SEX IS NICE and pleasure is good for you. We’ve said this before, and it bears repeating. In our present lives, your authors enjoy sex for its own sake, and it feels natural and comfortable, but we want you to know that it wasn’t always this easy for us. In a culture that teaches that sex is sleazy, nasty, dirty, and dangerous, a path to a free sexuality can be hard to find and fraught with perils while you walk it. If you choose to walk this path, we congratulate you and offer you support, encouragement, and—most important of all—information. Start with the knowledge that we, and just about everybody else who enjoys sex without strictures, learned how to be this way in spite of the society we grew up in—and that means you can learn too.
The word “sex” gets used as though everyone agrees on what it means, but if you ask people what they actually do when they have sex, you’ll hear about a huge range of behaviors and interactions.
We have talked before about sex being part of everything and about everything being part of sex. Now let’s talk about the parts that most people call sex—the parts that involve lips and nipples and clits and cocks and orgasms. Sex may involve these parts, but we don’t think it’s about them; the genitals and other erogenous zones are the “how,” not the “what.”
The “what”—what sex actually is—is a journey into an extraordinary state of consciousness, where we tune out everything extraneous to our emotions and our senses in this very moment, travel into a realm of delicious sensation, and soak in the deep connection that we share in sex. This journey is a voyage of awakening, as if the nerves whose job it is to transmit feelings of delight had been lying asleep but have suddenly leaped to attention, aflame, in response to a nibble or a caress.
Perhaps what we call foreplay is a way of seeing just how awake we can get—all excited attention from our earlobes and ankles out to the ends of our hair—the prickling of the scalp, the tingling in the arch of the foot. The glorious miracle of sexual anatomy is that any of these awakenings can set off the swelling in the loins, lips, nipples, cocks, and cunts, which awakens lots more intense nervous networks buried inside us, till we are all lit up like fireworks.
Sex is anything you do or think or imagine that sets the train in motion: a scene in a movie, a person on the street you think is hot, swelling buds of wildflowers bursting in a meadow, a fragrance that opens your nose, the warm sun on the back of your head. Then, if you want to pursue these gorgeously sexy feelings, you can increase the swelling tension, and your sensual focus, with any kind of thinking or touching or talking that humans can devise: stroking, kissing, biting, pinching, licking, vibrating, not to mention erotic art and dance and hot music and silky stuff next to our skin.
So sex covers a much larger territory than genital stimulation leading to orgasm. Sex that’s limited to perfunctory foreplay and then a race down the express track to orgasm is an insult to the human capacity for pleasure.
Here’s a happy way to answer the question of what is sex: if you or your partner is wondering whether you’re having sex at any given moment, you probably are. We like to use an expanded definition of sex, including more than genitals, more than intercourse, more than penetration, and, while we definitely wouldn’t leave them out, much more than the stimulations that lead to orgasm. We like to think that all sensual stimulation is sexual, from a shared emotion to a shared orgasm. One friend of ours, a professional sex worker, remembers:
I’d had a regular session with this guy once before, but one day he showed up, put $400 on the table, and said that he just wanted to talk. So we lay down together on the futon and talked all evening. It was one of the most intensely sexual experiences of my life; it felt like being in love. We were in this profound heart chakra communication, a space of pure communion that felt luscious and sweet, as thick as honey. We were close enough that we could feel the heat of each other’s bodies, almost but not quite touching—we tried touching a couple of times, and it diminished the energy. We were so turned on I felt nauseous. It was mind-boggling.
When we expand our concept of what sex is, and let that be whatever pleases us today, we free ourselves from the tyranny of his hydraulics, the chore of getting her off, perhaps even birth control and barriers, if we decide that outercourse is perfectly good sex in and of itself.
Pleasure is good for you. So do what pleases you, and don’t let anybody else tell you what you ought to like, and you can’t go wrong.
Remember the clean love, in the moment and without expectations, that we talked about earlier in this book? It’s a skill you can bring to your sex life, and it’s based on getting present and accepting yourself.
Cast your mind back to your childhood, some time you remember being happy. Children are naturally adept at being in the moment. To recover that consciousness, take yourself to a park and investigate that interesting twig you’ve found in the interesting dirt. Go to a beach and take your shoes off. Wade at the water’s edge; how do your toes feel, in the grass, the sand, the surf? Dig a hole in the sand while the tide is coming in. Pay attention to your surroundings; pay attention to your experience.
Then pay that same rapt, joyous attention to your beloved; this will probably feel good. So do it some more—you are a nice person, so is your beloved, you both deserve to feel good.
Hands on skin is a great way to get into the present, into connection, and into love. Wash each other’s feet, find some lotion, and massage your lover’s feet. Take turns. Put aside future tripping: will this lead to sex? Who cares? The two of you are in the moment, feeling your feet.
Your authors are in no way opposed to the intense beauty of genital sex. But all of us need to work on paying attention to what we feel in the moment and to how that connects us to the people we love. We are not in the moment while we are planning the future. Too much wonderful sensual joy gets lost in projecting what will happen next. Learn to enjoy mystery, that little frisson up the spine when you realize that you’re on a path to something interesting. Follow that path and find out where it meanders; appreciate the miracle. Don’t miss the glories of the moment in your zeal to zoom up to the crotch like a superhighway, fast as ever you can. Efficiency is not what we’re looking for here and now.
The feet are relaxing, you hear a groan of ecstasy: should you slide your hand up that gorgeous leg? Oops! Let go of that and get back to those tender, sensitive feet. Nobody can relax and feel their feet if they’re worrying about what you are going to do next. When you bring your full attention to making those feet feel better than they have ever felt before, you’re in the moment and so is your partner, lost in the bliss of a tingling, creamy instep. And when you are through, reconnect in a lovely hug or a sweet cuddle, and then figure out what you two would like to do next.
Whatever that may be, vow to stay present with that too. Perfect presence and acceptance is an ideal, perhaps never to be perfectly achieved but transcendent even in the trying. It’s a joyous practice of letting go of what’s not needed right now, washing away all the grit and dust of your histories and expectations and opening yourself as completely as possible to meeting another person in the fullness of your open, waiting heart.
Good sex seems as though it ought to be easy—but often, in our experience, it is not. Everything from ignorance to distraction can get in the way of responsible, enjoyable sex. Here’s our A-list of fun-spoilers:
At the top of the list, many of us start out paralyzed by shame and embarrassment, even after we figure out that we don’t want to be embarrassed by sex. Shame, and the beliefs we were taught that our bodies, our desires, and sex are dirty and wrong, make it very hard to develop healthy sexual self-esteem. Many of us spent our adolescences consumed with guilt for our sexual desires, our fantasies, and our masturbation, long before we managed to pull anything off with another human. When we did connect with others, many of us spent those encounters obsessing about our performance, often so busy worrying if we were doing it wrong that we forgot to notice how good it felt.
When our desires and fantasies stretch further than a monogamous marriage with a member of the opposite sex, we suffer additional attacks on our self-acceptance—to some, we are sex-crazed perverts, deserving objects of scorn to others and, all too often, ourselves. According to some people, even God hates us. It’s hard to feel good about an expansive sexuality when you feel so bad about yourself that you just want to hide.
None of us look sexy enough. The advertising and fashion industries see fit to line their coffers by making us all feel bad about our bodies so that we will buy more clothes, makeup, cosmetic surgery, or whatever in a desperate attempt to feel okay about how we look to others. The perfume industry floods us with images designed to convince us that we smell bad (and if we smell worse than these highly synthesized scents, we must smell very bad indeed). Even those lucky souls who are young and thin and cute suffer from constant worry about how they look: why else do you think they throng to gyms and aerobic classes?
The more people you want to share sex with, the more people you are going to have to expose your naked body to, so there you are. To enjoy a free sexuality, you need to come to terms with the body you are living in, unless you want to wait till you lose twenty pounds, which could take forever, or until you look younger—don’t hold your breath. Do remember: your sexiness is about how you feel, not how you look.
Go to a store, any store—a discount clothing store, a thrift store, a lingerie store, a sex toy store—and buy yourself something sexy. Something that feels sexy to your body today. Sensual is a good place to start—anything from silk to soft new flannel or really fine cotton. Loose-fitting or tight, it doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as you feel good in it. What colors are sexy to you? Rich deep shades, delicate hues? What expresses your inner slut? Close your eyes and feel your way through the racks. Leather and velvet are divine to the touch, so invite the touch you dream of. Even some denims are startlingly sensual, so try buying your jeans by feel. Let go of what anything is supposed to be, and let your skin choose what it wants. Go home and parade around in it.
It is foolish and rude to assume that people with physical disabilities don’t enjoy sex. Differently abled people may indeed engage in differently organized forms of sexuality, but that doesn’t mean no sex at all. People with spinal cord injuries who have lost all sensation below the neck report orgasms: there is a lesson here for all of us about how sensitive our ears and lips can actually get.
Sex for a person with physical disabilities is not that different from any other form of sex. Focus on what you can do, what you can feel, what feels good, and how to go about experiencing the most intense feelings that this particular body can feel. Learn about your body just as any other person does. What supports you in moving or reaching? How can you deal with any medical appliances? What safety precautions must you keep in mind?
Most important of all, what do you like? People who have lost physical abilities in accidents may spend a long time rediscovering what this new body can do and feel—finding what feels good is the joyful part of the journey. People disabled from birth or childhood often get treated as nonsexual beings; they may need to go to work when they grow up to discover what their sexuality can be.
Don’t forget the advantages of using tools—vibrators tap into the entire electrical grid for their strength and endurance and never get repetitive stress injuries. Implements can reach where arms may not, and pillows can prop up any limbs that need propping. Medications—hormones that keep vaginas flexible and moist, pills that help sustain erections—can help with some of the sexual changes that relate to aging or health issues.
Investigate possibilities. Whether disabilities are visible, or invisible like asthma or diabetes, you get to explore what works for you and get cooperation from your partners to work around anything your body can’t do.
If the prospect of being a lover to a physically challenged person seems utterly strange to you, don’t forget that one day you will be old—at what age do you plan to give up enjoying sex? Will you just give up at the first obstacle, the first bit of arthritis that interrupts a nice thrash with a painful twinge? We do hope this book supports you in grasping your sexuality in any way that works for you. Remember, whatever the physical possibilities of the body you or your friend inhabits, the most important sexual organ is always found between the ears.
Another obstacle on our course is inaccurate or just plain bad information we may have learned about sex. For many years, information about sexual behavior and basic functioning was censored, along with most other discussions of sexual pleasure. Depending on where you live in the culture now, you may or may not have access to good information. We need to politicize to protect our right to accurate and positive information about sex.
To acquire a basic knowledge of sexual functioning and how the sexual response cycle works in men and women, we recommend strongly that you read one or several good books. Books about sex provide a lot of information—more than we can give you in a chapter—about how sex works and what you can do about it when it isn’t working as well as you’d like. Self-help exercises are usually provided for concerns about erections or orgasms, timing, coming too soon or too slowly, and what to do when you can’t find your turn-on. You can learn more strategies for safer sex and birth control and more language so you can more easily talk with your partners about all of this good stuff. Some clever sluts read a chapter a week of a good book with a partner and perhaps talk about it on Friday over dinner—a nice way to prepare for the weekend.
These days there is also a lot of information and discussion on the Internet. We applaud this freedom of information, and we also want you to be careful, because much of the information you read and hear about sex will be inaccurate. Because sexology is such a new science, and because research into what people actually do in sex is difficult and often inconclusive, and because we as a culture have not talked explicitly about sex for a very long time, fairy tales abound, and reality can be hard to come by. Collect all the information you can, use what works for you, and take it all with a grain of salt. Fortunately, there’s lots of sex information available these days in books, magazines, podcasts, websites, and more—plenty to choose from. The best part of learning about sex is that you’ll love the homework.
If you can’t talk about sex, how can you think about it? The historical censorship of discussion about sex has left us with another disability: the act of talking about sex, of putting words to what we do in bed, has become difficult and embarrassing. Although most of us have had the experience of failed sexual functioning in one way or another, most of us never get the chance to get support from our friends and lovers about it—sexual dysfunction becomes our secret shame, a position from which it is virtually impossible to figure out a way to function better.
What little language we can use to talk about sex is riddled with negative judgments. Either you speak in medical language of vulvas and penile intromission—which sounds like you need to be a doctor to talk about sex, so it must be a disease—or you have gutter language (fucking cunt, hard dick) that makes everything sound like an insult. What you can’t talk about, you can hardly think about—a crippling disability. People who can’t use words often resort to trying to communicate without words: pressing their partner’s head downward, moving their hips to try to get that tongue in just the right place, feigning ecstasy when a hand strays in vaguely the right direction … while hoping desperately that the bewildered partner will figure out what they’re trying to ask for. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just say, “I would really love it if you ran your finger around my clit in a circle instead of up and down” or “I need you to grab my dick much harder”?
The tyranny of hydraulics is a tremendous obstacle to terrific sex, and not in the way that the manufacturers of Viagra would have you believe. Many people believe that if there is no penis with an erection, nothing sexy is happening. (Lesbians, of course, disagree most vehemently.) Many men feel they can’t even engage in foreplay while they are soft, and many women are insulted if they discover a soft penis while they are getting aroused. And still more people are completely nonplussed if the penis in question decides to release at a time that is inconvenient for the rest of the activity, as if there were no sex after ejaculation. We want to encourage you to think beyond the hydraulics of erection and allow your playful explorations to go wherever they want to go, no matter where the participants may be in the sexual response cycle.
When sex becomes goal oriented, we may race to orgasm with such single-minded focus that we never even notice all the lovely sensations that come before (and, for that matter, after). When we concentrate our attention on genital sex to the exclusion of the rest of our bodies, we are excluding most of ourselves from the transaction. When we ignore most of the good parts, we increase our chance of developing sexual dysfunction, and we miss out on all the good feelings.
To be truly free to explore our sexual potential to the fullest, most of us need to examine how we have been taught that a man or a woman is supposed to enjoy sex. Many of us were taught that it is natural for men to be sexually aggressive and for women to be passive responders. Your authors like both of these roles and many others too. When it comes to what feels good, we are all highly individual human beings—and, despite what you may have heard, we all come from the same planet.
When men are forbidden to be receptive, then a man is not allowed foreplay or to ask for any sensory input at all. He’s not supposed to need it, much less want it. So then if a man is not automatically turned on when his partner is, he may wind up thinking he’s impotent when all he needs is a little nibbling on the ears.
Women consigned to passivity can fall into the Sleeping Beauty trap—some day my prince will come, and so will I (because people in fairy tales always have simultaneous orgasms, right?). In the real world, however, a woman who is allowed to take her turn at being the active partner is well on the way toward figuring out for herself and her lover what works for her to get really, really hot.
Active and receptive are both great roles when they’re not dependent on gender. Think of oral sex—is sixty-nine the only way to enjoy it? Or is there a particular delight in taking turns? When we focus on the active role, we can all be great lovers and get off on our partner’s pleasure. When it’s our turn to receive, we can truly appreciate the gift we are being given, not to mention feeling free to thrash and shriek and otherwise express our appreciation.
We’d love to see a world where everybody knew how much lovely sex they have to give in the active role and how much they give their partner when they receive.
The mythology has it that once you start having sex, it will all come naturally—and if it doesn’t, then you must have some deep-seated psychological problem, right? We’re not sure why sex stands alone in this regard. If you want to get good at anything else, from cooking to tennis to astrophysics, you’re going to have to put some effort and time into learning how. If you want to enjoy sex and to make sure your partners enjoy it too, you’re going to have to do the same thing.
One friend of ours had her first orgasm at the age of thirty-four, after reading for the first time in one of the sex manuals that became popular in the early 1970s that it was okay for her to masturbate—she’d grown up in the generation that was told masturbation would make you sick or crazy. This is a horrible story—how many years of orgasms did this woman miss because of bad information?
Whatever you do now you learned somewhere, somehow, so you can learn new or different sexual skills and habits if you choose. Learning requires some effort, but the rewards are great, and we know n you will be brave and persistent. Many of the books we recommend include exercises you can use to expand your sexual skills and your repertoire—try them.
Talk to people about sex. Ask them about their experience, and share yours. Janet remembers seeing her first porno movies and feeling confounded because the women in them all masturbated face-up, and she wasn’t sure if she’d been doing it wrong all those years. She started asking her women friends and found that she was far from alone—not only in her face-down preference but also in her sense of uncertainty. Talk to your intimates and any friends or people you respect who are accessible to you. Breaking the ice can be scary at first, but establishing discussion about sex with your friends and lovers will be a valuable resource for all of you, well worth risking a few minutes of embarrassment as you get started. A friend of ours used to believe that she was the only person in the whole world whose cheeks got sore from sucking a big cock. Talking to a few friends let her know that she was in the majority. If you find you can’t talk intimately and explicitly about sex with your lovers, then how can you deal with a problem or try something new?
We mean this quite literally. When Masters and Johnson began their research into sexual functioning in the late 1950s, they wanted to start by learning about good sex before researching sexual dysfunction—so they started by selecting 382 men and 312 women, including 276 heterosexual couples, all of whom had satisfactory sex lives. One surprising fact they uncovered was that virtually all these sexually satisfied people masturbated—regardless of whether or not they were also having partnered sex.
Write this on your mirror: sexually successful people masturbate. You are not jerking or buzzing off because you are a loser, because you can’t find anyone to play with you, or because you are desperate to get your rocks off. You’re making love to yourself because you deserve pleasure, and playing with yourself makes you feel good.
Set aside a couple of hours for this. Turn off the telephone, lock the front door, and get rid of any distractions. Then prepare as though you were preparing for a date with someone you were very excited about: put clean, soft sheets on the bed and place all your favorite sex toys near to hand. Next, take a steamy bubble bath with candles, or a luxurious shower and close shave, accompanied by soft, sexy music. Style your hair, perfume yourself, trim your nails, rub in lotion so your skin is soft and touchable all over. Slip into silk boxers or a sexy nightie. Have a glass of wine, if you like.
When you’re ready, turn the lights down flatteringly low and lie down. Tease yourself with soft, gentle touch all over, feeling your soft hands as though they were the touch of your perfect lover. Take your time. Tantalize yourself with lots of foreplay, using your hands, maybe your mouth, and maybe a toy or two.
Only when you absolutely can’t stand it any more—when you would be begging for release if there were anyone there to beg—may you bring yourself to climax, as many times as you like.
Lie there and soak up the warm, rich feeling of loving yourself enough to give yourself slow, mindful pleasure. Your perfect lover is waiting for you anytime you want … right there in your own skin.
We have never met a person who suffers from low self-esteem at the moment of orgasm. Your relationship with yourself is what you bring to a relationship with another person: it is what you have to share, personally, emotionally, and sexually. The sexier you are to yourself, the sexier you will be to your lovers.
People who play with themselves are good lovers for two reasons. First is that sex with yourself is a really good time to explore new sources of stimulation, like touching yourself in different places, or vibrators, or new positions. Because you will never fail to notice what doesn’t feel good, you will always do it the way that feels best, and there will be no one to get embarrassed in front of. So masturbation offers you an opportunity to practice all sorts of interesting things: for instance, if one of your goals is to be able to enjoy more sex before you come, you can practice relaxation exercises with yourself and learn to slow down and speed up your response however you like. If your concern is that sometimes you are not able to come when you would like to, you can pay attention to what works for you when you have sex with yourself and teach your partner your particular preferences in sexual stimulation. Try different rhythms and stimulations so that you don’t get into a rut of being able to get off on only one sensation. Practice makes perfect, so masturbate a lot.
Start by putting some energy into supporting your own self-esteem and developing a positive feeling about your body—no, not the body you plan to have next year after you work out every day and live on lettuce. What have you done recently that helps you feel good about the body you are inhabiting today? It’s hard to have a good relationship with your body when all you do is yell at it. Try giving your body treats: a bubble bath, a trip to the hot tubs, a massage, silk underwear, anything that feels good. Be nice to your body, and then go find somebody else’s body to be nice to, and somebody will be nice to your body too.
Love yourself as you would your lover. Masturbation is a good way to nourish and develop our relationships with ourselves. We can improve our self-esteem by the simple act of pleasuring our bodies.
Don’t forget: grown-ups play with toys. A huge variety of excellent sex toys is available. While these can be purchased online if you’re shy, we strongly recommend a visit to one of the hundreds of excellent erotic boutiques—modeled on San Francisco’s classic Good Vibrations—that have sprung up in large and small cities all over the United States. Such stores allow you to shop in a welcoming, safe, and remarkably unsleazy environment, with helpful staff who are knowledgeable about the mysterious devices on the shelves. Dossie used to sell toys at pleasure parties, which are Tupperware parties for sex toys, usually run by a sex educator invited in for the occasion—a great idea for a bachelorette party.
If you’ve never tried a vibrator, it’s never too late. Battery-operated vibrators are less powerful than the plug-in and rechargeable kinds, so try to find an opportunity to check out all kinds—they work through clothes, so it’s not really that hard to find a way to experiment. (They’re not just for women, either—many a man has had his life changed by a vibrator against the perineum.) You will find insertables in a huge variety of sizes and shapes to meet every need, texture toys in fake fur or spiky gels, satin blindfolds and velvet restraints—and usually a thoughtful selection of good books and erotica. There is no reason why a sex store has to be hidden in a basement.
Toys can add to your pleasure and make some things possible that never were before—for instance, if you’re curious about anal play, it helps to start small. Vibrators have given many women an assurance about orgasm that was never before possible: many women share sex however they want to, and if they have not had an orgasm by the time they are getting tired, curl up with their good friend and their vibrator—a surefire solution. Not having to worry about how orgasms are going to happen can take a lot of the worry out of getting close for both women and men.
If you really want to be the world’s greatest lover, and you want to know exactly what pleases your partner the most, try masturbating in the same room. Who knows, you might like to watch—we find it a tremendous turn-on. Watching or showing, you will teach and learn each other’s individual pattern of pleasure and become the most perfect, and the most perfectly satisfied, lovers that ever could be.
It’s hard to focus on pleasure when you’re worrying about whether the baby is asleep, the door is locked, the shades are drawn, or whatever bothers you. Figure out what your conditions are, what you need to feel safe and free of worry, so you can enjoy your sex completely. Deal with your needs beforehand.
Establish agreements with your partner about safer sex and/or birth control. It is not appropriate to argue with anyone’s limits regarding pregnancy and disease risk reduction: respect the limits of the most conservative person, because sex is a lot more fun when we all feel safe. Personal limits may be idiosyncratic, and that’s okay too. Dossie has a minor obsession about being clean and likes to set up clean sheets and have a shower so she feels all fresh and sparkly. Someone else might not care as much—so what? There is no one right way to get ready to have sex. Give yourself permission to take care of your own needs; it will free you.
Sometimes you discover that your conditions aren’t what you thought they were and that the new ones might offer some special fun. Janet remembers:
I’d been to a concert that night with two friends, who were lovers with each other and with me. One of us had recently acquired a treasure: a ’64 Lincoln Continental the size of a studio apartment. On the way back, we decided to stop by the river to admire the moonlight, and before we knew it we were throwing a full-scale orgy in the front seat of the Lincoln. I’d always thought I wouldn’t like sex in a car, but when I found myself stretched out in the front seat with my head in one partner’s lap as I masturbated him over my shoulder, and my other partner kneeling in the passenger footwell with her head buried between my legs, I began to change my mind. The scene ended in hysterical giggles: the one I was masturbating began to come, his body went into an orgasmic spasm, and he hit the horn—the car emitted an enormous blast of sound from its mid-’60s Detroit horn that must have awakened everybody for miles around and made us all practically fall out of our seat!
Most of us have been struck dumb by the scariest communication task of all—asking for what we want. Is there any one of us who has never failed to tell our partner when we want our clit or cock stimulated harder or softer, slower or faster, more on the shaft or more on the tip, on the side, on both sides, up and down or round about, or whatever it is that would work for us? Take it from us, the way to get what you want in sex is to ask for it. And the way to get a good reputation as an excellent lover is to ask each partner what he or she likes and let them show you how to do it exactly right: Janet makes a point of having her lovers masturbate for her early on in the relationship, so she can watch how they do it and make mental notes about what kinds of stimulation they like to feel. Once you get past the initial embarrassment, this is actually easy and will make you a very popular lover indeed. If you find this impossibly difficult, here’s a good way to start:
EXERCISE Yes, No, Maybe
Try this exercise with yourself or with a lover with whom you are very familiar, and as you get comfortable, repeat it with each new lover.
First, make a list of all the sexual activities you can think of that anyone, not just you, might like to do. You will immediately discover that this is also an exercise in developing language, so pay attention as you name these things. Are you more comfortable with intercourse or fucking, oral sex or going down, cock sucking or eating out? What do you call your own sex organs: penis, dick, cock, prick … pussy, cunt, vagina, clitoris? If you get stuck, put a little effort into finding any name that describes the activity, take a deep breath, and repeat those words five times, and breathe again. Make your list as complete as possible, and include activities that you don’t like as well as those you do. You can get prefab lists online, but then you miss the experience of naming all these unspeakable delights.
Then each of you take a separate, smaller piece of paper and make three columns: YES, MAYBE, and NO. YES means I already know I like this. NO means this act is outside my limits and I don’t want to try it in the foreseeable future. MAYBE means you would try it if the conditions were right. The conditions might be:
and so forth.
Decide where every act on the big sheet fits into your limits today. Share the lists with a partner. Discuss where you fit together well and where you have differences. There are no rights and wrongs here. Think of your likes and dislikes as if they were flavors of ice cream.
Notice the wealth of what you both like on your YES lists.
This exercise will need to be done more than once, as your limits will change over time. You can do it to look at what you can share with any particular partner when you are sharing sex.
These are ideas about how you can start communicating explicitly about sex and negotiate consensuality. Remember, we define consent as an active collaboration for the pleasure, benefit, and well-being of all persons concerned. Consent means that everybody involved must agree to whatever activity is proposed and must also feel safe enough that they could decline if they wished. We believe that if you are not free to say “no,” you can’t really say “yes.” We also think it is essential that everyone involved understands the consequences of both responses, which is another way of saying that it’s not acceptable to take advantage of someone’s naïveté.
We cannot say this often enough: You have a right to your limits, and it is totally okay to say no to any form of sex you don’t like or are not comfortable with. Having a limit does not mean that you are inhibited, uptight, no fun, or a permanent victim of American puritanism—it just means you don’t like something. When you want to learn to like it, we think there are better ways to do that than to succumb to guilt tripping, shaming, or outright bullying. Say no to what you don’t want, and when you decide to try something new, arrange for lots of support from your partner, get your conditions met, and be kind to yourself. Positive reinforcement is really the best way to learn.
In many areas, workshops and groups about sex are available, put on by dedicated sex educators and counselors, sometimes at birth control clinics or organizations supporting sexual health. All of these workshops are designed to be safe, to respect everyone’s boundaries, and to give you an opportunity to learn new information, increase your comfort level, and speak for yourself about your own feelings and experience. What we are advocating here is communication by, with, and for everybody.
EXCERCISE More Fun with Your “Yes, No, Maybe” List
Once you’ve made a list, there are lots of further activities you can do with it:
Have you ever set out to make love and discovered that you couldn’t find your turn-on? There you are, hunting for that elusive state of excitement and wondering what’s wrong with you when your lover does the things you usually love and your response is just plain nothing, or, worse yet, irritation or ticklishness. Women wonder why they aren’t getting wet, men agonize over absent erections, everybody either fakes it or gets embarrassed. It happens to everybody. Really. It’s not just you.
For some people, losing their turn-on happens when they are nervous, maybe with a new partner or in a new situation. For others, familiarity reduces arousal, and they have a hard time grasping their desire in their relationships with the people they know the best and love the most.
Getting turned on requires a physical and mental transition into a different state of consciousness. Every night, when you go to sleep, you make such a transition: you turn the lights down, get into loose clothing, lie down, perhaps read quietly or watch a little TV, deliberately changing your state of consciousness from wide awake to sleepy. Some people do this automatically, while others have to work at figuring out what helps them get to sleep.
Similarly, we all need to know how we get turned on, what works for us when arousal doesn’t just come of its own accord. Our mythology tells us that we are not supposed to have to do this on purpose, that we are supposed to be swept away with desire, or else something is wrong: we don’t really want to make love to this person, we’ve made a terrible mistake and now what are we going to do with the kids? Men are told that they are supposed to be so turned on by the mere availability of a partner that their erection should stand up and salute without any actual sensory stimulation. Women are taught that they ought to be turned on in response to any stimulus from a partner they care about and, if they aren’t, they are frigid or perhaps feeling hostile. These are only some of the very destructive lessons you may have learned.
The first thing you need to do when desire doesn’t come up like thunder is to remember that lots of serious sluts have dealt with this problem successfully, and so can you. Let’s look at how we could go about deliberately getting turned on.
Some people just charge on, start sexual stimulation, and keep on with it until their turn-on catches up with them, and this works for many people much of the time: Dossie once had a partner who liked to leap into cold mountain lakes when they were camping, insisting that you’d get warm eventually if you just thrashed around. Other people like to get in the water one toe at a time, warming up gradually and sensually, allowing time to appreciate the changes in sensitivity that occur as they move slowly into their sexual response cycle. For many people, simply slowing down gives them the chance to get in synch with their turn-on, and once you find your turn-on it makes it easier to speed up.
Many people experience hypersensitivity, which means feeling ticklish or jumpy or irritated, when they attempt to take in sensations that are too focused or too intense in the early part of their journey to arousal. Such ticklishness usually disappears once the person is thoroughly excited and may reappear right after orgasm. The only way to deal with hypersensitivity is to remember that very few people can get turned on while they are being tickled or irritated, so take your time. (Dossie’s partner who loved to leap into cold lakes also really loved to be tickled—that’s why you gotta ask.) Feel free to tell your lover about hypersensitivity, and what sensations you enjoy early on, and how that may be different later. Most hypersensitivity can be cured with a firm touch and a gradual approach. Start with caressing backs and shoulders and less sensitive parts of the body, making sure of serious arousal before touching the more exquisitely sensitive areas.
Talk with your lover about what turns you on—a fantasy? A story? Having your fingers or toes gently bitten and sucked? Ask your lover what turns him on—chewing on her neck? Brushing his hair? You could prepare for this talk by writing down a list of all the things that you know excite you, each of you on your own, and then sharing your lists. Talking can be a little risky, and risk can be exciting in and of itself.
Get into your body: sensual delights like hot tubs, bubble baths, naked skin by the warm fire, massage. These are the slower delights that give us time to focus our attention on physical pleasure and allow our busy brains to slow down or drift off into fantasy. This kind of pleasure should not be demanding; this is not the time to worry about heavy breathing or undulating hips—it is the time for entrancement.
Fantasy is a big turn-on for many people, and yes, it is perfectly normal to fantasize when your partner is doing sexy things to you. Many people also like to fantasize on their own before their erotic encounters, building up a nice head of steam before any touching actually takes place. Perhaps you would both enjoy watching an erotic video or reading each other grown-up bedtime stories. Maybe it would be hot to tell each other your favorite fantasies.
Although lust for one person is seldom satisfied by sex with another, experienced sluts know that turn-on is transferable. The excitement you feel about the sex you’re planning with Bill next weekend can easily set a fire under your session with Jane tonight, because arousal is a physical experience that can be used for anything you want. The lust in the mind persists and will still be there for you when you get around to Bill—we promise.
Excitement begins with a slow, sensual warmth, and when the warm-up has begun, the door is open for more intense excitement, exploring the sensitivities of ears, necks, wrists, and toes, or tongues in mouths. Breathing becomes deeper, and hips start to move of their own accord.
So does this excitement mean it’s time to leap on that express train to orgasmic release? Just because your body is physically ready to enjoy sex doesn’t mean you need to rush to fulfillment! Why don’t you take a little more time? This feels good, right? So what about feeling good a little more, getting a little more turned on: remember when you were in high school and you could kiss for hours?
Don’t we all want a lover with a slow hand? The most common mistake people make when they get nervous about sex is to rush things. Tension does tend to speed us up, and it is also true that both men and women develop a lot of muscle tension as they approach orgasm, which adds to the furor. Now when we are truly ready, there is nothing we like more than to grunt and gasp and heave and shout and make fists with our toes on the speeding express train to orgasm. But there is more to sex than orgasm, so let’s not leave out sensuality, seduction, the oh-so-gradual turn-on, the building of suspense, the exploration of every part of the body that can arouse the senses—we want to do it all. To explore the entire range of sensual and sexual intimacy, we need to learn techniques for slowing down.
The first technique for slowing down is very simple. Take a deep breath and hold it. Put your hand on your abdomen and feel the hardness of your muscles. Then breathe out, slowly, and you will feel the muscles in your torso relax. When we are tense, we tend to breathe in gasps, gulping air in and exhaling very little; that’s how we maintain tension in our muscles and in our minds. When we breathe out, we relax. So anytime you are tense, in any situation, you can relax a little by taking three long, slow, deep breaths, making sure to breathe out as thoroughly as you breathe in.
You can learn more about relaxation and slowing down by taking a class in any form of yoga, practicing sensual massage, trying tantric techniques, or just slowing down long enough to discover what fun it is to focus on what you’re feeling when you’re feeling good.
You can reduce your nervousness when you talk about sex, and you can slow yourself down during sex, just by breathing. When you slow your breathing while you are turned on, let your awareness go down into your body. Scan your whole body with your mind, starting from your toes, and let yourself notice how each part of you feels. Chances are you will discover a lot of good feelings you haven’t even felt before. Sex therapists call this “sensate focus” and advocate it in particular for those who want to slow down their response and enjoy more sex before they come. You can slow down your physical sexual response by breathing, relaxing, and focusing your attention to reduce your physical tension, because, you see, not only do we all tense our muscles before we come, but most of us cannot come when our muscles are relaxed. So orgasmic control is not achieved by grunting and bearing down, but rather by relaxing and enjoying yourself.
Slowing down is also useful when you are trying out new activities or feeling nervous for any reason. Our friend Mandy relates one of her early learning experiences with condoms:
Rob and I had been occasional lovers for many years, and we were getting together for the first time after a long hiatus. We had very little experience of safer sex at the time but decided, due to our various experiences, that if we wanted to fuck we should use a condom. This was all fine in theory, but when the time came to put it on after a suitable and exciting round or two of outercourse, Rob picked up that difficult little piece of rubber and promptly lost his erection. I’m sure this has never happened to any of you.
We fooled around for a little while and tried again, with the same response—Rob’s mind and his cock were not in agreement, and his cock was not cooperating. I dragged myself up into a more active consciousness and decided to put what I had learned in adult sex education to use.
I got him to lie back and agree to be done to, and I set up the environment: candles for light carefully placed where we wouldn’t knock them over, lubricant and towels handy, two or three rubbers in case we broke one, plus slow sensual music on a very long disc. I got myself in a comfortable position between his legs—comfortable because I wanted to take all the time in the world, and I did not want to be interrupted by an aching back or a cramped shoulder.
I started by stroking his body—thighs, tummy, legs—very gently, in a soothing way, for a long time, till he first relaxed and then responded with an erection. I waited a little longer so he could enjoy that erection without any responsibility for taking things further: in sex therapy, this is called “non-demand pleasuring.” Then I moved the stroking to his genitals, around but not on his penis. His erection went down again, so I moved further back and continued sensual stroking on his skin until he got hard again. I continued again a little longer and then moved to touching closer to his cock. This time his erection fell only a little and got hard again after only a few seconds. By now he was breathing hard, and so was I. For me, the experience was very sensual and kind of trance-like, warm, and pleasurable: a major turn-on, too.
I spent a very long time stroking around, but not on, his cock, until he was very hard indeed. He reached for me, but I slapped his hand—no distractions, please. I am doing this to you, get it? When the suspense was virtually unbearable, I ran my hand lightly over his dick—he shuddered. Stroking his cock and pulling gently on his balls aroused him even more, and he was beginning to moan and sweat. I picked up the condom, checking to make sure I was unrolling it in the right direction, and he lost his erection almost instantly. I went back to stroking around, not on, his cock, and he sprang up again, getting impatient … but I made him wait, played with his dick for a long time but gently enough that I knew he couldn’t come.
The next time I approached with the rubber, he only wilted a tiny bit, so I rubbed a bit more, and we went round a few times until he was so turned on he couldn’t think any more and his cock stood up nice and straight while I rolled the rubber over it. I continued playing with him while he got used to the new sensation.
By this time I was seriously turned on and more than a little impatient, so when I gave the word, he attacked and did the raging bull thing, and we both finally got to fuck fast and hard. It was well worth the waiting—I’m sure they heard the explosion in the next town!
To sum up, and maybe catch our breath a little ourselves, a basic skill for good sex is knowing how to relax, and slow down, and then knowing how to tense and speed up. And once you know how, you can go round and round as many times as you can bear to hold off, enjoying every minute and building up excitement for the grand finale. Relaxing your breathing, and relaxing your body, can help you get centered, grounded in your body and in the pleasure you are feeling, and give you more choices about your sex life.
Sometimes we get so fixated on the challenges of successfully steering our course through the tortuous rapids of getting there that we forget to pay attention to where we have gotten. Afterglow, that dreamy, relaxed, exhausted, sweet state that follows the thrashing and shouting, is a delicious time. Enjoy it. Rest in it, curled up with your partner. Forget the mess, and drift in the profound relaxation. Feel the connection to your partner as you float together in a warm pool of your conjoined energy, swirling around in the comfort of satisfied love. Feel good.
EXERCISE Get Loud
Why have you never heard your neighbors having sex? Why have they never heard you?
Do you believe that your partner should make a lot of noise but you should not? Why is that?
Masturbate as loud as you can. Pump your hips to the rhythm of your breath. Open your mouth and throat as wide as you can. Breathe hard, moan, yell, scream.
See how much noise you and your partner can make the next time you make love.
Smile when you see your neighbors.