¶N¤¢01þ02COCK-RINGS ARE FOREVER!þ01 ¢02Written by:¢03 The HeavyWeight/Devious. ¢02 Some of you may have noticed the current vouge of jabbing bits of metal thought any bit of flesh dumb enough to protrude more than a millimetre from the rest of the body. Catwalk models, rockers, receptionists and even 12-year old schoolboys, now sport a varity of nose-spikes, navel-studs, eyebrow- rings, and lip-chains that just a few years ago would of looked wierd on sado-macochist barnyard animal. Yes, it is only the "acceptable" face of the phenomenon. You'd be straggered by the number of number of otherwise normal Australians who have gone to great expense and pain (God, think of the pain!) to have a whole armory of clinking-clanking things hammered though thier penises and vaginas. The first thing you thing of when confronted with this information - apart from aaarrrrghh - is WHY? Obviously, these dingling doodads serve no comsetic purposes, (unless the pierce-ee is a flasher of a porn-star), and would seem to make otherwise routine tasks like accurate urination tricky, to say the least. (And a casual stroll though crowded airport metal-detectors doesn't bear thinking about.) The answer is - not suprisingly, considering just what these trinkets are attached to - SEX; specifically, the sexual act itself and possibly enhancement therefore. Now dozens of the shady world of gay male S&M have long known that, for the 50 percent of men who have erectile nipples, voilent stimulation of said nipples can cause intant tumescence in a far more important erectile organ. (Don't ask me why this is, or why half of the male gender is condemmed to a life of limp nipples - it just is.) Running rings through these nipples, and then giving them a good tweak, naturally stimulates the bejeesus out of them and grants throbbing hardons to many old queens who'd otherwise be lucky to get a whimper out of their whithering weeble-sticks. (And I say this in the nicest possible manner.) Nipple-rings aren't new either: Roman centurions had them and often used to attach their capes, though what kind of sub-toga action this provoked has not been passed down to us. The vagina/penis piercing rationale is similar, if slightly more radical. Take Prince Albert for instance. The notourious accoutrement is a ring which passes through the mouth of the urethra (uuuurrrnnnggh!) and pierces the flesh at the base of the penis-head (nooooouuihhh!). It is named after Queen Victoria's husband, who had apparently used to keep his foreskin permently retracted and this was sweet-smelling for wifey. Though I had great difficultly envisioning the good Queen Vic saying, "Oh Albert, your cock smells so nice today", it's a fact that others used it to keep thier disorderly dongers neat for the skin-tight trouser fashions of the day. (You passed a string though the ring and tied your penis to your thigh.) In these days - thank God - of loose-fitting jeans, its purpose is entirely erotic. The sensations ot produces are allegedly wild, though primarily for the wearer rather then his partner. The dydoe and the ampallang, on the other hand, are much more democraic, enhancing intercourse for both frigueur and frigger. Dydoes look like tiny metal dumbells and are always worn in pairs - one though either side of the upper edge of the penis head of glans. Dydoe-wearers swear that they bring back to the circumsized penis the sentation lost with the foreskin, and thier partners - male and female - add that the sexual expirence takes on a whole new dimension, I shouldn't wonder ... The ampllang is also a tiny metal dumbell, but its placing and use are very different. It's been deployed in South East Asia since time immemorial, and can be made of ivory, bone, silver, even gold. It is inserted horizontally through the middle of the glans just above the urethra, often as an initition-rite or at the onset of puberty. As a partner-pleasuring device the ampallang is said to be unparallelled and in some societies, woman have been known to refuse men without them and even specify the size and shape of the ampallang they prefer. Some authorities have even linked the almost exclusively South East Asia employment of the ampallang to those peoples' constant worry about penile dimensions. (And yes, it can be told: Malays have, on average, the smallest penises on earth. But then, they are smallish people.) Another nation disturbed by diminutive dongers is Japan. Their solution shows every sign of Nipponese ingenuity, among the Yakuza at least. These Japonese mafiosi insert a pearl just under the skin of the penile shaft every time year they spend behind bars. Yakuza molls are addicted to these knobbly knob-sticks, and lifers are in great demand. Resourceful Japanese even make a special battery powered dildo versions of the pearl studded penises, which feature a revolving shaft stuffed with plastic ball-bearings. (What'll they think of next?) And then there are the frenum and the guiche, bizarre in both placements and function. The frenum is actually the loose piece of flesh under the cock head where the glans joins the shaft. A ring which is passed through here then flipped over the head, acts like a built-in cock ring. In other words, once any action is under way, the ring traps the blood in the business-end and keeps the erection harder longer. The gutche ring, however isn't even on the penis - it passes through the raphe perinel, the strange seam of flesh between the penis and the anus. Popular among South Pacific tribesman, tugging on this ring at orgasm is said to prolong climax for miutes on end. Having said all this in an authoritative manner, it's embarrassing to admit that the jury is still out on labial and clitorial piercing. Until very recently the only labial peircing we saw were the hideous examples of female circumcisions and "inflibation". This is now erroneously used to refer to female or "Pharaonic" circumcision, but actually means to seal the vagina with a clasp, or fibula. Clitorial piercing is a modern phenomenom. (The old "Pharoniac" usage involved cutting the clitoris off altogether.) Beating that in mind, both piercings have become increasingly popular with the very serious S&M act - hetero or lesbian - and they swear by them, though the medical community continues to regard them as cosmetic rather than erotic (for whatever reasons.) Depite my personal misgivings about sexual piercing, I have to add that very few people regret their piercings, and many become so addicted to them they end up with a combination of some or all of the piercings described above. They're just not for me. Call me a cock-worshipping penile-supremacist pig, but nothing, not even the golden promise of hours of orgasmic bliss, could ever convince me to go through life with some kind of charm bracelet threaded through my long suffering dick. But the prospect of a piercing of a pierced politition intrigues me... For all we know Paul Keating already has nipple rings, but how about Brownwyn Bishop with a ampallang through her hair-do? Or Alexander Downer with a spike - right through his forehead?