Friday, 28 December 2007
| 12:00 am
| Advice
My partner walked in on me masturbating this morning. After scrambling under the covers, upsetting a bottle of lube in the scuffle, I laid there with my heart pounding in my chest hoping that she mistook my fervent blush for just-woke-up-from-a-nap color.
Some hours later (but with a pink glow still gracing my face) I’m trying to figure out why I am so embarrassed.
My girlfriend and I have been dating for years. We’ve been through wonderful times and not so great time, times when our bodies rebelled against us with infections and gross secretions, and times when our bodies came together in bone-shaking lust. There is not a single square inch of my skin that she has not seen let alone touched, licked, or bitten. She knows my genitals so well that could likely pick them out of a lineup faster and with greater ease than I could. And it top it off, the woman has watched me get myself off more times than I could ever count.
So why am I still embarrassed that I got caught?
To be fair, getting walked-in on doing something blatantly unobjectionable is nerve wracking in and of itself. Heck, I would have jumped should she have come home and I’d been writing in my journal or something equally innocuous. But there is an additional level of trepidation that comes with being caught being sexual. Is it fear? Guilt, maybe?
I would argue that we’ve lived a long time with the message that, whether we agree with it or not, masturbation is something good boys and girls simply do not do. And if they were to do it, they ought to make certain that they were doing it somewhere very private where no one would ever discover their depravity. They should also make sure to clean up after they are done, hide the used tissues, the bottle of lotion, the semen-filled tube socks, and wash their hands before someone, god forbid, catches them.
I think it’s nearly impossible to keep these moral standards out of our adult lives. Even when I am well past the point of being comfortable touching myself with a partner present, it would be much thornier for them to sit across the room and watch me get off without participating. It would be even more difficult should I choose to masturbate for my own selfish pleasure with them present but not paying attention to me while I did it. I can’t fathom saying, “No babe, keep on watching the game, I’m just fooling around with my vibe over here and plan of getting off before I come join you” unless I had some distant hope that they would come over and lend a hand, so to speak. It’s just not done!
But I pee in front of my lovers. I blow my nose in front of them, get sick with them, clean my toenails in their presence without so much as doubting if I am overstepping the comfort lines. Why should masturbating be any different if it isn’t about some sense of internalized guilt?
What would that harbored guilt be about, I wonder. Guilt about being selfish? Guilt about being sexual without my partner’s permission (translating to being a sexual person outside of a relationship)? Guilt surrounding being dirty or perverted or not normal in some way?
Intellectually, I know all of these statements to be false. And yet, there I was, shaking under the blanket as if I had been caught in a scandalous affair with someone else.
I often wonder what our sex would be like if we could let go of all the leftover guilt and shame that was instilled in us over the years. What if we were all free to explore our bodies with one another without fear of our “O-face” or how much noise we make when we get riled up. I want to be comfortable when my partner comes home early from work and I am tangled up in the sheets three flicks away from coming. I hope that one day I will glance to the side and say, “Hi honey, I’m super close to getting off, can I come kiss you in a second?” and finish without feeling the need to hide under the blankets.
Undoing sexual guilt is a tricky thing but I have a hankering that it can be done. I’m planning on building a relationship where I can be selfish if I want to and have orgasms by myself, when I want them, without apology to my lover who may be present in the room when the urge strikes me. Perhaps this will translate into letting go of my embarrassment about being caught with my pants down. I’ll let you know how that goes over time. Wish me luck.
— Rebekah Skoor, MA
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In honor of the recent holiday (and, no, I don’t mean Global Orgasm Day on December 22, though I hope you had a good one! Multiple good ones, even!), here’s a cup of cheer in the form of some festive sexual sites:
The always-insightful Mistress Matisse has a column at The Stranger, “The Whore on Christmas”, about sex work and the holidays. She goes some way towards refuting the whole “Sadder than a whore on Christmas” cliché in the process. It’s a great piece, sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes both.
Yes, yes, words are all well and good, but you want pictures of naked women in Santa hats, don’t you? Here we go:
Here’s Nadia Styles & Ashley Fires cavorting by a tree! (Their stockings appear to be hung with care, too.)
Fleshbot has a Christmas card and a few photos of natural hairy model Furry Girl wearing a strap-on, along with the old red-and-white garb. If only she could have found a dildo striped like a candy cane!
Here’s a Christmas gallery from Hegre-Art.com that’s a classic (at least, in internet terms — I’ve seen it the past couple of years around this time): A blonde and brunette duet suffused with the spirit of giving (and groping).
How about a woman in a Santa costume sitting on her submissive’s face? Ever seen that before? Well, now you have.
Adult Video News held a Santa Baby contest, allowing viewers to rank a bevy of holiday hotties. A winner was named a few days before Xmas, but galleries of all the entrants are still online, so take a look. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
Lad rag Nuts has a Lucy Pinder’s Topless Christmas, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You’d think people would be sick of seeing Lucy Pinder’s breasts by now, since they’re on display more-or-less constantly . . . and, yet, they are somehow still quite captivating. It’s a Christmas miracle!
If your desire for the combination of hot women, red velvet, and white fur is even yet unsatisfied, I can only point you toward the XXXmas Blog, which gathers an astounding array of links to holiday hotties, and should keep you occupied with a very personal sort of tree-trimming for a while.
But it’s not just women who get a little wild when the chestnuts start roasting and the carolers come out. Consider this Sexy Male Christmas photoset on Flickr, which, while not always sexy, is certainly always male and Christmasy. Where else can you see a guy with tinsel on his dick? (If the answer is, “in my living room,” well, I commend your holiday spirit.) Then there’s the woman who groped Santa Claus in Danbury CT. Too bad she couldn’t have simply hooked up with one of the guys from that photo set above — she could have found a willing gropee, and avoided those nasty criminal charges!
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the Christmas/Sex continuum (and I didn’t even delve into the comparatively modest worlds of Kwanzaa and Hannukah porn!) Enjoy the leftover turkey, and have a happy new year!
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Friday, 21 December 2007
| 12:00 am
| Advice
December is AIDS awareness month. If you are anything like me, thinking about HIV transmission while shopping for family gifts does not sound like the stuff of ideal, snow-flocked holiday fun.
Why the officials of Worlds AIDS Day chose December 1st for commemorate those that have passed away from AIDS is beyond me (although I’m sure a quick search on the ol’ Internet would likely give me some answers as to the date choice). It sure is untimely when we consider the great lengths Americans go through to put on the annual Christmas consumerist show that has more to do with stringing up the better light arrangement on the front of the house than helping out our communities in need.
As I sat around the breakfast table this morning with a good friend who happens to be infected with HIV, we got to talking about what it is like for her to be one of the millions of people who have contracted this vicious virus.
We dipped gingerbread into lattes and talked about how AIDS continues to feel like a problem that is happening “over there” in other countries, far enough away to feel safde and snug in the arms of our non-infected lovers. The WHO just released information earlier this year that they had overestimated the number of Africans living with HIV by about 7 million people. That seems a grievous error until we learn that 33 million Africans actually ARE infected. Thirty-three million human beings; I can’t even get my head around that number.
And that’s just in Africa! When we talk about 33 million people in Africa, we aren’t talking about the countless other nations that have epidemic levels of HIV swirling throughout their communities. We aren’t thinking about all of the places that testing and treatment are not available to help those in need. We certainly aren’t talking about how the sex trade and money game keep humans enslaved to unsafe practices that put their lives at risk to keep food on the table.
And yet, I don’t see us caring all that much about people dying of AIDS, especially during AIDS awareness month.
Sure, we care; we care to a point. We write a check every now and again to sponsor a friend who is doing an AIDS awareness marathon. We think about those poor children in Africa who contract HIV through breast milk before they even have a chance at life. We think about them over there. But we don’t think about Americans having HIV.
We don’t want to think about the University in Chapel Hill that suffered with an HIV outbreak in 2003. We can’t get our heads around young, white students contracting this virus doing the same kinds of things we did in college, activities some of us still do. We don’t think about what we would say if our children, our parents, our best friends came to us with the news that they are HIV positive. We don’t think about what that would mean if we, ourselves, lived with the virus inside our body.
It doesn’t feel good to mix the idea of sexually transmitted viruses with tinsel and spiked eggnog. I don’t often hear tales of Santa leaving condoms in stocking so the naughty, sexual Americans can ho, ho, ho safely.
When I take time out of my present-wrapping to consider why a quarter of the estimated 1.2 million HIV positive Americans do not know they are infected, I’m left to sit with the paucity of sexual awareness in this country. The fact that 40,000 new Americans contract HIV every year in this country is staggering. While it may be easy to think about “other people” or just “gay people” contracting this, of these 40,000 people, the vast majority are young people (ages 13-24), heterosexual women, and people of color.
We do not talk about sex enough. We are not standing together to teach our children about how to engage in sex safely and how and when to get tested for STIs when they become sexually active. We do not stand united on the right for women to demand protection, to know the STI status of their partners, to consent to all sexual acts they engage in. We still hesitate to ask our lovers if they have been tested or if they mind using a condom because we are not comfortable talking about sex when it is real, when it is happening, or when we stand the most to lose.
We do not talk about sexually transmitted diseases as if they could really happen to us.
But they do happen. They are happening. And people are dying this Holiday season from AIDS whether we choose to think about it or not.
So what if we decided to think about it this year?
What if we though about AIDS this holiday and what if we did something about it? If doing something for you means making a donation, all the power to you. But what if we did something more personal, more private as a way of recognizing this pandemic?
What if we called up a buddy and went and got tested this holiday season? What if we bought a box of condoms for our kids and left them in their bathroom, just in case they ever felt like using one? What if we sat down and had a real talk with our lovers about out sexual histories? What if we took the time to believe that we are not invincible, not safer than other people, not more deserving to be HIV negative than anyone else?
Thinking about the sad reality that engaging in something as beautiful as sex could kill us is terrible. But not thinking about it is contributing to the factors that make this terrible truth a reality. It’s the time of year for generativity, of giving back to the world. What can you give?
— Rebekah Skoor, MA
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Thursday, 20 December 2007
| 10:07 pm
| Culture
I was going to write this as a comment to Rebekah’s piece on dry spells. But it just got longer and longer . . . until I realized that what I had on my hands wasn’t a comment, but a column.
Quick summary of what the heck I’m talking about: Last week, Rebekah wrote in this blog about being in a sexual dry spell: about not having sex, or the time for sex, or even the inclination for sex, for several weeks on end. The main culprit was time and stress and overscheduling, and she asked, “How does anyone manage to get in good fucks anymore? . . .How has our species managed to survive this long if we can’t procreate when we are taxed?”
This column is my reply.
First: I’ve been there. I’m still there, off and on. Things are good these days, but to some extent it’s an ongoing issue. I think almost anyone with a busy, overscheduled life deals with it. And as we get older, we deal with it more.
And I’ll make the usual disclaimer: I’m just speaking from my own experience here, about things that have worked in my own sex life. These ideas are based on a very unscientific sampling size of one — me. (Okay, two — me and my partner.)
One of the things that’s really helped kick my libido into gear is regular vigorous exercise. I know, I know: exercise is a time-suck. But I’ve found that it pays off in time as well as health. (I work more efficiently, I sleep better, yada yada yada.) And almost nothing makes me more generally horny than working out twice a week.
But honestly? The thing that’s helped most of anything is that tired old couples-counseling workhorse: scheduling and setting aside time for sex.
I know. Scheduling sex sounds so unsexy. And when you’re not in the mood to have sex anyway, the last thing in the world you want to do is block out time for it in your datebook.
But I’ve found that it works — for two big reasons.
Reason One is purely practical, purely a tackling of the symptoms. If I wait until my life settles down to get back in the mood, I’m going to wait a very long time. At the rate I’m going, my life will probably settle down when I’m in my coffin. I have to schedule time for the things that matter to me — otherwise, they’ll never happen. And that includes sex.
But Reason Two gets to the actual heart of the problem.
Reason Two: Nothing in the world makes me want to have sex more than actually having it.
Even if I’m not in the mood when we first get going, having sex usually gets me in the mood. The sight of our favorite toys; the smell of massage oil or lube; the sight of her body in one of our favorite positions (or the feel of my own body in one of them); the sight and sound and smell of her excitement . . . that’ll get me in the mood, even if I wasn’t to start out with.
And when we’re having sex pretty regularly, I find myself thinking about it a whole lot more often. Doing it just reminds me — in a literal, visceral way — of how fun it is, how good it feels, how close it makes us, how important it is to both of us. A funny paradox; the more often we schedule sex, the more likely we are to have it spontaneously as well. It’s very Pavlovian: the more I have sex, the more it’s on my mind.
There is no aphrodisiac in the world better than sex itself. It works in the short term, and it works in the long term.
So scheduling sex — whether a whole evening’s entertainment or a ten-minute quickie — can be a great way to cut the vicious circle of stress and sexlessness.
It can be weird, I won’t deny that. I wrote about this a little in my piece on this blog, Willing. Starting to have sex when my mind is on work and worries and errands and plans can feel awkward at first. But the awkwardness usually passes . . . to be replaced by more pleasurable emotions.
Now, if there’s a special one-time reason why I’m too stressed to fuck — travel, family crisis, a big work project, that sort of thing — I try not to worry about it. I let myself go fallow for a few weeks, and figure it’ll pass. But if it’s just everyday overscheduling, I know it won’t get better unless I take positive action to make it better.
And putting sex in the datebook is the best way I know to do that.
Greta Christina, copyright © 2007. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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It’s time once again for a niche fetish round-up, our occasional celebration of life’s rich pageant and the diversity of human sexual expression and obsession, a collection of links related only by their ability to titillate some while mystifying others . . .
First up: Women with Hands on Hips. Some of these women are beautiful, yes, but what is it about that pose that gets the right kind of heart racing? The suggestion of strength and sternness? Some kind of Oedipal thing? The resemblance to Linda Carter-era Wonder Woman? One cannot speculate. One can only observe.
I can understand having erotic associations with sex and cars — as teenagers, lots of people discover sex in cars. But the specificity of “Pedal-pumping porn” is kind of breathtaking. Videos of feet — male or female, and barefoot, in socks, or in shoes, depending on your particular kink — pumping the gas pedal in cars. The links aren’t even not-safe-for-work, though if your boss wanders by, you might have a hard time explaining what exactly you’re looking at . . .
Headph0ne Phet1sh is a surprisingly polished-looking site dedicated to the heretofore unknown-to-me love for women wearing headphones. There’s wallpaper, videos, user-submitted photos, and more! There are even extensive tips to help headphone fetishists do more effective web searches, since just googling “women headphones” one-handed apparently fails to bring up the desired results. This is another one that’s pretty much safe for work, but might earn you strange looks from the dude in the next cubicle.
As an old-school science fiction fan, I’d like to say that I see the appeal of Women in Spacesuits, but in truth, I’m more of a sci-fi traditionalist — I like my outer-space cheesecake to involve skintight jumpsuits with zippers down the front, or possibly gold lamé bikinis. Still, there’s something charming about this site, with images of women in space suits — from the realistic to the skiffy — through the decades. I also kind of love encountering the sort of mind that compiles a list of popular space movies that don’t feature women in spacesuits — just to save his fellow fetishists time and frustration! (Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan? No chicks in space suits. Just FYI.)
And, finally . . . Girls Eating Sandwiches. Nobody loves sandwiches more than me. Sandwiches are my favorite food. And girls? Boy howdy, do I ever like girls. And yet, the combination of girls and sandwiches is not intrinsically sexy for me. (No, not even girls and foot-long hot dogs.) But if you like to see a woman having a nice nosh, you’ll find plenty to keep you entertained. The breathless prose of the image descriptions is pretty great, too. For instance: “She knows that there’s nothing like a tomato covered in mayonnaise!” And now you, dear reader, know it as well.
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Earlier this month, the Museum of Hoaxes reported that a certain set of nerdy rumors were making the blog rounds once more: rumors of sex in space. Or — and here I should be painfully specific, because for the time being these two things are synonymous — sex in the space program.
When I say “space program,” I’m really talking about two space programs, the Russian and the American. The Chinese manned space program has existed for such a short time that any orbiting sex there would be furtive at best, and in any event no one seems to be speculating about it yet. More about us horny Yanks later; for now it’s the Russians strongly denying that there were any experiments performed on sex in space, as related in this Bankgkok Post article on an Interfax report about Valery Bogomolov, head of Russia’s Institute of Bio-Medical Problems, that Russian and US cosmonauts had most explicitly not been “testing sex in space.” “There is no proof . . . that on any mission cosmonauts had sex,” said Bogomolov. “Cosmonauts, too, are regular people, but . . . I have not heard about any sex in orbit.”
Specifically, the reports and rumors centered on a supposed Institute study in which six cosmonauts (five men, one woman) spent two weeks isolated ina zero-gravity capsule, as part of an experiment to simulate conditions that might occur on a trip to Mars. Bogomolov claimed “there were no complaints over the absence of sex,” which doesn’t surprise me. Personally, I have a helluva time sitting through a poetry reading without ducking into the loo to adopt a “narrow stance” for a few minutes, but then, I’ve never been considered for astronaut training (and now I know why). A two-week period of isolation might not generate too much sexual desperation in your typical type-A number-crunching Slavic geniuses, but an actual trip to Mars would take at least 260 days, so if it comes down to it I think Mr. Bogomolov and his cronies might want to spring for a silver bullet and a Fleshlight or two.
Rumors — some would say “wishful thinking” — about sex in space have been around since the beginning, not least because science fiction in the pulp era was published in magazines and paperbacks that often featured silver bodysuited space jockeyed and scantily-clad humanoid aliens. Aliens and future Adonises were the wish-fulfillment of an industry fueled by testosterone and wonder, and 25-cent paperbacks were never respectable to begin with. When space flight became a reality, it’s not surprising that people started projecting onto it their fantasies of a little intergalactic bootay; what’s surprising is that it doesn’t happen more.
The Soviet space program was marked throughout with the extreme secrecy that typified that regime. After the cold war, for instance, it was revealed that a much larger number of people had died in the Soviet space program, and to this day a fairly well-researched conspiracy theory exists that the Lost Cosmonauts were would-be space travellers who were simply stricken from the records. If the system could “disappear” whole cosmonauts, what would be the challenge in covering up a spacebound boink or two?
But for whatever reason, the Americans are usually the beneficiaries of spacefuck rumors and urban legends. US astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee got married just before travelling on the Space Shuttle in 1991. In what appears to be an enduring urban legend, NASA was reported to have tested multiple sex positions in zero-gravity, utilizing elastic bands and other helpful equipment. This report periodically surfaces and makes things interesting (and no doubt exasperating) for NASA press representatives. NASA does not ban sex between its astronauts, but a spokesperson said that “We depend and rely on the professionalism and good judgment of our astronauts . . . There is nothing specifically or formally written down about sex in space.”
Yeah, maybe. As with most government agencies, just because there are no guidelines about how or when to fuck doesn’t mean that NASA won’t deny that anybody’s fucking. About a year and a half ago MSNBC and other sources reported on NASA’s voluble denials of sex on board the Space Shuttle. The denials in that case were in response to a hoax in which NASA was said to have conducted a survey — apparently related to the 1996 hoax — on whether any of its astronauts boinked on board the shuttle. Equally important to the zero-G fucking hoopla was Laura Woodmansee’s August, 2006 book Sex in Space. The MSNBC story also incorporated the proposal of science fiction writer Vanna Bonta (who incidentally contributed a story to “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) that sex in space was crucial to the long-term survival of the human race. Bonta’s novel Flight included a garment called thhe “2suit,” which faciliated zero-gravity sex by including Velcro strips, zippers and breakaway sections as well as an inner material that would absorb the perspiration generated by sex — which, in a low-pressure zero-G environment, would be less likely to evaporate and more likely to get in strange and irritating places.
Around the same time, Violet Blue proposed the well-reasoned rationale that sex in space was going to need to be facilitated by bondage. I concur. As anyone can imagine if they’ve ever nerded-out over videos from NASA’s website of the STS Crew (the Space Shuttle astronauts to you laypersons) strapping themselves down for sleep or work, zero gravity sex would not be all floaty intimacy. On the contrary, without a tiedown or two, it would be like trying to get off while doing midair gymnastics. Which could be fun in its own way, but seems unlikely to be sexually satisfying. Blue later included the sex in space story in her top sex stories of 2006.
But the human fantasy of sex in zero-gravity was in the beginning, is now, and forever shall be. Back in 2000, a film called The Uranus Experiment Part 2 was nominated for a Nebula award. In the sci-fi porn movie, stars Sylvia Saint and Nick Lang have sex in microgravity conditions — which were simulated by flying a plane in a parabolic pattern, which basically generates the same gravitational conditions, briefly, as those onboard spaceship in orbit.
Clearly, microgravity porn hasn’t taken over the erotica market. But all it really takes is a DC-9 with an open cargo bay and a whole lot of craft foam — or red velvet pillows, if that’s your gig. Can it be far away? Only the Russians know for sure, and they’re not talking.
Thomas Roche is the managing editor of Eros Zine, teaches at San Francisco Sex Information, and also blogs on sex, drugs and cryptozoology at thomasroche.com.
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Friday, 14 December 2007
| 12:00 am
| Advice
I’m in a dry spell these days. It’s hard for me to admit this, being the couple’s columnist and a professional sex-advice person and all. I feel like my sex drive should be infallible! But the truth of the matter is that I haven’t wanted to get off for weeks.
Perhaps some of you might read this and think, “Weeks? She’s complaining about weeks?!” May sound downright crazy that a few measly weeks of low sex drive is something that should bother me. It’s such a departure from my normal state of affairs however that I have taken keen note of it and stand back and stare at my fledgling sex drive as if it were worthy of intense examination.
I haven’t even wanted to masturbate.
Unheard of!
I have a feeling I know what the deal is. I’m busy. Very, very busy. In the midst of enduring 12-hour workdays, exercising my increasingly agitated puppy, helping my partner develop her new business plan, surviving the holidays packed into my mother’s home along with several antsy family members and said agitated puppy, and counseling folks about their most intimate, emotional issues, I can’t find the energy to get it up right now (so to speak).
It’s hard to find the energy to be sexual when I barely have enough energy to brush my teeth before falling into bed. I think my vibrator is getting lonely to say nothing of my lover who touches my face and kisses my ear before I fall into blackout-like sleep each evening. She tells me that she is “concerned” with my workload and that she senses I am “distant” right now. Yes, quite.
How does anyone manage to get in good fucks anymore? I can’t be the only busy one in the world. I wonder especially after new parents, traveling business executives, elementary school teachers (who we all know work harder than everyone else on the planet combined), or anyone who must balance leisure time with the copious responsibilities of life. How has our species managed to survive this long if we can’t procreate when we are taxed?
And it isn’t just finding the time that I am talking about. The energy is the trickiest part of the equation. I feel like I can’t even muster the energy to take the damn toy out of the damn drawer and get my pants off.
The few friends I’ve mentioned this to seem wholly unconcerned. “We all go through dry spells,” one reassured me with a pat on my arm. While this might be true, it’s still unnerving when the person with the dry spell is me. I want to go back to being my usual sex-craving self. I want to feel desire bubbling around in my veins, transforming dull moments into opportunities to sneak away from my desk and get off in the office bathroom. I want to want to jump on my lover and take her hard when she least expects it, to slip into something lacy and cover the house in candles, to pop in a butt-plug and wear it out to a party. I want to feel like myself again!
I suppose it is human to go into self-preservation mode when life gets too hectic. I imagine I would feel anxiety prone if instead of plummeting my sex-drive rose in times of extreme stress. Right now my body is likely dictating low desire so it can keep on working at the unhealthy speed and intensity it has been for the past few months. Flippin’ fantastic.
This period of stillness in my body does lead me to wonder how others are affected in their full, busy lives. Do other people experience this phenomenon in the same way? Are they bothered by it or is it a welcome change? My grandmother once told me that if she could take a pill in the morning that would take care of all of her bodily urges (hunger, tiredness, desire, etc), she would invest in a life supply. I don’t feel the same way.
My urges, my aches and pains, my desires and revulsions shape who I am and how I move through my life. When these urges fade, I feel that I am less than whole, less than me. I want my desire back. The question I must pose to myself is: what in this busy, full life am I willing to give up to restore healthy desire?
I suppose I’ll try to answer that question tonight, right after I finish my column, walk the puppy, prepare dinner, pick up my partner from work, take a shower, send out a birthday card, pay rent, and look over my caseload for this coming work-week. Yes, I’ll ponder these life-changing questions, just as soon as I find the time.
— Rebekah Skoor, MA
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