› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I have these dreams that my mother is trying to have sex with me. I want to leave, but I freeze in place and can’t move. I feel sick when I think about it. I’m a bisexual woman in a healthy relationship with a man. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but I also have another problem: I really want to have an orgasm with normal sex. I can come if my boyfriend goes down on me or rubs me off, but it usually takes a long time. He’s wonderfully patient but I’m still frustrated with myself. I always feel like I’m almost there, but then we’ll have been at it for so long (two hours or so) that I dry up and it starts to hurt and the feeling is gone. Is there something terribly wrong with me?
Love,
Bad Dream, Bad Sex
Dear Bad:
There’s only one thing about you that really worries me, and it’s that you would ever imagine in your wildest dreams (and your dreams, you must admit, are pretty wild) that the perfectly normal way in which your sex life is unsatisfactory could have anything to do with your mother. I don’t think that the Oedipal (not the right word, but “Electral” doesn’t quite work either) dreams have any connection to your bisexuality either. Whatever’s going on with your feelings about your mother is way too fraught and Freudian for me to touch, but I’m willing to bet it has influenced neither your sexual preference nor your sexual performance.
As for coming during “normal” sex, well, you already are. Of course you’d like to reach orgasm during intercourse, but please understand that if you did so, you would be in the minority, hence no longer “normal” yourself. Relatively few women (the number is unknown but often reported at about 25 percent, which is probably too low, but it’s all we’ve got) reach orgasm purely through vaginal intercourse with no additional clitoral stimulation. This may seem unfair, but Mother Nature, admirable as she is in many ways, has never been known to play nice.
The feeling of getting “almost there” during intercourse is, regrettably, extremely common. It is also good news — if you’re almost getting there, there is at least somewhere for you to get to. My advice: quit the grim, goal-oriented grinding (two hours is really pushing it, guys), don’t let yourself dry out (there are many fine wettening products out there), and when the good feeling begins to fade, do something else. And no matter what happens — pay attention, this is very important — do not think about your mother.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I was rereading your column “Sister Act” and had a question. When I was maybe eight or nine, I’d play daddy and my sister would play mom. I don’t know where we got this idea, but sometimes I would get on top of her (clothed) and kinda grind away to orgasm. I think we both knew we weren’t supposed to be doing it, and if my parents came in, we’d quickly separate. So, is this at all normal? Also, is it normal that later as an adult I still desire her (I’m bi)? I’d never act on it, but I feel awful just for thinking it.
Love,
Sister Act II
Dear Sis:
I wrote a column called “Sister Act”? I wonder what it said? Probably something about how even socially unacceptable fantasies are harmless and, like ghosts and other apparitions, unable to affect things in the real world unless somehow incarnated, so don’t incarnate them. Something like that.
Playing house, including the weirdly gender-bound role-play and the not-so-innocent grinding, is indeed common and even normal. Most kids get up to this sort of mischief once or twice and nothing bad happens (of course there’s always that one kid who likes it a little too much). Cousins and next-door neighbors are the classic partners in crime, but siblings will do in a pinch, and to call this “incest,” let alone “abuse,” seems an unnecessary pathologizing of pretty harmless childhood exploration. This is all assuming that it stops at some reasonable age — preferably before puberty. It’s uncommon to even remember the game all that clearly, let alone long to go back and pick up where you left off.
In short, while there are many definitions of normal as applied to sex, none can fairly be said to include sex with your adult sister. There is nothing to be gained by feeling awful about it though. We’re not responsible for what we want, only what we do. Don’t do anything — that includes saying anything — and you really have nothing to feel guilty about. Weird, yes, but not guilty.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.
Andrea Nemerson
My sister! My mother!
If once, then always
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I started dating this guy (I am a girl) about six months ago. I knew he had a girlfriend in another country. I knew it was wrong, but he was only going to be in town for a few months. We ended up really falling for each other.
So the time came for him to leave, and I thought that would be it. But then he told me that he broke up with his girlfriend as soon as he got home. He flew back to visit, and we started talking about the long term.
Then it all crashed. He told me he was having doubts, he was feeling very guilty, and he was really in love with me but was confused. At first I was angry — but I really care about him and want him to be happy. I told him to do whatever was right for him, that I still loved him, but he needed to figure out what he wanted, and I couldn’t be strung along forever.
Now he says he’s made up his mind. He’s coming back. I’m worried I won’t feel secure now. Not only did this whole thing start as a lie (he was cheating — he says he’d never cheated before, but still), but now I fear I’ll always worry that he’ll think he made a mistake. Is there any way this can be salvaged? Can honesty and communication eventually smooth things over, or was this relationship doomed from the start?
Love,
Hopeful
Dear Hope:
Just to be perverse, I’m going to take up against the legion of advice columnists (and friends and bartenders and busybody neighbors …) who nod sagely and intone, “If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll cheat on you.” Sure, a bounder is a bounder and a rat is a rat, but can people not change? If you prick a bounder, does he not bleed? (OK, that last bit didn’t make any sense, but it sounded good, didn’t it?). In most cases, sure, a cheater who doesn’t cheat again is merely a cheater who hasn’t been caught, but — surprise! — people aren’t perfect. Sometimes we make mistakes, like hooking up with the wrong person for the wrong reasons, and sometimes only more bad behavior will remedy the situation.
The smug fatalism of “once a cheater always a cheater” depresses me. It’s like when the HIV counselor insists that you can never be sure your partner is monogamous, you only know he says he’s monogamous. Oh, shut up, Cassandra. I do too know, so butt out. Sometimes it’s just necessary to take a leap of faith, although not, of course, without looking where you’re going. It’s entirely possible that, having extricated himself from the wrong relationship and inserted himself into the right one, our boy will never look back nor stray again. Don’t kid yourself, though, that there’s much you can do to ensure this. If he is the cheating kind or easily bored, there is no level of devotion, no intensity of attention, and no righteous excellence of blow job guaranteed to keep him home.
By the same token, don’t count on honesty and communication to smooth things out. As relationship guru John Gottman has persuasively demonstrated, it’s not the communication style that makes or breaks a relationship, it’s what is actually being communicated. The ratio of “positive interactions” (sharing jokes and happy memories, saying “thank you”) to negative ones — according to Gottman — can predict success or failure far more accurately than the use of “I” statements ever could. (“I want to leave you” is an I statement; “No sane person could live with you” is not.) Whether a couple can improve their relationship by upping their ratio of positive to negative interactions is still in question. Maybe happy couples simply have a high positivity ratio to begin with. Either way, though, it isn’t the honesty that predicts success, it’s the positivity.
If his adventure with you does represent his one and only episode of cheating, and if the ex is really ex and was never the right girlfriend for him in the first place, and if he not only knows how to make up his mind but keeps it made up, I’d be inclined to give you decent odds. It should go without saying, although I will say it anyway, that taking a chance on love is a pretty good song but don’t quit your day job or sell your house. And if by chance you have a farm, don’t bet that either.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life, she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex advisor. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.
Ghost story
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I was on antidepressants for a year and just came off them recently. It was situational; I have no other psych history. I’ve always fantasized about being submissive but never seriously acted on it. But since I’ve been off the medication, I’ve experienced an intense surge of sexual interest. I’ve developed an online relationship with someone in which I am his sex slave–toy. I’ve just sent him some pictures of me. I’m a professional and my friends and family have no idea.
I feel I’m about to go out of control with this desire. Out of control is bad, but is being a sex slave bad? I need to either find a safe place to act out my cravings or go to counseling. How do women who want to be submissive slaves become so safely? What the hell is wrong with me?
Love,
Slavey
Dear Slave:
In my little subcultural corner over here, not a thing, but I wouldn’t be so sanguine about it if I had evidence that you wished yourself harm or were not, as they say, tall enough to ride this ride. You seem a cautious, even somewhat timid sort of girl though, and while that might hold you back a bit, it’s better to be held back than to hurtle blindly over a cliff.
I know a couple who established a relationship like yours, never intending to meet, let alone fall in love, and last time I heard, they were living on a boat and raising kittens. That’s rare though. More typically, what happens online ought to stay online, if you ask me. I don’t mean online dating; that’s fine, but if you’ve established a master-slave deal with this guy based on nothing but, well, mastery and slavishness, what are the chances you are otherwise compatible?
Keep Mr. Web Master–your Web master as a toy (he’s your toy as much as you’re his) and start from scratch. If you’re not out trolling for scary strangers who could actually hurt you and you’re not being driven so crazy by twisted desire (can’t you see the pulp-style illustration?) that you can’t maintain your respectable, professional standing, you don’t need counseling. You need to read some books (not the pulp kind, the kind they sell at nice sex stores), join an S-M educational group or attend some “munches” (coffee klatches for would-be perverts), and start experimenting with being the sort of sex slave who sheds her collar after a couple hours and goes home and feeds the cat. This sort of program, entered into knowledgeably and pursued in moderation, ought to get you where you want to end up: as a “slave” who commands respect and controls her own destiny. There’s no such thing in real life, but this is hardly real life, and that’s the point.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I’m not-so-recently divorced and starting to think about having sex again. My problem is, whenever I start thinking about sex, it’s memories of what my husband and I did (mostly BDSM) that come to mind, and I just shut right back down because I don’t want to think about him. Do I just need to buy a bunch of random porn and hope I’ll light on something else that arouses me?
Love,
Long Dry Spell
Dear Dry:
Not a bad idea, but you don’t have to buy anything. (You really have been gone awhile, haven’t you?) Porn is free for the finding all over the Internet, and you should be able to find representations of not just BDSM scenarios but the exact BDSM scenarios you used to act out with your husband — minus the husband. Looking at or reading some of this stuff may not fully exorcise your husband’s unwelcome ghost — it probably won’t — but it is sure to help. BDSM also, unlike other sexual proclivities, has the advantage of being a spectator sport. If you live in or near or can visit a major metro area — the kind that can support a leather shop or two and has a gay pride parade featuring humans, not golden retrievers, being proudly leash-walked through the center of town — there will be some sort of club or private party circuit where you can see S-M in action. The disadvantage of live display is that the people are unlikely to look as good in leather panties as do the models on the Internet. Plus, you have to be polite to them and ask if you can watch — in short, you have to talk to them. The advantage, of course, is that you do have to talk to them and thus might make a friend or find someone who is neither your husband nor the ghostly afterimage of your husband with whom to do S-M. This is all very hard work, and for the confirmed introvert it (speaking) will never come naturally. But compared to being alone, lonely, haunted, and unable to masturbate, it’s got to be a breeze.
Love,
Andrea
Too bad, Dad
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’ve prided myself on having a good relationship with my daughter, and we have always been able to talk about anything, but I was shocked when she asked me about anal sex. I was at a complete loss. She’s only 14 and it never crossed my mind that she would even know what that is, but I guess it’s not like it used to be. She said it’s the “cool” thing to do at her school and that most of her girlfriends have had it. I don’t want her to think that she can’t come to me about things. I could give her the “if your friends jumped off a bridge” speech, but then again, well … at least I wouldn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant. LOL. How should I handle this? Should I be supportive or honest or just refer it to another female like my sister or one of my coworkers?
Love,
Puzzled Pop
Dear Pop:
Sorry. Unless you’re raising her alone in a supermodern ranch house on a lonely and distant planet, she could have asked someone else, but she didn’t. You’re up, and I’m afraid you’ll have to be both honest and supportive. It should help to hear that “supportive” does not mean “Butt sex? It’s no biggie. Get with the program, kid.” Plus, if she came to you for advice, chances are good that she’s not already doing it and liking it or else what would she need your advice for?
We do hear (where have you been?) that these kids today spend more time having anal sex and attending blow job parties than they do on soccer, MySpace, and homework combined. There was a moment there when it seemed every possible media outlet featured a scarifying exposé of rampant oral gonorrhea among kids at elite suburban middle schools or rings of barely pubescent girls selling their anal favors for Bubble Yum. Much of this stuff is clearly exaggerated for effect, extrapolated from precious little data to garner ratings, sell magazines, or whip up a panic among parishioners or PTA members.
There is, however, some measure of truth along with the disinformation, if fairly nonpartisan bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins are to be believed. Every study conducted in the last decade or so has shown at least some increase in the number of young (in some cases, very young) people having oral and anal sex. In some cases, these are the very kids who sign abstinence pledges, promising not to “have sex” until marriage, another downside to using “sex” to mean penis-vagina intercourse. It allows for all sorts of weaselly usage, from the presidential “I did not have sex with that woman” to the willful misinterpretation of decent scientific data by groups like the Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family.
I did have a point here: do not assume that she’s wrong or exaggerating when she tells you that anal is the “in” intercourse at her school. It may not be as prevalent as she thinks or reports (at least some of her girlfriends are lying), but it is happening.
It would be useful to know what your daughter actually asked you — I’m having a hard time believing she requested your blessing to start taking it up the butt, so what did she need from you? I’m going to go with the most likely possibility, that she mostly just wanted you to listen while she processed her own thoughts and feelings, and surely you, Mr. Sensitive Dad, could handle that much without having to palm the poor child off on your secretary or the mailroom girl?
Chances are your daughter also needed some information about what people actually do with their butts and stuff, since adolescents, even adolescents who affect a world-weary air and claim intimate knowledge of whatever arcane subject is under discussion, are notoriously vague about the nitty-gritty details. I think it’s perfectly legit to outsource this part, but only this part, probably by recommending one of the sex education Web sites specifically targeted to teenagers. I like Scarleteen.com, but it really doesn’t matter as long as you don’t just point her at the Web and tell her to go look up “anal + teen,” OK?
Let the professionals handle the “does it hurt?” and “will I like it?”-type questions, but as her dad you don’t get to shirk the harder parts, where you ask her what she’s heard, how she feels about it, whether her friends are pressuring her, and what she will do if they do pressure her. I would hope you’ve already talked to her about respecting herself and her body and not doing anything until or unless she really wants to, and then only once she’s educated herself about risks and how to avoid them. If you haven’t, well, for God’s sake, man, she’s 14. She has all kinds of excuses for stupid and irresponsible behavior. What’s yours?
Love,
Andrea
Eye spy
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’ve found myself a femmy boy who’s willing — nay, enthusiastically prepared — to wear green eye shadow in public. This is delicious. However, we live in Colorado Springs, which is for its size a wealthy and well-educated town but also is headquarters for Focus on the Family, New Life Church, Will Perkins, Ft. Carson, NORAD, and the Air Force Academy. One of my femmy-boy friends was recently chased down an alley downtown by some of the local military simians for the apparently gender-treacherous crime of wearing a top hat. It was lucky for him he knew the area well and wasn’t nearly as plastered as they were.
My two questions about the eye shadow thing are these: first, and I understand if you’re not able to answer because you don’t live here, if we do go on a date while he’s wearing it, what do you think our chances are of finishing the evening without getting the shit beaten out of us? And second, what’s your opinion on where he should put his feet while treading the fine line between staying safe and taking a stand for the right to do what he wants with his body if it’s not hurting anyone else?
I guess the question is along the same lines as, how do you feel about him wearing a ball-gag and leash to the local Starbucks? Eye shadow is just a less overtly sexual signal. Well. To some people. Not to me.
Love,
Don’t Kick Me
Dear Kick:
Gotcha. And no, I surely do not live there, nor would I, but we did blow out a tire there on a cross-country trip once and got stranded for a couple days. Pretty town. Really nice park. I knew all that stuff (Air Force, antigay groups, etc.) was there, but you can’t tell by visiting — it’s not like there are giant “FAGS GO HOME” banners flying gaily over Main Street or anything. But would I, were I a guy, dress up in my gayest glad rags and sashay down the same main drag in a pair of darling red wedge espadrilles and a panty girdle? I would not. I suspect you would not either, were you a guy (you’re not, right?). It would be no safer for you to accompany your new girly-boy while he did it, either. There is sticking up for your inalienable right to be a weirdo, and there is stupidity. I draw the line at stupidity in any other context, so why would I make an exception for this one?
There was a time in the late ’80s and early ’90s when the all the cool kids were making a spectacle of themselves in the name of political action: “visibility,” I think we called it. All you had to do was print up some T-shirts or stickers and show up en masse where you weren’t expected, and you got to feel all brave and thrillingly transgressive and challenging to heterosexual hegemony and stuff. It was great. It was also kind of a fake — when you’re surrounded by a few dozen or hundred or thousand of your closest friends and you’re in San Francisco or New York or Washington, not Jakarta or Beijing or rural Rwanda, you’re pretty safe. Even if the cops get you, you’re going to be cited and set free; protesters in the United States are rarely brought to trial, let alone found bound and beheaded in a ditch. That doesn’t mean that nothing we do here is dangerous, though, and unfortunately walking certain streets in a state of visible gender ambiguity can still get you kicked in the face.
There is no set point on the continuum from safe but stifled to “kick me” that I can recommend you find and cleave to, never again to stray. I do not think it would be very smart to dress your boy up and parade him around near the base at bar closing on a Saturday night; nor do I think those of us who fail to conform in every particular to local community standards for gender performance need cower at home forever for fear of attracting a disapproving glance. Somewhere between “don’t frighten the horses” and “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke” lies the perfect level of public self-expression for you two as individuals of your particular place and time. Find it. Also consider finding some fellow gender traitors with whom to make your scene, even if that scene is no more transgressive than going out for fish and chips (I’m pretty sure that’s what I ate at your local brew pub while waiting for our truck to be fixed so we could get the hell out of there) and the late showing of Snakes on a Plane. I think you’ll be OK. I wouldn’t recommend the Starbucks-and-ball-gag excursion, but that’s because it’s in bad taste, not because it could get you killed. You’ll have to use your common sense. If you haven’t got any, I really do think you’d better stay home.
Love,
Andrea
Milkbone
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
Do you think lactation is sexy? My sister just had a baby, and her husband finds the breast-feeding all very erotic, and I told her there was something wrong with him. I said she should tell him to see a shrink, but she told me it didn’t really bother her. I’m worried he is brainwashing her. Do you know of any books I can give her? What should I say to keep her safe? Should I call child services if she doesn’t snap out of it?
Love,
Fretting Sis
Dear Sis:
Yikes! Are you serious? If anyone’s going to do any snapping out of anything, it had better be you. I did mention recently that I don’t find lactation or its accompanying equipment at all sexy, but my opinion here matters barely more than yours does; if it isn’t a problem for your sister, it isn’t a problem, period. I see that you want some drama and to get to be the hero and all, but too bad. Go find a stray kitten to rescue and leave your sister’s family alone.
It’s no surprise to me that the husband, incidental beneficiary of nature’s bounty, should appreciate his good fortune. Men like boobs! News at 11. Nor does it shock me that the occasional woman quite innocently experiences some sexual sensation while breast-feeding. We only have so many body parts and so many physiological responses: breast-feeding, orgasm, and emotional bonding, for instance, all release or respond to the same hormone, oxytocin, which also induces labor. For most people the pleasurable (orgasm) and the nearly unbearable (labor) could not be further apart, but individuals are not “most people.” Susie Bright, for instance, wrote about using a vibrator during labor and (I think) claimed to have had an orgasm while delivering her daughter. Pretty unusual, granted, but hell, it’s got to be better for you than an epidural.
We’ll never know how many women have felt a harmless little buzz while breast-feeding, and considering the attitudes out there (yours, for instance) we never will. It’s not just disapproval, either. Every once in a while there’s a story about a woman who’s admitted feeling something vaguely sexual while breast-feeding actually losing her kids. (OK, in the most famous of these the kid was three, which does change things, but still.)
It may be difficult to establish the requisite distance when there’s a baby involved, but it would behoove you to learn the difference between “I think that’s weird” and “I think that’s wrong and dangerous and I have the responsibility to do something about it.” Or try it this way: if you hear that your brother-in-law is turned on by the baby, then by all means freak out and panic and leap into action. If, on the other hand, you hear that he’s turned on by his own wife’s breasts, well, shut up and go home.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I told my husband that I got hit on at the grocery store. I told the guy I was married and I walked away. Well, my husband apparently felt the need to prove to me he’s desirable too. So he tells me how he was “joking” with this cashier, asking, “Do you want to go for a ride?” “In your truck?” she asked. He replied, “I didn’t say anything about my truck.” She wanted to take him up on it, but she wasn’t getting off work for a few hours. He shrugged and said that he had to go, never once telling her that he was married.
We don’t wear rings; I know I’m married and I make sure any guy who tries to hit on me knows too. I’m kinda upset with my husband now. He doesn’t understand why. What do you think?
Love,
Check Me Out
Dear Check:
I think he’s kind of a tool or was at any rate behaving in a tool-like manner. It isn’t merely that he was playing a nasty little game with you, although I’d think that would be bad enough, but what about the cashier, whom he was using as a cheap prop or pawn? He behaved caddishly toward her as well. One can only hope that she was playing him right back, planning to amuse her girlfriends later with the story of that horn-dog married guy at the store today, what a tool.
It’s not his childish insistence on getting you back that bothers me most, though. He was obnoxious to the cashier and toolish to you, but not understanding why you’d mind these things makes him an idiot, and that is pretty close to unforgivable.
You will forgive him, of course, after explaining one more time exactly what he did wrong. You pretty much have to, since you don’t, I assume, want to have to get a new husband. It’s hard enough to get a new grocery store, and I don’t see either of you going back to the old one, do you?
Love,
Andrea
ALT.SEX.COLUMN
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m a 50-year-old man who has gone without sex for too long now. To me, my ex-wife’s 35-year-old niece is the true personification of the “MILF.” She’s had her two kids, got divorced, and still looks as hot as she did at 18, when I first developed an incredibly deep infatuation. Since I was still married to her aunt, I couldn’t indicate this in any way. Now I can’t stop thinking about her. I know it’s holding me back from pursuing other opportunities, but I’ve found that I really need her … bad! I guess my questions are, how appropriate would it be for me to make my thoughts and overwhelming feelings known to her? If appropriate, how should I approach this? I don’t want to freak her out, but how should I tell her that I’ve had the hots for her for 17 years now and would do anything to go to bed with her at least once?
Love,
Not Really Her Uncle!
Dear Unc:
We’ll get to your questions, but first, “… the true personification of the ‘MILF’”? She “still looks as hot as she did at 18”? Can we talk about this? I know that new parents are notorious one-note bores and I swear I’m not one and will keep writing about other topics, but while I’ve got you, this MILF business has got to go. First off, nobody looks as good as they did at 18 (and frankly, we could all live without the pressure) and second, what does it even mean, “MILF”? By specifying the “mother” in “mother I’d like to fuck,” does the speaker intend to make a distinction between the rare mother worth fucking and the unfuckable masses? Or is it really the “mother” part that intrigues, that sexy whiff of fecundity, that milkshake that brings all the boys to our yard? My personal suspicion is that it’s the latter masquerading as the former, that the fascination with the pregnant or baby-toting Heidi Klum or Angelina Jolie is not fueled so much by the fact that they still look “hot” as by the implication that if somebody knocked them up, then so, by extension, could you. But I may be getting a little theory-addled here.
I bring all this up not so much out of a wish to render my readers walleyed with boredom, but because I was so touched by a new blog called “Shape of a Mother” (shapeofamother.blogspot.com) that I’d take pretty much any opportunity to mention it, even in a column about wanting to fuck your ex-niece-in-law (which, by the way, whatever). The concept is elegantly simple: have a baby or have had a baby or in a few cases don’t have had a baby, take a picture of your transformed body, write a few notes about how you feel about the changes, and Bonnie, the blogger, will post it. The result is an extraordinarily moving document, whether you see it as political (I surely do) or as mere documentation or even as art. It reminds me, in a gut-punch way — not a “wasn’t feminism fun?” way — that sisterhood not only was but can still be powerful. Also, when my absolute best self is not in ascendance, that my own recently ravaged body is not really so ravaged, comparatively. In your faces, stretch-marked bitchez, I got off easy!
No, seriously, this sort of normalization by exposure — see Joanie Blank’s pussy-picture book, Femalia, for a similar and similarly successful tool for fostering self-respect and even self-love among women who may have been feeling freakish, ugly, and ashamed of their perfectly normal bodies — works. It may be the only thing that does work, and it’s way cheaper than therapy. All it takes is seeing unretouched women (two- or three-dimensional, either way) who don’t have a modeling contract or sex with Brad Pitt. It works on men too, although men as a group seem less inclined toward this sort of collective feel-betterism. They can still be cured of a lifetime of self-loathing by mere exposure to the unglamorized truth (it’s five and a half to six and a half inches, dudes).
Let’s get down to it: this woman is not your relative, your ex-wife is not your wife, and nobody cares. Oh, and she doesn’t want to fuck you, so it’s time to give it up already.
What you have here is not a crush or a fancy but something verging on obsession and by definition unhealthy. If you insist on trying to get somewhere with her, you should really leave out the part about thinking dirty thoughts about her since she was 18. That’s pretty skeevy, pops. If I were her, I’d change the locks.
Ask her out, decently. Emphasize interest over obsession. Try not to sound like you have a secret room in the basement plastered with her photographs, and then take no for an answer. We can only hope that her rejection breaks the spell. She isn’t the one holding you back, you know.
Love,
Andrea
SFBG
Jeepers creepers
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
My sister introduced me to one of her best friends. She’s a wonderful girl, smart and tough and funny and cute and accomplished. She’s traveled the world and is a field biologist. She’s exactly the kind of woman I dream of.
On our second date, if you can call it that, we spent nearly four days straight together. The more we’re together, the more we want to be together. So here’s the rub. One night my sis and I were talking about herpes, and she told me that this girl once had a genital fever blister. She also said (she’s a biologist too) that she had 95 percent confidence in the information.
Now clearly I can’t betray my sister’s confidence by just blurting out some blunt question, and I don’t much care for games. So I’ve offered to get tested and intimated that I would like her to as well. You know, as a way to let the evidence speak for itself, and nobody gets hurt. She demurred and said something like, “What for? We’ve already pretty much taken our chances.”
What do I do? I know my chances of picking herpes up without her being broken out are somewhat less than 10 percent, so I’m kind of playing the numbers right now, but I think she should have already been honest with me. Don’t you? I mean, that’s what a real relationship is founded on. And I do have to admit that it kind of nags at me, in the back of my head, but I’ve let it go now for three or four wonderful, adventurous weekends spent in and out of bed and in and out of all kinds of different sex positions. What’s to be done? I like her a lot. How do I keep the romance alive and figure out what I might be picking up all at the same time?
Love,
What Good Can Come of This?
Dear What:
You have no idea what you could be picking up, and neither, to be fair, does she. As many as 75 percent of people infected with HSV (herpes simplex virus) are asymptomatic or oblivious, so what makes you so special? You could have been infected for years and been merrily spreading it from blossom to blossom like a busy little bee, all unawares. Anybody could.
While I think many AIDS educators go way overboard insisting that everyone is equally at risk and every new contact should be assumed positive until proved otherwise, it’s surely true of herpes: Anyone could have it, and most of us do. I have no idea, for instance, whether I’m immune (I’ve never had the slightest hint of a cold sore or anything suspicious down there) or am simply another asymptomatic shedder, merrily spreading, et cetera.
Herpes is usually tested for with a swab at the site, but there are blood tests available for the asymptomatic and curious (the American Social Health Association, at www.ashastd.org, has all the information). Hardly anyone gets them, though — they’re expensive and inconvenient, and most people never even think about herpes unless they know they’ve been exposed or have developed symptoms. And I don’t blame them. What could be more “out of sight, out of mind” than something you’ve never seen and would rather not think about?
All this aside, a “genital fever blister” like your lady friend reputedly had that one time almost certainly counts as a symptom. While there are herpes-ish things that can pop up in or around the mouth — canker sores, pizza mouth — a blistery lesion on the genitals is overwhelmingly likely to be the real thing. (Of course, she added cheerfully, it could have been syphilis!)
It’s pretty common to have one outbreak and never have another, although as I’m sure you know, the herpes is not gone nor should it be forgotten. It is merely hiding. And an infection tends to get less virulent over time and is harder to spread from female to male (that 10 percent figure you quoted probably referred to transmission from male to female and to monogamous non-safe-sex-having couples over the course of a year, not a three-day one-night stand), though you could, I suppose, have been unlucky. In the absence of suddenly appearing sores, you’ll probably never know. Now what do you want to do about it?
Assuming the lady ever even had that outbreak (hey, my brother’s a biologist too; he’s way smart, but I defer to him on matters of marine ecology, not who’s had which kind of cooties and when), she did owe it to you to fess up. This does not absolve you from failing to think about, ask about, or take responsibility for avoiding infection yourself, though, does it? It takes two to tango, tangle, or transmit, after all.
If you don’t like games, don’t “intimate” things — ask them. If you want to know if you got infected, get a blood test. If you want the girl, call her. I don’t see where any of these are mutually exclusive.
Love,
Andrea
Standard deviation
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m a young, mostly heterosexual woman, and I don’t get much out of ordinary sex. I rely on (safe) sex with one-off partners, which just doesn’t satisfy me.
I’m increasingly interested in S-M — tattoos, piercings, bondage, and I like to be dominated. I’ve also been having fantasies about being cut, which I find a bit worrying. Maybe not being able to fulfill the other, milder desires is causing me to think up more twisted things? Obviously it’s difficult to bring this up with strangers, but I’m not interested in having a long-term partner now. I also don’t want to buy into a whole subculture when all I want is the occasional bit of harmless deviance. What next? Do I even have a problem?
Love,
Deviant Dallier
Dear DD:
Ha! Good question. I wish more people would ask me if they even have a problem, so I could just say, “Not really, no,” and go back to my book. And you don’t, particularly. You seem to know exactly what you want. The only question is how to get it.
The S-M scene does not care if you “buy into it.” You will not hurt its feelings by failing to identify with it. Think of it not as a club but as a marketplace: Is there something you want? What are you willing to pay for it? Is it really so hard to attend a meeting here and there or some events at the local Sexe Shoppe? You don’t have to buy a lot of shiny, unflattering clothing or pierce your face or anything, just go and check out the scene. Meet some nice deviants, get invited to some parties. I’m not a joiner either but sometimes you just have to shut up and do it, whatever it is. It’s competitive out there, and if you want to be properly abused you’re going to have to assert yourself.
As for the cutting, it’s less scary in the doing than in the contemputf8g. Most people into blood play are obsessively careful, occasionally too careful, if you know what I mean, and few will come near you with anything sharpish without undertaking exhaustive negotiation first. You do not want to get into this with total strangers, though, or at least I’d rather you didn’t. There’s a whole realm of “play partners” out there, perverty people who get together at parties or less public arenas to exchange some affectionate floggings or piercings and then go on their way again, no strings attached, or at least not for long. I’m sure someone would want to do the same with you, but if you want it you’ll have to, oh, I dunno, leave the house?
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
My girlfriend and I have explored a number of fantasies, and last week she let me in on one that worries me: She wants us to act out a rape fantasy. She says she wants to be dominated and forced to submit, especially by someone who minutes ago was holding doors open for her.
I’m the first to admit that I’m interested and I think it could be fun if done right. I like the idea of the “woman in a frilly Southern dress gets ravished by muscular lover” stuff of romance novels. Unfortunately, her fantasy is closer to “girl gets dragged off the sidewalk and pounded hard while being called a slut.” I really worry about forcing myself on a woman while she screams “No, don’t!” — no matter that she asked me to do it.
Sorry to kill your immediate reaction, but yes, we have talked openly about it. I’ve told her my concerns, and she understands. So what do we do here? Should we even be considering it? Have we accidentally stumbled into one of those relationship-killing zones where it’s best for a couple to just forget the idea and move on?
Love,
Hesitant
Dear Hes:
I dunno. There are interracial couples who act out slave dramas without psychological harm. There are incest survivors who reenact their childhood traumas in “daddy’s girl” scenarios and the like and end up the stronger and saner for it. If they can play with this combustible material without getting burned, I don’t see why you two can’t. It’s worth noting, though, that the bottom/submissive/“victim” in a scene is not the only one who can get hurt. Not only can tops develop “flogger’s shoulder” or other repetitive strain injuries, they are just as vulnerable to psychological harm as the bottom, but without the built-in safety valve: Bottoms can cry and regress and call a safe word if things get too intense. So can you, but you’ll have to break role to do it. If you try this and it’s too much for either one of you, stop. (You’ll need a safe word other than “stop!” or “no!” or this will never work.) It’ll be fine. It’s not like you’ll accidentally actually rape her or anything. It’s a game, and games end when you’re done playing.
Love,
Andrea
Little creatures
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I would like to know if leeches can be used on female nipples and clits?
Love,
Sucky
Dear Suck:
Would you, now? And why would you like to know that? I suppose it’s too much to hope for that you are selflessly devoted to the cause of curing helpless women of scrofula, ague, and the bloody flux, and are seeking new treatment modes? Tell me you’re not really wondering if perhaps leeches, applied to well-innervated body bits, could provide a stimuutf8g sort of suction. If so, I’m impressed — it takes quite a lot to gross me out but, man, that’s disgusting.
Do you actually know how leeches leech? It isn’t very nice. Here’s a succinct description of the feeding habits of Hirudo medicinalis, courtesy of the University of Michigan’s Animal Diversity Web: “It attaches to the host by means of its two suckers and bites through the skin of its victim. Simultaneously, the leech injects an anesthetic so that its presence is not detected, and an anticoagulant in order for the incision to remain open during the meal. It has three jaws, which work back and forth during the feeding process, which usually lasts about 20 to 40 minutes and leaves a tripartite star-shaped scar on the host.” How hot is that? And you caught the part about the anesthetic, right? The little suckers don’t suck you as much as they sort of . . . dissolve you, but you can’t even feel it while they’re at it. A poor choice of sex toy all around, I’d say.
I realize, of course, that simply hoping that nobody finds leeches sexy is not enough to keep someone, somewhere, from doing exactly that. There is, as my aphorism-coining husband is wont to put it, someone for everything, and all we can ask of the inevitable leech fanciers is that they keep it to themselves.
Speaking of things that suck, I’ve been a little distracted lately from my readers’ blow job issues and quixotic quests for the perfect dildo due to having gone and had two babies a mere three weeks ago: real babies, with the diapers and the 3 a.m. feedings and all that good stuff. They’re lovely, thanks.
I couldn’t say for sure if one’s essential self (assuming there is such a creature) really changes with the onset of parenthood, but one’s perceptions sure do. Things change. Nipples, for instance, are changed forever. Once mildly sexy in theory and distinctly sexual in practice, nipples at my house are now the most quotidian of objects, either made of silicone and soaking in the sink or the real fleshy deal shoved unceremoniously into the frantically gaping but adorable maw of an insatiable small being at any and often every hour of the day. They have been repurposed, and if you take the time to think about it, that is just kind of bizarre, as though you had a penis but it had suddenly been declared indispensable as a household tool — a garden hose, say, or a plumber’s snake — and put to that use for most of the day, every day, until you were expected to bring it back to the conjugal bed and put it back to work at its original job.
What has all this to do with your question about leeches? Oh, not much, admittedly, except perhaps as an example of things which one might think could be vaguely sexy but just don’t cut it. This brings us to the least sexy vaguely sexy-sounding device on this or most other planets, an object without which I had lived quite happily until they wheeled one into my hospital room and ordered me to use it lest my defenseless and undersized newborns suffer and die before our horrified eyes. It’s the breast pump. Yes, the words breast and pump are both inherently sexy and yes, the thing does bear a superficial resemblance to similar devices sold for use on whichever erectile bits and bobs you could stuff into them. Not only that, but there are milky-MILF fanciers all over the Internet, not to mention all those “human cow” stories that clutter up the BDSM fantasy sites. I don’t care. Any object that brings to mind the phrase “moo cow milker” is unfit to be considered a sex toy. The nasty thing may distinguish itself from your leeches by lacking the ability to inject an anticoagulant or inflict a tripartite, star-shaped scar, but that’s about the best that can be said for it.
That’s enough of that. Go read Christopher Hitchens’s entertaining intellectual history of the all-American blow job in this month’s Vanity Fair, or turn up an obituary of John Money, the seminal gender researcher who died this week after a long career as first the hero and then the bogey man of trans- and intersexuals everywhere, and you’ll know as much as I do this week. I gotta go change diapers, and that isn’t sexy either.
Love,
Andrea
Swear an oaf
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
After several bad relationships I started seeing someone new. She’s into “playful” spanking. She started spanking me on the street one day and I told her it made me want to hit her. She seemed to like it, though, so I said OK, just not in public. Then I came over and she seemed really happy to see me and she was giggling about spanking me. And I was, like, “OK, this is kind of funny,” rolling with it.
Then later, lying in bed, she spanked me. I said, “Don’t do that,” in a very clear and stern way. She spanked me again. I hit her in the head. Then she hit me in the head. This pretty much killed things and I’m just about totally destroyed as far as being able to feel anything toward anyone.
I feel unhappy with myself for hitting her but also angry at her for spanking me again. I tried to work things out with her, but she seemed barely able to understand my side of things. She implied that I would hit our kids. She works as a dominatrix and seems very businesslike about her job. But aren’t there safety words or something like that? Doesn’t no mean no? Should I have begged her not to hit me?
Love,
Spankmonkey
Dear Spanky:
Gag, gross, no. Of course you should not have begged her. You should have grabbed her wrist and lowered her hitting hand back onto the bed while saying, very clearly, “I told you I didn’t want you to spank me. If you can’t respect that, I’m leaving.” Of course, in order for something like this to work, you would first have to not be a wishy-washy washrag who gives the spanking go-ahead and then changes his mind. She might be a bit of a bitch, but you do understand that from her perspective you were a total psycho, don’t you?
Whatever your internal process (which appears to have little to do with what you want and who you like and everything to do with wanting desperately — and rather unattractively — to be liked), your outward behavior was, “Oh please don’t throw me in the briar patch, Miz Dominatrix!” pretty much from the get-go. She couldn’t read your mind, and then you hit her in the head. Doesn’t no mean no, you ask? Indeed it does. For everyone involved.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
Things are going well with my boyfriend, except for one thing. He is too rough in bed. He penetrates too deep and too hard. He is also rough with his fingers and mouth. I have noticed a tear a few times on the edge of my vagina. I get really freaked out afterward when I see what it looks like down there. Does it make me more prone to infection? I have brought this up to him a few times, and he says he feels bad and doesn’t want to hurt me, but I’m not sure if he really understands. I am not always sore afterward, but at least half the time I am. I have a serious problem with confrontation (especially in the bedroom), which makes these things hard to talk about. Is this something I should end the relationship over?
Love,
Sore Loser
Dear Sore:
Poor guy. He’s not a brute; he’s just some sort of lummox, or perhaps an oaf. He doesn’t know his own strength; plus, he is not so smart. He means no harm, though, and if you like him I see no reason you should have to lose him over this. Nor, of course, do I see why you should have to poke around checking for damage and holding cold compresses to your nethers every time he’s done with you.
See, I’m imagining you emitting tiny squeaks of dismay every time he handles you roughly, and maybe passing him neatly folded little notes that say “ouch.” Speak up! He’s barely registering your complaints, if indeed you’re making any, and then later you say, “Too rough,” and he says, “Sorry,” and then you both let it happen all over again. You don’t want to be a wishy-washy dishrag like Spanky up there, do you? Lummox-boy is not going to shape up on his own. The good news is, you probably don’t have to hit him in the head.
Of course an open wound will make you more prone to infection, although if he isn’t carrying anything he can’t give it to you, no matter how clumsily he goes at it. I suggest putting him on notice that you intend to stop him the next time it hurts and show him some alternative moves. You don’t have to put on a show — just ask him to start with the gentlest, most lubed-up touch he can manage and move up from there till you say “when.” If he’s actually concerned about hurting you and wants to do better, he will be motivated to pay attention. If he isn’t … well, what are you doing there?
Love,
Andrea
Going topless
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
My girlfriend is really into BDSM. At first I tried and played a convincing (I think) top/dom, but it just wasn’t hot for me, so I looked some stuff up to get inspired. As I was reading/watching, I would really get off on it, but the sex with my girlfriend still wasn’t hot. Then I realized that when I was masturbating to all this, I was fantasizing about subbing. Oops. I am way in love with my girlfriend, but she is a bottom, period. She might switch it around if it meant a lot to me, but I would know that it wasn’t really making her happy. I don’t know what to do. Can I become a top? Can I teach myself to like it? I’m going to do it either way, but I really want to get into it, so please help! I want us to be good in bed together, but two bottoms don’t make a top. Help!
Love,
Topless
PS: We’re lesbians, if that matters.
Dear Tops:
It sure doesn’t, but thanks for the info!
I was just thinking about this last night when a friend was catching me up on her latest dating adventures. She was lamenting that some potential dates seem to come equipped with a set of kinks perfectly matching her own, and though that sounds good, it is, of course, no use at all. As you have discovered to your frustration, one wants a date with a complementary set of kinks, not a matching one. It’s not an uncommon problem, and its most common manifestation is exactly the one that’s driving you nuts: There are too many bottoms in this world and nowhere near enough tops to keep them satisfied. Why this is (beyond the fact that topping is hard work) I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I bet any number of eager grad students are currently proposing theses on the subject to bored advisors who have read enough similar stuff already.
Here’s my theory: There are people for whom BDSM is a core part of their identity, running as deep as, say, homosexuality or monogamy. Some may always have recognized this element in themselves, even before they had the language to express it (these are the kids who always want to play pirates or whatever game involves somebody getting tied to something or the intentional infliction/receiving of pain, even when the other kids are long since ready to move on). Others don’t realize it until they’re exposed to S-M in some more adult context, but then it just clicks in, key into lock, and they know. Your girlfriend sounds like one of those BDSM lifers, who tend, in my experience, to be pretty set on their preferred role even if they do switch experimentally on occasion (a good idea, if only to find out how painful/exhausting it is to experience/produce any particular sensation).
Then there are the “anything goes” people, who are happy to pick up a flogger or don a dog collar, what the heck, as long as it’s fun. This type of player may not identify as an S-M person per se, but may enjoy a little power exchange on the occasional Friday night, no biggie. You may fall more on this end of the spectrum, but even “what-the-heckers” usually discover some sort of preference, as you have. The perfect 50-50 switch is almost certainly as rare as the perfect 50-50 bisexual.
Plenty of people find something to like in either role, and I think you can develop an appreciation for topping and get some satisfaction out of a job well done (there are resources like The New Topping Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, to help you). But you can enjoy and get good at it without ever really becoming a top the way both of you are currently bottoms. Be careful about taking on a role that isn’t really “you.” Nobody loves a martyr, and you’re still going to want to bottom sometimes. I worry about you starting to resent your girlfriend for getting to have all the fun.
I have a suggestion that might save your relationship or might strike you as all sorts of wrong and make you hate me, but here goes: You guys find a willing top, maybe somewhere in your social circle, maybe online or in a BDSM social organization, and bottom together sometimes. This kind of shared adventure can be hot, hot, hot and very bonding, sort of like getting lost in the woods together and surviving through mutual trust and interreliance — but a lot more fun. I think if you do that sometimes, and play top sometimes, and stick with the vanilla sometimes, you’ll probably be OK, provided you both take care of getting your itches scratched. Love conquers … much.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her archived columns.
Cooler heads
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’ve been dating a beautiful girl, and I mean she is hot. The problem? She’s really jealous and we fight all the time. I can’t look at another girl. She is incredibly possessive and wants to be involved in every element of my life.
I’ve never had any sort of sexual problems before, but I’m having problems orgasming. We have sex all the time. It’s never boring; she has an amazing body and is a great lay. But I just don’t come. I have no problems coming on my own. Can my mental frustration lead to physical problems in bed?
Love,
Feel Free to Come Up with a Clever Acronym
Dear FFTCUWACA:
I don’t do those; that’s the other guy.
I keep reading and rereading and I have yet to find the part of your letter where you say you love, like, or are in any way interested in this girl beyond the purely physical, and that stuff’s not going so well. This lack of any genuine affection makes the solution to your problem pretty simple: Get the hell out and date someone you like next time.
If you were actually planning a future with Miss Hot Thing, I’d be expressing concern about the extreme possessiveness and warning you that little good ever comes of a relationship based on the desire to control and possess, rather than enjoy, the object of one’s alleged affection. You probably know this already, but how hard someone latches on to you and how much control that person wishes to exert over every aspect of your life is not a measure of affection, not by a long shot. At best, it’s about her, not you, and it could and will be easily transferred to the next object of obsession. At worst, well, does the term “bunny boiler” mean anything to you?
Frustration can indeed lead to performance issues, as can just plain not liking the person you’re attempting to perform with. Face it, she drives you crazy, and not in a good way. Your body has noticed this and is refusing to cooperate any longer. Your brain, or what passes for one, is still convinced that a girl who’s “hot” and “beautiful,” “has an amazing bod,” and is “a great lay” ought to be enough. Your other head, on the other hand, has proved itself the smarter for once. I suggest you listen to it.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I’m a virgin, though I recently became involved in my most sexual relationship ever. I think we’re nearly ready to have sex, but I’m concerned about not having an orgasm. I hadn’t experienced much penetration before, but now I get a lot. Still no orgasm. I don’t get very far on my own, but when he’s using his tongue or fingers, I occasionally feel close but never experience a release. Is this normal? Does it suggest that I’ll have similar difficulty when it’s his penis instead of a tongue or finger? Or will the difference in size make me more likely to orgasm?
I take an antidepressant but I’ve been on it years longer than I’ve been sexually active, so it’s hard to tell if that’s the problem. I’m working on lowering the dose slightly, but stopping isn’t an option right now.
Love,
Please Release Me
Dear Release:
Are we having That Clinton Problem? You say you’re about ready to have sex, but you’ve already had his tongue and fingers and who knows what else all up in your business, which sure sounds like sex to me. It would also be useful to know where exactly he’s sticking those things. My guess is, nowhere useful.
There comes a time in every woman’s life where she must use the power of the Internet to access a nice vulva diagram. I found an alarmingly colorful but rather nice one at www.vaginaverite.com/diagram1.html, but there are plenty more where that came from. See how there’s nothing inside the vagina, but there are plenty of external structures that look worthy of attention in their own right? The clitoris and related bits in particular? Direct his (or your own) attention there for a change and stop worrying about penetration until you’ve gotten what you’re looking for. Although some women are capable of a purely internal orgasm and far more enjoy penetration, if you were going to find your bliss poking about in there, you probably would have already.
As for the drugs, they may indeed be inhibiting you. Many people find that the effect wears off over time, but you’ve had time and it still isn’t working. I suggest trying the clitoral route (your fingers, a vibrator, a shower massage, his fingers, his tongue … you get the picture) while also putting your doctor on notice that you may need to lower or change your medication soon. Perhaps remind him or her that never ever having an orgasm is a depressant in its own right.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. She rarely has That Clinton Problem. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her archived columns.
No gag
> andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
About getting past my gag reflex while giving blow jobs: I have no idea what’s the best way to practice this. I’ve tried bananas, but honestly that was just weird. I never bothered trying to deep-throat my ex because he was happy with a hand job. The new boyfriend has expressed much interest in it, and I think trying to deep-throat without practice first would be really awful. Any books on this? Recommended dildos? Anything?
Love,
Willing but Worried
Dear Will:
Indeed, but first let’s get our terms straight: Are you confutf8g the standard-issue blow job with the X-treme sport called “deep-throating” (taking the penis all the way into the throat), or has the boyfriend specifically requested the latter? “Deep-throating” has long had its place in the lexicon, but it has not replaced and ought not to replace “blow job,” “giving head,” or “going down on.” They are not at all the same thing.
If all you two are interested in is mouth-penis contact, you shouldn’t need a textbook or a night of, you should pardon the expression, “cramming.” You can practice a bit with nothing fancier or more banana-flavored than your own finger or a popsicle stick, just to determine how far back you can tolerate an oral foreign body before you need to expel it. It does get easier with practice. Once you graduate to the real thing, you will find that the more control you take over the process (you do the moving, he just lies there being happy he has a penis), the less gaggy you will feel. If it still feels overly intrusive or out of control, wrap your hand (spit into it generously first, as though sealing a bargain) around the base and move this in concert with your mouth. Some men can easily detect the difference but many don’t care — friction is friction, after all, and warm, wet, and deep are usually good enough without having to get all picky about it. Most men enjoy a blow job, period, and few — I cannot say “none,” but let’s not get distracted by the corner cases — get off on making girls gag or produce involuntary Roman showers.
If you can imagine yourself practicing on a dildo and not immediately collapse in giggles, you’re ahead of the game and I give you my blessing. Buy something realistically sized and inexpensive (jelly rubber, probably), pretend it’s attached to your boyfriend (the sillier the color the harder this is to carry off, I imagine) and see how deep, fast, et cetera, you can go without gagging. Keeping your neck straight and head slightly back are supposed to help, although the often recommended lie-on-your-back-with-your-head-off-the-edge-of-the-bed position strikes me as ill advised at best, since we are trying to avoid panic here, and what could be more panic inducing than having your airway and vocal capability cut off while somebody straddles your chest? Try lying prone or crouching, with the dildo upright as though projecting jauntily from your boyfriend’s pelvis as he lies on his back, and practice opening your throat as though chugging a beer or saying “Ah.”
You may find, in time, that you really can control your gag reflex. The feedback provided by a real live boyfriend, though, in the form of appreciative gasps and groans, is a motivator the likes of which mere plastic, no matter how colorful, will never achieve. Not, at any rate, with today’s technology. Androids and replicants haven’t yet started rolling off the assembly lines and into our toy boxes.
Faking it with inanimate objects will only get you so far; if you really want to learn, you’re going to have to try it on the real thing. I don’t know your boyfriend, but I bet he’d be game for a little experimentation. Just make sure that the session is approached as an experiment, and that neither of you brings to it unrealistic expectations of immediate, spectacular success. Nobody’s born knowing how to do this sort of thing, at least not until those replicants get here.
If you two get this far and wish to — oh heck, there’s no better way to put this — go a little deeper, there’s good information to be found in instructional videos and DVDs, like the ones Nina Hartley puts out, and in books such as Violet Blue’s The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio, which contains nifty tips like how to keep your lipstick perfect throughout, as well as, yes, bona fide deep-throating techniques. I think deep-throating is overrated, myself, but then, I only borrow a penis and ought to defer here to those who possess them full time.
One last word of warning: Yes, there can be a somewhat unpleasant surprise at the end of a successful blow job. Inform him that he is responsible for early warning and withdrawal, no “whoopsies” allowed. This probably ought to be considered nonnegotiable at the beginning, subject to later review.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. She is currently preparing to give birth; thus, we’ll be rerunning some of her favorite columns from adventures past until she recovers. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view more archived columns.
Dodge ball
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
You once ran from a letter from "Stretch," who was interested in stretching his scrotum. As someone with naturally occurring low-hangers, let me just say they seem to have minds of their own, finding their ways into the most unexpected places. A playful smack on the ass from my boyfriend can leave me writhing in agony. Even sitting can be risky. I don’t see any advantage to having low-hangers, unless, of course, Stretch finds them aesthetically more pleasing than more traditional balls.
Love,
Too Stretchy
Dear Too:
People who write in for ball-stretching advice rarely mention why they’d want to do such a thing, come to think of it. While many, I assume, are seeking sensations having something to do with gravity, drag, and, um, wind resistance, I’d file permanent scrotum-stretching with all the other piercings, dilations, and bifurcations. They are varyingly extreme expressions of the human yearning for self-transformation. While most people are content with, say, coloring their hair, decorating their skin, or acquiring an annoying faux-British accent, others feel driven to use their bodies as a plastic medium. While I agree with you that altering a particularly vital and vulnerable body part to swing ever more freely in the breeze seems ill-advised, it is not particularly surprising.
So, what is surprising? How about www.houseofgord.com? I’d never seen it myself until last week, when I was hanging out with the usual band of geeky freaks, plus some new ones with new freakinesses to share. At some point in these evenings someone will pull out a laptop, and then it’s time for show-and-tell, pervert version. This one is dedicated to human transformation into … furniture. That’s right: chesterfield fetishists. Breakfront freaks. OK, I exaggerate — tables and chairs are more common inspirations, but there are also numerous ceiling fixtures and a human lawn sprinkler. You can, apparently, make a lawn sprinkler out of nothing but a girl, a rubber suit, some tubing, and — oh, never mind. I can’t describe it. You’ll have to go look for yourself.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I think I have a crazy foot fetish. I love it when a woman gives me a back massage with her feet. I like it when a woman knees/kicks me in the balls and I fall to my knees in pain at her feet. I reckon I would probably love it if a woman continuously kneed/kicked me in the balls until I surrendered. What’s wrong with me?
Love,
Kick Me
Dear Kick:
Eh, nothing much. You’re a run-of-the-mill kinky foot-fetishizing ball-kickee male submissive; join the pack.
Getting groin-kicked is surprisingly common fantasy material, although perhaps unsurprisingly, few guys really wish to act out the full-contact version. Many men, for instance, are willing to pay a well-shod woman to sorta kick them in the balls. Of course, there are people who wish to go all the way — there always are. For every few thousand fantasized castrations, there’s one superdedicated guy who actually goes out and does it. Hell, there have been at least two cases where someone who wanted to die actually contracted with someone who wanted to kill, the most famous of which involved not only murder but cannibalism. It does, indeed, take all kinds.
Compared to some of those kinds you are hardly weird at all. What you might be, though, is unfulfilled. While there are numerous "goddesses" and the like willing to pop you one in the nuts, most will charge you stiffly for the privilege. If you can afford it, great. Otherwise, there are of course fine consumer products available from places like — you guessed it — www.groinkick.com.
There are reasons besides money why many men would rather dream of being groin-kicked than actually experience it, as should be obvious upon a little reflection: It hurts, and it can cause permanent damage. Do be careful.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I used to kick (and knee) my brother in his testicles a lot (I still do sometimes). He thinks that he can no longer have kids. Is this true? Can a guy be unable to have kids from being kicked in the testicles?
Love,
Balls-Busting Sis
Dear Sis:
You still do this? What the hell for? Do you think it’s funny?
That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I really do hear quite often from men who find that women think kicking them in the balls is funny. As I’ve written before, it seems to have some sort of pseudofeminist, "get back at ’em and get ’em good" kind of component, but you know what? It’s not political, and it’s not funny. It’s just loutish, stupid, and mean.
It’s unlikely but possible that your brother has been rendered infertile by your mistreatment, especially if both testicles are badly damaged. He ought to have his balls examined, and, if he’s been allowing you to beat him up all these years, perhaps you both ought to have your heads examined as well.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. She is currently preparing to give birth; thus we’ll be rerunning some of her favorite columns from adventures past until she recovers. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view archived columns.
Thimk!
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
When my husband and I first got together in our mid 40s 10 years ago, he was fairly adventurous in bed, and I’m sure you saw this coming, but now the sex is really boring. No spontaneity, nothing different than intercourse, no passion. It’s like brushing your teeth — a necessary nuisance — except it gets the sheets dirty.
I know I have half the blame, but when I’ve come on to him at other than the "usual" time and location, he’s tired or has something else important to do that I didn’t know about. He does work long hours. I’ve tried fancy underwear. Sex toys don’t really interest him. Bubble baths are history. He prefers to shower alone. I’m reluctant to arrange for an X-rated video because the ones I’ve seen can be really distasteful. And I don’t want to get sexually aroused by something that doesn’t excite him.
We love each other very much, and neither of us is getting any action on the side. Suggestions?
Love,
Midlife Stasis
Dear Stace:
See, this is why I hate sex advice columns. We’ve been out here for decades, dishing out the same old tired cure-alls (well, not me, of course!) without, frankly, really having the slightest idea if they work or not. There are efficacy studies on therapy but not, as far as I know, on fancy underwear or weekends away, and yet off everyone dutifully trudges to the bed-and-breakfasts and the Kama Sutra Dust and the surprise appearances naked except for (choose two) frivolous footwear, plastic wrap, leather collar, chocolate sauce. Is it any wonder that by now people with troubled sex lives just sort of automatically print out one of these mental checklists and grimly put themselves and their partners through the paces, exactly the same way they got themselves into trouble in the first place? Keeping a sex life lively takes thought, not just a menu of goofy variations, and bringing one back from the dead takes just as much thinking, if not more. Put down the list and let’s think about this.
First off, I ask you to differentiate between "seriously no more exciting than brushing your teeth" and "normal for 10 years into a midlife relationship." Not that I think the latter has to be tooth-brushingly dull, mind you, but let’s all give ourselves a break and remember that things do tend to get a little, well, let’s call it "familiar," once we have enough years together under our belts. There are worse things than familiarity.
Next, I wonder if you have any idea what, if anything, he might be interested in trying. And not to slag your personal tastes or anything, but showering together and bubble baths are not sex acts; they’re hygiene acts, and rather femmy ones at that. Nice enough as far as they go, but I’m not surprised he wasn’t overcome with passion at the mere idea of sharing a moisturizing lilac-hibiscus bath bomb with you. The only thing on your list I see as having any serious hotcha-hotcha potential is the porn, which you are shying away from. I have no doubt that you’ve seen something icky, but there’s so much choice out there that I hate to see you shrug off the entire category without even taking a peek at the reviews on sex toy sites like Blowfish and Good Vibrations. Hardworking lesbians were paid inadequate wages to watch and review all that stuff! They’re bound to have seen something that both you and your husband would find acceptable. I notice that you didn’t say he finds porn distasteful, just that you have, in the past. Your concern that you might be turned on while he isn’t — well, if that isn’t a bridge to cross when you get there I don’t know what is.
I don’t, by the way, recommend just swapping out his Sopranos DVDs for Driving Miss Daisy Crazy II without warning. You are not trying to trick him into an accidental resurgence of passion. Here’s what I suggest: You didn’t specify “the ‘usual’ time and location," but you did say you have one. If it isn’t earlyish in the morning, in bed, try that. Few men, even busy, tired men, will turn down a roll in the hay if all it takes to get one is rolling over. If it works, you can talk later, emphasizing not the part about how unsatisfied and neglected you’ve been feeling, but how nice it was to rekindle things all accidental-like this morning — what fun! And damned if it didn’t leave you feeling a bit frisky. Would he like, perhaps, a little blow job? Or how about you set aside Friday evening to watch some of these prevetted, guaranteed nondisgusting, and yet oddly stimuutf8g DVDs you rented? I don’t expect this to work in the absence of an afterglow or some reasonable facsimile thereof, so strike while the iron is, if not exactly hot, at least still plugged in.
Love,
Andrea
Bimbo on the box
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I recently bought my first “rabbit” vibrator from a nice feminist sex toy vendor’s clearance sale (honeysuckleshop.com), and I love it. (“My First Rabbit” sounds like a Judy Blume title, doesn’t it?) I had no idea how much I preferred the woman-friendly approach until I went to the nonfeminist Pleasure Place in DC to buy a dildo and couldn’t make myself buy a thing. Why does all the packaging on toys meant for my pleasure have to have a fake woman on it? Like that would turn me on?
Anyway, I protested with my wallet and didn’t buy anything. But I still need a dildo, so I thought I would ask you for recommendations. What qualities should I be looking for in my new friend?
Love,
Disgusted
Dear Disgo:
What, they didn’t have any of those boxes where a well-groomed MILF type holds the toy up to her neck or cheek with her eyes closed and her mouth dropped open in inexplicable ecstasy? I guess not — those pics are generally found on “therapeutic massagers” and the like, not static space fillers like dildos or butt-plugs — but I’ve always gotten a kick out of them.
OK, so what’s bugging you is the big-haired, big-boobed, bleached, shaved, and shiny-mouthed porn starlets on the dildo boxes, who are clearly there to attract a certain sort of male interest and purchasing power? I can sorta see your point, but then again, it’s OK with you if men buy dildos too, right? So it’s more a sort of “hostile atmosphere” problem, where you feel a little threatened by the aggressive sleaziness of the packaging? Despite my nearly irresistible urge to snap, “Butch it up, babe,” and leave it at that, it’s clear that a lot of women do mind sleazy marketing, hence the many, many jobs for many, many of my friends at many, many women-owned clean, well-lighted, nonporny places for sex toys over the years. If that’s the sort of atmosphere you prefer (and I get it, I really do — I’m just yanking your chain) and you can’t find one in your area, just hop online and read up at one of the places (Toys in Babeland, Blowfish, or Good Vibrations) that have extensive descriptions, recommendations, and even in-house reviews of every product on the premises. Be prepared to spend some money (silicone outperforms latex and jelly rubber by nearly every measure, for instance, but if you want it you’re gonna pay). You don’t need to drop the bucks right out of the gate, though. Unless you’re positively set on a certain shape (Corn Goddess! Buck Rogers Ray Gun!) or know for a fact that the “Mr. Big Stuff” model is the one for you, consider buying some cheaper disposables and experimenting.
So far so good, but you’re still wondering why those bimbos are gasping fake-orgasmically all over the box for a toy you plan to use for your own special secret female purposes. Heck if I know. I do know people in the business, though, so I passed your question on to my friend the writer and anthologist Thomas Roche of skidroche.com, who currently edits Eros-Zine (www.eroszine.com) but has more than paid his dues flacking sex toys for the manufacturers of exactly the sort of goods you’re wondering about. Here’s his (typically crass and cranky, god love him) answer:
I have no idea what the people who design sex toy packaging are thinking, but I can take a wild guess. There are ten bazillion of these friggin’ products released every ten minutes. I suspect the packaging designers are given vast folders of digital clip art bought en masse from porno houses and have, like, fifteen minutes to design each package based on a small selection of templates that don’t change much.
I also suspect that the majority of people, when they go to buy a sex toy, are less concerned with the packaging than with the fact that they are buying a sex toy. People in the “alternative” sexuality market are fond of expressing outrage and bewilderment that the adult industry doesn’t cater more to the needs of whomever they think the companies aren’t catering to, but successful businesses tend to do things based on the bottom line, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Therefore, I can only assume that this packaging moves product. I don’t like it any better than anyone else does, and I have no idea who’s “supposed” to buy it, but they sure buy a lot of it.
Smaller manufacturers and boutique shops are much better about coming up with tasteful packaging (and also tend to offer higher quality product) but having been to so-called “boutiques” all over the country, I can say that most of those smaller shops stock the same tastelessly packaged dildos as the porn shops, though that is starting to change.
Crankily,
Thomas
Thanks, Thomas, and good luck, Disgusted. Buy American!
Love,
Andrea
Measuring stick
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
It’s easy to find reliable stats on penis size, but is there anything out there on average vaginal width and depth? I know: The vagina isn’t a constant size, it expands with arousal, etc., but the same could be said of penises, and lab-coated experts have managed to measure them. I’ve tried to measure with a dildo, and been surprised to notice that even at my most aroused, I can only get it about five inches in. Is this unusually shallow?
Also, does it make a difference to most men? If a guy’s got a long dick and the woman is (anatomically) shallow, does that substantially decrease the fun? Or is it analogous to the vagina having almost all its nerves in the first third, so that many women don’t care all that much about length? Can you ask around, even if there are no concrete facts?
Love,
Shallow Girl
Dear Girl:
Running your letter here counts as "asking around," doesn’t it? Is anyone interested in marking off a seven- or eight-inch dildo (is there anything a Sharpie cannot do?) and sending me the results? (Do not send me the dildo itself, thanks.) Numbers will be crunched. Maybe I’ll make a chart.
It’s much harder to measure vaginal depth than penile length, and that (along with the fact that fewer women than men actually give a crap about this issue) is the probable explanation for the dearth of info. Not only does the vagina constantly shape-shift, as you noted, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus on what we’d be measuring if we did bother to measure. Many of the sites I checked out, for instance, cite distance to cervix as the measurement of interest, and anyone who’s spent much time up anybody’s hoo-ha ought to know that there’s a little fractal fillip of space like the tail on whatever you’d call a single paisley (a paisle?) extending under and behind the cervix, even when the hoo-ha in question is at rest. At play, when the vagina widens and loosens, and especially as the uterus begins to lift up and out of the way, taking the cervix with it, this space may become capacious enough to stash any number of interesting objects. A fist, say, or one of those bananas an emergency room doctor told me he was always fishing out of college girls who’d hygienically, if ill-advisedly, peeled their fruit before deploying it. So what are we measuring? And how are we determining where, exactly, the vagina begins, let alone ends? Are we including the vulva, some of which are bony while others are plush? And what about position? Have you tried measuring while kneeling, as well as while supine or prone? Rear-entry as well as from the front?
Men generally do enjoy the feeling of being completely engulfed during intercourse, and inconveniently for us but happily for them, the base of the penis is not substantially less sensitive than the front half (although most men do have more feeling in the head, or glans). Most couples, however, can pretty easily achieve that "all the way in" feeling by adjusting positions, propping things on pillows, and so on. If that doesn’t work, a hand, yours or his, can be put to good use here, but you know, I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with you, and why solve a problem you don’t even have?
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I think your response to "I Wanna Be Great," the girl whose boyfriend kept (unfavorably) comparing her with his ex, was on point. What I find strange is that women always want to know "how good" they are in comparison to past partners. I always respond that I cannot compare sex partners because each partner means different things to me. I have no desire to know how I compare with past partners. Is there some gene in women that makes them want to know this? I do usually tell them that they are the best and that is why I’m with them (hey, a little white lie for the sake of the relationship can’t be that bad). Why do women want this information?
Love,
Confounded
Dear Con:
I assume your only experience has been with women, so I suppose it’s natural to go looking for the "rate me!" trait on the X chromosome, but let me tell you, you won’t find it there. In my fairly vast experience (answering questions! I’m not talking about the other kind here), it is, if anyone, men who fret the most about performance and worry that a partner’s former partners will somehow outshine them. But I can’t prove it’s mostly guys who annoy in this very particular fashion, and it doesn’t really even matter. The truth is, everybody does it; you just haven’t done it with everybody.
And by the way, your little white lie sounds a bit cheesy — and don’t think the girls haven’t noticed. Flatter, but don’t blow smoke. It isn’t nice.
Love,
Andrea
Pusher girl
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m a girl. I take Zoloft. It lowers my sex drive, and when I do get horny it takes forever to come. I want to experiment with Viagra. My friend is afraid it might be dangerous. I say, "If Andrea N. and Violet Blue have tried it, I can too!" Who’s right?
Love,
Not Scared!
Dear Not:
I did take it, and would happily take it again. My friend Violet Blue did take it and promised me she’d write a response for you, but has she? She has not! We’ll just have to go ahead without her, won’t we?
Viagra has been extensively tested only on men, and the small studies using women have not been encouraging, so we have little to go on here except anecdata and some common sense. If boy parts and girl parts are that similar, and both types require blood flow and lots of it in order to do their thing, why shouldn’t Viagra and similar drugs work for women too? Anecdotal answer: They do, at least if you’re moderately sexually functional to begin with. Neither my now husband nor I was looking to the drug to bring us back from the dead, as it were, and for neither of us did it serve to speed anything up, just so you know. It did increase arousal, both in the purely physical sense that there was more blood and more — ech, this word is never going to sound sexy to me — engorgement, and also, probably, in that it’s just kind of titilutf8g to procure and take a drug to have hot sex. The latter phenomenon is not to be discounted.
Any drug might be dangerous, some more than others. Sildenafil citrate and its cousins seem remarkably safe, although the initially tiny number of deaths associated with the drugs has, inevitably, crept up over the years they’ve been in common use. The first wave of deaths was made up almost entirely of sick but optimistic old men overdoing it and either dropping dead on the spot or being given nitroglycerin when they showed up in the ER clutching their hearts. The next deaths to make a splash were among much younger men of the party-animal persuasion, who consumed mass amounts of some unholy cocktail of Viagra, nitrous, poppers, and/or crank. Don’t do that. There have also been some deaths, recognized more recently, among apparently healthier, less reckless men, who simply dropped dead. This turned out to be due to the drug’s unexpected effect on blood platelet clumping and is not likely to affect men without atherosclerosis or similar heart disease. Notice I say "men" because we have, as far as I know, no data on Viagra deaths among women at all.
So should you take it? Not for me to say. Should you fear it? As long as you have no heart disease or any of the other conditions for which it is contraindicated, I’d say no. It’s not 100 percent safe but it’s safer than almost any drug you will ever choose or be ordered to take, and it might allow you to come while still on your antidepressants. What do you think?
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I’ve been divorced nearly 15 years. It was a very happy marriage except for my sudden inability to "perform," back in the pre-Viagra days. We were too embarrassed to seek any help. These days, there are chemical remedies for my marriage-killer. I’ve avoided dating since, probably because of fears of again disappointing a partner. I did get a trial prescription for Viagra and was able to achieve a measure of firmness. I have yet to attempt any intimacies for fear that my psychological problems might override any benefit provided by modern chemistry.
Love,
Scared Scripless
Dear Scrip:
Oh dear. I can’t help but cheer the arrival of the Sex Drug Era and wish you’d run into your problem a decade or two later than you did. Of course you did yourselves no favors refusing to seek help even then, since there were remedies available, just trickier and less palatable ones, like sticking yourself in the dick with a needleful of Papaverine. Not nice, but it did work. Still does.
You don’t sound so terribly damaged to me, but the association you’ve learned to make (loss of erection equals loss of love) could be a hard one for anyone to shake. I’d think some short-term cognitive behavioral therapy plus a nice fat scrip for Viagra would fix you right up, but you’ll have to believe in it. Neither one works if you insist on seeing yourself as too broken to be worth fixing.
There are legions of single women your age out there, most of them bemoaning the lack of decent men worth dating. Get shined up a little and prove them wrong.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her former life, she was a prop designer. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.
Stick to it
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
This might be a little vanilla for you, but I thought I’d chance it.
My boyfriend and I are in our mid-20s, and I’m fairly confident that we’ll be married at some point. I’m only the second girl he’s slept with, though, and the only girl he’s had an orgasm with. I’ve had a few more partners. I genuinely feel like he should have sex with other women before committing. Do you think the numbers matter? Is he going to wake up at 45 needing something different? Is there any way I can get him to have sex with another woman and not feel like he’s cheating on me?
Love,
Commitmentphobe (for him)
Dear ’Phobe:
Well that last part is up to you, isn’t it? If you’re going to feel like he’s cheating even though you pretty much ordered him out the door with your phone number and address pinned to his underpants, there’s nothing I can do for you. You’re going to have to decide which is more important to you: lifelong fidelity or knowing he’s had a look around and still chose you. Without a time machine at your disposal (oh, how I wish I had one, for so many reasons), you’re not getting both.
Here are two facts, make of them what you will. (1) Americans, on average, have not had anything like the number of partners racked up by unmarried characters on any sitcom you might watch. At last count by a trustworthy source, half of all adult Americans had had three or fewer sex partners over the course of their lifetimes. More than your boyfriend/husband will have to show for it on his deathbed, should he neither cheat nor obey your order to go out and slut around first, granted, but certainly not what you’d expect from the way people do go on. (2) If he’s going to get bored at 45 and need a little something different, that’s going to happen whether or not he does the homework you assign him at 25. If it helps, when the data for the landmark "Sex in America" study were collected in the early ’90s, it appeared that the vast majority of married or cohabitating couples were in fact faithful to each other, something that, again, you’d never guess from watching TV or movies, or even reading popular or literary fiction.
And, anyway, cheating is not the leading cause of divorce. Many studies point to money or plain old "incompatibility" for that, and not necessarily sexual incompatibility — although that does count. There is even some research showing that "being very unhappy" needn’t cause divorce in and of itself: 86 percent of couples who reported being unhappily married in the late ’80s described themselves as happier five years later, and indeed most called themselves "very" or "quite" happy by then. It seems that the best indicator of whether a marriage will last is whether the couple wants it to last and is willing to stick it out.
I do digress and I do apologize, but I guess what I want you to get here is that projecting your worries into the future (there’s that time machine again) is not necessarily the best use of your time while you’re young and happy and have a wedding to plan. If you’ve made the offer ("Sure you don’t want to go out and spread it around a little before we settle down?") and he is still not interested, you might want to consider just being glad he’s so satisfied with you, and start picking out china patterns.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
My boyfriend has described an ex-girlfriend of his as "really great in bed," so I asked him what was great about it. He described her vagina as "ribbed for [his] pleasure" and said that she had muscle striations that gave him a pleasurable sensation because she did Kegel exercises regularly.
I do Kegels regularly too, but obviously he does not consider our respective vaginas to be comparable. Am I doing something wrong? Do I not do it enough? Would one of those weights that you’re supposed to put in there help?
I definitely have more "tricks" than that girl, but I want to be considered "great" too!
Love,
Wanna B. Great
Dear Great:
Of course you do. I wonder, deeply and truly, about those "muscle striations" and in fact assume that they were in his head, along with a lot of other muscle and not too much of the more useful sort of tissue. By all means get a barbell-style exerciser if you like — it couldn’t hurt — but you’re not going to get any more "striated," just stronger. Your boyfriend could get to work developing his tact muscles at the same time, if he knows what’s good for him.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her former life, she was a prop designer. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.
Raw Deal
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
Should I worry that my husband, who says he is straight because he just isn’t attracted to guys, might be subconsciously or secretly gay? I’m concerned because he really likes anal sex. I think it is disgusting and painful and my first experience with it was rape, and I don’t get why he likes it, let alone how he can enjoy it when it causes me such discomfort. I’ve agreed to do it periodically, in return for him giving up a vehicle that I think is dangerous, but I’m concerned about it.
Love,
Trade-off
Dear Off:
Yes, yes, it’s normal. It’s not gay if he does it with you, especially since he isn’t even attracted to guys, and (as a Hispanophone friend puts it) "bla, bla, y bla." Do a search and you’ll find me explaining this approximately monthly for the last eight years. My concern is not that your husband is a buttmonkey, but that you are willing to put up with something you find painful and humiliating just so he won’t … what? Ride a motorcycle? Unless he made it himself from a cheap Albanian kit, put it together with only half the bolts called for while drunk, and rides it blindfolded, I’d say you’re getting the raw end of the deal.
Love,
Andrea
I’m a wanker. I call help lines and try to get the people who answer them to have phone sex with me. It works best with youth lines, but some crisis lines will do it too. I know this is wrong, but I can’t afford phone sex. Do you know of any phone sex lines that are free? I heard San Francisco Sex Information will do it but they hang up on me. What are some good numbers to call?
Love,
Wanky Wanker
Dear Wank:
OK, that’s pretty funny. If you’re sincere, asking me this question would seem to imply that you expect me to give you the numbers of nonprofit do-gooding agencies like the ones I work often work with, but with slightly less well-trained volunteers? I’ll get right on that.
Actually, I wouldn’t even be answering this except that it gives me a perfect opportunity to run the sort of public-service announcement that I usually eschew, but this one — "phone volunteers, beware" — is near and dear to me. So thanks for writing, asshole.
Phone-wanking is a fairly common behavior or compulsion (which one is more accurate depends on whether the wanker "could stop anytime" or truly feels like he cannot help himself) and has little in common with the dreary-seeming but harmless practice of paying people to talk dirty with you. Your basic phone-wanker is more like the old-fashioned "What are you wearing?"–<\d>type of late-night, random-dialing heavy breather. Your help-line wanker, on the contrary, is looking to score some nonconsensual jollies off of some well-meaning volunteer at suicide prevention or various youth talk lines, as you mentioned your wankerself. Now think about that: It "works best with youth lines"? Because why? Because the youthful staffers don’t have the years of practice and built-up emotional callus it takes to understand just how creepy and devious adults can be? Because it’s easy to snatch kids’ emotional candy? If you really do do this, and you hadn’t quite thought of your behavior in quite those terms, I suggest you start now.
There may have been a time when pay-by-the-minute phone sex was the only option for those looking for a truly alienated sexual encounter with a professional orgasm-faker, but in these days of chat rooms, fora, IM, etc., anyone with a little creativity and determination should be able to scare up some long-distance action. Consensually, I mean. Sure, you wouldn’t want to ask most of these phantom partners why hot teenage girls like themselves would find themselves alone, horny, and available to chat with a loser like yourself on a Saturday night, but really, we can’t afford to be too picky here. Unless your motivation really is the sort of half-evil, half-pathetic phone-rape we were talking about above, anyone with an Internet connection and a good line of patter should suffice. In the meantime — hey, wanker, leave those kids alone.
Love,
Andrea
(Fun fact: According to the 1990 Census, Wanker is the 53,492nd most common surname in the United States.)
One percent solution
› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Readers:
The column about the young woman who ceased having sex with her boyfriend after being terrified (not to say terrorized) by the antiabortion displays on their college campus got a lot of responses, not entirely unexpectedly. This letter bore the subject line: "Stop degrading women for protecting themselves," which, well, wow. Don’t spend much time on the Internet, do ya? If this woman thinks my mild dismissal counts as "degrading" women, then I do not think that word means what she thinks it means. Go Google "bukkake," honey, and then maybe we can talk.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
As a nurse, I was disgusted to have you dismiss using both the contraceptive pill and a condom as "borderline nutso overkill" for contraception purposes. When used absolutely perfectly, with no other drug, digestive, or weight considerations, the pill is at best only 99 percent effective. A 1 percent chance of getting pregnant should not be dismissed as "off-plumb." Patients on the pill can get pregnant even though they have not missed any pills, because every single factor that could decrease the pill’s effectiveness has not been studied.
As for your comments about antiabortion displays as "assaultive theatrics": Why would these displays be offensive and disturbing to you if there was absolutely nothing wrong with terminating the life of a fetus?
In the future, you should refrain from describing women as "nutty" for trying to eliminate the 1 percent risk. I would describe them as empowered and intelligent for taking every measure to avoid conceiving a child they do not want.
Love,
Stop Degrading …
Dear Stop:
Did you miss the fact that she wasn’t "protecting herself" by using a condom plus the pill; she was refusing to have sex, period? To be fair, I didn’t treat her previous insistence on doubling up birth control methods with the softest and supplest of kid gloves, but I did have my reasons. Would you like to hear them?
See, I talk to these kids constantly at San Francisco Sex Information, where I think the staff spends more time on these questions than they do at any other educational pursuit. "Can I get pregnant if I’m on the pill and he wore a condom and he didn’t come in me?" "… if I’m on my period and we don’t have intercourse but he rubs himself on my knee a little bit but doesn’t come?" "… if we’re in the hot tub and I’m on the pill and he’s wearing a condom …?"
After a while, one loses patience. Not with the teenagers, mind. It takes a lot to get me feeling grouchy toward kids who are just looking for a little trustworthy information. No, I have lost patience with their teachers, who ought to be teaching them some critical thinking skills so they can learn to do reasonable risk-assessment, but who are so afraid of getting into trouble that even in nonabstinence-only districts all they will say is, "There’s no such thing as safe sex." The kids who call and write are terrified. They have no idea how the menstrual cycle works (and not for lack of "learning" it over and over in sex ed). They have no concept of what it actually takes to get pregnant ("Can I get pregnant from oral sex?"). They know nothing, nothing at all, except "sex = pregnant." And they are not dumb kids, or even underprivileged kids. They are suburban, middle-class kids, and they can’t think their way out of a wet cardboard condom box, because nobody has bothered to teach them how. I get grouchy! Sue me.
I also get grouchy when people who ought to know better demonstrate a similar lack of critical-thinking skills. Where, for instance, does your 1 percent failure rate come from, and why are you so comfortable bandying it about? Most sources I can get my hands on put the reported "perfect use" failure rate of oral contraceptives at between 0.1 and 0.3 percent (charts usually just say "less than 1 percent"). The "typical use" figures, granted, put the failure rate as high as 5 percent, but keep in mind that by far the most common "typical" cause of failure is not taking the pill, followed by taking it wrong. One paper I read actually blamed oral contraceptive failure on going off the pill entirely during the year in question and failing to report that. So yes, while assorted physiological weirdness can cause pill failure, it’s a lot more effective than you give it credit for, provided one actually, you know, swallows the thing.
I have no problem, really, with people at no particular risk for STDs deciding that the 0.3 percent is not quite safe enough for them and choosing to add a barrier method, particularly during the midcycle danger zone. That is a matter of personal, albeit slightly nutty, choice. I do have a problem with scaremongering and willful ignorance. That goes for the fetus-poster panderers as well as for the teachers who can’t be bothered to check their facts before telling vulnerable young people to "be afraid, be very afraid."
Love,
Andrea
Danger! Danger!
Dear Andrea:
Being in my second trimester, I’ve read volumes about the so-called danger of air embolisms caused by blowing air into the vagina during oral sex. Now, I can’t imagine I’m part of an elite few who have had the somewhat embarrassing, occasional “vaginal farts” during or after sex. What do you suppose is the risk of the infamous air embolism occurring from simply getting air forced into the vagina from your basic act of intercourse?
Love,
Airy Mary
Dear Mary:
I’ve actually looked into this subject some while in the process of putting together a talk on all the horrible things that can happen to you while having what you thought would be nice, normal, even salubrious sex. You can break your penis — or someone else’s penis! You can burst a previously unsuspected ovarian cyst! You can — well, never mind. You can do all sorts of horrible things to yourself or someone you are quite fond of, but chances are, you won’t.
A few years after essentially pooh-poohing the embolism issue (“Don’t sit on an air compressor,” I believe I wrote), I had the opportunity to interview and then work with Dr. Charles Moser, the unchallenged expert on how to avoid killing yourself or others in the pursuit of sexual gratification, and he succeeded in convincing me that air embolisms really are a potential danger, even (occasionally) in nonpregnant women. But not even the good doctor suggested that intercourse was likely to cause one, except in certain very specific circumstances that we will get to shortly. A quick review of the literature turns up many articles on air embolisms due to (poorly executed, one assumes) oral sex, although the cases themselves are pretty scarce and often not fatal. You get to go to the hyperbaric chamber, like Michael Jackson!
Since “vaginal farts” are caused by air pumped into the vagina during intercourse, not, heaven forfend, into the uterus, there is likely no correlation whatsoever between your propensity for producing them and any possible danger to you or your fetus. The air has to get into your bloodstream, and the most likely route for that would be through the (open) cervix into a (possibly damaged) uterus. You will, of course, have had a thorough exam, including an ultrasound, to clear you for any cervical or placental abnormalities, before taking my word on anything like this. If you haven’t, we are not having this conversation.
Now, those few fatalities. They were mostly due to intercourse too soon after delivery, a thought that makes me cringe anyway, although I have spoken to women who felt ready to go as soon as the doctor cleared them for takeoff. Doctor and cleared would be the operant words there.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
My girlfriend and I always have sex with a condom, and only when she is on birth control, to play it extra-safe. Recently, however, she’s been noticing the antiabortion displays that show up on our college campus sometimes. She now refuses to have sex, because she is so freaked out about becoming pregnant and needing to have an abortion, and she talks about seriously never having sex again because of it. I obviously want to talk to her about this and reassure her, but everything I say, no matter how understanding, makes her think I’m just trying to persuade her into giving me sex. How should I help her calm down about this situation?
Love,
Out in the cold
Dear Cold:
You realize your girlfriend’s reaction is way out of the norm, right? That is to say (not that I recommend putting it this way when you do have that conversation), she’s gone a little off-plumb, at least where her risk assessment abilities or lack thereof come into play. Or was she always a little nutty on this topic, as evidenced by the doubling-up of pill plus condoms, which is borderline nutso overkill for birth control purposes (although perfectly rational for disease prophylaxis)?
Look, I have walked through those antiabortion displays. Quite recently I arrived at the restaurant where I was meeting my husband a little pale and shaky from having to walk through two rows of giant, dismembered-fetus posters. They were stationed outside of what I believe was an obstetrician’s convention, and I confess I could neither eat nor engage in small talk until the ghastly images, mixed with my anger at the fact that these assaultive theatrics were aimed at doctors who provide essential health care to women, had faded. But, dude, I got my groove back. There is something going on with your girlfriend that cannot easily be laid at the feet of the antichoice brigade, not that it wouldn’t give me great pleasure to heap blame upon them.
Suggest that your girlfriend go see a nurse practitioner or someone who can calmly walk her through the actual risks (essentially nonexistent) of condom-wrapped, hormonally blocked intercourse. If that plus taking a different route across campus when the crazies are afoot don’t work, well, I hope you like blow jobs. I hear they’re quite popular.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her former life, she was a prop designer. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.