babble and monkeybating.

But first, why so many doors? Why are there so many different pathways? 

Pathways

The short answer is: Our bodies are different. 

It sounds cliché but take a moment to contemplate this. 

One of the central aspects of the human experience is having to live our whole lives in our bodies. We are given a random starter toolkit and try to make the best of it. Maybe you get a sharp sense of smell or really good abstraction, maybe amazing hearing or being good at reading emotions. You don’t reach the same places with a hammer than with a rope. 

Our bodies are wildly different, and thus we experience things differently. That’s why we’ve created so many doors into the pleasure trance. Not all of them will work for you, but some you haven’t tried just might! 

Bator Babble and Verbal Bators

It’s a type of mantra. Repeated sounds or power words to focus our attention on the body experience. From the sacred Om sound to japa chanting, the Hare Krishna and Christian rosary prayers; ritual chanting has been around for as long as there’s been people to sing.

Sound is felt in the body. It literally shakes us. Hearing and saying certain sounds, feeling them, can quiet our minds. We get lost in them. In the repetition, in the syllables being uttered and the way they resonate. We prefer some sounds to others, we like the word ”dong” because it rings out like a bell. Sometimes the words don’t matter. A mantra doesn’t need to mean anything to be powerful.

But sometimes, the words do have meaning. Some words have deep associations that when heard, are felt in the body like jolts of ecstasy. Charged words. Some can weave them like spells. Verbal bators can get into a flow and, like horny sports commentators, start talking nonstop in a hypnotizing cadence that can drive whole groups of bators into a trance.

(Bless you all, horny fuckers!)

An aside for smell as a pathway. 

Those with a very sharp sense of smell can be completely overtaken by certain scents. I often see people’s eyes glaze over, their whole body reacting very viscerally to sniffing pits or socks, completely absorbed in the sensation. I have no more insight as my own sense of smell is moderate at best. 

Monkey/Gorilla-bating

The monkey bator. Ape sounds and flexing, beating chest and cock. High-energy, bold, unadulterated ecstasy. The prime gooner.

I’ve talked about making faces and neural pathways before. I’ve talked about giving each other permission and encouragement to sustain the trance. Today I’ll talk about shapeshifting, about projection.

Shapeshifting is everywhere. We call attractive men “studs”. Ballerinas dance “gracefully like swans”, we give each other “bear hugs”. We wear make-up and leather, put on masks and costumes. Everytime we do anything performative, it is there. We take the projected energy of something other than us —a cat, a rock, a porn star— and wear it.

We do it to communicate with each other. But also to grow, to transcend. It is how we dare to become something bigger than we are. We embody the thing and our body learns how to do it. Then we bring it back to ourselves. That’s why some of us become a 400-pound mass of uninhibited sex ape when we bate.

The confident showing off of pits and groin

the beating of the chest

the primal sounds, tongue moving

drool dripping down, unnoticed

shimmering, pooling on the chest

hard cock and balls hanging side to side

all of this, inviting, with a a spaced out big smile

It’s like being next to a campfire, the raw sexual energy shooting out.

Putting on the Ape mask allows us to display and project unrestrained, almost boundless sexual energy. Everyone around feels this intensity and is affected by it. It elevates the experience for the gooner and for anyone that tunes into that energy. 

Then we come back feeling confident and high on endorphins. It’s fucking magical. And mind-expanding. 

But I’m biased. 

You should try it out yourself.

Let me know how it goes.

We use the tools that work for us, that resonate with our body and our experiences. When we play with others they show us their ways, and we show them ours. That’s how we explore and grow, by learning from each other.

It’s not straightforward. While we bate all these “pathways”, these sensations meld into each other, they grow and diminish. You get self-conscious and then fall back into your body, you take a break to hydrate, you have a laugh and slowly get back into play. 

There is no “perfect trance”. There’s only gratitude for the experience, to our bodies, to life itself; and appreciation for those we get to share it with. See you again next issue!

If you’re immersed in bate culture, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you for reading and until next time!

*** You can listen to a 90-minute conversation about different people’s experience of gooning on Bator’s Journey #37, moderated by Nick Woof, JackAll Club and myself. Different approaches from different people. Check it out!