My friend in Thailand sent me a picture this morning. I was apprehensive to open it until I had my coffee, since it usually contains some raucous scene of him and his partner having oodles of fun while I yell at squirrels to get the fuck off my birdfeeder. This time though, it was a picture of ‘butterbeer’. “We’re at a Harry Potter-themed bar!” And, since it is Thailand, I asked, “Are there Harry Potter-themed sex workers there?” This, of course, led down a rabbit hole of us trying to come up with names for a Harry Potter-themed brothel (The Forbidden Section, The Whomping Willow, simply Hagrid’s), and then it devolved into magical spell sex puns like expecto sextronum and Alo Ho Mora.
Yeah, my friend and I are sex-nerds. Worse: ’90s sex nerds. We grew through our teenage years alongside Harry Potter. When he started having crushes, so did we—all the drama, rogue-boners, loves and losses he had, we had. So, of course, we have this clawing sensation at the back of our minds whenever sex and Harry Potter get jumbled into one, this feeling that something here is very-very right about this. Naturally, we’re not alone: the internet has a staggering amount of Harry Potter-themed porn and sexy fanfic, but it got me thinking about how men (well, nerds) can healthily realize these fetishes. They’re not always role-play, per se. There’s Wand Sounding (using a wand as a sounding rod), sex dolls, themed toys, guides, and more.
“We grew through our teenage years alongside Harry Potter. When he started having crushes, so did we—all the drama, rogue-boners, loves and losses he had, we had.”
As an aside, please keep in mind that a desire to get dressed up in robes and fuck on a dragon in no way supports any of J.K. Rowling’s transphobic awfulness. She created a world where people definitely have some crazy wonderful sex, then wrote seven books and a play where nobody fucked—I mean, come on? With teasing like that I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t have a Harry Potter fetish…
That said, I’ve never brought it up in a relationship. I’ve done themed role plays: “Mr. Police Officer What Can I Do To Get Out Of This Ticket,” “Help I’m On Fire—Okay, Now I’m Not, Let’s Fuck,” and “The Fox and The Hound.” But those were always because my partner wanted them. If I had asked one of them to Petrificus Totalus me and then stick a wand in my penis, I don’t think they would’ve found it as hot. But maybe?
It doesn’t stop at Harry Potter. There is something about Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Star Wars, and more. A fantasy fetish is a hard thing to explain to someone who was never into fantasy (i.e. cool folks). And I know a lot more men who were into fantasy than women—this isn’t by any means a rule, but most female friends I’ve had either aren’t into fantasy as much or didn’t find it as sexual. Of course, if you bring up Twilight, that story changes. I’m sure there is some psychological mumbo-sex-jumbo to explain why—in binary terms—men more often want to fondle pointy-eared elves while women are more into blood-sucking old dudes. (I’m pretty sure it’s because boys read book after book of sexual tension between characters where the only payoff is “and then someday they had a baby”, whereas vampires just fuck… But, I’ll leave that to the sex-science folk.) I’m more interested in how men can take these teenage fantasies that developed as they hit puberty, and turn them into a reality.
The most obvious way this happens is porn. Endless porn. LOTR, Harry Potter, even Pirates of the Caribbean. But to live it? Should we want to live it? It’s kind of awkward to ask for a teenage nerd-sex-fantasy to be fulfilled. It’s just not cool. I only had one friend, around my age, who had done it when he was in college. His girlfriend dressed up as Hermione Granger for Halloween and they played it out. But she was also into Harry Potter, so it all worked out. Others, though, answers came more in the form of “yeah, that would be hot, but no…” And, from one: “Naw, not nerdy enough for that.”
Meanwhile, there is a lot more comfort around toys, ropes, butt-plugs with tails. A lot of sexual fetishes can be explained with, “I like this because it feels good, want to try?” Whereas a nerd sex fantasy requires a bit of conversation: “So, when I was a kid, I read these books about wizards, elves, orcs—orcs are these green bald guys—and there was a ring—no, just a normal ring. Yes, this is a sex thing, hold on, I’ll get there.” I’ve never managed it. A lot of older guys I spoke to didn’t seem to have this problem as much—sure, a couple of Star Trek fetishes were in there. For younger guys, it was more about video games, which, like my older counterparts, I didn’t understand.
“A lot of sexual fetishes can be explained with, “I like this because it feels good, want to try?” Whereas a nerd sex fantasy requires a bit of conversation…”
Every generation of nerds grows up through a confusing stage of holding onto that childhood fantasy world while simultaneously wanting to have sex with everything in sight. Put this in a blender with pubescent angst and those fantasies stick around. So, how to make them a reality? If I’m honest, the porn industry around fantasy sex—especially Harry Potter—has made life uncomfortable for the actresses who played those roles in movies, so I’m not inclined to support it. Of course, plenty of folks of all genders are into fantasy, so it’s always possible to simply find a partner who is into it as well. But if you’re with a partner who isn’t, maybe start with a movie marathon, then a sexy Halloween, then maybe a crossover episode… Edward Cullen on the Enterprise?
Just be wary of anyone looking to roleplay “Cerce and Jamie Lanister Climb the Tower”.
Podcast Transcript: