I remember the first time someone got their whole hand inside of me.

It was on my third date with a man who provided me with some of my darkest yet most intense moments of life. A charming sociopath who missed our first date because he was in county jail, and gave me a Japanese spyder knife as a courtship present on our second date. He later confessed he’d given it to me because he’d used it to slash the tires on SUVs while tripping on acid, and wanted to get rid of the evidence.

It comes as no surprise that this man was the first to succeed in fisting me when other lovers had tried and failed. He split me open and got under my skin in every way possible. But that first time he got his whole hand inside of me, it was better than drugs. No sex act has the capacity to reach quite that same sweet mix of pleasure, pain, and endorphins as fisting, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

The concept of fisting is pretty simple even if achieving the feat is somewhat complicated. You squeeze the fingers of the hand together to make the notorious “duck head”, then gently push and thrust with a lot of lube until you reach that critical juncture where you can fold your fingertips up into your palm and slide all the way in. While the entrance to the vagina or ass tends to be pretty tight, there’s generally a lot of space deep inside. Once you’ve managed to work the meatiest part of your hand into your orifice of choice, the relatively narrow wrist rests at the entrance, at which back you can pretty much kick back and enjoy the sensations of fullness almost indefinitely.

Once inside, you don’t even really need to move your hand much; there’s no “fucking” per se. The sheer intensity of stretching yourself wide open to let another person deep inside your body is generally more than enough stimulation.

Fisting is considered to be a rather taboo sex act for “straight” people, even though it is pretty standard fare for kinksters and queers. I’m a genderqueer femme in a relationship with a man, and my dirty secret is that I prefer a big man hand when getting fisted. I’ve taught workshops on fisting a few times, complete with live demonstrations. I’ve been fisted by men and women, and I’ve fisted men and women.

People cringe in horror when I talk about fisting. Fisting is culturally taboo as well — illegal to show fisting in porn, despite the fact that as Jenna Jameson astutely pointed out, her entire hand is probably smaller than the average porn star penis. I’m asked a lot if it makes you loose, or if a normal penis can’t compare after you’ve tried it. The answers are no, it doesn’t, and a penis just feels totally different, not better or worse. Being fisted is like yoga for your vagina or ass; it makes your pelvic floor muscles more elastic and flexible, but things pretty much always snap right back into place after an hour or two.

I’ve never been anally fisted (and do not want to be), but I can vouch that the experience of being vaginally fisted has a distinct arc: the pleasure of being fingered with the creeping urgency and slight pain of being stretched little by little as the hand goes deeper and deeper. There is the vaguely terrifying leap of faith when the fister curls their fingers and goes all the way in. There is that brief moment where the hand will feel impossibly big, like it will rip you in half, and you will want them to stop. You have to drop the fear and trust it, breathe through it. Then pain passes quickly as the hand slips all the way in, and is replaced by a strange feeling of relief, and the throbbing intensity of feeling fuller than you’ve ever felt before. You will want to just sit with it, be with it, figure out this feeling so unlike anything else.

You will feel impossibly close to your partner and vulnerable and raw. You’ll also feel like you’re floating on another planet where nothing matters but the showers of dopamine and endorphins your brain is issuing forth. You can have an orgasm while full of someone’s hand, but the orgasm will seem besides the point, a simple means to an end. Just the intimacy and trust of being that full, riding on the sensations so different from anything else, is incredible. It can feel like being high, post-verbal and disassociative. I once told my fister to stick his “other hand in my other vagina” because I was that tripped out. It’s addictive. And when it’s finally time for the hand to come out again, it’s easy, it just slides out like a fish swims. Afterwards you feel tired, and relaxed, and totally satiated. You want cuddles and ice cream and to fall asleep.

Fisting is admittedly not a sex act many people will engage in during their lifetime — either due to lack of interest, or being physically incapable. Some people like me were practically born for it, and stumble instinctively; I’ve always wanted more than 2 fingers inside me. Others will reject it, then try it and love it. I once went to a woman’s sex party where there was a girl who claimed it was impossible for her to be fisted. An hour later, with help from a Hitachi and a woman with a small hand, it happened. Every time I saw her after that, she would glowingly tell me how being fisted had changed her life, and how she needed it, wanted it all the time. She couldn’t get enough of it. So yeah, it’s like that. It’s not for everyone, but it is possibly one of the most intense sexual experiences you can have in your lifetime.