Queer n There	Queer n There Archive

Sorry, it's too late to sign up. But starting September 11th-- a day in which we aptly commemorate towering eruptions-- you can watch online a blow-by-blowjob chronicle of the adventuresome couples, straight and gay, who enrolled in a program to test a pill reputed to improve the taste of semen.

The above sentence is not intended to make merry of terror, appear cum-negative, or imply there's anything irredeemably foul about the taste of a fellow's most manly emission.

In fact, faith that semen can be improved-- even unto tasting like apples-- is what motivated Lovehoney.co.uk, a British sex toys catalog, to recruit couples to test "Sweet Release," a made-in-USA food-based pill that comes in that flavor, and promises to have users' oral-sex partners smacking their lips for more.

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"We've been completely overwhelmed," Lovehoney's Ali Carnegie tells The Guide about the response to their call-- some 2000 couples altogether. That suggests a lot of folks are regularly puckering mouths at a flavor often described as a melange of "metallic," "grassy," and "bleach." And that's not counting the rank notes of garlic or Marlboro that a man's consumer habits might additionally impart.

"Originally we presumed it would be the men applying and adding their girlfriends' names without asking them," Carnegie says. "But it's been a big response from women as well, who say things like, 'I'm really keen to improve the taste of semen,' or 'I'll do anything to make it taste better.'"

Guys, don't take that personally. Semen has a big job to do, and nature didn't put taste-buds in the vaginal tract-- which, from a sperm-eye's view, is a deadly war zone. In fact the vagina is so biochemically unwelcoming to a man's sex cells, you'd think it was built just for lesbians. Vaginal flora, kin to the acidophilous in yogurt, expose a man's genetic patrimony to corrosive lactic-acid. On top of that, once a man shoots inside her, a woman's immune system rallies against the onslaught of spermatozoa as if they were alien invaders. In response, semen builds in some savvy-- though unsavory-- biotech of its own.

Spooge, accordingly, is a complicated brew. Like blood, cum is comprised of both cells (sperm in this case, 200 to 500 million of them per load, plus some lymphocytes) and plasma (95 to 98 percent of the volume). That plasma bathes the energy-hungry sperm in fructose, some zinc ions (around 5mg-per-ejaculation, to protect sperm cells' precious genetic cargo), prostaglandins (to damp down feminine immune defenses), and such poetic-sounding, acid-busting amines as putrescine and cadaverine.

But should guys be popping pills to sweeten their load when they could, according to anecdote and urban-legend, be eating pineapple (notable semen sweetening in only 24 hours, your correspondent can attest), kiwis ("My last hookup tasted like them," a friend relates, suggesting word is getting out), drinking plenty of green tea, and avoiding meat, asparagus, beer, curry, and tobacco?

How do these flavors wend their way, for good or ill, into semen, anyway?

Hoping to put that question on a more scientific footing, a call was put in to Blue Mountain Nutraceuticals in St. Paul, Minnesota-- Sweet Release's makers. Alas, instead of biochemistry, the answers proffered by a staffer, who asked that we call him Ronaldo Niermayer, seemed to devolve into a medieval discourse on bodily humors.

The headwaters of semen, said Ronaldo, lie in mucus.

"You are what you eat-- that's a cliché that's out there," Ronaldo noted. "Any kind of moisture that comes from the body-- whether sweat or saliva-- comes from the mucus," he went on, granting "that's kind of a bad word to use."

"What we do is actually flavor the mucus part of the body," the Blue Mountain spokesman explained. The firm's pill achieves that end with a certifiably nontoxic mixture of fruit essences in a base of omega-3, -6, and -9 fatty-acids derived from cranberry seed. It's all calculated, Ronaldo says, to deliver those flavors right into a man's mucus.

So while Sweet Release works its magic on semen, is its real metier adding a fruity je ne sais quoi to snot? "We haven't heard anyone saying it," Ronaldo says.

The Mucus Theory of Semen seems, if not all wet, at least a bit slippery. There's indeed a soupçon of mucus in semen, declares Wikipedia-- helping sperm swim together upstream through even more viscous vaginal secretions-- but it's a tiny component.

For a more likely source of semen's variable flavor, look to the prostate. About a third of ejaculate, by volume, comes from that gland. And even though urology doesn't know exactly why, it's evident that the prostate has an appetite of its own. That's why the lycopene in tomatoes, the turmeric in curry, the omega-3 fatty acids in fish, and the sterols in pumpkin seeds appear to be so good for prostate health (and an excess of animal fat so bad). Sweet Release's theory of mixing healthy fats with fruit essences probably makes sense-- if you're not up for regularly downing a pineapple/kiwi/cod-liver-oil smoothie. (Disclosure: a free bottle of the pills is in the mail to your correspondent to try.)

But wait-- is fruit-flavored cum what the world's been waiting for? Isn't semen's challenging taste and funny mouthfeel, as the ads say of Campari, what makes the first time so memorable? Ladies and gentleman of the jury: a world where assholes resembled rosebuds by smell and not just sight, where foreskins were redolent only of sweet butter and not gorgonzola, where cunt-lappers enjoyed no hints of fishmongers and souring milk, would be a world less real, less chunky, ultimately less satisfying. We wish Lovehoney's guinea pigs our best as they begin their 9/11 oral sex odyssey. We hope they savor many fruity hits from the bursting towers of their manfriends. But we'll take our semen au naturel.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com