He'd been jackhammering away for what felt like hours. "You like that, baby? You like that?" he asked, though he didn't notice I wasn't answering. And then, somewhere around the 18th time he said it, it hit me -- I wasn't just having bad sex. I was having bad porn sex.
Unlike other recreational pleasures -- bowling, baking pies -- sex, unless you're a swinger, isn't something people get much firsthand observational experience with. Forget about getting real information from school about how awesome it’s supposed to feel. And the trainer from the gym isn’t going to stand by while you’re getting your freak on, telling you your form is off. Hence the instructional uses of the erotic feature.
We are thankfully a generation away from the days one had to do a stealthy walk of shame to the back room of the local video store for a glimpse of naked people going at it. We can, if we so choose, sit around in our underwear all day and watch Tera Patrick do what she gets paid to do. The rise of youporn.com and other user-generated sites means that "face-sitting in latex" is easier to get than a Domino’s delivery -- and about as good.
Convenience, ubiquity and the goal-oriented, money-shot, male-centric perspective of most porn (hint: Women don’t need to see that much fellatio) have changed us. Much has been written on how porn’s transformation into the modern sexual lingua franca affects women -- the pressure to be bush-shaved and adept at pole dancing didn’t come from Oprah or Martha Stewart. But porn has changed men too -- what we expect of them, what they demand of themselves. And the problem is that thinking you can learn to make love to a woman from watching porn is like thinking you can learn to drive from watching "The Fast and the Furious."
Porno sex is about the angles and displaying the goods. Whether the actors who are putting in a hard day's work on the job are actually enjoying themselves doesn't matter. It's about performance, and performance, more and more, is just another aspect of life in general. We tweet what we're eating for dinner. We upload a photo of the party we're celebrating right now on Facebook. And some of us are screwing like we're trying to go viral, long on ego and short on originality.
It’s hard to feel fully in the moment when you’re thinking of what it would be like to watch it. And there’s something cold and sad and deeply unerotic about being in the throes of it with somebody and thinking, "Why does this remind me of ‘Weapons of Ass Destruction 4’?" As a friend said recently, "Just because it looks good doesn't mean it is. Then I wind up feeling inadequate because I'm not enjoying it." Soon after, another friend mentioned a man she'd been dating, whose erotic repertoire included withdrawing his member at key moments to thump it on her. After puzzling over it with friends, she finally figured out: It's a porn move. Listen, if you're a professional showing off his stuff for the camera, that sort of thing almost makes sense. Out of context, however, it's another situation entirely. You know what description you never want a woman you've slept with to apply to your sexual technique? "Baffling."
Of course, everybody is different, and what wins one person a fan for life can send another rushing to book an emergency shrink session. But if we learn by example, does anybody really want an education from someone who has a fluffer?
If you’re still unsure how to answer that question, I refer you to the funny, sexy and often spectacularly gross new book "Rock Her World: The Sex Guide for the Modern Man" by Adam Glassner. Glassner, better known as gonzo porn auteur Seymore Butts, cheerfully peppers his tome with behind the scenes anecdotes from the world of adult films -- and many, many episodes involving bodies and their fluids going wrong. The man who makes his living in adult features doesn’t advocate for theatrical antics. Instead, he recommends his readers have a "desire to give pleasure" and "genuinely like women."
A person who is out to have a nice time, who has spent at least some of his adult life in the company of living, breathing humans, already knows that. If he has a very strong opinion about the declining standards of the Girlvana series, or if most of the urls on his bookmarks have an .xxx at the end, maybe he doesn't. Perhaps then he's like the gentleman I went home with once, who spent the entire time watching himself in the mirror. He did not have sex with me. He had sex on me.
I'm not doubting, by the way, that women are likewise vulnerable to conflating dirty movies with good sex. I am no stranger to the notion of trying too hard myself, as a few chafed former partners would likely attest. Women have a long history of performing during sex -- but our unrealistic, rock-your-world expectations are just as likely to come from "The Notebook" as they are from "Interracial Cheerleader Orgy." My male friends have their own versions of ill-fated hookups with would-be sex queens. I've heard the tales. I just haven't seen a lot of other women in action.
Likewise, I've known plenty of men who don't treat intimacy like a camera-ready event. I'm just saying to those who do: I once saw an adult movie in which the leading man hoisted a woman upside down, standing, the better to have her service him orally while he dangled her from her ankles. When you feel a particularly ambitious move coming on, ask yourself, am I Rocco Siffredi? Then no.
"Men have been imitating porn forever," says author and sex educator Anne Semans of Babeland.com. "When the Kama Sutra came out did they start busting out the weird moves?" Now, however, "It’s become more acceptable to buy into the porn fantasy." Last year when Babeland conducted a poll about sexual attitudes, one of the questions was, "The most inaccurate perception men have picked up from porn is ..." The top four responses from women were:
So now that you know, you can take that pressure off us. Take it off yourselves. Because in spite of or because of the mythology of the ever-rarin'-to-go, hot-blooded man, the physical and emotional reality of male sexuality is far more complicated. A man has to hope his equipment is of pleasing dimensions, that it rises with his desire, that he doesn't finish too soon or go on too long. So When Mr. Jackhammer asked, "Does that feel good, baby?" he may well have really been trying. And did I pipe up and say no? I did not. I ran away and never saw him again, prompting a friend to say with a sigh, "Now he's just going to go do that routine to some other poor woman."
For all the sex we watch and all the fancy moves we know and all the people we've ever seen without their pants, sex remains one of the hardest things in the world to speak truthfully about.
Life's not like the movies. Sex isn't just a matter of doing what comes naturally. I'm eternally grateful to Dr. Grafenberg, the authors of the "Lesbian Sex Secrets for Men," and all the intrepid explorers who've followed in their fingersteps. I have nothing but admiration for anyone who's ever had the guts to simply come out and ask a lover what works and what doesn't. I'm all for going at it on the pile of coats at the party or bringing in a treasure box of toys or talking dirty till the break of dawn if that's what you're into. Because -- and this is key -- it seems like fun. Remember fun?
You don't see a lot of laughing in porn, but some of the best sex in my life has been punctuated with fits of giggles. You don't see a whole lot of genuine female orgasm in porn either, and believe me, that's a pretty big part of what makes a memorable evening for a lady. Aping an adult star doesn't make a person a lover any more than playing Rock Band makes him a musician. Good sex makes room for honest passion and uninhibited enthusiasm, and doesn't feel like an audition for AVN rookie of the year. It's messy and silly and profound. And unscripted.
In today's "living up to the cultural stereotype" news, the G-spot, which earlier this month British researchers dismissed as perhaps just a mere figment of our hopeful imaginations, has been championed by, naturellement, the French.
Speaking today in the UK Guardian, French gynecolgist Odile Buisson called the rather dubiously researched King's College London report a "totalitarian" approach to female sexuality. The British study – the largest ever on that fabled realm first pioneered by Dr. Grafenberg -- involved over 1,800 sets of identical and fraternal twins and was conducted solely via questionnaire. But asking women whether they possess a body part and proving that they do or don't are two different matters. For many women, after all, subjectively identifying their own pleasure zones can be as challenging as finding Cameroon on the map. Just because they can't, it doesn't mean Cameroon isn't there.
Adding to the fray in today's Guardian, French surgeon Pierre Foldès explained, "In female sexuality there is a variability ... It cannot be reduced to a 'yes' or 'no', or an 'on' or an 'off'.'" The key, Foldès said, is just patient exploration -- and the desire to do so. "In discovering the sensitive parts of her own body, this sensitive zone [the G-spot] will become more and more functional," he said. "But if she has never touched it and no one else has ever touched it ... it won't exist for her as a consequence." In other words, you'll never find it if you don't at least look.
This weekend, the country's first legal male prostitute starts work at the Shady Lady Ranch. Well, OK, 25-year-old Markus technically began his new job earlier this week, but he hasn't been able to land any appointments until then. His slow start hardly helps to silence naysayers who doubt straight women will be interested in paying for sex -- but it will be even tougher to squelch another controversy at hand over gay male sex. Homophobia is in the air, as industry insiders rebel against Nevada's recent move to legalize male prostitution and the appearance of this beefy ex-Marine on the brothel scene. Never mind that Markus refuses to see male customers.
Earlier today, while reading an Associated Press article about the new "prostidude" in town, I came across a quote from Arie Mack Moore, owner of Angel's Ladies Brothel: "It won't be successful," he said. "You can't have both (male and female prostitutes) in the same building or adjacent to each other, in my opinion." I wondered: Why not? So, I gave him a call. With a Southern twang, he explained: "The men that want to go see female prostitutes don't want to see a male prostitute." Well, what if they don't have to see him, I asked. "They don't even want to go where a male prostitute is," he said. Then I went for the question tugging at my mind: Do you think homophobia is at play? He answered explosively: "Very much so." Straight male clients will refuse to walk into a brothel that has a male gigolo on the premises, for fear of being pegged as gay or because there might be gay customers there, he said.
Moore says his business has gotten a recent boost thanks to customers who have outright told him they're staying away from the Shady Lady specifically because of Markus. There are certainly other issues at play aside from homophobia -- for example, he said male customers want to avoid the embarrassment of running into female customers. I would have probed further on that subject, but Moore was keener on talking about how the STD screening process is hotter for male clients than it is for female clients. Female prostitutes will place a male client's member on, and I quote, "a dick pan" for inspection and cleaning. A male prostitute, however, would have to give a gynecological-like exam and look for "rashes" on her "pussy lips," which is not so "romantic," he explained. (Got it: "Dick pans"? Romantic. "Pussy rashes"? Not so much.)
As Broadsheet's Kate Harding reported in December, some insiders have rebelled against the legalization of male prostitution out of fear that gay male sex-for-pay will bring further scrutiny to the industry. Not only do they worry about it raising health concerns, but many suspect that the general public will find it unacceptable. George Flint of the Nevada Brothel Owners Association speculated: "There should be some fallout and backlash from this decision. Some may feel it's a repugnant thing to do or something that does not have the appetite of the state as a whole." Female prostitutes in Nevada were already having sex for pay with both men and women, so it's safe to assume that he's referring specifically to gay male sex. As Jim Davis, co-owner of the Shady Lady told the AP, "Everybody's so damn scared two men might have sex -- it's happening every day in Las Vegas."
Funny thing is, Markus' refusal to see male clients is earning him criticism from an entirely different group of industry insiders. A 22-year-old prostitute from Moore's brothel says his women-only policy is sexist. "How can you just turn down services because of what someone's preferences is? It comes with the territory. It comes with the business," she told the AP. Well, that seems awfully unfair, considering that sex workers often draw personal boundaries that they do not cross. I wonder whether there's a stereotype at play here -- that of the straight male hooker who gets paid to do something he would happily do for free. It's understandable that sex workers who hate the gig might be resentful toward some dude they assume has just breezed into town feeling like he's landed a dream job; and most lady prostitutes do cater to women as well as men, regardless of their orientation.
Look, you just can't win. Cater to men and homophobes will freak; exclude male customers and you'll be considered unprofessional. What's a straight male gigolo to do? I guess we'll have to wait to find out.
The ladybits have seen hot pink pubic dyes and dollar sign stencils. They've encountered jewelry of the pierced and clip-on variety. They've been available in different flavors. They've even recently become aware of labia tinters. But this week they really sat up and took notice when actress Jennifer Love Hewitt announced on "The George Lopez Show" that she has pimped out her yoni with Swarovski crystals. Or, as she put it, "It's called vajazzling." Of such great import was the news of the Ghost Whisperer's crotch bling that Broadsheet actually received a press release from the Lopez camp about it. I shit you not, America.
Discussing her new memoir "The Day I Shot Cupid," debut author Hewitt said that after a painful breakup, "A friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady and it shined like a disco ball," adding the imperative that "women should vajazzle their vajayjays." It was at this point that Lopez leapt from his chair to kiss the fair maiden's hand, and I went to check my iCal to see if the first day of April had arrived early. Perhaps that's because when I hear the word "crystal" I begin rather naively picturing a wedding gift-sized swan rising like the sun from Ms. Love Hewitt's Cosabella thong. A scenario that would no doubt inflict untold injury on her boyfriend Jamie Kennedy.
Instead, muffin studding is a considerably smaller scale affair, involving tinier gems. And it's festive as hell. As the folks at Completely Bare explain, you can "decorate your own jewels" because "accessorizing your privates is the hottest rage." (Anyone who associates the words "hot" and "rage" with their privates, please report immediately to anger management.) DIY types, of course, can probably just opt for a Schick and some temporary tattoos.
When you consider the seemingly endless ways a person can customize her holiest of holies, it's a wonder Martha Stewart hasn't yet done a whole segment on vajayjay projects. Consider the possibilities – a little ribbon, a shaker of glitter, and a Brother P-Touch label maker – you're looking at hours of entertainment. But it seems unfair to limit all this whimsical embellishment to just one sex. So once I master learning to knit, I am totally making a sock monkey that fits a penis.
Northern Ireland has its very own Mrs. Robinson. It has for some time now, actually, but only recently was it revealed that politician Iris Robinson shares more than just a last name with the iconic seductress in "The Graduate." The 60-year-old parliament member and wife of the province's top leader, Peter Robinson, admitted last week to having an affair with a much younger man -- and I use the word "man" loosely, because he was just 19 at the time. She's also accused of secretly securing an $80,000 loan for her boy-toy to open his own business. Now, her husband faces allegations that he knew about the loan but failed to report it, and he has temporarily stepped down as first minister while he attempts to clear his name.
This tale has all the usual elements of a political sex scandal -- namely, the younger lover and blatant hypocrisy. Not too long ago, Robinson publicly condemned the "abomination" of homosexuality from high atop her perch as a good, cross-wearing (and adulterous) Christian. (Show me a self-righteous politician with a taste for moralizing over other people's bedroom behavior and I'll show you someone with a secret, shame-filled sex life.) What makes this story different, of course, is that the adulterous politico is a woman, not a man.
We've seen women do the stand-by-your-man routine countless times before -- but, in this case, the cheated partner held his own press conference. Mrs. Robinson issued a statement through a spokesperson, while Mr. Robinson invited reporters into his home for an intimate chat about his wife's infidelity. He verged on tears, but he owned his own story. Meanwhile, Mrs. Robinson -- who admitted in her statement that she tried to kill herself after the affair was revealed to her husband -- checked herself into a hospital for psychiatric treatment. Famous male philanderers have routinely sought out treatment of some sort, but there are noteworthy differences here -- like the suicide attempt, which casts her hospital stay in a different light (the florescent glow of, say, a mental institution as opposed to the sunny environ of a luxury rehab facility).
I could perform a lengthy exegesis of this scandal as contrasted with those of high-profile male cheaters, but, ultimately, this isn't about sex differences so much as it is about similarities: Clearly, women are fully capable of screwing up their families and careers with tawdry sex scandals, too. Go, humanity.
Meet Roxxxy, the "world's first sex robot." She has folks buzzing with excitement after her debut at this weekend's Adult Entertainment Expo (never mind that she isn't actually the first of her kind). Given the hype, and the use of the term "robot," you might be envisioning something along the lines of a Real Doll that can actually perform sexy moves -- or at the very least do "The Robot." In reality, she's more like an X-rated version of Talking Elmo. She can't walk or move her arms, but when you touch Roxxxy she will purr things like, " Where you gonna put that?" As creator Douglas Hines demonstrated at the event (video below), clumsily groping at her vagina will elicit a moan; meanwhile, she remains paralyzed in her pre-programed ecstasy.
Should you tire of Roxxxy's come-ons, you can always hook her up to your laptop and turn her into a different robot-lover. She comes complete with five different personalities: Wild Wendy ("outgoing and adventurous"), Frigid Farrah ("reserved and shy"), Mature Martha ("very experienced"), S&M Susan ("ready to provide your pain/pleasure fantasies") and Young ("barely 18" and "waiting for you to teach her"). The personality you pick will alter her response to the aforementioned touching and groping. However, Roxxxy's true raison d'être, says Hines, is providing companionship post-coitus. (Note to potential buyers: All the wiring around her mouth that makes conversation possible also makes her look a bit like Kanye West post-jaw surgery. I'm just saying.) The cost for one of these customizable sexbots runs anywhere from $7,000 to $9,000.
If, inexplicably, there are any straight ladies out there feeling jealous that men can own their very own fantasy fembot, take heart: Plans are currently in the work for Rocky, a literal sex machine.
In Katie Roiphe's world, the boy crisis is fictional. Not in the sense that the much-hyped threat to manliness is a fiction. No, the provocateur argued in Sunday's New York Times Book Review, that evidence of masculinity's decline is found in fiction -- more specifically, in the imaginary sex lives of imaginary male protagonists in novels written by men. This is a new take on a familiar argument, but Roiphe places the blame on the very same culprit framed for ruining the real-life sex lives of real-life men: feminism.
Today's revered young(ish) scribes are not literary lions, she says, but cuddly little cubs. Roiphe specifically has in mind Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Benjamin Kunkel and Jonathan Franzen. (This short roster leaves out many members of the new guard of novelists that do not fit her thesis, like Junot Diaz, but whatever, moving on.) These writers "are so self-conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can't condone even their own sexual impulses," she argues. In this genre the "sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex." Having grown up under the influence of feminism, these guys engage in a "convoluted, postfeminist second-guessing" instead of "conquest or consummation."
This is a pity, says Roiphe -- who in the past has written about her own desire for an old-fashioned manly man – because, in comparison, there is "a certain vanished grandeur" in the scandalous sex writing of John Updike, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow. These alpha males wrote graphically about carnal (and sometimes violent) lust. Not only were they unabashed about their conquest of women's bodies, writes Roiphe, but there also "was a feeling that [these] authors were reporting from a new frontier of sexual behavior: adultery, anal sex, oral sex, threesomes." Blame today's limp-dick literature on the "crusading feminists" who stridently railed against these virile novelists, she says.
Her argument is uncomfortably reminiscent of the claim that sexually aggressive college girls are scaring guys soft or that the lack of retro dating rules has rendered young men fearful and weak (read: feminine). As overblown as these arguments can be, I suspect they provoke so much ire because they have a strain of truth (just as I admire Roiphe as a polemicist with a keen cultural understanding, despite her tendency to cherry-pick evidence). Feminism has culturally upended many things, including our notions of masculinity, and that can be frightening. I've had too many candid conversations with too many guy friends over too many pitchers of beer to have any doubt about that.
It has to be said, though: These are not all guys. These are not even most men, except perhaps among the sensitive, liberal and well-educated set to which these male novelists and fictional protagonists belong (a rarefied group indeed). Widen the cultural scope just a wee bit, and you will find no dearth of jack-hammer sex (see: Mary Elizabeth Williams' essay "How Not to Make Love Like a Porn Star"). Plenty of men still happily rely on old-school stereotypes to pick up ladies. But, fine, Roiphe has picked a very particular and personally relevant focus for her essay. Limitations aside, I read the piece and thought: There's something there there.
So, I e-mailed the article to a guy friend in his late 20s to see whether he identified with these confused and cuddly protagonists, and did he ever. He wrote back: "In college, my somewhat obtuse interpretation of feminism coupled with my desire to be perceived as a 'great guy' made me averse to appearing sexually aggressive or dominating in any way." For him, that meant reading books like "She Comes First" and letting the woman lead in the bedroom. Unfortunately, at least in one case the response to all this sensitivity was an exasperated: "Are you gay?" He explains, "I was just trying to avoid being the stereotypical tin-eared, jack-hammering brute that I was fairly certain women didn't respond to." Eventually, he learned "to dial in a more context-dependent, sensitive and confident approach." Still, he says, "that shit messed me up for a little while."
Of course that shit messed him up -- there is some real contradiction here. Thing is, young women are also coming up against conflicting cultural influences. Many of us are trying to reconcile feminist thinking with … basically every other cultural message out there. Social change brings about growing pains. Where Roiphe and I differ is that she favors a return -- at least in certain relational respects -- to an earlier time when things were simpler, more straightforward. I, on the other hand, would like to see us keep on maturing.
Roiphe's dismissal of today's sexually confused men is proof of just how far we have yet to go. It feels like she is shaming these male authors for failing to keep up their end of the bedroom charade. (You know, the one that makes it possible to have sex without either partner revealing any vulnerability or authentic, unrestricted emotions. The one where he "takes" her and, on cue, she quivers with passion.) She seems to believe that men, be they real or fictional, are supposed to emerge cocksure on the other side of young adulthood -- or at least convincingly appear to. Even the hot pink graphics accompanying the article practically scream: C'mon you sissies -- grab your balls, be a man! But I dare say the real issue here -- for men and women, too, clearly -- is growing up, not manning up.
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