In her own way, every woman who shared her story for this book is memorable. We remember some, in particular, because the fantasies they described were so original, passionate, unusual, funny, or poignant. We remember others because of their courage to weed out unwanted sexual fantasies that had stubbornly taken root in their minds, often due to influences that were beyond their control. And, we remember a few in particular because something in their stories thrilled our senses and inspired our own fantasies to take flight.
Collectively, these women remind us of the wonderfully creative, erotic power of the female imagination. Although our fantasies are often strongly influenced by the culture around us and past sexual experiences, we also have the power to deliberately shape, control, and filter our fantasy life to better suit our individual interests, sexual styles, relationship needs, and as-yet-unsatisfied desires.
The fantasies women have shared with us, in all their rich variety, also demonstrate the infinite possibilities for creating new sexual thoughts for our own pleasure. The personal histories we’ve heard remind us that we’ve all known how to fantasize ever since we were children. Over the years, some of us may have forgotten how to spin stories and images from the air. Perhaps we underestimated the value of fantasizing, dismissed it as child’s play, or unknowingly allowed our sexual imagination to be limited, repressed, or influenced by outside sources.
Given all that we have learned about women’s sexual fantasies, we have new opportunities to put this wisdom to use. As our own best fantasy makers, we can change fantasies we don’t like, expand on fantasies we enjoy, and seek out new sources for the specific kinds of fantasies we want to experience more. We can exercise more choice in our fantasy lives, and use it to lead us wherever we decide to go.
GIVING OURSELVES PERMISSION
Caroline is a quiet, serious twenty-three-year-old teacher who was inspired to deliberately get in touch with her fantasy life for the first time after attending a fantasy workshop with some friends. Throughout most of a two-hour group discussion on sexual fantasy, she sat quietly as the other women in the room described their experiences. She occasionally looked surprised as the women she thought she knew well shared their favorite Dominatrix and Wild Woman fantasies and reminisced about their adolescent crushes, first kisses, and earliest sexual thoughts. Near the end of the session, as the participants were reflecting on all they had learned from one another, Caroline finally spoke up.
“I just don’t know how to do this fantasy stuff,” she said, sounding exasperated. “It’s a place my mind will not seem to go, no matter how much I’d like it to. And from what I’m hearing from all of you, I’m missing out on something that sounds like fun.”
Caroline went on to explain that she had grown up in a family where “suppressing the appetites” was considered praiseworthy. “My parents were moral, honest, working folks who taught me to be strong-willed and self-reliant, and I thank them for that. But they also raised me to be suspicious of anything that had to do with sex. I wound up feeling afraid that I might lose myself in sexuality, if I ever really got into it. When I finally started having sex, it was so difficult for me to draw any pleasure from the act. Now, I find that I have to really concentrate on my body’s reactions to feel much of anything. Orgasms, when they happen, feel like finely tuned, mechanical events. Meanwhile, my husband is this sensual guy who wants our sex life to be playful and fun. It seems so easy for him to just relax and enjoy his body, and mine. Frankly, I’m pissed off that this whole sexuality thing has to be so damn hard for me. From what I’m hearing, fantasies might help me let go and enjoy sex more, if only I could learn how to create them.”
A few weeks later, we received an exciting letter from Caroline. The discussion group had stirred up her dormant erotic imagination. By learning more about sexual fantasy, and all the benefits that it offers us, she felt a new permission to explore this part of her mind. In fact, she had just created her first sexual fantasy. She enjoyed it not only because it turned her on, but also because the Beloved-type fantasy fit with how she wanted to define sexual pleasure for herself, on her own personal terms.
“I know myself well enough to understand that I don’t want to be silly about sex, in order to enjoy it. If I’m going to invent fantasies, I want them to be a continuation of what I like most in my real life,” she explained. “This new fantasy is all about me, just as I really am, and all about my husband, just as he is—except that, in the fantasy, his fingernails are neatly manicured and very smooth.” Intuitively, Caroline had figured out how to use fantasy to improve on reality. She was thrilled and proud to be able to share her first sexual fantasy with us:
I am sleeping, clean and warm in a deep, soft bed in a quiet, private place. My husband, a gentle, sensual, beautiful man, comes in silently and smiling as he watches me breathe. He touches my face lovingly. I’m wearing loose-fitting pajamas. As I lie still, half asleep, he climbs into bed beside me and caresses my body as he undresses me. I keep my eyes closed, and let my usual self-consciousness continue sleeping. Meanwhile, though, I allow my body to awaken. I feel and respond and become aroused. We do not need to speak. He strokes my sides and thighs (with those well-manicured hands). I feel my nipples become erect. My body’s full, uninhibited sexual response excites us both. Our separate skins enjoy touching and playing together. Finally, we both climax, long and richly, then sleep soundly.
For Caroline, and for all women who wish to create new fantasies, giving ourselves permission to play with our fantasy lives is the best place to begin.
RECOGNIZING MOMENTS OF OPPORTUNITY
From women who have shared their stories, we’ve learned that inspirations for sexual fantasies are all around us. They await in the books we read, the movies we watch, the music we hear, the dreams that arouse us, the foods and smells that titillate our senses, the partners who share our sexual pleasure, and the strangers we know only from a distance. Sexual fantasies can be inspired by almost any experience, image, or sensation that an individual woman recognizes as erotic.
We can greatly expand on inspirations for new fantasies by paying attention to these moments of erotic opportunity. The most fleeting encounters or episodes can fuel our fantasies, if we are aware enough to appreciate them and recognize our own response. A new fantasy might start with something as mundane as peeling an orange and sucking the juice from our fingers. Or stepping from a bath and noticing how the droplets of water roll down the skin. Or making eye contact with a stranger who shares a brief elevator ride. One woman said she and her husband had been going to the gym together for months before she took the time, one morning, to appreciate how sensuous his arm muscles looked as he worked out on a weight machine. Similarly, writer Sallie Tisdale described a chance moment of erotic opportunity in her book Talk Dirty to Me:
I walked out, not long ago, at eight-thirty on a clear, fragrant spring morning. Gnats were stirring in the still sunshine and no one else was about. I was still sleepy, thinking only of the morning paper and a cup of tea as I walked down a path between apartments. Suddenly in the hush of the day I could hear the repeated moans of a woman through a curtained, half-open window. Her voice was breathy, catching in her throat, climbing higher in tone and louder in volume. I stood rooted to the path for a few seconds, saw the open window next to me with the white curtain fluttering in the slight breeze, and then walked on…. Her guttural, meaningless sounds infected me with desire like a virus caught from the air. I could barely walk a straight line to the sidewalk.1
To inspire our own fantasies, we can pay attention to whatever it is that tweaks our own desire, whether it’s music or poetry or scenes from nature or nude photography. Later, we can call these thoughts and experiences to mind again, during times of private genital pleasuring. Connecting new erotic thoughts with sensations such as clitoral stimulation helps reinforce their erotic power and effectiveness as new sexual fantasies. To deliberately link what’s happening in our minds and our bodies, we can think our favorite sexual thoughts and touch ourselves.
As we’ve already heard, women sometimes draw erotic pleasure from sources and images that don’t seem to be sexual at all. A woman who is a watercolor artist enjoys sensory fantasies about velvety flowers opening their petals and releasing their perfume. A woman who teaches yoga pictures swirling images of red and violet as she makes love. She shares these kinesthetic fantasies with her lover, imagining that their bodies are exchanging auras of colorful energy during sex.
Although we can certainly learn from hearing about how other women make use of these inspired moments, the fantasies that we enjoy the most are those that strike a particular chord in us. Our most satisfying fantasies feel right because they reflect our own erotic style. One woman, hearing a suggestion at a workshop that fantasies can be inspired by scenes from nature, said pointedly, “Yeah, but what’s nature got to do with it?” Fantasies are valuable to us only if they connect with our individual sense of the erotic. Each of us holds a unique palette that we can use to paint our own fantasies.
READY-MADE SOURCES
We don’t have to be artists, poets, or pornographers to create our own sexual fantasies. If our sexual creativity needs a boost, we can try on ready-made fantasies by reading erotica or romance fiction, or watching films that celebrate and expand on our definition of the erotic. Then, if we like, we can imagine ourselves in the scenes we like best.2
Geraldine Kudaka belongs to the new wave of women writers producing a wide variety of erotica for other women to enjoy. (She edited On a Bed of Rice, an anthology of erotica by Asian-American writers.) When a woman sits down to read a book of erotica, Kudaka says, she’s giving herself permission to express and play with her own sexuality. “It can be reassuring for a woman to hear that it’s okay to want to have sex, and it’s okay to think about sex. These books tell a woman, ‘I’m not a freak for sitting here, being horny. Horny is okay.”’ Kudaka adds, “Erotica can really please the mind and open up the senses. The best stories can push the edge of sexuality, and spark desire for us in new ways.”
And once we understand exactly what it is that sparks desire, and why, we have a new source of inspiration for our own fantasies. Desire can build on desire. Some women, for instance, may find themselves inspired to think about sex in new ways, with new images, after reading a passage such as this one by Tanith Tyrr. Her erotic story “Sacrament” describes the first sexual encounter between a Japanese-American couple this way:
This is sacred, this most ancient of rituals. My body is a holy sacrament which he worships with growing delight, his tongue flicking as rapidly as a serpent’s on the altar of my breasts, my belly, my thighs. Hesitant, then hot and demanding, he buries his face in my holy cunt, my sacred womanhood, and worships me to orgasm after orgasm. I am Goddess, I shout, as waves of pleasure come crashing over me like the moon-called sea.
I clasp him to me and we press together, moving inexorably with the rhythm of tides. We surge forward violently and then draw back, readying for the final embrace. Thou art God, I cry out softly.
Stallion, goatfoot god, golden phallus of the sun, his cock fills me as if I have never been empty, as if I will never again be empty. I clutch his lean, tautly muscled body to me.
We plunge together, bucking and twisting, sacred bull and rider locked in the ancient dance. He rises like the sun, limned in glory. My body is the full moon, moving to cover him in the sky, and our joining eclipses the Earth. Again and again, until our backs arch and our mouths open wide in a rictus of uncontrolled pleasure.
As I ride the cresting waves of orgasm, I hear him cry out, high and wild. In my mind I see two birds flying freely, beyond the prison walls and for home.3
Romance writers tell stories about sex in a different way. In romance novels, typically written by women and for women, contemporary writers such as Stella Cameron include explicit love scenes that deliberately touch on all of the senses. Cameron wants her readers to vicariously feel everything that the heroine and hero experience in these scenes. “My readers tell me that, on some level, it’s sexually stimulating for them to read these books. Reading romances may make them more receptive to sex in their own relationships,” she said. In a recent novel called Sheer Pleasures, Cameron also describes a first-time sexual experience between two lovers. Cameron’s sexually inexperienced heroine, Phoenix, and her worldly hero, Roman Wilde, play out a passionate encounter that reads like this:
Her body wept for him, wept for what he promised. Several times he sent a finger reaching inside her and she whimpered. She also felt him reach away from her and heard him find something that crackled. A condom. She should have known he would always be ready for moments like this. His teeth, fastening lightly on a nipple, blocked her train of thought. Her back arched and Roman’s response was to suck.
While his finger reached, his thumb played over the nub that has passed beyond aching. Holding her about the waist with one arm, he worked that bud of flesh until she clawed at him with her fingernails and cried out in meaningless pleas.
The inferno erupted. Phoenix clung to him, consumed, only to cry his name over and over as he raised her hips and drove her down on him, drove himself into her waiting, wanting body.
There was a burning, a breaking, a sweet torture. She accepted and contracted about him, welcomed him deep within her.
For an instant he paused, breathing raggedly, his skin wet beneath her hands. “You said this wasn’t the first time.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Oh, my God.” He muttered against her lips. “You’re unbelievable.”
He was unbelievable.
It was unbelievable.
His great hands bracketed her hips and moved her. His pelvis jerked to meet each descent.
“Now?” Phoenix shouted the word and knew what it meant. It meant the beautiful, searing, consuming flame that shot to her womb, to her breasts, to her knees.4
In the same way that reading can set our erotic imaginations in motion, watching films can also give us ready-made ideas for new fantasies. Women who want to minimize violent or otherwise abusive sex scenes in their own fantasies can deliberately seek out films that portray loving, mutual, or playful qualities of sex. Deborah, a woman who was healing from sexual abuse, said she was thrilled to fantasize that she was Sarita Choudhury, the Indian actress who played opposite Denzel Washington in the cross-cultural love story Mississippi Masala. Deborah said: “In the film, the two characters take time to know each other well before they ever have sex. That struck me as unusual. When they finally did make love for the first time, it had meaning. It was touching to see them looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. When I saw them lick, stroke, and suck each other’s dark skin, I could tell they were happy to have found each other. Even their feet became part of their joyful lovemaking and sexual exploring.
“When I took this love scene into my own fantasy life, I had a whole new vision for what sex could be. In my own life, I never experienced sex with a man who didn’t rush or force me. This fantasy let me imagine how it would be to receive respect, and let passion build up slowly.”
BECOMING OUR OWN FANTASY MAKERS
Georgine was twenty-eight years old when she was involved in a car accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down and put her in a wheelchair. A beautiful woman by anyone’s standards, with long, wavy hair, smooth skin, and high cheekbones, she stopped thinking of herself as sexual after the accident. “Once the injury happened, I just shut down my sexuality for a while. I didn’t give myself permission to even fantasize about sex.”
One morning, about two years after the injury, she was surprised when a jet of hot shower water hit her in the crotch and triggered a tingling response in her genitals. That was the first sign that she had gradually recovered some sensation below the waist, and she recognized the erotic potential of that moment. She thought to herself, “Maybe there’s still hope for me to be a sexual person.”
Georgine began to get back in touch with her sexuality by encouraging herself to fantasize. “I started using tanning beds as a place to let my imagination take off. Under the lights, I’d feel warm all over. I’d kind of drift off into these explicit fantasies. At first, they involved sensations that helped me relax. I remembered how it used to feel to lie in the warm sun and feel cool blades of grass against my bare skin. Gradually, I began to respond sexually. I would lubricate. Then, I started creating the same feelings by imagining myself with a partner.”
Eventually, Georgine turned her bedroom into a place where she could deliberately encourage her sexual fantasies to unfold. “My bedroom set has a huge vanity, and I keep my bed perpendicular to that, so that when I look up, I see this huge mirror. I light candles and incense to stir up my senses. I fill my room with lovely colors. Oh, and I have a collection of hats. Depending on my mood, I might put on a tiara with rhinestones or my greatgrandmother’s fur.”
With that, Georgine broke into laughter. “Imagine,” she went on, “if I told people that I put on my fur coat, my rhinestones, and sit on my bed with a glass of champagne, waiting for the spirits to guide me to sexual pleasure. They would probably think I was bonkers, right? But I’ve had some very satisfying, very erotic experiences since I’ve become my own fantasy maker. I’ve imagined myself as Muffy, an aging cheerleader with big breasts who is afraid of getting older. She’s into younger men. I’ve been a rather slutty character in a red wig and heavy makeup who likes to hang out in bars. I’ve imagined myself wearing a hippie outfit from the sixties. In that fantasy, I imagine a certain gentleman I really like coming into my room, wearing a long, black jacket. He stands at the foot of my bed so that I can see his reflection in the mirror. The light is really soft. He takes off his clothes and does whatever I ask.” When she has a particularly vivid fantasy, Georgine said, “I literally feel the heat from my imaginary lover’s body.”
When Georgine sees herself in a mirror now, she recognizes a sexual woman who happens to get around in a wheelchair. Since she embraced her fantasy life, she has been reminded of how much she enjoys sensual, sexual energy, and how much pleasure awaits within her own erotic imagination.
The final five stories we’ll hear were shared by other women who have learned to appreciate the value of sexual fantasies. They have been inspired by a variety of sources to create their own original fantasies that they clearly love. Their stories demonstrate how we all can craft new fantasies that feel more like our own authentic creations, not something imposed on us. Finally, their stories remind us that sexual fantasies are our most personal creations, changing with our unique life experiences.
NADINE:
COURTROOM DRAMA
Nadine is a single, high-powered trial lawyer in her thirties who keeps her sexuality well concealed during the day behind conservative suits and a businesslike demeanor. One day at work, however, an opposing lawyer named Malcolm jokingly told her he was working so hard on an upcoming case that he dreamed he had appeared in court—naked.
Nadine remembered how Malcolm had looked the previous week when she happened to see him working out at the gym. He was wearing shorts that showed off his tanned, muscular legs. Nadine appreciated a buffed male body, and especially liked dark-haired men. In a flash, she imagined how the rest of Malcolm must have looked in his dream.
Later, when she had more time, she decided to invent a new Wild Woman fantasy set in the familiar territory of the courtroom. She wrote it down so that she could have fun playing with the language, adding legalistic puns and sexual innuendo, along with the specific kind of sexual stimulation she most enjoyed. Each time she saw Malcolm after that, she enjoyed recalling the fantasy and knowing that he didn’t have a clue in terms of what direction her imagination had traveled. She also adopted a new habit of wearing her sexiest lingerie under her business suits whenever she had to appear in court. She shared her fantasy:
Somehow I entered Malcolm’s dream, too, and saw him naked in the courtroom, using his cell phone to tell an office clerk to bring him some clothes. When he looked up and saw me, with his intense blue eyes, he acted as if we were conducting business as usual, and handed me a demurrer to read. As I looked down to digest the legal document, I realized that I, too, was improperly dressed for the courtroom. Instead of my usual business suit, I was wearing a purple merry widow from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, thong panties, pull-up stockings, and spiked heels. I asked to borrow Malcolm’s cell phone so that I could call my office, too, but he was not obliging. In fact, he said that I could only use the phone if I let him practice undoing the clips on my garter belt. I really needed to use that phone, so I stipulated to his request.
Even though he claimed to be an old hand at garter belts, my outfit gave him trouble. Somehow, he thought he could undo the clips by kissing and fondling my breasts. Then he insisted that I bend over and grab hold of the jury box railing, so that he could get a better grip from the rear. Even though I doubted his competence by this time, I went along, continuing to read the demurrer.
Malcolm softly ran his fingers over my bottom and strayed a bit, touching lightly on my vaginal lips, which were moist and warm by this time. I dropped the demurrer. He managed to unclip the two rear garter clips, but when I turned around and asked respectfully for the phone, he said that he wasn’t finished. Two more clips remained to be undone. By this time, I couldn’t help noticing how excited he was. I kneeled in a prayer for relief and began to suck his hard cock. He lifted me up, faced me, and perched me atop the railing. I wrapped my legs and heels around him as he pushed inside me. We nearly tumbled off the rail and into juror number three’s seat, but Malcolm held me tightly with his muscular arms. Licking, pushing, and kissing, we came together in a series of sighs and sweetness.
When Wanda and her husband, Luke, first met during the 1970s, they often spent time together at a meditation center. They’ve drifted away from Zen practices since then, although Wanda still brings to lovemaking the lessons about mindfulness that she first learned in a spiritual context. She especially enjoys feeling calm, aware, and in the moment during sex, hearing her own breath, appreciating the buildup of sensations in her body, and enjoying the exciting rhythms she and Luke create together. In her favorite fantasies, she often finds new ways to enhance these experiences.
Because her master bedroom is located right next to her teenage daughter’s room, however, Wanda also feels compelled to keep the sounds of lovemaking somewhat hushed. One night, she and Luke went to see the movie Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. In one scene, comedian Jim Carrey pretends to be meditating, while in reality he’s having sex. That scene inspired Wanda to create a new sexual fantasy that felt playful and spiritual. Because it highlights a sense of privacy, the fantasy also helped her to more fully enjoy sex. In her new fantasy:
I imagine that I’m a college-age meditation student who has received special permission to use a secluded ashram in the woods for a weekend retreat. Although I’m expecting to be alone, I discover that another Zen student has arrived before me, planning to have the ashram all to himself for his own spiritual retreat. (He looks just like Luke did, back when we were both in our twenties.)
Since neither of us is eager to change our plans, we agree to share the space. We quietly go about our separate tasks, beginning our silent meditation early in the morning when the air is cool. Sitting cross-legged on the ashram floor, several feet apart, we are positioned at an angle so that we each can steal glances at one another. As the sun streams through the big picture window, the day grows hotter. We both begin to unbutton and remove items of clothing. This becomes a subtle striptease, with our hands moving slowly and sensuously across our own increasingly bare skin.
Although we are trying hard to concentrate, we cannot help but be aware of each other. As our clothes litter the floor around us, we find it harder and harder to keep our minds on meditation. Although we’re still not talking or touching, every now and then one of us releases a groan, knowing it will attract the other’s attention. Toward dusk, when we’re both completely undressed and clearly aroused, we finally turn and embrace each other. As we move together, our sexual energy combines with the sense of comfort and safety that I enjoy in real life with Luke. Our breathing, which we have practiced keeping calm and steady during meditation, continues to feel peaceful even as we are becoming more excited.
Once we’re actually having sex, fantasy merges with reality. For a moment in both fantasy and in reality, his cheek rests against my cheek. Our heads turn toward the picture window in our bedroom, which frames a view of a graceful tree, its branches swaying in the breeze. Then I turn my head so that I can see my lover’s face. His eyes are also open, and I can see him swooning and writhing in ecstasy. To see Luke enjoying such pleasure is a real turn-on for me, and hastens my own orgasm. My climax feels like it is honoring life, our love, the safety and comfort we bring to one another, and a spiritual connection to nature. The Zen energy of this fantasy lets our natural, erotic chemistry build calmly, quietly, but powerfully.
When the poet Rochelle Lynn Holt was a little girl growing up in Chicago, she would announce to her parents, “I’m going to bed now to turn on my dreams.” Her earliest sexual fantasies cast her as a Pretty Maiden in distress rescued by such Hollywood heroes as John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Humphrey Bogart.
In her twenties, after a woman friend introduced her to the poetry of Anaïs Nin, Rochelle began to fantasize about women. When she read romance novels, she would imagine the love scenes playing out with a woman in the role of the daring cowboy, soldier, or other hero. Meanwhile, in real life, she had lovers of both sexes.
Once she reached her forties, and AIDS became a risk, Rochelle turned her erotic attention to what she considers “safer paths.” For example, she says, “Water has become a primary lover, whether in a private pool where jets beneath the surface can engender literally multiple orgasms in a swimmer who fantasizes about whomever, or in the ocean when I am pleasantly or wildly pummeled by the waves.”
One such fantasy, a prose poem called “Pleasures,” demonstrates how sensation, nature, and language can combine to inspire new kinds of erotic images. It begins:
The pleasures of waves lapping the shore which is your body at night when you lay the ocean of your self down for a long session of dreams letting another time sweep over your subconscious floating effortlessly the body at once both the waves and the sandy shore over which the water washes feeling cleansed and massaged by tongue by fingers that are gentle and loving this pleasure of the sea and its song the message between tides under the whitecaps gone all memory of past or fears of future only now swimming in the moment of nature at the period when there is nothing else on water but waves beneath full moon and diamonds below shimmering like jewels…
BRENDA:
ELECTRONIC FOREPLAY
For Brenda, a married woman in her forties, a sense of humor and flair for drama have come together in unexpected ways to inspire new sexual fantasies. One night, she and her husband, Tony, were acting out charades at a party. When she made a sexually suggestive gesture to enact the movie title Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, she could tell from the look in his eyes that he got turned on. And that turned her on. Once they got home, she asked Tony if he wanted to keep playing charades. He was more than happy to continue. As they acted out movie and book titles that got more and more erotic, they both wound up undressed and well on their way to a night of memorable lovemaking. Since then, they have discovered that inventing fantasies together keeps their sex life exciting and fresh in middle age.
They regularly use all sorts of telecommunications devices to expand their fantasy repertoire and to share new ideas they want to explore in lovemaking. On a typical day at their separate offices, they might use private e-mail and voice mail to set new fantasies in motion. “This way, we can have hours of extended foreplay before we ever get home from work,” Brenda said. “It’s like we’ve been making love all day long.” She describes a recent example, in which she pretended to be a demanding Dominatrix:
I was sitting at work, and the thought of Tony’s erect penis just popped into my mind. I knew that he’d enjoy hearing how I was thinking about him, so I picked up the phone and connected with his private voice mail. Faking a Russian accent and a stern voice, I said, “This is Natasha, the horse trainer. (We live on a farm, and he takes care of the stable.) I will be home soon, and I want you to be ready for me. When you curry the mare today, take your time. Pay a lot of attention to her flanks and back. Whisper in her ears. She loves that. And be sure to have a big, hard carrot ready for her. The stallion has been acting frisky lately. Let’s be sure to exercise him—vigorously.”
Within an hour, she had gotten a response from Tony via her private e-mail. He wrote:
“This is Boris, your dutiful stable boy. I wanted to assure you that I got your message. I’ll try to do everything you asked, in a way that will really please you. I have some new ideas, too, about what that frisky stallion wants. I think he’s ready for a good workout.”
By the time they arrived home, Brenda said, they were both excited about climbing into an imaginary hayloft. As they have woven these new fantasies together, they also have discovered that they both enjoy thinking back on their shared sexual adventures. Each time they have invented and acted out a fantasy, they have expanded on the erotic material available to replay in their minds. “We love to talk about other times we’ve been sexual together, other fantasies we’ve invented,” Brenda said. “I can describe to Tony how I felt the first time we ever made love, for example, and that alone might bring us to climax. He makes me feel as if I’m his greatest lover, and that really appeals to me.”
Whatever roles they choose to play in their fantasies, Brenda and Tony never lose sight of who they really are, and how they feel in the moment. “Fantasy offers us a way to bring our wit, our humor, and our wisdom into lovemaking,” she said, “but it’s always about who we truly are. In our fantasies, no matter what characters we’re playing, nothing else matters except for the two of us and the love we share.”
Elena, a hardworking stockbroker in her late twenties, was surprised when a sexual fantasy spontaneously emerged one night because of a chance, nonsexual encounter. She had been seeing her current boyfriend, Rick, for nearly six months. Before the holidays, the two of them had been talking about going away together, but couldn’t seem to find a time when they both could take a break.
Several days before she had the fantasy, Elena had been feeling more stressed than usual. Later, she recalled how this new sexual fantasy first came to mind:
It had been a really hectic week, leading up to a three-day holiday weekend. During my lunch hour, I decided to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. My office is near a street lined with small boutiques, so I decided to try my luck there. The window display in a tiny little shop caught my eye. It was filled with bottles of aromatherapy oils, massage lotions, and bath salts, in all different shapes and colors. My attention was drawn to a certain bottle with sensuous curves that reminded me of Aladdin’s lamp. It contained bath oil that shimmered, even in the pale winter light. As I picked it up to look closer, a saleswoman appeared at my side. She was lovely, with soft, chestnut brown hair that framed her creamy complexion. When she spoke, her voice had a soothing, almost musical quality.
She told me that the bath oil was pure and smelled like spring rain. The large, shiny flakes suspended in the liquid were real gold. She wrapped her long, delicate fingers around my hand and showed me that shaking the bottle ever so gently would cause the golden particles to float through the oil like snowflakes in a paper-weight. She held her hand over mine until the contents of the bottle became still again, then walked off to help another customer. I left without buying a thing but felt refreshed, as if I had just awakened from a wonderful dream.
I returned to work and forgot all about the experience until that night. I’d been working late at home, trying to finish some year-end reports. My boyfriend, Rick, stopped by my apartment unexpectedly. He said he’d been thinking about me all day. He began to massage my tight shoulders, and convinced me I needed a break. Before long, we were stretched out on my living room floor, watching the lights twinkle on my Christmas tree. We began to make love. As his kisses and touch made me feel more and more aroused, I imagined that I was climbing a long, winding staircase that led to a doorway. I reached the top of the stairs just as I began to climax, and the doors flew open to reveal a room that shimmered with gold. For a fleeting moment, right at orgasm, it was as if I became the gold. After my orgasm faded, my mind was still filled with an image of swirling, golden droplets, and I felt incredibly calm and relaxed, for the first time in days.
I loved the fantasy so much that I decided to share it with my boyfriend. Not until I was describing it did I make the connection between the sensory images of gold and the bottle of bath oil. Rick listened closely, caressing my face and smiling tenderly at me as I described my unusual encounter in the perfume shop, and this golden moment in our lovemaking. Then he said, “When we have sex, you make me feel like I’m gold, too.”
On Christmas Eve, Rick handed me a beautifully wrapped package. Inside, I was thrilled to find a bottle of the golden bath oil and a reservation for a weekend at a romantic inn.
Sexual fantasies occupy a special place in our minds and can create wonderful pleasure in our bodies. Until we dare to mindfully enter this realm, without fear of what we might discover, our wisdom and creativity can remain hidden, even from ourselves. If left unexplored or allowed to be misunderstood, women’s sexual fantasies might seem mysterious, strange, frightful, or even silly. When we take time to appreciate and understand our fantasies, however, we discover a marvelous personal resource that we carry with us throughout life. Embracing our fantasies is a way of honoring ourselves. As we know ourselves better, we become more free to celebrate our natural erotic rhythms with whatever thoughts quicken our pulses and please our hearts.