Most men won’t admit to wanting anything near their ass—much less inside it. For that reason, pegging, a sexual practice where one partner penetrates the other anally with a strap-on, is sometimes treated as taboo. The term pegging entered common usage nearly a quarter of a century ago, after the sex columnist Dan Savage held a contest in 2001 to name the act.

For the latest installment in our series on the Secret Lives of Men , we interviewed David*, who had long been intrigued by the idea of getting pegged by a sexual partner. When he finally had the experience he was seeking, the forty-year-old professor found that he was cracked open — not just by the sex, but by heartbreak, submission, and the unnerving thrill of surrender.

*Names and identifying details of the subj

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