When I first began to have sex, I was quite young, and nothing impressed me
so much as the hope that I would be pleasing. Thoughts of my own climax
took a back seat to the prayer that I would be desirable, that I would be
worthy of seduction. Such girly insecurity embarrasses me now, and it even
embarrassed me then, but at the time, pressing further on to the sexual
frontier was the last thing on my mind -- I just wanted to be chosen.
Nowadays, if I could talk to my teenage self, I would say, "Don't be such a
nincompoop. You're 16 in cutoffs and a halter top -- of course
someone wants you!"
The one thing that saved me from a complete descent into the hopeless
romantic mythology of a Danielle Steel novel was that my entree into a
grown-up sexual life also included making love to women. And when it came
to being with another woman, I had to ask myself not only, "Am I pleasing?"
but, "Can I give her pleasure?"
Aside from all the details of technique, the bigger question for me was
confidence -- a certain flair for taking one's lover in hand and proceeding
to blow her mind. You need to believe you can do it. You need to want to be
inside her. Forget about just lying there and looking good -- a woman of
action was called for, and remember, there was no Xena in the 1970s. I
needed to get what I call "femme-cock-consciousness," and of course, when
it comes to this kind of eros-expanding imagination, the bigger the better.
I went from being very busily bisexual in the '70s to almost exclusively
lesbian in the next decade. And finally, when I had my first affair with a
man in a very long time, I found myself facing a new wrinkle.
It felt so strange to not be fucking my male lover back, to not feel
him lie limp in my arms, filled up with me. Of course I could go
down on him, that's one way of sharing that submission, but it's not the
same as being on the inside.
The first time I ever asked a man if I could fuck him he said absolutely
not. After that, I met a few men who definitely liked it, and even guided
me to feel inside for their prostate gland (which felt like the tip of a
nose). But after they came and cried out and loved every minute of it, I
noticed a decided lack of conversation. They were embarrassed that I'd
found some secret part of them. I sensed that if I insisted on talking
about it, the taboo would get worse.
Can you imagine if women were like that when they had intercourse? Yes, I know
we're talking anus vs. vagina, but the feeling of being penetrated has
unavoidable similarities -- you give it up, you open wide, you have someone
else's body part inside your body! It's a big deal -- I don't care what the
orifice is.
I once had a fuck buddy who used to gripe about the way I was sometimes
testy about being penetrated. "Because," I said, "I don't want to be
ENTERED every day -- when you don't feel like it, it's an invasion, not an
embrace."
But then I saw him again last summer, and it turns out that he'd
introduced his new girlfriend to using a strap-on. She was insatiable, and
despite much sexual pleasure on his part, he was starting to feel like his
rump was not his own anymore. "I'm hiding," he whispered to me one
afternoon, "and I'll never challenge you on this one again! I had no idea
what it was like to be the one who's always there for the taking."
It's too bad they didn't last more than a few weeks, because I might
have introduced them to some old friends of mine who have just made the
very first sex video about women doing men: "Bend Over Boyfriend." Nan
Kinney, the producer, calls it B.O.B. for short, and it couldn't be more
user-friendly: part sex education, part erotic show and tell.
Shar Rednour, the video's director, was at first overwhelmed with the
project, because there's a lot to teach about anal
sex all on its own before you even get to the switching of the
boy/girl dynamic and attendant techniques, such as how to use strap-ons and
dildos.
Luckily, she directed some generous lovers who could demonstrate with great
flair how anal sex doesn't have to hurt (anymore than toast needs to burn)
and talk about why people have this switching fantasy to begin with.
Carol Queen, one of the main stars, suggests that women are sometimes
attracted to fucking their man because they want to see what it's like to
be "in the driver's seat," or explore a masculine side of themselves, or
even out of just plain curiosity.
I know that when I first put on a strap-on, I didn't feel like a boy.
Rather, I called myself a "genital unicorn." I felt as much of a gal as I
ever had, and I certainly noticed that as I perfected my rhythm, the base
of the dildo rubbed against my clit -- another reminder of the feminine
place where I was getting turned on.
Shar commented that even though the tape is directed toward heterosexual
couples, it was easier to cast lesbians in the roles she needed, because,
"Face it, dykes are more likely to know how to fuck." Her candor struck me
-- it's true, when you're a lesbian you have to confront your ability to
make the first move, initiate sex, to feel as comfortable touching your
lover as you are with being touched. And while lesbians are certainly not
all perfectly balanced models of egalitarianism -- ahem -- even the
femmiest femme of a lesbian, in her high heels and lipstick, usually knows
how to use her hands.
I would like more women with male lovers to know the pleasures of ravishing
their husbands and boyfriends, not just because their men would like it, or
because it's fun to buy a new sex toy, but because it's a deep emotional
pleasure to be the one who holds the world in her hands, so to speak -- to
be on top and going inside. When a man is vulnerable to you in that way,
he's not only having physical pleasure from his prostate, he's also giving
himself to you in such a completely open way that it can't help but be
intensely -- dare I use the word -- romantic, in an ultimate,
far-out, upside-down kinda way. And if Danielle Steel would like some
suggestions on how to make the intimacy in her next novel even dreamier,
B.O.B. is just a phone call away.
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