Roulette is queer indie fun, with an emphasis on lesbian action (though the cast runs the gamut from butches to bois to femmes and points in between), and one scene with two bio-guys fucking each other’s brains out on a rooftop — if you want queer variety, look no further.
The opening scene starts with cutie Ceci trying to find the right costume for the night’s stripper gig, but her boyish beau Kenji is precious little help, preferring Ceci in her underwear anyway. Cute clothes, strap-on fucking and sucking, and loads of genuine chemistry follow.
Wrestler boi Cyd has a masturbation scene in a locker room, stroking a strap-on while using a glass dildo with the other hand, and it’s glorious sweaty solo action. Other solo scenes include Dia Zerva playing a housebreaker in high heels, picking a lock and slipping into a kitchen to become incredibly excited by a bottle of ice cold milk, proving eros is where you find it; definitely one of the more inventive solo scenes I’ve seen. Director Courtney Trouble does a turn before the camera as well, bathed in red light, playing with toys and vamping for the camera.
Walter Crasshole and Nikolaj (who sport a mohawk and a fauxhawk respectively, along with a full complement of piercings) provide some guy-on-guy action, with cocksucking, ass-licking, anal sex, and mutual masturbation — their passion is incandescent.
The big gangbang scene has femme Rozen DeBowe arranging to get used by Jiz Lee, Syd Blakovich, and Donny in a pool hall fuckfest with liquor-bottle penetration, strap-ons galore, a Hitachi magic wand, and more filled holes than a pool table . . . but it’s actually very sweet, in its way, without the gonzo “top-this” vibe so often seen in gangbang sequences.
The last scene was my favorite, bringing a little bondage with busty femme Milo and her playmate Cole, who wears cuffs and collar while getting bent over and banged in the ass. But Cole’s switch, and gives as good as she gets — they’re a real couple, and the connection shows.
The film also features some very clever music videos by bands who contribute to the kick-ass soundtrack, and it’s altogether a wonderfully varied and enjoyable package. Director Courtney Trouble took home the Most Deliciously Diverse Cast prize from the Feminist Porn Awards for this movie, and she’s definitely got a vision worth watching.
Nostalgia is marvelously high-concept porn, and as soon as I saw the premise, I was in love. Director Courtney Trouble promises to “queer the classics,” and that’s exactly what she does, with all-girl versions of iconic scenes from the Golden Age of Porn.
We open with Trouble and the lovely Pepper Sox in bed watching porn on a laptop. First up is a version of Behind the Green Door where our main character (no Marilyn Chambers, but then, who is?) gets kidnapped and taken to a sex theater by a couple of masked strap-on wearing ladies. (The audience includes sex educator and advocate Carol Queen in a cute cameo.) The scene has all the hot voyeuristic/exhibitionist/submissive elements of the original, and the classic film’s iconic slow-motion money-shots are replaced by shots of women squirting onto the willing victim’s body — a rather inspired twist.
The second scene is an homage to Deep Throat, with Madison Young in the role of the sexually-frustrated woman going to her for help having orgasms. Naturally, Madison has to undergo a series of highly invasive tests before Doctor Syd Blakovich figures out the problem — as you may recall, in the original, the woman’s clitoris was located in her throat, leading to a series of oral adventures. The same holds true here, with the help of some dildoes of exceptional length, and Madison overplays the part with adorable chirpiness until she finally gets the orgasmic fireworks she’s been dreaming about. Things move on from there, with a Hitachi magic wand and the handle of a golf club pressed into sensual service, before Madison ends up on her knees choking herself on two strap-on cocks at once. Hot, hot, hot.
Next we have an all-girl version of the dinner party scene from Babylon Pink, with the characters fantasizing about fucking one another, and while it’s enjoyable enough, it doesn’t have the verve of the earlier scenes. Fortunately, the finale is a return to form: we join the suicidal April Flores, who kills herself in a bathtub, only to find herself in a limbo strangely reminiscent of, yes, the setting of The Devil in Miss Jones. In a nicely meta twist, April is returned to Earth for lessons in depravity . . . including a visit to Pepper Sox and Courtney Trouble, the couple we’ve been watching make out between videos. Bathed in suitably Satanic red light and wielding some sweet metal toys, the characters move into full orgy mode . . . and skip the original Devil in Miss Jones’s horrifically downbeat ending. It’s a smart, funny, and — most importantly — hot trip down the hardcore side of Memory Lane.
So: Sex in the tub. What kind of lube should we use?
Ah, the perennial question: What kind of lube works best for romping about in the water. Of course, water- based lubes are right out, being as they are . . . well, you probably clued in right at the “water-based” part. They wash off very easily, which is great for cleanup but kind of defeats the purpose for fun in the surf.
Oil-based lubes are also not so great. They’re fine for anal sex (although they destroy latex condoms in a heartbeat, so don’t use them if a barrier like that is required), but we really do not like to see people use them for vaginal intercourse.
That brings us our favorite lubes of all, the silicone lubes. They are much more water-resistant than water-based lubes, they are fine for use with latex, they clean up pretty easily, and they’re great for both vaginal and anal sex. They also don’t taste like anything, which is often a good thing in the lube world.
You may have heard that they are not to be used with silicone toys, but in our testing, the danger is overdone: Just clean your toys thoroughly after play, and you should have no trouble at all.
No lube is perfect for splashing about (they all do wear off much faster in water), but silicone lube is the best we’ve found for aquatic ambitions.
If you read the sex advice columns (and who doesn’t?), you see this sort of thing a lot. “I’m gay, and I don’t want to be.” “I’m kinky, and I don’t want to be.” “I have a fetish, and I don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to want what I want.”
Now, despite what some may think about us sex-positive advocates, I’m not going to reflexively say, “Oh, just go for it.” I don’t necessarily think that everything we want is good, or good for us. (Snickers bars come to mind.) Some sexual desires can do us harm if we act on them: the desire for barebacking, say, or the fetish for being fed until you gain massive amounts of weight. And if what you want sexually is immoral — sex with children, say, to use the most obvious example — then that’s a no-brainer. Being sex-positive doesn’t mean being positive about all sex, in every situation.
But let’s say that what you want sexually isn’t immoral, by any useful definition of the word. Let’s say that what you want is consensual, and honest, and doesn’t hurt anybody in a way that they don’t want to be hurt. And let’s say that it’s reasonably safe as well: no more likely than any other hobby to cause serious or lasting harm, to you or to anyone else.
And let’s say that you still don’t want to want it. Let’s say you’re still distressed and unhappy with what you want in bed.
What then?
I don’t pretend to have an answer to this. Not one that could be written in a short blog post, anyway. But I think part of the answer lies in doing a careful, thorough, honest inventory of your thoughts and feelings . . . and figuring out, not why you want the sexual thing you want, but why exactly you feel so bad about it.
I think there are three main reasons why people wish they didn’t want the kind of sex they want. 1) They’ve internalized the social stricture against sex in general: they think sex is trivial and silly, and in general not worth wanting or pursuing. 2) The kind of sex they want is one that society frowns upon, and they’ve internalized the social stricture against it: they believe it’s immoral and bad, even if it’s consensual and honest and doesn’t hurt anybody. Or 3) The kind of sex they want is one that society frowns upon . . . and pursuing it will be inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst.
All three of which intertwine, of course.
(If I’m leaving any out, speak up in the comments.)
And I think figuring out which of these is making you feel so bad about your desires will be key in helping you figure out what to do about them.
I had an LSD trip once (no, this isn’t a tangent, stay with me) in which I hallucinated that my consciousness had somehow gotten detached from the pool of my memories and thoughts and feelings, and I had to find my way back. It was a grueling, no- fun trip, in which I spent hours sorting through my ideas and feelings and beliefs like they were a trunk of old clothes. (”Is that my belief? No, that one belongs to my mother, she just left it here.” “What about that? Do I believe that? Yes, I think that’s one of mine.”) It was a grueling, no- fun trip . . . but at the end of it, I felt lighter, and liberated: like I’d unburdened myself of a lot of useless crap, and like everything in my head belonged to me.
Now, I’m not proposing that everyone with unwanted sexual desires take powerful hallucinogens until they reach a liberating epiphany. In fact, I’m not proposing that anyone do that. It’s really not a reliable form of therapy or consciousness-raising, and you’re just as likely to get a liberating epiphany about leaves or the Beatles or the lines on the back of your hand as you are about your sexuality.
What I’m proposing is that you take some time and sit with your desires. Let yourself feel them; let yourself have them. Let yourself really feel, not only your desire, but your discomfort with it.
And try to figure out: Where is this coming from? Not the desire itself — typically, figuring out the causes of our sexual desire is like reading tea leaves in a hurricane — but the discomfort with it, and the wish to not have it. Let yourself feel that discomfort, and ask yourself:
Is this mine?
Do I really think this?
Or is this something somebody else thinks — my parents, my neighbors, my co-workers, my religious leaders, people on TV?
Don’t just go with your first instinct. I don’t think our first instincts are necessarily our best. Our first instincts often come from prejudice and fear. Really sit with it; really think it through.
Where does this discomfort come from? Are you genuinely repulsed by your desire . . . or are you simply embarrassed by it? Do you really think it’s harmful and immoral, or just silly and trivial? If it’s the latter . . . to me, that’s a clue that I don’t really think this kind of sex is bad. To me, that’s a clue that who’s doing the talking is the part of my brain that says, “All sex is bad — it’s not important, it’s not worth taking seriously, and it’s definitely not worth making a priority in my life.”
And when you hear the voice in your head telling you that your desire is bad . . . whose voice is it? Is it your voice, or the voice of other people? When you think carefully about the arguments it’s making . . . do they make sense to you? Is the voice even making arguments? Or is it just screaming, “Bad, bad, bad!” To me, if the voice saying my desires are bad really doesn’t sound like me, and on careful examination it isn’t really making much sense . . . that’s a clue that what’s going on isn’t a genuine personal distaste for the sex in question, but an internalization of the social taboo against it.
Or do you have a genuine practical concern about pursuing your desire? Are you worried that you might lose your job, your family, your friends, if people found out? Are you worried that disclosing it to people you’re dating will alienate them? Are you in a monogamous relationship with someone who’s really not interested in doing your particular thing?
If you have a genuine practical concern about your desires . . . well, that’s just cost-benefit analysis. And nobody can do your cost-benefit analysis for you. You’re the only one who can decide if this desire is not that big a deal and isn’t worth making a priority . . . or if it’s going to drive you batty if it’s not pursued. In my experience and from what I’ve read and observed, deeply fundamental sexual desires and orientations — like, say, being gay — are not going to go away, and trying to ignore them will make you miserable. But some desires are less deeply-rooted, and can be put on the back burner. It can be annoying to not pursue them, but it’s not necessarily misery-inducing. And nobody but you can decide whether the benefit of pursuing your desire is worth the cost.
But if the voice that’s telling you “No!” is just saying that all sex is bad? If it’s saying that sexual desire is dirty and trivial, and you should be ashamed of yourself for making such a big deal out of it? If it’s saying, “Everyone else thinks that what you want is disgusting and bad, therefore is must be disgusting and bad”? If it’s just screaming, “Bad, bad, bad!” without any real rationale behind it?
I have never in my life known a good cost-benefit analysis that came down on the side of listening to those voices.
Why do political figures keep their sexual identities secret?
Why do they fight so viciously against the very sexualities they practice?
And why do people decide to expose them?
I’ve pondered this question before. But it keeps coming up — and up, and up, and up, to an almost comical degree. So I thought I’d ask one of the world’s leading experts on closeted gay politicians: Mike Rogers.
Mike Rogers wears many hats, all of them fabulous. (See bio below.) But he’s best known as “the most feared man on Capitol Hill”: a dogged investigative reporter known for outing closeted gay politicians who work and vote against LGBT rights. He’s the star of “Outrage,” the recent documentary inspired by his investigations. His most recent expose is among his most controversial: South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, the closeted anti-gay politician who’s in line to replace the now-infamous Governor Mark Sanford. We spoke recently about how and why he outs closeted anti-gay politicians, his standards of evidence, the psychology of homophobic gay people, the difference between news and gossip, and more.
Greta: You’ve made it a big part of your life’s work to expose closeted gay politicians who work and vote against LGBT rights. Can you tell us why you decided to do that?
Mike: It’s not really a big part of my life’s work. I think people have that misconception, because it’s what I’m so well known for. But my life’s work, at least up until now, has been that of a fundraiser. My politics are shaped by my work at a number of places, but particularly the Harvey Milk School, where I saw young people who were affected by society in such negative ways. What I saw was unacceptable to me. Society was abusing these kids.
So from that point, I felt that everything I do in my career, I want to do to make the world better. But it was only in 2004, with the incredible frustration I felt over the use of marriage in the 2004 election — that’s when I decided, “You know what? This is bullshit. And I’m going to do something about it.”
Why do you think outing has become such a big part of your public image? Is it just because it’s lurid? Why do you think that’s how people identify you?
Well, people love it. Everyone loves a good outing. It’s sensationalism. Why do people care more about who John Edwards had sex with than they care about ending poverty in America? Why do people care more about who Bill Clinton got a blowjob from than they care about true health care reform? Well, it’s not boring all of a sudden. The media’s like, “Woo hoo! We have something fun and different and exciting!”
It’s sexy, and we’re primates, and we care about that.
Right. It’s not that people are fascinated by the sex lives of closeted politicians. It’s that people are fascinated by sex lives. This is nothing new, it’s been going on for a long time, but history has denied it. People have trouble viewing history in color. So much of our history is denied over sex.
Let me ask about your most recent outing: South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer. Why did you feel this particular story was important?
First of all, Andre Bauer stood up and defended anti-marriage stuff. When I looked at who put Andre Bauer into office, and the running theme of his political career — this is a man who has been in bed with anti-gay forces since he got into politics.
It’s a personal call. There are lots of Republicans, including some in Congress, who are closeted and gay, and I have no reason to out them. They’re not in bed with the religious right; they’re not working with a team of folks who are rabid homophobes.
Now, a lot of people object to outing on principle. Even with closeted gay politicians who vote against gay rights: they still think people have a right to sexual privacy, and to decide for themselves when and if to come out, no matter what. What’s your response to that?
First of all: Regardless of what they would like, politicians don’t get to decide what stories about their lives will be reported on. That’s not how it works. Whether it’s taking money from the treasury, bribing people, whatever it is — the guy in office doesn’t get to say, “Don’t write a story about this, but write a story about that.”
In terms of who has the right to report things? No other community is expected to harbor its own enemies.
I have no problem if these people want to be private — but then they shouldn’t be running for office. I wrote a post called No more “outing,” where I pledged to replace the word “outing” with “reporting.” To me, “outing” is the indiscriminate revealing of an individual’s sexual orientation. I don’t do that. I report on hypocrisy.
Do people feel that if a member of Congress is arguing against choice, and it’s found out that they had an abortion — is that something that should not be reported? If you find out that a member of Congress is supposedly a Christian, and is having an affair — should that be reported? For me, the answer is yes. It’s a very simple thing . . . because they are beating gay people up.
I have yet to find a reason that Larry Craig should be able to say that somebody who has sex with a man should not serve in the military — and then he has sex with men, and serves on the Veteran’s Affairs Committee in Congress. That should be uncool with every person in America. If nothing else, it shows such a steep level of something in their psychology, that they shouldn’t be one of the 535 people running the country.
So what are your standards of evidence? The LGBT community is full of gossip about celebrities and politicians who are gay, and a lot of the time it’s not true. How, as a reporter, do you distinguish between garden variety celebrity gossip about who is and isn’t gay, and a credible story that’s likely to be true?
Every reporter decides how and what they’re going to report. When Sy Hersh writes for the New Yorker that there are Dick Cheney operatives in the Pentagon, and that he can’t reveal his sources, people take at value whether they believe Sy Hersh is telling the truth — that he talked to people.
So there are all these different standards. You can have folks at the Atlanta Journal Constitution who destroyed Richard Jewell’s life, or Judith Miller who sent us into war on behalf of the New York Times — without any proof, without anything other than one person.
I take it much further. I’m a reporter. I research stories. Like many reporters, the first thing that happens is a tip. Let me tell you how many “tips” I’ve gotten: “I heard So-and-so is gay, I know he’s gay, I’ve heard it forever, I just don’t have the proof.” I’ve probably gotten a hundred emails over the years that have said, “Lindsay Graham is gay, I can’t believe you’re not reporting this, you’re a horrible individual.” Well, everybody can say they know Lindsay Graham is gay — but I don’t know if Lindsay Graham is gay. I don’t know if Lindsay Graham has sex with men.
Now, in some cases, it’s easy. A tip comes in, it’s the voice mail of a U.S. Congressman looking for sex on a phone sex line. Eight different tapes.
If only they were all that easy!
So in a variety of methods, I verify whether the tapes are correct or not. They may not be. But the proof is in the pudding: whether the proof is tapes, or whether I report on Larry Craig eight months before he’s arrested and the arrest becomes the news. In the cases where it’s easy, it’s a no-brainer.
The other cases come down to: What do people know, when did they know it, who said what, how did they say it. So what I do — what I did, for example, in Larry Craig’s case — I met various people who claimed to have had sex with Larry Craig. Now, when I meet a gay political guy here [in D.C.] who says, “I had sex with Larry Craig,” and he tells me specific characteristics about Larry Craig’s penis — and then I fly 3.000 miles across the country, and I meet with somebody who’s not in the political arena, who had no connection to the guy in Washington, and he tells me very similar things about Larry Craig’s penis, despite there being a five or ten or fifteen year difference? That, to me, says something else.
Exactly. But those people won’t come forward. It’s not that they don’t believe in what I’m doing, it’s not fear of being disproven. They won’t come forward because they know that the right-wing garbage machine will shred them. They will shred them from head to toe. Look at the shredding Michael Jones went through.
We all know that it isn’t just gay people who hide their sex lives and then take political action inconsistent with those sex lives. My question, with the people who are gay: How much of this shame and denial do you think has to do with being gay . . . and how much of it is just about sex and sexuality? Like sex is something that’s dirty and secret, something you don’t talk about? And how much is shame about being gay specifically?
First time I got that question! It’s a good one.
There is a pathology. In some places it’s probably about the sexual part of it — that they’re so ashamed of the sex. For others, it’s probably a matter of convenience. You want to be the governor of South Carolina, and you’re the lieutenant governor, and you’ll never get elected if you tell anyone you’re gay. So — you make yourself not gay.
I think there are different people, and I’ll give you an example. David Dreier is different than Larry Craig. In fact, David Dreier is much closer to Barney Frank than he is to Larry Craig, in terms of the psychology. David Dreier is a gay man, he has a gay relationship, he has gay friends — but he has built this closet. He’s what I call a man on a journey.
I don’t know if you know my case with Paul Koering, the state senator? Koering’s an interesting case because he was a gay Republican who was not always voting for us the way he should have, and I felt he was on a journey. And it was being on that journey that made me tell him, “Senator, when you go in and vote next week” — he was voting on a Michele Bachmann thing in the State Legislature — “don’t worry how you vote. I’m not going to out you.” I actually expected him to vote for their state marriage amendment. As a result of everything, he ended up coming out against the amendment. The only Republican to do so. Voted against it, walked out in the lobby of the Minnesota State Capitol — and simultaneously came out on my site and to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
I think my work nudged his journey . . . but even if he had voted against us, I didn’t think it was worth an outing, because I thought his journey would get him where he had to be. For Paul, and he’s talked about this, it was the strict Catholic upbringing he went through in Brainerd, Minnesota, that brought him to the closet. It was something he had to overcome.
As opposed to Larry Craig. Larry Craig was never going to overcome his closet. Ever. It’s a dry drunk syndrome.
That brings me to my last question. In your experience, what typically happens with closeted gay political figures after they’ve been exposed? It seems like some of them change their attitudes about LGBT issues, and some don’t. What do you think makes that difference: the difference between somebody who, once they’re outed or are pushed out, then they’re out and proud and start working for our causes — and the people who just get buried deeper in the closet?
What makes anybody different? What makes people be out, and then not tell their parents? Or what makes people tell their parents, and not tell their friends? What makes people live their whole lives, and then come out when they’re sixty? Each person lives their life through their experience.
When a guy is in college, and someone outs him to his family, how does the guy react? Either, “No, Ma, that’s bullshit, it’s not true,” or “Hey, I’m gay. Get over it.” That’s probably a question better asked to a psychologist than to me.
Michael Rogers is the director of the National Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative and a Media Fellow at the New Organizing Institute, where he develops nationwide media programs. He is a former development director of the Harvey Milk School, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and GALA Choruses, and was director of major gifts at Greenpeace. Rogers blogs at BlogActive and is the lead subject of “Outrage,” a documentary inspired by and about the work of his site. Rogers is the executive editor of PageOneQ and director of business development for Raw Story. He resides in Washington, DC.
How do you get in the mood if you’re not in the mood?
I’ve written before, many times, in lavish praise of scheduling sex. I’ve written about how scheduling sex can be one of the best ways to keep sex alive and lively for people who are getting older, people who have been together a long time, people who are just plain busy and overscheduled. I’ve written about the myth that being swept away by passion (as opposed to consciously making room for sex in your life) is inherently the best kind of sex . . . and how this myth reinforces the idea that sex is dirty and bad and the only valid excuse for it is that you were overcome by passion. And I’ve written about how you don’t need to be in the mood to have sex when you start having it: you just need to be willing to get into the mood.
All very well and good.
But how do you get there?
How do you get from A to B? If you’ve made a plan to have sex on Sunday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon rolls around and neither of you is feeling it . . . how do you get yourself feeling it?
How — specifically, practically, strategically — do you get in the mood?
This is a big topic with a lot of different possible answers, and I can’t hope to cover it in one little blog post. But today, I want to at least get a start on the subject. Today, instead of advocating for the broad principle of scheduling sex, I want to talk about some specific, practical strategies for making it work. I want to talk about some specific, practical strategies for making the transition from A to B: strategies for shifting mental gears, away from work or worries or errands or whatever, and towards the more intoxicating topic of the small of your lover’s back.
1: Dressing up. I don’t necessarily mean putting on elaborate costumes. (Although I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from that!) But getting out of your work clothes, your dress clothes, your errand- running clothes, and slipping into something more comfortable — or less comfortable, as the case may be — can be a great way to shift how you think about your body, and how you think about yourself. And seeing your lover in something naughty and revealing and specifically designed for sex can definitely be a great way to shift how you think about their body, and about them. The look of a sexy outfit, the feel of it on your skin, the meaning and unspoken language of it — all of that can shift your gears in a hurry. The same way dressing for a party can get you in a party mood, the same way dressing for a ball game can get you revved up to watch or play . . . dressing for sex can make you feel sexy, look sexy, get in the mood for sex.
2: Using sexier language to describe your mood. Sometimes you can change a mood just by reframing it. If you’re tired, say instead that you’re relaxed, or languid. If you’re stressed, say that you’re keyed-up or excited. Say it to your partner; say it to yourself. A bad or disinterested mood can be shifted to a sexy one, not by trying to change your physical and emotional feelings, but by viewing those same feelings through a different frame. And the language you use is part of what sets that frame.
3: Reading, watching, or looking at porn. A classic, for a reason. It can help get you in the mood . . . and it can give you ideas of things to do once you’re there.
4: Picking out sex toys. Just looking at toys you’ve had fun with in the past can put you in the mood for sex, simply by reminding you of those good times. And if there are toys in your collection that you haven’t tried yet, looking them over and considering whether to give them a whirl can get you into an adventurous spirit. Plus, the blunt, garishly sexual, often somewhat silly look of so many sex toys can help ease that awkward transitional stage from not-sex into sex. Or rather, it can remind us that awkwardness and sexiness aren’t necessarily contradictory. It reminds us that sex doesn’t have to be a magnificent, brilliantly choreographed, many-splendored production: it has a goofy, silly, “What would the space aliens think of they saw us doing that?” aspect to it . . . which doesn’t have to get in the way of the sex being intensely hot, and can even amplify its hotness.
What’s more, when you go through your sex toys and decide which ones you might want to use today, it gets you talking about sex: specific sexual options, as well as the delightful topic of sex generally. Which leads us to the all- important final item on today’s list:
5: Talking about things you might like to do.
This can help get you in the mood in at least two ways. It gets you thinking about the topic of sex generally. And, of course, it gets you communicating and making plans, so once you do get in the mood and get things going, you have a clearer idea of what to do once you’re there. It doesn’t have to sound like it was written by Henry Miller, or even by Rocco Siffredi. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be classic dirty talk at all. It just has to be honest.
So for the sweet love of Loki and all the gods in Valhalla, when you’re sitting down for your evening’s scheduled entertainment and your lover asks, “What would you like to do?”, do not answer, “Oh, I don’t know, honey. What would you like to do?” That is the kiss of death for sex, as much as it is for dinner and movie plans. When your lover asks, “What would you like to do?”, do both of you a favor, and tell them already.
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None of this is a magic bullet. The transition from not-sex to sex can feel awkward and silly no matter what you do, and to some extent you have to just accept that. In order to schedule sex and have it work, you have to let go of the idea that sex should always be a graceful and perfect erotic ballet; that lightning should always strike both partners at the exact same time, with the exact same set of filthy ideas, without ever having to talk or even think about it.
And now and then, you’ll have to be flexible about your plans: to let them go and re-schedule, even if you’d been looking forward to it. If one or both of you is deeply exhausted or in a truly lousy mood, if the day wound up being much longer and harder than you’d anticipated and one or both of you just doesn’t have it in you . . . then you might need to call it off, and do it another day. (Or else do a quickie instead of a marathon.) You do want to take your sex dates seriously and not blow them off just because you don’t happen to be in the mood right at the moment — but at the same time, you don’t want sex to be like showing up for a dentist’s appointment or getting to work on time, something you have to go through with even if it’s the last thing in the world you feel like doing.
But assuming you have good sexual chemistry together, these preliminaries can be a good way to shift your mental gears, away from the daily routine, and into erotic awareness and excitement. And they have the added benefit of moving the awkward transitional stage back a bit in the proceedings. You may feel a bit silly during the preliminaries . . . but by the time you’ve gotten into full swing, you’re in the mood and raring to go.
So those are a few starter ideas. What works for you? If you’re someone who schedules sex in advance, how do you shift gears? How do you get your mind off of work dramas and shopping lists, and into the gutter where it belongs? Inquiring minds want to know.
I want to talk about the sexual world we have today. And I want to talk about how vastly, immeasurably better it is than it used to be. Not that long ago, either. I want to point out some of the ways that, as painful and terrible as our sexual world can be, it is so much better than it has been . . . in ways that we sometimes take for granted.
When you’re fighting for social change — whether that’s for racial equality or sexual liberation, ecological consciousness or LGBT rights, free speech or feminism — it’s easy to get despondent. It’s easy to focus on how lousy things still are, how slow the going is, how much further we still have to go. So today, I want to take off the Cranky Pants, and put on the Incurable Optimist hat, and remind us all of how very far our sexual world has come in a remarkably short time.
I started thinking about this for two reasons. I was reading a recent “Savage Love” sex advice column, consisting of letters thanking Dan for specific, practical ways his advice has made people’s sex lives better. And I was watching “Mad Men,” the excellent TV series about life — including some of the more appalling aspects of sexual life — in and around a Madison Avenue ad agency in the early 1960s. Right around the time I was born.
And it started to strike me: Damn. Thing are so much better now for sex than they were when I was born. In so very many ways.
I want to talk about some of those ways.
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When I was born, vibrators and other devices for female sexual pleasure were sold underground, with their true purpose disguised . . . if they were sold at all. Today, an astonishingly wide variety of vibrators and such are readily available to anyone with a computer and a credit card . . . giving millions of women easy access to orgasm at the touch of a finger.
When I was born, the very idea of female sexual pleasure, and the idea that women had as much right to sexual pleasure as men, was shocking and controversial. Today, the notion that women actually enjoy sex, and that we have a right to ask for the kinds of sex we enjoy, is generally understood and accepted. (At least, more so than it was 47 years ago. Even right wing Christian evangelicals are pushing the idea of sexually satisfying marriages . . . satisfying for both partners, not just men.)
When I was born, it was generally assumed that women in an office were there (a) for the sexual enjoyment of men, and (b) to catch husbands. Today, it is generally assumed that women in an office are there to get some work done.
When I was born, birth control was still illegal in about half of the States in the U.S . . .. and the birth control methods that were available were ineffective, dangerous, or both. Today, birth control is legal, widely available, available in a variety of forms, and much safer — thus enabling women to enjoy sex without the constant fear of unwanted pregnancy.
Ditto abortion.
When I was born, kids and teenagers looking for information about sex mostly got it from their friends . . . who didn’t know any more about sex than they did. Today, kids and teenagers looking for information about sex can talk to San Francisco Sex Information, or Scarleteen, or any number of other sources of accurate, anonymous, non-judgmental sex information.
Hell, that’s true for adults, too, not just kids and teenagers. When I was born, the available sex information for adults was mostly Kinsey, a handful of bad marriage manuals . . . and their friends, who didn’t know any more about sex than they did. Now, accurate and detailed information about sex — from “How can I help my female partner reach orgasm?” to “What is a safe way to pierce my genitals?” — is readily available, simply by turning on a computer or picking up a phone.
When I was born, books about sex — fiction, non-fiction, photography, art — were considered shameful at best and illegal at worst, something you bought under the counter and hid under your bed. Today, they’re sold on Amazon.
When I was born, people were still being put into jails and mental institutions in the U.S. for being gay. Almost all gay people lived their gay lives in secret, in constant fear of discovery and ruin. Today, my female lover and I are legally married, and we live together openly, with all of our friends and families and colleagues knowing about it and not thinking it’s a particularly big deal.
When I was born, oral sex was widely considered dirty and perverted, even between married partners. Today, people are shamelessly writing to sex columnists asking for advice on spanking, bondage, anal sex, fisting, three- ways, casual sex, gay sex, rape fantasies, rimming, dressing up like stuffed animals, and everything else under the sun . . . and oral sex is generally seen as just part of the standard sexual package, so normal as to be almost boring. (Almost. I said almost.)
Ditto masturbation.
When I was born, it was legal in the United States for husbands to rape their wives. It wasn’t even considered rape. Today, it is considered rape — and it is against the law in all 50 states.
When I was born, divorce was shameful. Hell, it was still shameful a decade after I was born: when I was twelve and my parents got divorced, I tried to keep it a secret from my friends. Today, it’s understood that marriage doesn’t always work out, and that people shouldn’t be trapped in misery for the rest of their lives just because they changed over the years or made a bad decision when they were younger.
I could go on. And on. And on.
But I think you get my point.
I’m not going to pretend that it’s all chocolate and roses. None of these issues are where they should be. For years, teenagers across the country have been getting a dismal, grotesquely inaccurate form of sex education known as “abstinence only.” Abortion access is severely limited in many states; birth control is hard for lots of people to get, especially teenagers, and the choices, while better than they were 47 years ago, are still far from ideal. Women are still seen as sluts for assertively pursuing their sexual desires, and sex is still often seen — unconsciously, if not consciously — as being more for men than for women. Same- sex marriage is still illegal in most of the country, and not recognized by the Federal government even in states where it is legal . . . and even apart from the marriage issue, LGBT rights are very far from where they should be, with plenty of anti- queer bigotry still being practiced, and many LGBT people still feeling frightened or ashamed of coming out, and many LGBT people still getting beaten or killed for it. Our society still marginalizes people with unconventional sexual tastes. Sexual harassment in the workplace is still a problem. There’s a vast amount of sexual information readily available . . . but there’s a vast amount of sexual misinformation out there, too.
And much of the world outside the U.S. is in a dismal sexual state, with girls getting their clitorises cut off, and women being executed for adultery.
I’m not saying that our sexual world is perfect, or even that it’s great. (So please don’t all write in with outraged comments about how insensitive or naive I’m being.) I’m not saying that our sexual world is perfect or great. I’m saying that it’s better. It’s better than it was. And it’s better than it was because, for decades now, people have been working and writing and kicking up a stink.
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