Video Games and Sensual Touching

Success in video games requires touch. It requires gentle precision and adroit fingers. Buttons are purely tactile, as are the sensitive joysticks and directional pads. Triggers are pressure sensitive, and imputing combinations requires absorbing and processing feedback to succeed. All of these are the qualities of a successful lover. Processing the feedback of a partner, carefully and expertly manipulating the various inputs; these are the jobs of a lover.

I say 'lover', but I mean sexual partner. When you are engaged in such activity, you've entered into a sort of game. Think of clitoral stimulation, and the various complexities that lie herein. It is a button, in a sense. A button that can be the key to a sublime satisfaction, or a source of enigmatic frustrations. Just as handing a controller to someone who has never played a game may elicit a response of confusion, or incompetence, so too may introducing one to sex organs. They represent a feedback loop so similar to games, that the joystick is clearly modeled after the cock. "Work the joystick," they said. 

I am a gamer. I am not some Casanova of love, some man who has laid with a thousand women. I have lived a happily moderate sexual existence. The partners I have had, have a few things in common. My touch was special. During massage, during gentle caresses, my touch was special. A back rub? A foot rub? You want me to rub your clit? These powers of touch I owe to video games. 

Example: My wife begins with foot in sock. She casts it over to my lap, a gesture that demands a foot rub. I begin to work the toes, down to the heel. It is a gentle needing motion that works downward, touching every part of her foot. I study her face, feel her squirm and shift with pleasure.

“Take my sock off,” she pleads. I do. Bonus points. I have triggered the bare foot multiplier.

Now she moans as I push my thumb into the pad beneath her big toe. I use more force, it borders on painful. I study her feedback. I watch how she reacts to my touch. I input a series of actions that net further rewards, by responding to my “on screen indications.”

I know this may seem like I am minimizing sex. I know this is strictly from a male perspective. But I wonder, what if we treated our partners more like we treat our video games? We spend hours with them, coming to terms with their rules and their shortcomings. We learn their control scheme, and understand the positive and negative feedback loops. What if we spent as much time understanding our partner's needs, even when it is something so simple as a foot rub, as we did mastering our games? We are experts of touch. Shouldn't gamers be able to shed our reputation of insulated, ill-equipped, under-skilled sexual partners? Let's touch each other, not just ourselves.