The three rules

Three rules. Each one comes straight out of the last step, and each one exists because of a specific way guys get hurt.

No jokes in this one. The rest of this app has fun with itself. This part has to be believed.

Rule one: flared base, every time

Anything that goes in your booty needs a flared base, a handle, or a ring that stays outside your body.

The reason is anatomy. A vagina is a closed space with a stopping point. Your rectum isn't. It keeps going into your colon. On top of that, the muscles in your anal canal move in a way that pulls things further in, not back out.

Something with no backstop can travel past where you can reach it.

A flared base is wider than the widest part of the toy and sits flat against you. A handle works if it's long enough to stay outside. Watch out for decorative plugs where the jewel on the end is narrower than the body of the plug, because that is not a flared base no matter what it looks like.

How bad this actually gets

One published study looked at patients treated for something stuck in the rectum. Sexual use was the most common cause at 45.4 percent, which is more than swallowed objects, assault and falls put together. Of those patients, 22.7 percent showed up with peritonitis, an infection of the lining of the abdomen that needs emergency surgery.

Read that carefully, because we're not going to oversell it. That study describes what happened to men who ended up in a hospital. It can't tell you how likely it is to happen to you. What it tells you is what this looks like when it does go wrong, and it isn't embarrassment.

Household objects almost never have a real flared base. Guys use them anyway, in every community we researched, and the same guys admit it's unsafe. How often something happens is not us saying it's fine.

If something does go further than you can reach, don't go after it with anything else and don't keep bearing down. Go to urgent care. This is routine for them, and waiting makes it worse rather than less embarrassing.

Rule two: pain means stop

Not slow down. Not push through. Stop.

You know from the last step that you've got two rings of muscle and only one of them takes orders. Pain is the signal coming from the one that doesn't. It's telling you something hasn't let go yet, and wanting it to let go won't change that in the next ten seconds.

Pushing through pain is how the tissue in there tears. Those tears heal slowly, they hurt for weeks, and they can turn into a long-term problem that needs a doctor. There is no version of this where forcing gets you there faster.

This is why we'll never tell you to numb up

Numbing products exist and they're sold for exactly this. Using one deletes the only warning system you have. If you can't feel the damage, you'll keep going until it's done.

Pain here isn't in your way. It's information, and it's the most useful thing your body tells you.

Discomfort that fades as you relax is a different animal from pain that sharpens when you keep going. You'll learn the difference with practice. Until then, treat anything sharp as a full stop.

Rule three: lube, every time

Never spit. Never water. Never nothing.

You know why from the last step. Your booty makes a little mucus, but it doesn't respond to arousal and there's nowhere near enough of it. Friction with no lube is the other main way guys tear.

Use more than you think you need, then top it up partway through. Water-based lube dries out or goes tacky, and that moment is exactly when men get hurt.

Which lube you buy genuinely matters, and there's measured evidence behind that. It's covered properly in Level 3, when you're actually about to buy something. For now the rule is just: always, and plenty.

When to see a doctor

Go, without waiting to see whether it settles, for any of these.

• Bleeding that's more than a streak, or any bleeding that keeps going
• Pain that's still there the next day
• Something stuck that you can't get out
• A tear that hasn't healed in a couple of weeks

None of this is strange to a doctor and they've seen it before. Ten minutes of embarrassment beats the alternatives, and waiting is the one thing here that reliably makes it worse.