In porn it’s called the “money shot” because it’s worth more than the rest of the film put together. In France they call it la petite mort, the little death, bringing connotations of terror and finality. In literature it’s euphemized as a “climax,” pointing to the moment everything so far has led to. But pomp and circumstance aside, an orgasm only lasts about 8 seconds.

But what a captivating 8 seconds!

While watching porn the other day I realized how short an orgasm is. The clip was a little over a minute long, but I was only interested in one 10-second period when the guy, beating off on a bed, moaned, arched his back and came on his chest. I re-played the shot again and again, watching his torso heave upward, his tanned muscles flex and face contort in one fleeting moment of ecstasy, then I’d re-start the scene a second later because I didn’t give a shit what happened in the video after the guy got off.

Consider that guys spend hours each day thinking about sex. Being 22 and having just been through the years when sexual fantasies are most intense, I know it all too well: we think about who we want it with, where we would find it, how we could get it to happen, and under what circumstances we would like it best.

We make life choices like where to live and what career to follow based partly on sexual opportunity — one of my biggest disincentives from joining the Peace Corps was that I didn’t want to be celibate for two years. For many, that’s the main lure of big cities and the reason to spend so many hours in nightclubs and bars.

And what is the most indispensable part of the sexual experience? According to most of Western culture — and to natural instinct — it’s an orgasm. We might love cuddling, being tied up or tying someone down, we might love the way our eyes meet when we know we’re both getting close — but all attention is really building toward that one, glorious moment. You can skip kissing before you unzip his pants and still feel good about the evening, but I don’t know anyone who stops right before he cums and can then get to sleep without problems.

A neurologist would say that an orgasm is the moment when dopamine, a neurotransmitter that heightens arousal, drops sharply when suppressed by a rush of prolactin, a hormone that makes the body relax and shuts off sexual desire. The intense spasm of an orgasm is just a burst of brain activity during the exchange.

We mythologize the transition with all kinds of descriptions — an orgasm is like electricity surging through our bodies, sexual energy exploding outward, sparks of life dancing through the air before a profound quiet — but the whole sensation is a quiet interaction of chemicals in the brain.

I used to think this porn clip was absolutely fantastic, especially since the subject of the video made a lot of noise, writhed passionately, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. “I’m gonna cum,” he said in a low, breathy voice, to let the viewer know he’s in that sweet build-up period that a Taoist describe as the most pleasurable moment in life. Then his head thrust back, his torso tensed up so his abs and chest muscles were sharply defined, and he gasped and moaned like the sky was falling. Seven beautiful spurts of pearly jizz flew from his penis like doves, to arc and plop in spatters on his chest — I’d sometimes time my own climax to blast at the exact same money shot moment in the video.

It was the lull afterward that brought my world of coitus crashing down. My subject forced an erotic moan, and grunted, enthusiastically; “God, that was great. God, that felt sooooo good.” He spoke as if in prayer, licked his hand and offered a satisfied grin that implied his life’s purpose was now fulfilled.

The way the guy in the video went on as if he were still in ecstasy was obviously an act. Those post-orgasmic moments are often a let-down -– it’s the moment of truth when we see our partners without the beer-goggles of arousal, and awkwardly try to small-talk as if we’re meeting for the first time, or the moment when we clean ourselves up and our minds wander to food and sleep. The orgasm itself is rarely as intense as we hoped it would be — if nothing else, it’s because we actually survived; something carrying so much anticipation should have been so good it killed us.

It should have brought the walls caving in around us or power-surged the light bulbs so they’d pop in showers of glass and sparks. At the very least an orgasm should last a couple minutes, gushing ’till our partners are covered with four pints of spooge, and we’ll slip, slide and mud-wrestle our way to the bathroom to rinse off. There’s something that would leave you singing “oh my God” even after it’s done.

Eight seconds per climax, even given the generous average of once a day over the span of an 80-year lifetime, adds up to no more than sixty hours of orgasm before we die — it’s 49 minutes per year, or 0.009 percent of our lives. The way we anticipate cumming is like spending every waking moment from August to June thinking about the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Yet there’s something so captivating about those eight seconds that we rarely think about how brief they are. There would be no new life without ejaculation, and the obsession with achieving them is an unchosen instinct designed to ensure biological success. Yet there’s no need for orgasms to linger when a few seconds is enough to release millions of sperm, there’s no need for sexual arousal to continue after that point, and the feeling only has to be just so good, just so fleeting, that we’ll eventually want to do it again.

At the very least we can enjoy an orgasm more often by proxy — thank goodness for the Internet and for the ability to rewind. Awareness may be enlightening, but biology is everything, and my world is not soon to change — I still think an orgasm is a worthwhile pursuit.

© 2008, Matt P.. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com