Andrea Nemerson

Work, work, work

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

When last we visited Polyland, I was congratuutf8g myself for doing a necessary public service: warning would-be polyamorists they would fail unless they happened to belong to that select group born with not only the desire but the ability to share. If I gave short shrift to the fact that polyamory takes hard work on top of natural inclination, plus the luck to find similarly inclined partners, I apologize. I’m continually amused, however, by the way the poly partisans who’ve been writing me (very eloquently, I must say) insist hard work is the one secret to successful multiple relationships, or, for that matter, any relationship. " How would I say it?" Happypoly asked in "PSA" (12/21/05). "Poly works for those committed to the hard personal work needed to make it work…. Of course, the same could be said of all other forms of relationships."

Seeing this attitude espoused everywhere has not managed to convince me that it’s true, merely that it is, apparently, what people want to hear. Of course a good relationship requires attention and occasional maintenance — what living creature does not? — but the constant harping on work, work, work makes me tired and suspicious. I may be lazy (OK, I am lazy), but I maintain that you can tell you have a good relationship when it pretty much runs itself. "Oh, we work on our relationship constantly!" does not make me think, "Oh, good for you guys!" It makes me think, "Oh, bro-ther."

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

It seems everything you say about those trying to be polyamorous can also be said about those trying to be monogamous. How many people do you know who got that right the first time? How many people do you know who really know how to do relationships at all? The poly people I know seem to be good at it because, well, they had to get good at doing relationships. I’ve personally seen more problems with expectations based on the monogamous template we’ve picked up from social cues around us than with jealousy. Part of getting good at this is learning to undo all we’ve learned and finding out what’s really in our hearts. Whether polyamorous or monogamous, we could all benefit from finding an unselfish love.

Love,

Poly up North

Dear North:

All nicely put. I guess we part company where we successfully undo all our lifelong social programming. Even if I believed that those templates were acquired, as opposed to inborn (I actually believe it’s some and some, of course), I don’t know what it would take to convince me that such programming could be successfully unlearned by more than a talented and lucky few. I’m glad you brought up selfish and unselfish monogamy, though. That’s a distinction that needed to be made.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I come down somewhere between your position and that of Happypoly on the question of who is well-suited to a poly life. I agree that the majority of poly people experience significant challenges in their relationships, especially at first. Of course, this doesn’t mean that their relationships ultimately fail. In my experience and observation, the following factors most positively influence the odds for success:

1. General attitude of goodwill and a generosity of spirit

2. Willingness to be honest, especially when the news is likely to hurt

3. Independent spirit

4. Strong personal desire for a poly life

5. Reasonably good emotional intelligence and self-esteem

6. Reading poly literature and discussing it with partners

Likely the poly relationships that you’ve seen crash and burn were insufficiently supplied with one or more of these components.

Love,

Poly out East

Dear East:

It all sounds so nice. I have no doubt, actually, that these factors do indeed play a role in the success or failure of people’s poly endeavors. I can’t help but be reminded, though, of a friend’s research into what actually motivates people to have high-risk, unprotected sex. It was assumed for the first 20 years or so of safer-sex education that people weren’t using condoms because A) they didn’t know how HIV spreads or B) they didn’t have access to condoms. It turned out, of course, that some 99 to 100 percent of the people having high-risk unprotected sex know how to avoid contracting HIV and have access to supplies. They have their own reasons (denial, peer pressure, desire, and so on) for choosing not to use condoms, and there is no chance of affecting their behavior without taking these very real concerns into account. This may seem a far-fetched and unfair comparison, I know, but I like to keep in mind that we shouldn’t assume what makes people tick is what ought to make them tick. People is weird.

Love,

Andrea

This column originally ran Jan. 11, 2006. Alt.sex will return with new installments March 28.

Trojan war

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m in my first sexual relationship. There’s been a lot of lovely hand- and mouth-action, but no penis-vagina intercourse because I can’t maintain an erection with a condom on. She really wants genital intercourse; she’s very experienced and always had her best orgasms that way. She also says she’s never heard of this problem before — and my self-proclaimed sex expert friends concur. Am I really that unique in experiencing a complete loss of stimulation with a condom? And assuming that we don’t get married, my sex life looks pretty bleak if I can’t use condoms. Any ideas?

Love,

Can’t Feel a Thing

Dear Thing:

Well, sure. Don’t listen to your self-proclaimed sex expert friends, for one thing. I’m a self-proclaimed sex expert myself, and I’ve heard of your problem before. Of course I have. You may be an extreme case, but no, you’re not unique.

It’s true that this weird bit of wiring of yours is capable of dooming you to a life of sexual frustration or sexual diseases, depending. So, in escautf8g order of inconvenience, I offer some technical solutions: a small amount of lube inside the condom, thinner condoms, polyurethane (plastic) condoms, those odd big-head condoms which are supposed to flap and rub around your business end in a lubricious manner, or — I hesitate even to suggest this but it’s actually not that bad an idea — the female condom.

If you really can’t feel a damned thing through an ordinary rubber rubber, I have limited faith in the ability of a drop of lube or a different brand of condom to make the earth move for you, but it’s easy enough to try and shrug in a world-weary manner if it doesn’t work. The plastic options are a much better bet. They’re harder to find, though, so there’d be no running out to the corner store with your pants half fastened; you’d have to plan ahead. The Avanti polyurethane condom had a bad rap for a while but has been tested extensively and is actually just as safe as anything else. They really are a better aesthetic experience all round: they are thin and quick to transmit body heat; they don’t taste like a mouthful of steel-belted radial; and they’re safe to use with baby oil or WD-40 or whatever greases your boat. It’s not like you’d never know it’s there, mind you — it’s a condom, and they all suck — but there’s a chance you’d be able to find your dick in the dark while wearing one, which appears to be more than we can say about the latex ones.

I find myself hoping very hard that the Avanti works for you, because I really don’t want to have to recommend the female condom. It’s expensive, more elusive yet than plastic condoms, and, frankly, ridiculous. It’s as long as your forearm, resembles a jellyfish, makes a horrid sloshy crinkling noise (the Avanti does this too but more discreetly), and although it looks OK while your lady friend is supine, turn her prone or stand her up, and it will hang low and wobble to and fro and make you both giggle, if you’re inclined that way, or cry, if you’re not. It’s a terrible product, in short, except for one aspect, which is surely worthy of notice: it works. You’ll probably hate it, but then again, if it’s a choice between knowing that your penis is inside a vagina and "Vagina? What vagina?" maybe you won’t.

Try the other things first, though. None of them resemble an aquarium exhibit that happened to lodge itself, unbidden, up your girlfriend’s hoo-ha, and that’s always a plus if you ask me.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I had sex with a girl one time who has a regular other partner. We did it once using a condom, and I pulled out with the condom on, prior to ejacuutf8g away from her. Her other friend doesn’t use a condom and withdraws. She called me to say she was pregnant, and I freaked. She didn’t understand why, since she is certain it must be the other friend’s child because of their methods and regularity. I don’t ever want to have sex again, obviously, but do I have a reason to worry here? All of a sudden she is pregnant, and I just happened to be in the picture around the same time? I’m scared to death.

Love,

Shaking in My Tracks

Dear Tracks:

You’re only terrified because there has been in recent years, if not a literal conspiracy, then certainly a strong and concerted effort to hide the fact that condoms actually work pretty well. They do, and if you come in the condom while it isn’t even inside her, then it works really extraordinarily well. You have been misinformed! Now shake off the shackles of ignorance, and don’t ever let me hear you say you "don’t ever want to have sex again." Of course you do; just use a condom. Oh, and buy that other guy a beer and a subscription to Real Dad magazine. This is so not your problem.

Love,

Andrea

It’s time again for San Francisco Sex Information’s Spring Sex Educator Training. Sixty hours, all good stuff, no filler. Find out more and apply at www.sfsi.org.

Blow pop

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

Can we, may we, talk about blow jobs? I don’t mean the semiotics and social history of blow jobs — those are cool, but were well addressed by Christopher Hitchens last year in Vanity Fair, in which he made an amusing if not entirely convincing case for the blow job as the quintessential American sex act. May we speak, then, not of symbolic blow jobs, but the kind we actually give and receive?

A few weeks back I was laying out my secret plan for getting your sex life back after having a baby and breastfeeding (or while still breastfeeding, for the ambitious) and ended with the postscript "A blow job wouldn’t hurt" (2/28/07). I thought it was funny but have since had several exchanges and conversations about the blow job and whether or not it could, in certain situations, hurt. Well, yes, of course it could, but we weren’t talking about that kind of blow job; perhaps I ought to have been clearer. I should, for instance, have made pretty damned sure that nobody could interpret "A blow job wouldn’t hurt" to mean "Oh, throw the poor old dog a bone; maybe that way he’ll shut up and let you sleep." Just because that sentiment happens to represent the antithesis of everything I believe about how we should speak of and, indeed, treat our partners, doesn’t mean nobody thought that’s what I was saying. If you thought so: hell no, and sorry.

If there’s a flaw in my postbaby sex-life-saving program, it’s that it can only work in the context of an essentially solid, loving relationship. I do have advice for people in the sort of relationship where "maybe he’ll leave me alone now" sex is common and expected, but it’s all pretty similar in that it tends to involve suitcases and real estate and the occasional plane ticket out of town.

Here’s what I really meant: sexual contact — surprise! — is good for your relationship. It makes you feel closer and cuddlier and more, you know, coupley. And if you’ve read that column (or anything else) about oxytocin and prolactin, you’ll recognize that there’s a strong biochemical aspect to this. There are reasons why a decent sex life is considered one of the most crucial components of a good marriage, and it’s not just because people like to have orgasms. Vibrators and weird Japanese comic books can produce orgasms, but they don’t make you feel all bondy and melty — or if they do, you have a problem. So, even if you’re postpartum and don’t have your sex drive back yet and feel yucky about your body and unsure whose breasts those are anymore, you can still get some of those good bondy melty prairie vole–ish feelings going between you and your mate. You can do it even if you don’t want him to touch you much, because it’s likely you still love him and think he’s hot and can still enjoy touching him. With your tongue, if you want. It’s really that simple.

The blow job may not be magic, but I have more faith in it as a postpartum marital aid than I ever could in that standby of lazy self-help writers: the weekend away. The weekend away is like New Year’s Eve in its inability ever to live up to the promise of funfunfun, so why bother? Plus, the good sea air and a continental breakfast, while lovely, are probably not enough to get your hormones back in order. Nursing mothers can’t exactly waltz off for a long weekend away anyway, and not many even want to.

I don’t really believe in any of the self-help fixes when it really comes down to it. Cleaning lady? Great, send her on over, but it won’t fix your sex life. Pampering, time alone, romantic dinners? Yes, please, but it won’t fix your sex life. The nongestating partner may be equally exhausted and distracted, but his libido will be fundamentally unchanged. (This is all very heterocentric by necessity, but it could apply to lesbian couples too, as long as one of them actually carried the child. Don’t write to me about adoptive or male breastfeeding. Seriously, I mean it.) As soon as he gets a good night’s sleep, he’ll be good to go.

Postpartum women cannot be so easily cajoled back into the fold, and you don’t want to give anyone false hope and high expectations just to have them go flat like those postpartum beers which might, sadly, fail to taste anything near as good as you imagined they would back while you were stuck with ginger ale all those months. (Not that I’m bitter.)

What does work, as I said, is sticking together; telling the truth instead of skulking, hiding, and pretending nothing’s changed ("I just don’t feel that sexy yet, hon, sorry," or "I don’t think I’ve got all my feeling back yet. That’s why I’m not coming"); sharing information (it’s hormonal!); and being patient. Oh, and, of course, the occasional blow job.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Snake oil

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Thanks for answering my question about performance anxiety ["Spectator Pumps," 2/21/07]. We solved the problem on our own. My girlfriend recognized that it was a confidence issue, so she went to the local sex shop and purchased an herbal male performance pill. We were both skeptical, but it actually worked within an hour. We proceeded to have awesome marathon sex. I had random boners for the next 48 hours.

My confidence was back pretty much instantaneously. We’ve had a healthy sexual relationship since then. We get a pill every now and again for kicks, but they are thankfully mostly unnecessary.

Love,

The "Mind-Blowing Sex, Not the Good Kind" Guy

Dear Good Guy:

I am simultaneously happy that you’re happy and terribly sad that I ever read your follow-up letter. Why couldn’t you have solved your problem with therapy or toys or pharmaceuticals or threesomes or gender reassignment surgery or anything, really, other than Dr. Woody’s Hygienic Vega-Vital Specific Elixir? Now I have to burst your bubble, and you have no idea how much I don’t want to do that.

Actually, you got past whatever was blocking you and now know you’re capable of having mind-blowing sex, the good kind, not only with those bull-pucky pills but, more important, without them. You may be immune to bubble-bursting of any sort, which is great, however you got there. They’re just, ugh, fake sex pills. I can’t help imagining those creepy late-night pseudoceutical ads with the happy, happy wife with the unhinged jaw like an adder’s — and shuddering.

I have a story that is vaguely apropos if you’ll just bear with me. Until fairly recently, I was plagued by crippling phlebotophobia — merely thinking of blood draws turned me clammy and faint, and having one, well, I don’t know what having one would have done, since I never let those needle monkeys get within a hundred yards of me. Since I wouldn’t get a blood test, I couldn’t get any serious medical care, which was fine with me but irritating to my partner, who preferred to think I’d make a good-faith effort not to drop dead on him without warning. So I resolved to do something about it, and since a couple therapist friends had been taking EMDR training, I decided to do that.

EMDR stands for eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, a hypnosislike process that is supposed to heal posttraumatic stress and be useful for treating phobias, although there is no scientific basis for those claims. There are studies suggesting it works as well as any other therapy, but then there are also studies demonstrating that all therapy modes, semiscience and pseudoscience alike, work about equally well. The most likely explanation? Doing something helps. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do something, the more formal the something, the better. Paying for the something also helps, if you ask me, since most people believe, deep down, that something for nothing is worth what you paid for it.

I knew all this but was determined to do EMDR (it seemed preferable to talk therapy, because I hate talking about stuff). I tried not to think about it too much. I also took my copy of Skeptic magazine with the cover story called "EMDR: Just a Big Fat Fraud?" or close enough, and buried it under a pile of old shopping circulars for the duration. I knew what it would say, you see, and I knew it was true: EMDR is bunk. It was the bunk that seemed most convenient at the time, though, so I willed myself to let it work. It worked OK (I’ve had umpteen blood tests since), although I’m fairly convinced that slipping $150 through a slot in the therapist’s door every Wednesday at 3 p.m. would have worked equally well. Just do something.

"Just do something" also explains why some patients report an immediate improvement when they start antidepressants, even though the real effects may take as long as two weeks to kick in. There is also, more directly apropos here, the Viagra effect, whereby a filled prescription for magic beans reliably produces enormous, um, beanstalks, whether or not you ever open the bottle. You pointed out yourself that expecting to have disappointing, dysfunctional sex nearly guarantees that you will have it, so it shouldn’t surprise you that merely knowing there’s help available if you need it can be enough to break the cycle. If not taking a pill can fix you right up, it shouldn’t be news that taking one, even a pharmacologically inert one, can work even better.

There is one strange addendum to that, though, if you’ll stick with me: your snake oil pills may contain something besides snake oil, chalk, and blue dye number 26, and guess what that something might be? Consumer protection agencies both here and abroad have tested some alleged herbal supplements and found them to be adulterated with … sildenafil citrate. That’s Viagra to you, bub. You might be better off just getting the real thing. At least that way you’d know the dosage you’re not taking.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Sour milk

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m still breast-feeding my third baby, and my libido is completely gone. I don’t even think about sex. My ob-gyn seemed to think it’s related to breast-feeding. That was months ago, and I still feel the same. I feel bad for my husband. I know he is starting to take it personally.

Love,

Shut-Down Mom

Dear Mom:

I have to admit I’ve been letting your question sit here in my "good question!" file for months. As a newish mother myself, I can’t easily write about this without taking it a bit personally too. I generally try to avoid getting all me-me-me unless it’s particularly amusing, but sometimes it can’t be helped.

Of course it seems related to breast-feeding. It is deeply and inextricably connected to breast-feeding, a process involving sex- and sexuality-related hormones, intimate touch, and boobs. So really, how could it not affect your sex life? Not to say that postpartum libido issues (I hesitate to call them problems since they are so natural, normal, and expected if generally unwelcome) are purely hormonal. You may be a big bag of hormones, but you’re a specific, unique sack of hormones living a unique and specific life. You have a husband, and you have rather a lot of children. There’s a lot more going on than the mere release or reception of this molecule or that.

I’ve read a ton on this subject, if not before I had these kids, then certainly since. And while most of what you see out there is common sense or nonsense, there are a few bits and bobs you may not have heard. Not everyone knows, for instance, that we all release the milk-making hormone prolactin after orgasm, producing a sensation of satiety. Even fewer people will have heard about the researchers who recently measured prolactin levels in laboratory subjects who masturbated to orgasm or had penis-vagina sex to the same end. The screwers released 400 percent more prolactin than the wankers did, possibly explaining why most people find partnered sex more satisfying than masturbation. Much work remains to be done (what about other kinds of sex with a partner? What about homo sex?), but if we in the Lactation Nation are already walking around with high levels of prolactin, which of course we are, we may already be feeling the sort of satiety that other, less milky people have to have partnered sex in order to achieve. We don’t want sex because we feel like we just had some, and the drive to go get some more is suppressed. That’s one theory, anyway.

Breast-feeding also releases oxytocin, that busy hormone with jobs ranging from stimuutf8g uterine contractions and causing your husband to start snoring so soon after sex to making prairie voles (and perhaps everyone else) bond to a partner and stick around to raise the children together. The oxytocin released at orgasm is responsible for the aaaaahhhh feeling you get as you nestle back into your beloved’s arms. It creates similar warm fuzzies at the mere touch of the right person (good hugs release oxytocin, while unwanted or merely social hugs do not). Oxytocin, of course, is released as your baby nurses, but also by just cuddling with her (or in some cases thinking about her). Again, the sensations of calm, happy, shmoopy-pie satiety, while delightful, are not exactly conducive to going out and gettin’ you some.

Add to all this the fact that your usual sex drivers, estrogen and testosterone, are at an all-time low, and the chemical basis of the "just don’t wanna" that can last as long as you keep up the nursing becomes obvious. Add to that the sleep deprivation, the ambivalent (to put it mildly, also inaccurately) feelings that many of us harbor about the changes our bodies have gone through, and the vaginal dryness, and there ya go. Death of sex. For a while. Do not despair.

Here’s my big secret program, which I hope to make some bucks selling to desperate couples: Do not feel guilty. Guilt kills sex. Do not hide or contrive to fall asleep before or after your husband, and do not lie or make excuses. All of these set up a familiar but deadly teenagerish dynamic where you own the sex but won’t be doling much, if any, out. Meanwhile, your husband is skulking around like a starving mongrel trying get whatever scraps you might drop in an unwary moment. Yuck and ew. You are grown-up partners, and you’re on the same side. Do not forget this.

Face your husband, clear-eyed. Remind him that it’s hormonal. Remind him that it will end. Encourage him to keep offering, since your proposition circuits are down at the moment. And — really important — if it doesn’t sound unappealing, take him up on it sometimes. Just because you didn’t crave it doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. Eventually, you’ll even want it, as long as you don’t have a bunch of stupid fights about it first.

Love,

Andrea

PS A blow job wouldn’t hurt.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Spectator pumps

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Most of the sex I’ve had with my girlfriend has been pretty bad, all thanks to my stupid brain. I go back and forth between impotence and premature ejaculation. Initially, I thought it was physical, but it’s become evident that it’s primarily a mental thing. You know how if someone says, "Don’t think about elephants," all you can think about are elephants? This is the same idea. If I’m confident and stay in the moment, everything goes well and lasts more than long enough for us both to be happy. If I think, "What if my boner goes away?" — it usually does. If I stress that the sex is going to be bad and my girlfriend is going to be unsatisfied, I usually come too quickly. I’ve looked into counseling and hypnotherapy, but they’re expensive and I’m broke. Can you offer any advice?

Love,

Mind-Bending Sex, but Not the Good Kind

Dear Kind:

You are such a textbook case of the classic performance dysfunctions (performance anxiety and spectatoring) that I immediately thought of the big-name researchers and writers on the subject. On my way to getting you some links to Helen Singer Kaplan and Masters and Johnson, though, I was distracted by a book called You Can Be Your Own Sex Therapist. I haven’t read it, but I like the title and appreciate the sentiment. (Felled by god-awful neck pain, I eschewed chiropractors, acupuncturists, and conventional doctors and went the DIY route with a foam pillow and a book called Heal Your Own Neck. I also diagnosed my own depression and used to clean my teeth with dental tools I bought at the flea market, so make of this what you will.) I also like and often recommend The New Male Sexuality, by the unfortunately late Bernie Zilbergeld, PhD.

If you could afford to see a sex therapist, chances are the therapist would introduce you to the concept of "sensate focus," the exercises designed to encourage you and your partner to give and receive touch for its own sake, without getting all goal-oriented about erection or orgasm. The therapist would help you identify what is distracting you and coach you through learning to stay present and enjoying what’s actually happening instead of projecting your anxieties into the uncomfortable near future. While working with a therapist is probably ideal, even seeing an intern for a sliding-scale fee can end up costing you some serious bucks. See if there’s such a clinic handy and if you can afford some sessions with an intern (don’t worry, they’re supervised); and if that doesn’t seem feasible, get a book and do it yourself. Your dysfunction is supernormal. It should be superfixable too.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend is 18 and less sexually experienced than I am. I find myself constantly spelling out to him what to do. I can see how this could occasionally be erotic, but we’re both getting frustrated. He doesn’t seem to be learning how to satisfy me very fast. Even worse, I’m taking antidepressants, and one of the side effects is delayed orgasm. Is it fair for me to expect more effort from him? Should I just accept that sex is going to be mediocre for a while?

Love,

Tappy-Foot

Dear Tappy:

Is that an "until I’m off the pills" while or an "until my boyfriend shapes up" while? You didn’t mean a "sex will be mediocre as long as I’m with this guy but I’m going to stick it out until something better comes along" while, did you? I hope you didn’t, but I fear you did.

Sex educators are forever bugging people to communicate more during sex. "Tell him what you want," they urge, "He can’t read your mind!" I say it too, of course, but I also often imagine an outcome much like yours: two essentially unsuited people endlessly nagging each other (or one nagging the other, whichever) to do it a little harder, slower, longer, or better. Helpful suggestions are all very well (vital, actually), but if there’s no spark, you’re not going to ignite one by rubbing two things together until everybody’s exhausted and dispirited.

I don’t mean to say you should give up right now. You should talk to him sometime when he isn’t down there grinding away in whatever dull and vaguely irritating way he’s grinding. And don’t tell him you need to talk to him about how lousy he is in the sack, either. Raise it as a communication issue, and see how that goes. Then you can give up.

I should caution you, however, against making it his problem that you are experiencing some extremely common, but regrettable, side effects of medication. That is not his fault, any more than being so tragically young is his fault. Both will get better with time.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

I’ve got a secret

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My newish husband and I are madly in love. We’re extremely experimental and both love porn. We share a healthy sex life (five-plus times a week) and talk about everything — except the fact that he secretly jerks off after I leave for work or when I’m in the bath, whether we have sex or not. (The signs are all there, so I know I’m not mistaken.) It’s not so much that I’m upset about it (I’d love to watch!) but that it decreases his volume and ability to achieve orgasm with me. Though he does come every time, he seems to struggle. But on the weekends, sex is amazing because he hasn’t released beforehand. So should I tell him I know? Am I wrong to want to talk to him about it?

Love,

Hands Off!

Dear Hands:

Wrong? No. But before broaching such a discomfiting subject, it’s a good idea to ask yourself exactly what you want by bringing it up — and if your chosen route is the best way to get there.

So what is it you need? Your sex life is already about 200 times better than that of the average married couple, so don’t tell me you want to do it more. (When would you catch up with all the shows on your TiVo?) You did mention volume, but how much fluid comes out is a nonissue. Your partner’s struggle to orgasm may be a problem, but you should ask yourself why it matters to you before you go bugging him about his private pursuits. (He is coming, after all, so it’s not like there’s some big dysfunction that needs fixing.) And keep in mind that if he’s OK with the struggle (I’m sure he knows what’s causing it and has chosen to carry on regardless), he’ll be unmotivated to change.

Also consider that at a certain level this isn’t even really your business. He’s doing it for himself (in both senses of the phrase). There’s a limit to how much you can reasonably expect a partner to change long-standing habits and preferences to suit you. Sometimes you just have to accept who you chose, and try to remember how great that person is — even if that person doesn’t do everything the way you’d like, when you’d like, and just for you.

If you do broach the subject, be mindful. Saying "I know you masturbate as soon as I leave the room" may not inspire your husband to do anything but feel his privacy’s been violated. (Nobody wants to hear that their spouse is tracking them around the Internet or riffling through their used Kleenex, no matter how loving, trusting, and shame-free the relationship is.) The best gambit I can see, in fact, isn’t even aimed at getting him to stop. But it might address your grievance about having to wait for the weekend to see Old Faithful go off: you say you’d really love to watch him sometime? Don’t tell me. Tell him.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend is a flirt. We have a good relationship, but the flirting bothers me — and has for the whole course of our relationship. Recently, when I was on his computer, he’d left his inbox open, and I found a slightly juicy e-mail from a girl. His response was that he has a girlfriend and was sorry if she thought otherwise. But now I’m addicted to reading his e-mail; and though I’ve been reading a lot, I’ve found nothing. I don’t even know what I’m looking for or what I’d do if I found it. I want to stop this nasty habit. I feel untrustworthy and sneaky. Be as harsh as you want. I deserve it.

Love,

Snoopy

Dear Snoop:

Way to take the fun out of harshing on you, dudette.

Look. You know this is wrong and stupid. And it’s not like I can prescribe you some kind of magic no-sneak pills. It would be tricky to explain wanting to start using passwords on your home computers — not unlike saying all of a sudden "You know what would be fun? Using condoms!" and expecting your honey not to think you’ve been cheating. You could try buying him a nifty new laptop with fingerprint recognition, but that’s a pretty expensive fix.

No, I think you’re just going to have to quit cold turkey. If you must, put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it when you have the urge to sneak around his inbox. (And not one of those wimpy Livestrong wristbands either. They don’t hurt enough.) Or whenever you feel the itch to snoop, you could just remind yourself of the two foolproof ways to wreck a relationship in no time: one, betray his trust; and two, demonstrate that you consider him unworthy of yours. Then, voilà! You’re done.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Small Favors

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have a small penis, and I want my wife to have sex with a man more endowed than me, but I don’t know how to approach her regarding this.

Any suggestions?

Love,

Small but Fearless

Dear Fear:

I’m trying to re-create in my head the conversation from the other week which culminated in my suggesting that someone could really clean up at Cafe Press with an "Ask Me about My Small Penis" T-shirt. I can’t, but suffice it to say that nobody disagreed.

If you don’t really need her to do this but just want to enjoy thinking about it, you don’t have to approach her. You can just … close your eyes. If it’s the humiliation you’re after (and you wouldn’t be the first or the thousandth), you can clue her in so that she can bring it up at (in)opportune times. There are few women, it is true, whose personal chimes get rung by panting, "Oh, Charlie, your dick is so small … and kind of limp. Oh, do me with your small, limp dick!" but there are certainly some who would gamely follow the script if it made you happy, especially if it isn’t even particularly true. (My dominatrix friend reports that men who announce their tininess ahead of time, hoping to be berated for it, are nearly always perfectly normal-size; it’s the customers who never mention a thing who turn out to be hung like a grape, and not one of those big grapes, either.)

Be very, very sure of what you want before you go asking your wife for a favor of this magnitude. Unless you already have reason to believe she’s amenable, she will likely be terribly shocked and wounded and wonder what she ever did to make you think she’d agree to such a thing and if you love her anymore. Or she may agree way too eagerly and rush out without so much as a "see ya" — and you probably wouldn’t like that much, either. Show her this column, and see what she says.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I love ticklish women. How did I develop this fetish?

Love,

Elmo

Dear Mo:

Oh, who the hell knows? Early sexologists such as Alfred Binet and Richard von Krafft-Ebbing and later theorists and researchers such as Sigmund Freud and the behaviorists have tried to explain how we make associations or get imprinted or conditioned (or whichever theory was in at the time) and end up getting weird about rubber aprons or white gym socks or used Kleenex. None of it’s very convincing. It doesn’t seem as though early (or "premature") masturbation in the presence of the object, nor possession of a congenitally low and criminal character, nor symbolic substitution ("The shoe, it is a vagina! The foot, it is also a vagina! Um …"), nor lovemaps, nor any other attempt to explain why we are attracted to things and parts as well as to people is ever going to emerge as the one true explanation. In fact, I would venture to say that they’re all wrong, as is the question itself. We can’t determine how or why fetishes develop when the category itself is such a catchall.

There are individual, idiosyncratic fetishes but also societally determined ones, which are also subject to the vagaries of time (the well-turned ankle, anyone? teeny-tiny feet?), and there are fashions even more ephemeral. There are drives so powerful they seem bred in the bone, and there are fancies adopted and forgotten like Paris Hilton’s Chihuahuas. There are objects that are not really fetishes at all but props or costumes necessary to someone’s fantasy scenario, and there is Fetish, which is the sort of tight and shiny stuff that many people fetishize but others wear or covet merely because it looks bitchin’.

You don’t really have a fetish for ticklish women, anyway, do you? You have a thing for tickling, but you don’t know which women are ticklish (and most of us aren’t about to tell you), and you probably don’t find their ticklishness arousing as much as you are aroused by tickling them. OK, I’m nitpicking, but still. Tickling is usually a power thing, of course, and many incidents of seemingly harmless tickling are acts of aggression in (flimsy) disguise. Being tickled can be particularly dismaying to the victim, because unlike, say, a sound kick in the ribs, tickling is supposed to be all in good fun, so a ticklee may feel like a party pooper or a crybaby for insisting that is in fact neither fun nor funny — she (it’s usually but by no means always a she) really wants it to stop right now. Are you one of those ticklers? Because if so, well fuck you, sir, very much. Cut it the hell out. If you are the other sort, of course, the tickler who tickles only willing ticklees or stops as soon as the recipient cries uncle, well good for you and carry on.

I really hate the first kind, in case that wasn’t clear. And ticklish? Me? Certainly not.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Newer skin

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

Who would have thought that the column with the letter from the guy who was contemputf8g gluing his dick shut to spare his wife contact with his precome would have garnered so much attention?

Mainly, I got suggestions for changing the flavor of semen (nobody but me seemed to notice that it was not semen but Cowper’s gland fluid that was bugging them), most involving pineapple juice. This subject has been covered and covered but suffice it to say that some people get good results with pineapple juice or parsley or figs wrapped in prosciutto or whatever the experts are suggesting these days, and others diligently down the stuff and remain pretty gamy. The last time I wrote about this I made fun of Yum-Cum or whatever, that powdered stuff that was hawked all over the Web a few years ago; I heard back from some indignant executive for Yum-Cum who wanted to send me a sample, but my lab partner wasn’t having any of that.

Precome is pretty near flavorless, and if someone’s were actively raunchy, I’d be sending that dude straight to urology. I assumed that the wife was just an unusually delicate flower, a princess and the pee hole, if you will, but when body fluids are a little too piquant, I recommend starting with lots of water and fewer bitter alkaloids such as nicotine and caffeine before making any dire dietary changes. Ingesting lots of fresh, sweet fruits and vegetables is rather nice, though; so by all means, eat up if the spirit moves you.

After the pineapple juice people, the next guy suggested a thumb cot, which is pretty much the same suggestion as a condom rolled down to cover only the head, except nobody seems to carry (or make?) thumb cots. Finger cots, sure. The only thumb cots I could find were wool-lined, and that just cannot be good. I did find a rather startling product, though: Finger Gloves. They are eight to ten times thicker than a finger cot, so are probably not ideal for our purposes, but they "snugly conform," and the Web site, www.fingergloves.com, is strangely alluring — rather beautifully designed and given to eccentric but persuasive pronouncements of product virtue: "Can be utilized during virtually any circumstance. A contingency where rigid inflexible tools awkwardly struggle." I’m not at all sure to what sexual purpose Finger Gloves might properly be put, but I urge someone to figure it out.

And then there was this guy, whose letter I present chopped to bits, as it was about eleventy billion paragraphs long.

You missed one suggestion that’s perfect for this guy, and it’s a big miss — from Mantak Chia’s book Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, "External Locking: the Three Fingers Method."

A man can press an area near the perineum right before the point of ejaculation. [Complicated instructions, etc.] He still has wonderful orgasms, except this external pressure blocks the semen from shooting out the penis and into his wife’s mouth. It gets reabsorbed into the body (and doesn’t leave a man in that worn-out, must-sleep post-come state, either). I did this for a few months, and it was amazing — come without the mess.

You can get to the point where you can do it with your internal musculature, but that takes a lot of training. There are more amazing benefits to it, but one of those will be keeping his foul-tasting semen from his wife’s mouth. I’m sorry, but it sounds like you’re not empathizing with how much a layer of latex decreases the sensitivity of a penis. He wanted uncovered penis solutions, not creative condom usage.

Anyway, he should practice it solo before giving it a try with the partner.

You must know about Chia’s The Multiorgasmic Man. I’ll assume you have ignored his earlier works because their Taoist approach brought you horrid visions of new age, aikido-practicing, vibing, oversensitive, and completely unfuckable men.

Yep, right on the money there, chum. I’m not opposed to Taoist-tantric-shamanistic-kabbalistic-woohooistic ways of knowing, as long as I don’t have to practice them myself. I do know people who have learned some pretty advanced tricks (sorry, I do think of them as tricks, like eating light bulbs or squirting water out your eye) that way. I do believe this writer when he claims to have successfully cultivated a habit of retrograde ejaculation, the only remaining question is, why bother? All the theories about the benefits of conserving precious bodily fluids kind of fall apart when you realize that the body is saving exactly nothing — no calories, no nutrients, no effort — by depositing semen into the bladder instead of into a wad of dirty laundry. It’s a little less messy is all. The other "amazing benefits" are ineffable as well as unquantifiable and unfalsifiable, being more in your head than in your pants. But hey, you go. It still won’t help our guy, though, since it wasn’t semen. It was precome, and I dare you to stop precome by humming at it and poking yourself in the perineum.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Up the butt, Bob

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Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend and I came home from the club blind drunk and started getting a little crazy. I was in her vagina as well as her anus and swapping between without cleaning myself. I also didn’t wear a condom. In the morning, I noticed there were blood stains on the sheets from her anus. I also licked her anus that night, but I’m not sure whether or not I got any blood in my mouth. I am really worried about diseases and infections even though we are both healthy with no infections. She has diabetes, however. Please help! I don’t know what to do.

Love,

Fretting

Dear Fret:

You can stop worrying about catching diabetes, for one thing. Type 1 diabetes is a luck-of-the-draw thing, not brought on by excessive donut consumption nor certainly by having drunken butt sex with a diabetic person. You knew this, right? Tell me you knew this.

This is not to say that what you and you girlfriend got up to that night was not stupid. It was not smart. In a long-term partnership it’s possible to anticipate most moderately plausible disaster scenarios and come to some mutual agreement about what to do if X happens. There are some Xs that ought to be avoided no matter what, but I trust mature long-term partners to make reasonable decisions about who can be exposed to what (fertile gametes included here) and when. And then there are the couples I wouldn’t trust as far as I could roll their drunken asses down the stairs.

If neither of you has any infections, why are you "really worried" about diseases? I mean, chances are good neither of you is actually harboring anything ghastly, but I’m going to guess you actually know that. For instance, there is some disagreement in my sex ed circle as to who originated the line "If rimming did not exist, hepatitis would have had to invent it." (It was me, me, me!) You have to consider heps A, B, and C if you’re going to — there’s really no delicate way to put this — lick blood off of somebody’s asshole. Or you could just not do that, which means looking before you, uh, leap, and maybe trying new, potentially problematic activities while sober enough to think, if not to drive.

In all likelihood, the most you’ve done is put your girlfriend at risk for bacterial vaginosis, but if you feel sick or turn yellow or anything else dramatic happens, see the doctor. And both of you, go get tested for a whole bunch of stuff (including pregnancy — hello, condoms aren’t just for prophylaxis, you know) before you go quite that crazy again. You have not proven yourselves smart enough to act that stupid all the time and get away with it.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend and I were having sex, and he asked if I’d like it up my butt. I told him to go for it. It was a little painful at first but then started to feel kind of nice. He asked if he could come in me, and the thought turned me on, but I didn’t know what bad things might happen. After searching the Internet and finding only porn, I thought I’d ask you.

Should I have any concerns about him coming in there? Will I drip for hours? Will it all drip out? Also, he has tested negative for HIV. However, I have not. What would be the chance of him getting HIV from me in this situation (not that I have any reason at all to believe I have it)? Lastly, I would like to clean myself before if possible. If I wanted to give myself an enema of some sort, how should I time it?

Love,

So Many Questions!

Dear Quez:

Wow, you don’t waste any time, do you? One little spontaneous anal episode and look at you now!

I’m not one of those condom-every-time people. I’m really not, especially when we’re talking about (presumably) monogamous couples, but I can’t help noticing that nearly every one of your concerns could be addressed by 75 cents worth of latex. Nothing will drip (it doesn’t much anyway, since the lining of the rectum is nothing if not absorbent); HIV worries would be assuaged (as the penetrator he’d be at little risk from the virus you don’t have); and anything messy can be skinned off and disposed of, never to be thought of again. If that’s not clean enough for you, you can get a "rectal syringe for anus hygiene." I think you’ll find them next to the hemorrhoid cream and just down from the Depends, but you can mail-order if shopping in that aisle makes you want to die. You can use it whenever, unlike a real enema, which must be done the night before if you want to avoid a horrible mess.

Condoms are neater, but nothing too terrible will come of bare-backing with a trusted partner, although it may not be a habit you want to cultivate.

Love,

Andrea

Skin Flick

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Your question form says to "try to be interesting." Hmm, performance anxiety … and I’m only talking about sex!

My wife is very sensitive to tastes, and she gags on my pre-come. On the other hand, I really don’t like the reduced sensation of using a condom during oral sex. So I was considering temporarily sealing my urethra with some of that "liquid bandage" stuff — no mess for her, plenty of good feelings for me.

I have several concerns. This stuff is used on small cuts, so it should be safe, but are there any nasty solvents that would make it problematic? After it’s dried, are there any risks if it’s ingested? If it works, I hope to use it often, so how can it be removed without lasting damage?

Love,

New Skin

Dear Skin:

Well, you succeeded. Your idea is interesting, and (this hardly ever happens) it is new. We oughtn’t let the fact that it’s also kind of crazy stop us from celebrating its novelty.

Dude. New-Skin contains alcohol and oil of cloves. Fingernail polish may dissolve it. It can, apparently, stain floors and countertops. It is labeled for external use only, of course, and also as not for use on "mucous materials." Is the inside of your urethra not a mucous material? My guess is this stuff will not permanently damage you but will hurt like hell and be difficult to remove if it gets inside. It’s not designed to fill holes anyway, so it wouldn’t even work.

Or did you mean the newer, higher-tech liquid bandage, the stuff that’s basically Dermabond, a.k.a. superglue? Have you not thought through the ejaculation problem? How, exactly, do you expect this to work?

This leaves us with three possibilities: The spray-on latex condom, although offering many opportunities for hilarity, won’t work, because it’s supposed to cover your entire penis (you stick your dick in the can, I believe) and because it isn’t on the market yet. Paint-on sex latex (google "liquid latex" or "deviant") is nontoxic and more or less meant to go naughty places but also is not meant as a gap filler — not that your urethra is a gap, precisely, but you know what I mean. Plus, latex is meant to be kept out of body cavities.

Last up: using a regular condom but rolling it down to cover just the glans. This is probably your best bet. It’s not creepy-cool like fake skin nor especially innovative, but it’s also not likely to maim you or require dramatic and embarrassing medical intervention, which, if you think about it, is really the least we can ask of our marital aids.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I love having raspberries blown on my tummy — you know, when the lips are placed against the tummy and then blown, causing a vibrating and tickling sensation. I’ve loved this ever since I was a child and also love doing it. I don’t know how to bring it up with friends because I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird. I only like women to do it to me, not guys! Is this unusual?

Love,

Herbert

Dear Herb:

Not at all. I know a number of people who are fond of the zerbert, at least one of whom can be instantly yanked out of the deepest, sloughiest slough of despond by the judicious application of sputtering lips to belly — but they are all babies. The reason nobody talks about this is that it’s something we do to entertain infants, like making faces or putting unusual objects on our heads. Few adults continue to laugh hysterically every time you put a stuffed pig on your head, and most would look askance at you for doing so.

Look, I don’t think this is even sex — it’s just something you do with your body that isn’t eating or excreting or sports, and we have trouble categorizing bodily acts that aren’t sex and aren’t any of those things either. We’re just weird about bodies. Perhaps we should all try to get over that, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

All that aside, though, nobody wants to hear you talk about this. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself frolicking naked with a likely female prospect, you can probably get away with it as a lighthearted, jokey thing, but do not bring it up over dinner, the way one might broach the topic of, say, S-M. People who wouldn’t blink on hearing that you are fond of pain or sex parties or any other normal kink like that might never feel quite the same about you after hearing you wax rhapsodic about belly raspberries. Probably because of the association with babies, the only people whose shirts we are allowed, even encouraged, to yank up without prelude or permission to shmoozle their tummy-tum-tums, it just seems a little unseemly.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Emily Postfeminist

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Dear Andrea:

Recently, my boyfriend and I were at a strip club and bought a lap dance. My experience has been that, as a girl, the hands-off rule generally doesn’t apply to me. However, out of respect for the girl, I don’t touch until she invites me to. This one invited me to touch her. Caught up in the moment, my boyfriend asked, "Can she touch your pussy?" I was a bit shocked because I assumed that was off-limits, but she said, "She can, but you can’t." So I started touching her on the outside of her G-string. I got a little braver and went under her G-string but still stayed outside. She moved a certain way during her dance, and my thumb kind of slipped right in. A few seconds later, she stopped it. She was nice and hugged me and told us to come back anytime. Did I go too far? I feel guilty that I may have made her feel like a hooker. Or is it really no big deal? I’m embarrassed to go back, and I’ve asked my boyfriend to not make that request in the future. How often does this sort of thing happen to a dancer?

Love,

Thumbelina

Dear Thumb:

Just what we needed, a new set of ethical dilemmas and moral failings to keep us awake and tossing on those long dark nights of the soul that tend to hit around this time of year. I really don’t think this is the sort of thing that used to bother people before half the female grad students in the country started stripping and writing books and doing performance art (oh, so much performance art) about it. For that matter, I don’t think other girls used to feel either as permitted or as obligated to go grope those girls for money at their places of work. I’m not entirely sure that what we’re seeing here is really an accurate demonstration of human sexual behavior in the wild — there are too many layers of politics and performance in there to tell what’s really happening — but I’m confident we’re at least seeing some genuinely new situations and their accompanying etiquette issues in play.

I’ve known any number of posteverything strippers, hookers, and dominatrices, but one in particular comes to mind. She’d been working at a womyn-owned crunchy organic peep show, but — surprise! — she could barely make her rent, so like so many before her, she’d given up her ideals and gone where the money is. Hired on at the grimy mainstream porn theater and Olde Lappe Dance Emporium, she was coming home with her pockets and God knows what else stuffed with 50s every night but complained to me that some guy came while she was wiggling around on him and ew, ew, gross, yuck, how dare he? I commiserated at the time because I’m a wimp like that, but honestly, isn’t this an occupational hazard? If you’re going to be a sex worker, you deserve to be treated with respect and decency, of course, and what you say goes as far as who’s allowed to touch where with what and so forth, but come on. Into each stripper’s life a little semen must fall. If that’s absolutely not going to work for you, dance behind glass (for lower tips) or, hey, get your Realtor’s license or something.

Most of the female sex workers I’ve known have been at least passingly bisexual, but even those who really aren’t seem quite genuinely enthusiastic about female customers, both prospective and actual. There are elements of novelty to the appeal, I’m sure, just as there are elements of safety and sisterly enthusiasm. What there ought not to be, and what you ought not to worry about, is an expectation that female customers aren’t really customers at all, that is to say, are not paying the sex worker for sex. While many women who go to strip clubs or book time with a dominatrix may be doing it to please a (male) partner or as a learning experience or a lark or just to make a statement of some sort, it would be pretty silly for a sex worker to be surprised when a customer, male or female, appears to be interested in having some sort of sex with her.

Your dancer granted you access. Maybe she liked you (or likes girls in general) or maybe she was milking you for tips, but whatever, she said yes. She has a sense of how sturdy or flimsy a barrier her G-string presents to curious fingers and was probably not surprised when you got where you got. Most tellingly, she invited you back whenever, which she was certainly under no obligation to do. I think it would be fine to go back there and fine to whisper "Sorry I got fresh last time" and fine not to. It would also be fine for her, in turn, to refuse you service, but I bet she doesn’t.

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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Don’t mess with it

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Dear Andrea:


In last week’s response to "Pill or No Pill," I’m glad that you mentioned that playing around with endocrine systems can be harmful. When I was diagnosed with anorexia, the doctors told me that if I kept missing periods, I would be at risk for things like low bone density and osteoporosis. It seems suspect that doctors and pharmaceutical companies are now advocating pills that limit a woman’s period to four times a year. What can you tell me about it?


Love,


Keeping My Period


PS In regard to "Pill or No Pill," why can’t they have sex during her period?


Dear Period:


I don’t get a chance to say this very often, but your doctors misspoke. There’s no doubt that your endocrine system was messed up good while you were anorexic, but it wasn’t the missing periods that were doing the damage. Both the amenorrhea (lack of periods) and the potential bone loss were symptoms of messing with your endocrine system. When one hormone gets knocked out, the entire chain is broken, and all sorts of havoc potentially ensues. You weren’t menstruating because you weren’t ovuutf8g because your ovaries weren’t getting the right hormonal cues because your pituitary gland wasn’t sending them because your hypothalamus wasn’t sending them because you were starving. It’s actually a good idea, if you’re an ovum, to avoid getting ovulated and fertilized while there’s no good material with which to build a baby.


Somewhere in there your ovaries also failed to get the hint to produce lots of estrogen, which is required for the absorption of calcium, and there go your bones. So yes, of course it’s potentially dangerous to mess around with your endocrine system, but we should remember that millions of women do just that every day when they take their pill, and they’re just fine. Better, even, since they’re not having to squeeze out another baby every year or so for the entire span of their reproductive years, the way our "ansisters" did and as women still do wherever reliable birth control is unavailable or forbidden. And speaking of our ancestors …


We (the Western, industrialized, supermarket-shopping we) are the freaks in a long line of normal people. As any number of evolutionary biologists and other researchers have pointed out recently, it is not at all the natural state of women to menstruate every damn month for 45 (damn) years. Contemporary hunter-gatherer (mostly gatherer) women start late, have a bunch of babies, breast-feed them forever, and die young, totaling about 100 or 150 periods in a lifetime. By contrast, supermarket women reach for the tampon box approximately 450 times. No wonder we’re crabby.


So is menstruation natural? Well, obviously, but an argument can be made that not menstruating is even more so. What seems a brute biological fact ("women bleed every month") turns out to be in part a social construct. Isn’t that cool? This sort of thinking isn’t really new — the developers of the original pill built in the bleedy part, the placebos at the end of the cycle, because they thought not menstruating would freak women out, not because it was medically necessary — but it’s not the sort of thing people tend to talk about. It will be, though, by necessity, and soon. As new products make four periods a year or no periods a year (seriously, this one has been extensively studied and so far so good for safety) increasingly popular, menstruation will become a lifestyle choice like any other. This will disgust the more moon-goddessy type feminists and please the "it’s all about choice" ones. For everyone else, after a while, it will just seem, well, natural.


You also asked, very reasonably, why the couple in the original letter (she wanted to take something to suppress her periods so they could have romantic weekends) couldn’t just have sex, blood or no blood. The answer is they could, of course. I’m willing to bet that they hadn’t even discussed and dismissed that option, as "no sex when the painters are in" is just one of those things everybody takes on faith until they don’t. If a woman’s "monthlies" turn out to be at least partly a social invention, the menstrual taboo is entirely one. Barring the presence of something nasty, blood-borne, and contagious, there’s no reason on earth (or the moon, for that matter, and aren’t we going back soon?) why a couple can’t have a threesome with him, her, and Aunt Flo.


Speaking of the moon: women down here have connected their sexuality and fertility with the phases and pull of our satellite for so long that I have to wonder what happens to all that lunar blood magic when we’re living in bubbles on the moon. Nothing takes the mystery out of a hunk of rock and dust like having to dig holes in it to build a privy.


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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Santa’s secret

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m a guy with a single, straight, platonic female friend in her mid-20s who could really use a first sex toy, but doesn’t seem comfortable enough with her sexuality to buy one on her own. The holidays seem like the perfect excuse to give a gift that keeps on giving. I was going to get her a gift certificate or gift from a woman-friendly online store, since she may be uncomfortable going into an adult store, and a vibrating gift under the Christmas tree might make Christmas morning a little embarrassing.
She’s the first girl I’ve ever met who doesn’t have at least one toy. I don’t think it’s occurred to her female friends to get her a toy or gift certificate, and I imagine she might be uncomfortable with me telling them she could really use a sex toy. But it’s been years since the girl’s had sex. I can see how giving a toy as a gift can be awkward because it can become associated with the visual image of the gifter. But among friends without a great deal of cash, it could also be uncomfortable for her to receive a gift certificate for $50 or $100. Is there a way around this that results in a more sexually fulfilled and less tense friend?
Love,
Secret Santa
Dear Santa:
She might be uncomfortable with you telling her friends she needs a good buzz-off? Do you think? Please, please, put down the gift certificate and back away slowly. There is no way for this to go well, and too many possible bad endings to count.
I mean, let’s say you’re right and she really has been utterly abstemious all these years, as opposed to uninterested in detailing the contents of her bedside drawer for you, her straight male friend. Even so, what could be more mortifying than a gift that says she’s hard up and in danger of drying out — and all her friends know it?
I suppose for maximum mortification you could save the gift presentation for whatever party she and all your mutual friends will be attending and let her do the stammering and blushing in public, but I’m confident that the moment would suck for her whether in public or alone with you, the friend who suddenly seems to know too much and be thinking too deeply about what does or doesn’t go on between her sheets. You’re very well meaning, and it’s nice that you care and all, but just don’t.
I see one way you could ensure that she has access to what you’ve determined she needs, but it’s both expensive and rather ridiculous: on the Romper Roomish principle that you shouldn’t bring any if you don’t have enough for everyone, pass out the gift certificates to your whole circle, whomever you’d normally be buying presents for, boys and girls alike. Then you’ll just be thought of as generous, if slightly pervy, instead of creepily overinvolved in the sex life of someone with whom you are not and will not be having sex. Unless you actually do want to have sex with her, in which case I still wouldn’t recommend buying her a vibrator.
Oy. This is very complicated. It makes me glad I’m Jewish and don’t have to buy Christmas presents for anyone, let alone receive any. It’s a minefield! Who knew?
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
We are trying to have a baby. After we have sex, the semen doesn’t stay in but trickles out of the vagina. Why does it happen, and what should we do to keep it in, so I can conceive?
Love,
Drippy
Dear Drip:
The only connection between your letter and the one preceding it is the way they produced an involuntary and audible “Don’t do that!” from me as I read them. Don’t have a baby!
Oh, relax. You can have a baby, but you should already know the answer to this, and I can’t help wondering what else you don’t know. The semen trickles out because it’s already done its job. Only a very small part of the ejaculate is made up of sperm; the rest is what would be called “inactive ingredients” if your partner were ejacuutf8g, say, toothpaste instead of semen. The carrier fluid coagulates briefly, just so it won’t run down your leg before the sperm have made their escape. Once the sperm that are going anywhere have gone, the leftover gunk liquefies and runs down your aforementioned leg to form the “wet spot” of lore. If it didn’t, you’d be carrying the leftover goo from a lifetime of sexual encounters around with you until you scrubbed it out with a bottle brush, and that’s not a pretty picture.
You’re fine. However, if your question really does reflect your general state of knowledge about these things, please get a book. Get several. Get a library card. This baby-having business is not simple, and while there is such a thing as too much information, too little information is worse.
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Mit-what-a?

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Got a question for Andrea? Click here to ask!

Dear Andrea:
I’ve heard two men recently refer to “Mitusa” as a fabulous oral technique to use on a woman, but they were reluctant to explain it. What is it and why the secrecy?
Love,
Dying To Know
Dear Dying:
Maybe they don’t know themselves what it means? I never do. I’m still not sure I know what the “butterfly technique” is, and I can never remember if it’s “tea bagging” or “snowballing” that was invented for some stupid movie, or was it “tea-balling?” “Snow-bagging?” Why not? They’re all equally plausible if you ask me.
Sometimes I fear that by the time my kids are old enough to pick up the latest smutty slang from their peers and bring it home to puzzle their parents, I’ll be too feeble to keep up: “Skazzy? What’s that? Did you say that song ‘has fangs?’ What? Why, in my day we called cool things hot and hot things cool and that was good enough for us, dadgummit.” Eventually, we all end up like my poor 80-year-old uncle, whom we dragged to the Borat movie without adequate briefing ahead of time. Two days later he was still gamely trying to figure out if Sacha Baron Cohen is really Kazakh or what and if he always has that mustache.
“Mitusa,” as a sex word, has made barely a ripple on Google, so I assumed reasonably enough that it was just another flash-in-the-pan pseudotechnique and thus safely ignored. According to one of the very few hits not referring the curious reader to industrial lift pumps or the Maritime Industries Trade Union of South Africa, “Mitusa” supposedly refers to giving a woman light little touches with your tongue instead of, I don’t know, jabbing at her like her lady parts require tenderizing or just drooling on her. I’d think little light tongue-touches could simply be considered one phase of any ordinary oral sex session — you do a little of this, a little of that, a little light-tongue-touching — but I’d be wrong. People have an apparently insatiable urge to catalog these things exhaustively, and some have a need to then lord it over other people with their special secret knowledge. People are silly.
Further reading, however, turned up a rather fascinating article on a very not-my-style site called holisticwisdom.com, which sells sex doodads with a vaguely feminist spin and seems very well-intentioned, although I beg to differ with them over the source of the ejaculate in female ejaculation. The site’s founder, one Lisa Lawless, PhD, CEO (not to be confused with Lucy Lawless, Xena), who was also asked this question by a reader but was inclined to do more serious sleuthing than I was, has turned up something both interesting and disheartening, if not surprising. Mitusa, it turns out, is not merely a mysterious and possibly nonexistent oral sex technique, it is a proprietary mysterious oral sex technique, the private property of somebody called Jill McSomething, who wishes to sell it to you or allow you access in exchange for filling out a lengthy marketing survey. The technique, according to some poor suckers who actually ponied up for it, is either a confusing mishmash of not-at-all mysterious techniques you already know about or else a badly translated version of the well-known Sam Kinison alphabet technique. Either way, nothing earth shattering.
But wait, there’s more (and stranger): until exposed by Lawless on her site, Ms. McWhatever was marketing the technique exclusively to men, apparently in an attempt to present the product (to men) as something that could be dangled in front of prospective conquests (“I know Mitusa, baby”) who would be so intrigued that they would happily follow some schmo back to his swingin’ bachelor pad (or parent’s’ basement) and hop obediently onto his face. Happens all the time.
Ms. Lawless, PhD, CEO, also discovered what appears to be some sort of viral marketing scheme in the form of (fake? who knows?) LavaLife posts where women warn that “you’d better know Mitusa.” The best thing I can say about this sort of campaign is that in this case, at least, it seems not to work, leaving product and proprietor in well-deserved obscurity.
I think we’re safe from this one, and I hope there’s no reader who would be silly enough to fall for anything so ridiculous, but I’ve got to say it anyway just in case: there are no secret, never-before-discovered sex techniques. There is no series of arcane exercises from the ancient Levant which will miraculously enlarge your penis. There is not — I guarantee this — any technique, drug, or ritual offering to the gods that can “guarantee extremely intense orgasms,” as Ms. McWhatev’s site purportedly claimed Mitusa could do (the site has since been taken down but has undoubtedly been reborn somewhere as the same old crap masquerading as some new crap). On the upside, there is also precious little you can’t learn to do if you get off your ass and off the Web and practice, practice, practice.
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Try, try again

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I can’t have sex. I tried about four years ago — it wouldn’t fit and it was not that big. I’ve been scared to have a boyfriend since. I’m too embarrassed to go to the doctor and was wondering if you knew what I could do about it at home.
Love,
Failed Once …
Dear Once:
While the original locus of your problem may have been you-know-where, I fear it has crawled northward over the last few years and is now located squarely in your head. Of course you can have sex, not only because the word and concept encompass so much more than merely sticking this into that, but because you probably can stick this into that. You’re just too scared to try.
It’s very possible that the unfortunate Mr. “Not That Big” from your first try ran into your hymen, which may or may not still be there four years on. Or he may simply have run into resistance, conscious or not, which had you tighten muscles that are actually under your control — however far out of control they may have felt at the time. To get over this you will need a mirror, a finger, a small and unscary dildo, some lube, some determination, and to believe me when I tell you that no gynecologist is going to be shocked either by the fact that you have a vagina or that you may need some coaching to learn how to use it.
If you see or feel a membrane close to the opening, kinda of like the one under your tongue but more, you know, vagina-y, that’s a hymen. It can either be worn away through use (here’s where the fingers or toys come in) or, if it refuses to budge, removed by the doctor. If there is no membrane but you can feel the muscle tension when you try to push your way in, stop pushing and go online for instructions on how to overcome vaginismus, which is the extreme version of this sort of involuntary muscle spasming. While it may not necessarily be the most accurate diagnosis, some of the exercises will help.
Finally, it depresses me to hear that you are scared to have a boyfriend, since a boyfriend is or at least ought to be so much more than a thing that does or does not fit comfortably into your vagina.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
Everything I read about sex when I was an inexperienced teenager led me to believe that multiple orgasms were my birthright as a female, something that would make up for all the bleeding and cramps and pregnancy scares and bra-shopping and all the other indignities that came along with my sex.
This has not proved to be the case. I orgasm once and then I’m done. It’s unusual for me to achieve a second orgasm in a 24-hour period, and if I do, it’s an inferior one. I find it really hard to go on with sex afterward when I’m not getting a single thing out of it and I’ve no prospect of doing so.
Am I doing something wrong? Are my partners doing something wrong? Or am I just doomed to be a lousy lay for all eternity?
Love,
Failed Every Time
Dear Time:
You are not a lousy lay; you’re just a normal girl. Your pattern is far more common than those books would have had you believe, and I have to wonder about any supposedly prosex treatise that offers multiple orgasms as payback for the indignities inherent in possession of a female body.
Multiple orgasms, while far more common for women than for men, are by no means any sort of “birthright.” Nor, I would venture, is being female so bleedy and scary and full of onerous shopping trips that we’re actually due reparations in the form of more orgasms or anything else. I mean what, by that token, are men supposed to get for having fragile generative organs that swing in the breeze and are the perennial target of ball-busting jokes — and are supposed to hew to certain dimensions and jump to attention whenever called upon to do so, and yet so often fail to measure up? What do they get in return for pretty much never having multiple orgasms and for having a set of bio cues that doom them to sleepiness as soon as they come, thus earning the ire of partners who are still hanging around waiting for their multiple orgasms?
Life isn’t fair. If you’re not enjoying the sex that goes on after you’ve gotten yours, try rearranging the proceedings so you come last. Or try to cultivate some interest in the parts of the experience dedicated to your partner’s pleasure. Do something, anything, other than clinging to some empty promises made to you by the authors of some fairly silly sex manuals you may or may not be remembering correctly.
Love,
Andrea
Sexpert Andrea Nemerson is fabulous — and on vacation. So we’re rerunning a popular column from the past in her absence.

Bumpy ride

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m a 50-year-old male. I’ve been married for 23 years and have two grown kids. The problem is my wife. She has never needed or been interested in sex. I have tried everything — books, videos, even suggesting counseling. She says no, there’s no problem. Our wedding night was a disaster. Is there any hope for me? What can I do?
Love,
High and Dry
Dear Dry:
File for divorce or pray for a painless, early death. I just don’t see another way out for you, sorry.
That was flip and a little cruel, and I do apologize but only sort of. You knew that sex was not, let’s say, a priority for her way back when you were dating, what, 25 years ago? And you married her anyway and cemented your relationship by having children and further enforced the union’s permanence by staying with her after the children were grown. I’m going to assume that you did all this because you actually love your wife, not merely because you were willing to sacrifice yourself on the altar of nice-guyism. Either way, you don’t sound like you’re going anywhere, and I applaud that. But your wife is right: there is no problem, or rather, she does not have a problem, and the fact that you have one is not her problem either. Since she isn’t broken, you can’t fix her. She is the “doesn’t need sex” model, and there’s no kind of rigging her up with after-market parts that’s going to change that. If you love her and don’t want to leave her, I’m afraid you’re stuck with it.
I print your letter not so much because I think that hearing “Sorry, you’re stuck with it” is going to be of any earthly use to you but as a warning to the many much younger people who write in wondering if their otherwise “perfect” boyfriends, girlfriends, or — worse — fiancés can be induced to change their apparently deeply wired sexual preferences (or lack of same) before the wedding. I said no. I still say no. I am using you, somewhat without your consent, as an exhibit, Exhibit A, the purpose of which is to demonstrate how much I really meant “no” when I said it. No. People who are already interested in some kinds of sex can quite often be induced to try some other kinds. People who are reluctant to be sexual may be coaxed into letting go of fears or inhibitions. People who simply do not care about sex — the way I simply do not care about, say, sports — are probably not going to change. It isn’t like I’ve never seen or played any sports. I have done both. I’m just not excited about it, and no amount of nagging at me to get excited would ever have the desired effect. Quite the opposite.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
What does it mean when a woman does the “walk and bump,” meaning a guy is standing there minding his own business, and a woman walks by and bumps his crotch with the back of her hand when she clearly has room to clear without contact? I have asked females about this, but I can’t seem to break the code of silence. I perceive several different reasons why they do this. but I want to hear what you have to say.
Love,
Do the Bump
Dear Bump:
This doesn’t really happen, does it? Readers? Has this ever occurred anywhere, ever, outside my correspondent’s fevered imagination? And correspondent, I ask you: which is more likely — that there is a secret cabal of crotch-bumping women and their supporters, who may not bump crotches themselves but are sworn to uphold the secrecy of those who do, or that you are a little bit nuts?
The closest thing to the “walk and bump” that I’ve ever encountered, and that only in fiction, is “elbow titting,” a disgusting pastime of sniggering, pimply youths who could not make proper, consensual contact with said body parts if their miserable, sniggery lives depended on it. There are no citations for “walk and bump” except a few descriptions of the walking habits of poorly trained dogs, which is pretty much apropos but not what we’re looking for.
I’m hardly the “women are from Mars, men crawled out of the swamp and ought to crawl back there” type, but I’ve got to say that women do not, as a rule, grope strangers on the street. Some men, very low and ill-bred men but men all the same, do. In Japan, it is the women who require protection from grabby-handed men on the subway, never the other way around. I dare say, Mr. Bump, that conscious or not, you are “walk and bump”–ing your crotch into their hands, and one of these days one of them is going to “bump” you back, with rather more force than you’ll find comfortable, so you might want to consider not doing that.
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Ooga-booga

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I wish I hadn’t read your column about cervical penetration. I am thoroughly disgusted, disturbed, even angry. It’s been my understanding that body modification is a red flag of imbalance, poor sense of self, and ignorance about anatomy and physiology. Do you think I’m justified in being disturbed that people are going around messing with irreplaceable tissue and getting off on their own pain? Throughout history we have tested our physical limits through sports, battle, fasting, etc. I can understand the desire to be liberated from our fear of pain by initiating it ourselves. It seems like a misunderstanding, however, to think that in our search for spiritual enlightenment, we will transcend the physical by destroying it. I’m hoping you can explain so I can stop feeling horrified.
Love,
Puzzled by Perversion
Dear Perv:
There are ways to indulge that are probably harmless, and there is stupidity (you ought to know better) and compulsion (you do know better but can’t help yourself). Since the young lady had a desire that could not be pursued without causing herself injury, I gently steered her toward what I hoped would function as a harmless alternative. What I did not do was presume to know her motivations or assume that she was broken just because she wanted something I thought was ill-advised.
We should make a distinction between body modification — generally understood to mean piercing, tattooing, maybe some scarring, and the occasional loony tunes full-body job like that guy on the Discovery Channel who looks like a big doofy cartoon cat — and S-M. The pain usually but not always inflicted or received in pursuit of the latter may look like a mere ouchy sensation but can feel like anything from a massage to a form of worship, depending on who’s doing what to whom. You can’t tell just by looking, and certainly not if you use preconceived notions of what damaged people they are, doing such damaging things.
Body mod is usually done to, well, modify the body. You may think it’s dumb — hell, sometimes I think it’s dumb — but you don’t know what motivated the pierced or tattooed person to mark themselves. Your Anthro 101 explanation actually supports my argument more than yours: “throughout history humans have tested our physical limits,” indeed, by poking sticks through our noses, hacking bits off our genitals, and rubbing dirt into holes in our faces. While I’ll grant that the people who invented these practices knew little of anatomy and physiology, I’ll wager that they were neither unbalanced nor lacking a sense of self. They were (as our modern practitioners often still are) both seeking to set themselves apart from the other tribes (them) and be instantly identifiable to their own (us). This was more useful and important when the “them” tribes were wont to hit you with a rock and then eat you, but it’s still an essential human urge, and decorating ourselves is a pretty harmless if occasionally silly way to express it. Does that help?
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I’m in a long-distance relationship and having serious sexual frustration. I can’t bring myself to masturbate more than once a month. I dream about masturbating but can’t bring myself to actually do it. I feel dirty and wrong, and during my big one monthly moment I find the only place I’m comfortable is the bathtub. Is there something wrong with me? I was never like this before.
Love,
Frustrated
Dear Frust:
Masturbation, which for a long time appeared in popular culture mostly as joke fodder and the object of many undignified gerundial nicknames of the “choking,” “draining,” and “clubbing” variety, has been undergoing an image upgrade of late, in some circles anyway, often finding itself exalted as a holy experience or at least revered as therapeutic and educational. I’m down with respecting it — masturbation is useful, and you can learn a lot — but I’m never too big on the sacred. Nothing’s sacred if everything can be made fun of, and everything can be made fun of.
All that said (and it was a lot), it seems to me that you’re putting way too much pressure on one humble little act, imbuing it with too much meaning. If you used to masturbate regularly but not excessively and without guilt and that has suddenly changed, poor little masturbation is surely standing in for something else. I’d be tempted to suggest that you are depressed or developing an anxiety disorder. A change in attitude that dramatic about something that quotidian and harmless cannot mean anything good. If attempting to desensitize yourself by simply doing it more (and, we hope, thinking about it less) doesn’t work, I’d get some short-term therapy, not because it’s crazy not to want to masturbate (it most certainly is not) but because it’s dysfunctional to punish yourself harshly for wanting to. Plus, come on, only OK in the bathtub? How Freudian can you get? That’s like suddenly manifesting a fear of snakes or dreaming of trains going into tunnels. Something’s up.
Love,
Andrea

You may find yourself …

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
My boyfriend and I have a great sex life. There’s only one problem: he’s working a temporary job across the country. While I’m happy for him, the distance has caused a huge strain on our sex life.
On the advice of friends, I bought a vibrator. I’ve found my orgasms to be quicker and more intense, which is great, but my fear is that I’ll desensitize myself. I have very intense, screaming, crying orgasms with him, but I’m scared I may ruin it with the vibrator. Some days I can make myself orgasm three times or more, which seems a bit excessive. I’ve heard about the benefits of vibrators, but what if I can’t orgasm with my boyfriend when he comes home?
Love,
Vibe-Happy
Dear Vibe:
I had you in the “dysfunction: female” folder, but when I pulled you out to examine you more closely, I discovered that you’re actually perfectly functional, no “dys” about it, and are merely buying trouble, as they say. Quit that.
Three orgasms a day is not excessive, although it might technically exceed what you would be capable of without the technical intervention. As long as the errands get done and no horses are frightened, you are far from out of control. You are bored and a little lonely, and really, what else is masturbation for?
As for becoming habituated to the vibrator and thus less responsive to human touch, I can’t say it never happens, but I can say it’s neither likely nor all that devastating. You’re probably safe, since you were so screamily, cryishly responsive to begin with, and I figure that most women who do become overly reliant on the buzz were not so supersensitive to begin with. And if you do somehow manage to train yourself into responding to the vibe alone, you can dehabituate yourself pretty easily. Learning to have orgasms when you’ve never had one can be a long haul, but one is almost guaranteed eventual success. Learning to respond to a different stimulus when you’re already Miss Orgasm 2006? Cinchy.
In the meantime and while your boyfriend is still out of town, you could do as a nice young woman I used to work with sometimes did and dutifully practice “manual release” every 10th time or so, just in case of, I dunno, nuclear holocaust or something. Maybe she just wanted to know that she could live off the grid should she ever choose to and raise goats and still have orgasms. You can value self-sufficiency without having to live in a shack and farm with your own feces. It couldn’t hurt to try.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
My girlfriend and I are college students, and initially our sex life was awesome — I mean, Tommy and Pamela would pale in comparison. After a couple rounds every day for about three months, it’s not that it’s boring, but it’s difficult for me to come now. She gives great head too, it’s just that I can’t come unless I imagine having sex with another girl. I can still masturbate, and I do manage to come eventually when I start imagining past lovers. I love her and really do see a future together. What can I do about this? I don’t think telling her is an option because she’d just get pissed. What would you (or your husband) do?
Love,
Imagine
Dear Image:
Let’s just leave my husband out of this, shall we? And Tommy and Pamela too, while we’re at it. I was, frankly, a little surprised to find that they’re still the hot-sex-having couple of record among the college crowd — didn’t that video make the rounds about 10 years ago, when there were still videos? Or is it quaint now, like the smoker reels that used to be pornography and are now considered kind of cute? Either way, ew. Surely we can do better.
It occurred to me to tell you that not all guys really love intercourse or that the exact sort of intercourse you’ve been having may be missing something — enough friction or a certain favored rhythm — but then I got to the part about giving great head, and there went that hypothesis. Changing positions, adding in role-play or props or mechanical devices, any or all may help for a while. In the long run, though, I’m afraid that you are one of those novelty seekers who just lose some level of turn-on after enough rounds with the same partner and must resort to fantasy to get up and over. The good news is that you’ve got company, masses of it. I wouldn’t even call it a problem as much as a fact of life, and I wouldn’t go assuming that your girlfriend never thinks about anybody but you or anything but what you’re doing at that moment, unless she tells you so, and even then she could be fudging a bit to spare your feelings. You could ask or you could just keep doing what you’re doing (it works, after all) and call it good.
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

At your cervix

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
As long as I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with gyno play and playing doctor. I had never acted upon it until meeting my current boyfriend. We’ve begun experimenting with speculums, various insertable objects, vibrators, etc. We are always very careful to be sterile and safe.
I’ve grown more and more interested in the idea of cervical dilation and cervical insertions but have been unable to find any literature on the subject. Apparently, I am the only human alive with such a fascination. I have looked online and found several varieties of uterine sounds but always in context of urethral play, not cervical stretching.
I understand that any cervical penetration has the possibility of causing cramps or other pain, but I am anxious and willing to experiment with this aspect of such play. My concern is safety. Any information?
Love,
Stretch me
Dear Stretch:
Questions like this always remind me of a kids’ science show I used to watch, starring the performance artist Paul Zaloom and some guy in a ratty old rat costume. Seriously, this existed. I’m not making it up. In one episode Paul was explaining how to grow a particularly odoriferous bacteria colony in an old tennis shoe when he broke off midsentence, looked directly into the camera, and said, “Don’t even do this.” That’s how I feel when people ask me about certain extreme and possibly harmless but just a little bit potentially fatal practices. Do something else. Don’t even do this.
Cervical stretching and sounding are, of course, accomplished every day in thousands of gynecologists’ offices and with no lasting harm to the patient. That’s how you get IUDs in and unwanted tissues out, provided, of course, that “you” are a trained medical professional. It isn’t the pain that worries me. I understand that you’re up for that, and, you know, go crazy, although having been the recipient of several antepartum “internals,” I can assure you that the sensation is … let’s call it “challenging” and leave it at that. You know that’s how they determine how close you are to going into labor, right? A doctor or midwife rummages around in there, eventually emerging to announce that you’re only “a fingertip” dilated. Guess what high-tech, finely calibrated device is used to determine that? No, really. Guess.
So, yes, cervical stretching hurts like 12 kinds of mofo, but that’s not our concern here. I’m afraid of you perforating something, introducing outside-world bacteria to your insides, or both. I don’t need to tell you how badly that could go for you, and only you can decide if it’s worth the risk.
It isn’t true that there’s absolutely no information on this out there — there’s just very, very little of it. There’s probably something in BME, the Body Modification Ezine, although you may have to join to get to some of their more esoteric content. I imagine the extreme practitioner C.M. Hurt knows something about cervical play if anyone does, but the closest thing I could find among her writings was an article (on dungeonmagic.com) about female catheterization play that you might enjoy. A place called Eros Boutique carries every conceivable type of sound and catheter, and medical books and sites with instructions for inserting an IUD could walk you through the steps necessary to prepare for messing with your cervix. That’s all I’ve got. I could tell you that in order to introduce something, say, a little catheter full of sperm for intrauterine insemination, into the uterus, they sometimes have to grab the cervix with a clawlike thing called a “tenaculum” (Could that word be more vivid? Half tentacle, half speculum?), but I’m afraid that given your proclivities, it would only encourage you.
This is very strange for me — up till now, whenever someone has asked me about inserting things into the female urethra, I’ve said, in a word, “don’t,” and for good reason. Unlike the longer and hardier male version, the female urethra is only a few inches long and kind of fragile. It’s a very short trip to the bladder, which really doesn’t want you dragging in dirt all over its nice clean floor. So while I generally counsel people, especially beginners, to leave the urethra alone and go play someplace safe, like the vagina, I’m going to take a flyer and suggest the urethra as a slightly safer alternative to the cervix if you absolutely must go poking in places where you’re not invited. At least you can sort of resanitize it by peeing afterwards. You may also feel free to be cranked open with a speculum, even a cold speculum for that frisson of gynecological authenticity, and prodded about the cervix with a gloved finger. It is possible — oh, so very possible — to create some quite intensely painful sensations in that region without ever attempting entry. I can’t, in good conscience, support your friend playing doctor in the sanctum sanctorum there. I just can’t.
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Still dizzy

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
About what you said about infatuation — isn’t it possible to be head over heels in love with someone and also have caring and mutual support? What would preclude it? I am not talking about commitment — there are lots of “committed” couples out there who don’t care at all and take each other for granted, as well as couples in the starry-eyed stage (I hope) who care for each other deeply. Caring should happen soon, otherwise it’s a crappy relationship, in my humble opinion.
Love,
Starry but Supportive
Dear Support:
There’s such a thing as spaghetti sauce, right? It’s made of tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil, and probably some oregano or something, but regardless — the existence of spaghetti sauce does not negate the existence of tomatoes, onions, garlic, and so on. Each still has its individual reality; all can be combined in any permutation and will still probably be OK on pasta, even if these mixes can’t reasonably be referred to as “spaghetti sauce” specifically.
Right? Oh, what am I talking about? Love, intimacy, sex, romance, caring, trust, and commitment are components — any given relationship may contain any or all of them. Your relationship with your best friend? It has love, intimacy, caring, trust, and commitment. Your relationship with your husband? You probably hope to have all of them, with some in ascendance at certain times while others slack off, eventually to return. Not that a satisfying relationship must feature all seven above plus the ones I forgot. A pickup in the park doesn’t promise any more than sex alone, but if that’s what the participants were looking for, it’s hunky-dory. Even the classic “men are from Mars”–type hetero marriage is often big on trust and commitment (and some have plenty of sex and romance, even many years in) without being nearly as intimate as many people’s close friendships or even work partnerships. We tend in this culture to hold up an idea of perfect partnership. At San Francisco Sex Information we use a Venn diagram with love, sex, and intimacy as intersecting circles, with the middle representing the holy grail. But satisfactory relationships can be forged using whichever components suit the participants’ needs. There is no duty to conform to the current local ideal if you don’t feel like it. Nor is it a sin to settle, if you ask me. One does what works.
I make a distinction between loving a whole lot and limerence (which differs from infatuation both in duration and intensity). Limerence — or longing for reciprocity — is not so much a feeling as it is a form of madness, and like other forms of madness is turning out to have a biochemical basis. “When I think of you my serotonin plummets, my darling! O, how my dopamine soars!” Not that faithful, mutually concerned, monogamous pair-bonding is entirely without its biochemical aspects — look up “prairie vole” on the Web sometime. Drugs and varmints aside, though, of course you can love and care for and be supportive of the same person you’re deeply in love with but perhaps not madly in love with. You do have to know the person to have that sort of relationship, while to crush out wildly on someone, you needn’t even have met. Since true limerence is a form of madness, it doesn’t tend to concern itself with planning for the future either, beyond the obvious (and unprovable) “I will always love you.”
Now, while we’re on the subject of love and limerence, a reader tipped me off that I was mistaken: Dorothy Tennov did not pull the word “limerence” out of her scholarly butt back in the ’70s and the word does share a root with other English words, which I’d list here if I hadn’t promptly lost her e-mail. I was horrified, since who wants to be wrong? Happily, not only does the Wikipedia entry on limerence back me up on Tennov’s pure invention of the term (“The word was pronounceable and seemed to her and two of her students to have a “fitting” sound…. The coinages are arbitrary; there is no specific etymology”), but here’s Tennov herself, back in 1977: “I first used the term ‘amorance,’ then changed it back to ‘limerence’…. It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me, it has no etymology whatsoever.”
So there we have it. As long as it works well in French! Unless Dorothy Tennov writes in telling me that she didn’t, after all, pull “limerence” out of her scholarly ass, I’m standing by my story.
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Clean freak

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m 40 and experiencing a sexual renaissance. I’ve turned into a squirter, which I’m coming to terms with. Guys seem to like it: I haven’t met one yet who complained about being wet all the way down to his toes.
The problem is that occasionally when I’m really having a good time I also lose a little bit of stool. Sometimes it’s just a smearing on the sheets, sometimes it’s a little more significant. This happens with regular vaginal intercourse, even without any anal. I find it incredibly embarrassing, though the guys I’ve been with have been cool about it. One of them was very gallant: we were moving around to a rear entry position when he told me I needed to go clean up because “he had pushed some poop out of me.” Nice of him to take the blame.
So, why is this happening and what can I do about it? I’ve had hemorrhoids, though I don’t have them currently. I have some skin tags around my rectum as a result. I had a vaginal hysterectomy (I don’t have my cervix but do have my ovaries), and I wonder if there might be some rectal prolapse going on? I don’t have health insurance right now and haven’t wanted to see a doctor about what doesn’t seem terribly urgent, just embarrassing. Are there Kegels for the rectum? Do I need to start anal douching before intercourse now?
Love,
Losing It
Dear It:
I’m impressed. Of course you’re embarrassed, but a lot of people would be too mortified to go on. You, dare I say it, suffer incontinence with extraordinary aplomb. You poop with poise. How many people can claim likewise?
This didn’t sound particularly familiar to me so I read around a bit, thinking there must be some study or other connecting vaginal hysterectomy with fecal incontinence, but I really couldn’t find anything. One study specifically queried abdominal and vaginal hysterectomy patients about their bowel health and habits and concluded this: “Patients undergoing abdominal hysterectomy may run an increased risk for developing mild to moderate anal incontinence postoperatively and this risk is increased by simultaneous bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy. An increased risk of anal incontinence symptoms could not be identified in patients undergoing vaginal hysterectomy.”
Salpingo-oopherectomy, for those following along at home, is removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes, and just think, if I’d gone to med school, I could use words like that all day. Oh well. Just because those doctors didn’t find any connection doesn’t mean you haven’t experienced one. Major surgery, with the scalpels and the nerves and everything, sounds a more likely culprit than do hemorrhoids or skin tags. Seeing a proctologist or surgeon seems like a good idea — something’s wrong here — but there’s no rush on that; you’re coping rather brilliantly.
In the meantime, yes, there are Kegel-y things you can do. They’re pretty much self-explanatory: squeeze, release, repeat. Do not douche right before partnered sex, or you may regret it in yuckier ways than I can bear to get into here. The night before is safer, and do what your mother would tell you to do, provided you talked to your mother about this sort of thing: eat more of what she used to call roughage. Lots more. The idea is to get so regular and so thorough in your elimination that there’s nothing left around to put in a surprise appearance later. And then, let’s get real: get some insurance. I don’t care how, just do it. Once we’re 40, running around with no coverage ceases to be devil-may-care and starts being stupid.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
You once wrote, “The human ass can clean itself. If it couldn’t, we’d all be dead. Internal ass hygiene requires only fiber (ingested, not shoved up there) and water (likewise).” But when I do anal, “something” is left on my penis. Isn’t there a way that my girlfriend could clean her ass so much that this would not happen? In the porno movies everything seems so clean. Not that if they had such an accident they would record it.
Love,
Tidy Guy
Dear Guy:
Yeah, I should clarify that. By “clean itself” I don’t mean “wow, it’s so clean in here — I’d eat off the floor” clean. I mean clean for the inside of a butt. I was talking about heroic measures, high colonics and suchlike, and the way hosing out your innards on a regular basis cannot possibly be a good idea.
There is, sadly, no way to guarantee that you will never see “something” again (but you might mind it less if you were using a condom, hint hint). Word has it that the pros do douche the night before. That requires a certain amount of planning, which is easy to accomplish if you know you’re going to be having anal sex from, say, 2 to 3:30 p.m., and never on Wednesdays. If you can pull that off, more power to you.
Love,
Andrea

Dizzy spell

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
You’ve written occasionally about infatuation, but is it really such a bad thing? I mean, is it meaningless? When it wears off, what happens next?
I know it when I feel it. It has driven even logical, structure-loving me to be romantic and well, loopy. But isn’t it based on genuine attraction? Is it something to be wary of?
The object of my desire lives far away, and infrequent visits keep the natural relationship progression at bay. It’s always exciting to see each other, and many of the normal daily annoyances and issues of relationships don’t arise.
Here’s the rub though: while I’m convinced I’m in love and confident in his feelings as well, I fear that making huge decisions and life changes (he’s thinking about selling his house, for instance) may be rash and based on infatuation.
Love,
Cloud Head
Dear Head:
I have written about infatuation, yes, but never without mentioning the word’s etymology, which never fails to charm me, if not as deeply and enduringly as I am charmed by the source of bugger, which is a corruption of Bulgarian, or herpes, which shares a root with herpetology, the study of reptiles, or “things that creep.” Infatuation, of course, means “to make foolish,” and shares a root with fatuous. Aren’t you glad you asked? What? You didn’t ask?
I don’t know what definition your psych 101 teacher gave. I’ll assume that you’re thinking of infatuation as the dizzy, dopey first flush of attraction which has no time for those aspects of love which take time, by which I don’t mean marriage and baby carriage as much as putting the other person’s needs and comfort first, or at least on a level with one’s own, and being made happy by the other’s happiness plus trust, commitment, and mutual support. These latter qualities get something of a bad rap — they’re the nice, dull things you earn in compensation for the sexy, shiny part wearing off — but of course they are no such thing. You can have trust, commitment, and an investment in each other’s happiness and still want to see each other nekkid.
Neither of these is to be confused with limerence, a word that did not exist until the ’70s, when a psychologist, Dorothy Tennov, saw fit to coin it. Unlike infatuation and herpes, limerence shares a root with exactly nothing. It’s rather a lovely sound, though, and seems fitting for that transcendent sensation, that sense that since you and your limerent object met or connected, the world has been utterly transformed. Surely others can see it! If they can’t see it, it’s only because they’re not as sensitive as you are. They could never understand the exquisite torture that is your special, special love.
Limerence is not love, it’s “being in love” (without infatuation’s connotations of foolishness and brevity): the intrusive thoughts to the point of obsession, the feeling of walking on air, the mad longing, the way that every touch, every word, every glance from the beloved is imbued with meaning, and the palpable pain (heartache) of separation or lack of reciprocity. Without limerence all popular music would be either “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” or “Kill You,” nothing in-between. The Rodgers and Hart song “This Can’t Be Love,” which is has been playing in my head since the XM radio in the kids’ room got stuck on the show tunes station, ought to have been called “This Can’t Be Limerence,” but it just doesn’t scan as well:
This can’t be love, because I feel so well,
No sobs, no sorrows, no sighs.
This can’t be love; I get no dizzy spells,
My head is not in the skies.
My heart does not stand still, just hear it beat.
This is too sweet to be love.
Limerence does not become love as much as it can leave you and the limerent object ideally positioned to find love together. You ask, is this really love or merely infatuation? I answer, it’s limerence, and better yet, requited limerence; enjoy it. You ask, “But is the attraction real?” and I say, of course it’s real. Limerence causes a certain type of temporary insanity but you still know what you feel. And finally, should the two of you throw all caution and real estate to the wind and throw in together, despite not really knowing each other that well? Um. This is pretty wishy-washy (limerence is never wishy-washy), but … sort of? How about you wait a year? How about traveling together a little first? Sharing a vacation house? Those situations are not real life but they do involve real stressors. I’d agree that this can’t be love but I won’t say it can’t get there. Let him see you without make-up. Find out what he’s like when you’re lost and hot and cranky on a road trip. Head in the clouds? Easy. How about shaving scum in the sink?
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 adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Opposites attract, kinda

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I have a very close gay male friend who often behaves like he’s interested in me romantically. He has even told me that he gets crushes on girls, that 1 percent of him likes women, and that he’s gotten semihard from girls three different times. He often gazes at me while we’re talking as if he’s thinking of kissing me. Even my friends notice. He also tells me that I brought happiness back to him and that he feels alive when he’s with me. We spend every other night together talking and flirting till 5 a.m.
I don’t need a boyfriend. Even just a kiss or sex with him would be fine with me. I find him attractive, and nothing we would do would ever dissolve our friendship. I once told him in a lighthearted manner that if he ever wanted to do something, I was up for it. He gave a vague response.
How do I approach this without offending him? I’m kinda shy about these things. Also, he is over 30, so he is not in a phase. He is very open about his homosexuality.
Love,
Friend of Friend of Dorothy
Dear Dottie:
Semihard three times in 30 years! Well, that is persuasive.
I have a gay forever-friend who always said that someday he’d marry me, and damned if he didn’t — he became a rabbi and officiated at my wedding. You’ve got to admit that’s something of an exceptional circumstance though.
I’m glad that you say there’s no romantic interest here, since I’d hate to have to shake my head sadly at you. I’m going to pretend to believe you instead, although I think you are interested in him (“My friends say he likes me!”) and I think he’s gay. Really, really gay. The kind of gay that’s so gay it doesn’t matter if he “gets crushes” on girls or even if he has sex with one. He’s still gonna like boys, and he’s still not going to “like” you like that. None of which means he doesn’t love you and consider you his soul mate and think you’re pretty. I’ve no doubt he does. But if you went so far as to proposition him directly and got a “vague response,” well, he already said no. He just didn’t want to hurt your feelings when he did it, because he loves you. And is so, so gay.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
Do you think there’s a real chance of a long-term relationship between someone who identifies himself as “maybe poly” and someone who is pretty sure she’s monogamous to the core? It’s a great relationship even with this business, but I feel like I need some kind of resolution. He’s already passed up one opportunity for sex with a long-standing (very poly) friend of his, which made me feel better on the one hand and guilty on the other.
I’m reading about polyamory and looking at it like the trained, rational scientist I am. I can accept it without wanting to embrace the lifestyle myself, but there are times when the whole thing just seems designed to aggravate my insecurities and turn me into a grasping, clingy girlfriend.
I don’t have a problem with the “other close relationships” thing. I just seem to have a problem with the sex. Is this cultural indoctrination, as the books would have it, or a real concern?
Love,
Cling Peach
Dear Peach:
What makes you think they’re mutually exclusive? Wanting your lover all to yourself is certainly culturally supported, if not precisely a matter of indoctrination, and it’s also perfectly natural. It’s a bit like hetero- or homosexuality in that you can cross over and act “as if,” but if you have a natural inclination toward monogamy, it’s going to be a poor fit: too tight, and itchy to boot. One ignores such discomfort at one’s peril.
It’s nice that you have what you term a great relationship with Poly Dude, but you do realize that at this point it’s functioning as something of a three-way — you, your boyfriend, and the elephant in the room? You’re going to have to talk about this eventually: Is being poly part of his core identity? (It rather sounds not, which is good.) If he does feel the need to experiment, can your relationship withstand the stresses, and can you withstand the temptation to throw things at him? Even more important, can you forswear wallowing in guilt for something you did not do and were in fact powerless to affect in any way? If so, great — go forth and pursue whatever it is you hope to pursue with Semipoly Dude. If you answered “no” to any but the first of my too many questions, then your relationship, lovely as it is, is fated to be brief and end either badly later or amicably now. So I hope you didn’t.
Love,
Andrea

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