Models of Sex.

When I was sixteen, my boyfriend Kevin brought me a vibrator.  (His mom had bought it, which... awwwwkward, but it was her well-intentioned effort to keep me from getting pregnant by her son. It didn't stop us having intercourse, but I didn't get pregnant so it all worked out in the end.)  The first time he used it, it was mind-blowing.  I'd never used a vibrator before, it happened to be an exceptionally powerful "back massager," and it was a goddamn revelation in sensation.  I came hard, immediately, and repeatedly.  I screamed and writhed and clutched his arm.

For about a minute.  Then he stopped.  He didn't look aroused.  He looked concerned.

"That was amazing!  Do it again!" I said, very happily.

"No," he said.  "I don't want to do any more of that."

Well okay then, that's certainly his decision to make.  We put the vibrator away and had a bunch of non-mechanically-assisted sex, which went fine.  When Kevin was about to leave for the night, I asked him to leave the vibrator behind, and he refused.  He told me he was going to throw it out.  I asked him, in roughly the tone of voice of a puppy that's just been told it can't go to Disneyland, why.

"I'm afraid it can pleasure you better than I can," he said.  So I couldn't have it.

Because I was sixteen, and meek, and naive, and did not have much power in the relationship, I said "oh okay," and then I burbled out a lot of nonsense about of course you pleasure me most of anything in the whole entire world, baby.  But even at sixteen and naive, I knew this was some bullshit.



What interests me now, at twenty-six (and still a bit meek but definitely not naive), is not that it was bullshit.  Telling me I'm not allowed to masturbate in certain ways because I might enjoy it more than The Mighty Penis is clear and obvious bullshit, now.  What interests me is why my boyfriend bought into that bullshit.

I believe it comes down to models.  There are many different ways to model sex, many answers to the questions "So, what exactly is sex? What is it for?"  I believe that once you know someone's answers to those questions, you can understand why their sexual choices make sense to them.

In the economic model, sex is a consumable good, produced by women and sold to men.  (And, in the nastiest implications of the model, sex can be "stolen" without losing value.)  In Thomas Macaulay Millar's performance model of sex, sex is like a cooperative musical performance, ephemeral and existing only in the moment of cooperation between performers.

I've seen people talk about sex in a maintenance model, in which sex is a task a women has to perform fairly regularly to keep her man contented in the relationship.  There's also an achievement model, in which the goal is to do the "naughtiest" or "sexiest" thing, regardless of whether you really like it or not--Cosmo espouses this a lot, and porn tends to encourage it.  And, famously, there's the competition model of sex, in which women are the mile-markers in a race men run against each other.

Or sex can be modeled as a cooperative sport, with the participants acting as teammates encouraging and challenging each other.  There's a communication model of sex, in which sex acts are a way for partners to express and strengthen their feelings for each other.  Personally, I tend toward almost a utilitarian model of sex, in which the goal is to work together to attain the greatest net pleasure.



Kevin's problem, I think, was that he had internalized a shitty macho-culture model of sex.  Going beyond "it's wrong to tell your girlfriend not to use a vibrator," why would it even make sense to tell your girlfriend not to use a vibrator?  In a utilitarian model of sex, it makes no sense--I gain fabulous pleasure, he experiences no harm to his body or his autonomy--this obviously ought to be a win-win, or at least a win-neutral, situation.

But in a competition model of sex, I was making him come in second place to a piece of plastic.  If he believed sex was about showing off his prowess, it was an embarrassment that his prowess couldn't compare to a machine--and it was as cruel and unfair as making a runner race against a motorcycle.

Because I believed that my pleasure was my pleasure, I thought the vibrator was harmless fun.  Because he believed that my pleasure was his measure as a man, he thought the vibrator would make him the loser in a race I didn't even know he was running.  It's no wonder he took it away.  He wasn't pointlessly depriving me of pleasure.  He was depriving me of pleasure because, in his model, he had to.



If I have a Grand Unified Theory Of Everything, it's this: I believe that people always do things that make sense to them.  Hard as it is to believe with all the hurting out there, almost nobody hurts others just to be a jerk.  So if you want to change human behavior on a grand scale, you can't tell people "stop being a jerk."  You have to dissect and then recreate their models of the world until being a jerk doesn't make sense.



[So here's the deal, scheduling-wise.  I'm going to try and have a post up every Tuesday night.  (Last week didn't go so well because Comcast accidentally cut off my cable for most of the week.)  Cosmocking is "extra", not one of the Tuesday posts, and I'll do other "extra" posts as time/inspiration allow.

Also, I just got this month's Cosmo, so that's coming up sometime this week, whee!]

"No means no."

[Possible trigger warning for sexual assault]


When I had my first sexual encounter, he didn't ask. We were just friends and we were hanging out in his basement watching movies, and then he put his arm around me and I didn't object, and then he put his hand on my breast and I didn't object, and then he started rubbing my vulva and I didn't object.

I'm making that sound worse than it was. I didn't object because I had a total crush on him and it felt great and I was happy and excited this was happening. But I didn't say any of that--I was 15 and extremely socially awkward and had absolutely no idea of how to respond to sexuality, so I was completely silent and frozen. Silent, frozen, and happy, as it turned out. But he had no way of knowing that. All he knew was that I didn't stop him.

Would he have stopped if I said "no"? Almost certainly. But... almost certainly. Some other factors to bear in mind: I was at his house, which was not close to any bus route and was about ten miles from my home. We were alone in the house. He was much bigger, stronger, and older than me. He owned weapons. He was more or less my only friend at that time in my life. And he was not someone who could maturely talk through conflict--I never saw him get violent or threaten violence, but he tended to go to direct to TantrumVille without stopping in CommunicationTowne.

I want to stress again that I just liked having my pussy stroked; none of this was running through my head at the time. But I wish it had been running through his. Because if I had been doing the rape math in my head, if I had been going along with it out of fear or obligation, he wouldn't have known. He didn't rape me--but it would have looked exactly the same to him if he had.

That's the problem with "no means no." There's a lot of reasons someone might not say "no," and being into the sex is only one of them.



Is it "really" rape if you don't know the person isn't consenting? Probably not legally, but in terms of the effect on the person who's being used sexually while they're paralyzed with fear, might as well be. Accidentally shooting someone isn't murder but it leaves them just as dead.

Anyway, this question ought to be irrelevant. Whether fucking someone who doesn't want it but doesn't object is rape or not, it's crappy and it's avoidable. It's not like good sex ever comes out of a situation where one partner is silent and immobile.

There's a little more finesse than just asking--you need to ask in a way that makes it clear "no" is an acceptable answer, and be sensitive to the difference between "...okay" and "OH YES"--but even without finesse, just asking makes 90% of the difference.



I know why he didn't ask. He didn't ask because he thought I might say "no." But this doesn't mean that he wanted to rape me. What it means is that he was afraid I was in some sort of strange, precarious mental state in which I would have to say "no" if I was asked, even though I really did want it, but once I had said "no" he couldn't do it.

Unfortunately, this mental state does exist--although far less often than people think, really--and I lay the blame for that squarely on slut-shaming culture and the myth of "spontaneous" romance. I lay it on every romantic drama where one character forces a kiss on another but it's okay because it was the kiss of true love and they understand as soon as they get into the kiss. I lay it on every teen sex comedy where the girl who says "let's fuck, baby" is gross-out comic relief and the girl who says "ooh, I shouldn't" is the real sexy one. I lay it on every girl who thought it was coy to say "no" when she meant "yes" and every guy who told the whole school that his date said "yes" too quickly. I even lay some of the blame on Cosmo and all the times it describes sex as something that spontaneously breaks out when the mood is right, like laughter or a bad case of the contagious yawns.

Until "yes" means "yes, sex would be lovely right now" and not "yes, I am an icky slut with no sense of romance," it's going to be hard to live in a world where only yes means yes.

But it's not all down to society. In my personal world, yes means yes fully and right now--Rowdy and I still ask before we fuck and we still take nos gracefully and unenthusiastic yeses with "we can just cuddle and that would be fine," and enjoy the enthusiastic yeses that much for it. I haven't fixed Western culture yet, but I've fixed my bedroom, and that's a start. If enough people can just say that, maybe the culture can change a little after all.

First Spanking.

I was sixteen. At the time, I didn't identify as kinky--I didn't even know what kinky was. I was still a prude in some ways, and things like anal sex or group sex or even one-night-stands were firmly in the "ooh, I would never" category for me.

But Kevin had awoken a monster in me. He was the first to fuck me, and once I got used to it, I didn't want to stop. Kevin was not a good person, but he was a good fuck, in a mostly-missionary sort of way.

(Digression: I love missionary. I don't want to make it some synonym for "boring," because missionary is comfortable and intimate and feels fucking fantastic. I love having a man's weight on me and I love wrapping my legs around his ass or planting my feet and grinding up against him. That said... Kevin didn't do much besides missionary.)

One day in early summer, near the end of our relationship, we had the house to ourselves all day. We started fucking missionary, and he couldn't come. It would fit the narrative better if it was mediocre for me, but actually it was amazing. We did it slow and close, belly on belly, chest on chest, cheeks pressed together like slow dancers. His cock was finding new spots inside me and I was coming, over and over, quick little orgasms, shuddering against him. I couldn't stop moaning, my hips turning in slow circles against his thrusts. And it just went on. Minutes were like hours, but I think it really was an hour. Eventually he just stopped. It was amazing but he couldn't finish.

We lay in bed for a while, quietly, him stroking my breasts and starting into space, a little frustrated but peaceful. His cat jumped up on the bed, walked delicately between our naked bodies, rubbed her head on each of us, and jumped down again. "Would you spank me?" I asked Kevin. It was the first time I'd asked for anything like that, but he was game.

I can remember every detail very clearly. I crouched down on knees and elbows and he stood beside the bed. His first touch was tentative, rapid gentle little slaps. Not like that, I told him. Go for it. And he did. He smacked my ass and the sound seemed to fill the house. I don't remember it hurting at all, but my ass was hot and pink afterwards. Kevin spanked me again, and again, my sharp little intakes of breath with each blow becoming moans.

Then he started fingering me. There's two ways men finger women--the tentative, intimate way with one or two fingers curling from the front into my pussy, and the way that just means fucking, where the hand is straight and brutal and the force begins at his shoulder. This was the second. With his fingers in me he kept spanking, hard, and I came so hard, harder than I ever had before, and I screamed.

I turned up and grabbed him, and kissed him hard, and dragged him down on the bed. "Now," I said and meant it. I got on top of him and I started fucking him. It wasn't cowgirl but missionary upside-down; I lay over his body and we were face to face as I slid slowly up and down his cock.

And I leaned down to his ear and I whispered terrible things. Things I had never thought or felt before. I told him that I wanted him to suffer. I knew he couldn't come and I didn't care. I would fuck him for hours and leave him in agony, that was just fine, because I was using his cock now. He was just the man attached to my cock and he meant nothing to me.

Reverse psychology, although I hadn't planned it: he started coming. He grabbed my hips and made me fuck him the way he wanted, hard and fast, and I started coming and we were both screaming together and at the instant of both our orgasms he bit me hard on the shoulder, drawing blood, and the pain felt like another orgasm again.

The next week we broke up. Unrelated reasons. We never had that kind of sex again.

My first vibrator.

My first vibrator was a gift from my boyfriend Kevin's mother, explicitly given to dissuade me from having sex with her son. This was ridiculous, partly because she was several months too late, and partly because the vibrator was not tall and muscular with soft brown eyes and a filthy-awesome sense of humor. And it never, ever, told me I was pretty.

(Kevin's father, incidentally, told me not to fuck his son because in his opinion the boy shouldn't be breeding. What an awesome dad. He had a point though, in retrospect.)

It was a "back massager" type, just a big black chunk of plastic you'd get in a drugstore rather than a sex store, as unsexy as a sex toy could be. Inevitably, Kevin and I ended up using it in bed together. We were curled up together awkwardly on the twin-size loft bed I had at the time, and he pressed it against my vulva, it made a big loud annoying sound, and...

I came. Instantly, explosively, and continuously. For as long as he kept it there, I was coming. It was torture and Heaven. It was also not very long.

I looked up at him, panting and grinning. "Do that again!" I said.
"No," he said. "I don't like that it can make you do that. I can't do that."
"Ha ha," I said, "That's a very funny and hilarious joke you made. Do it again."
"No, really," he said. "I don't want you using it."

So we had sex regular, and when he left he took the vibrator with him, and that was the last I ever saw of it.

I wouldn't stand for any part of this story now, but I was fifteen then and a very different person. I was agonizingly embarrassed shopping for underwear, there was no way I could've bought myself a vibrator or told my boyfriend to loosen the fuck up because this was awesome. When he took the toy away I just let it go.

I don't generally play with super-hard vibration when I have my druthers. I usually find that a tiny bullet vibe on the very lowest setting is the best for masturbation; more than that is simply overwhelming. But then again, I'm the kind of girl who likes to be overwhelmed a little. Being overstimulated and forced to come continuously and uncontrollably isn't something I'd inflict on myself--which is why I need someone to inflict it on me.

The flip side of Kevin's prudish insecurity, though, is Bill. Bill brought me a big ol' Magic Wand-type vibrator, pressed it against a dildo hilt-deep in my pussy, and went to town. It was great, I came like crazy, and... he didn't stop. I came again and again and it began to pass from ecstasy into irritation. I don't know how many times I can come, but it's more than I want to. After a while it's uncomfortable. But I was older then, and able to tell him to stop, so the night wasn't ruined. I was just amazed by how responsive my body is to that kind of stimulation--and to how dumb a guy thinking "wow, it's like an Infinite Orgasm Factory, I wonder if this will keep going for an hour" can get.

It's not something I can do to myself, and it's not something I'd want a partner to do to me all the time, but my reaction to hard vibration is definitely amazing. I'm kinda missing it now.

END OF LINE.

When I lost my virginity, the movie on in the background was Tron.


Back in the day, Kevin and I almost had to watch a movie to have sex. It was relaxation, it was distraction, and it was almost the only way to make things feel natural. We couldn't just crawl in bed together, that would be like we were having sex on purpose, that's way too intimidating. Instead we had to play the "we'll just lie on the bed to watch a movie and see what happens" game. Usually we didn't get to the opening credits.

(During an awkward reunion several years later, we were watching the Evil Dead trilogy, I started getting all gropey and he uncomfortably told me he didn't want to have sex during a horror movie. With glorious obliviousness, I patiently waited out the first two films, then started arguing that Army of Darkness is really more of an action comedy. See, this is what you get when you make weird excuses instead of just saying you don't want something.)

I still like moviefucking as a way to keep things slow. When you're in bed just to have sex, you tend to cut to the action, and sometimes that's awesome, but it can be hard to pace yourself if you're in a mellower mood. Just lying there groping without getting to the wet bits can be frustrating, even boring--it'll feel like you're drawing things out.. Whereas telling yourselves that you're supposed to just be watching a movie, but if you get a little naughty, no one will know... even as a grownass adult, that's just fun.

Fakin' It.

I've faked orgasms. Not in recent times, but as a teenager I'd fake them to get him to stop.

The problem was that I knew how to turn down sex from someone I didn't care about, but I had no script for rejecting sex right now but not forever, or rejecting someone sexually without rejecting them emotionally. "No means NO" is easy; "not right now, honey, no offense" took some learning. And for his part he never forced me into anything, never intimidated me, he did something much more sinister: he'd whine. He'd mope and pout and say of course he respected my decision but whhhhy.

It was always about pleasuring me, too. He didn't get like this if I wouldn't suck his dick or fuck him; he'd do it when he wanted to finger me or eat me out. 90% of the time I just enjoyed it straight up, I'm not exactly a hard woman to please, but when it wasn't working for me or I was tired or just not in the mood, I found that a quick "OHHHH... ohh, that was great baby, you wore me out" was faster and easier than having to pat his hand and reassure him and explain myself for thirty minutes. It ended the discomfort and made him happy, win-win!

The most annoying was when he found out I could have multiples, then started insisting I produce them on demand. "I want to make you come three times, baby." Aw fuck, man, just making the noises for that is going to be exhausting!

But the saddest thing is that there were a couple of times I didn't know the difference. When something would feel really good but I'd start moaning because I knew it was expected, and I couldn't tell the difference myself between the moaning I was doing to placate him and the moaning I would have done anyway. And when you've become a little too skilled at the art of moaning and clenching and writhing--there were times when I genuinely don't know if I had an orgasm or not. Or if I would've had one if I wasn't so busy putting on a show.



I haven't done this in years now. (Certainly not with you, baby.) The irony is that I really am ridiculously orgasmic and ridiculously showy about it, no faking required. But I've gotten better at saying no, and that doesn't mean I'm having much less sex or treating men worse; it means that when I say yes I mean it.

Abstinence.

Since politicians' personal lives are always far more interesting than their policies and values, Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy is Big News. Which makes sense as it was undoubtedly Palin's personal decision to get her daughter pregnant, right? Anyway, this whole thing has segued into a discussion of abstinence-only sex education.

The thing that amazes me about abstinence is not just that I would've been expected to be abstinent as a kid (which, in retrospect, might not have been the worst thing, although it didn't destroy me either), but that the expectation would be continued into now. I'm twenty-two, and you can't argue with a straight face that my tender immaturity makes me unprepared for all the big scary adult responsibilities of sex. (Well, you probably could if you knew me, but anyway.) And yet, since I'm not married, I'd ideally be a contraception-ignorant virgin now. This isn't just an issue of kids having sex. This is an issue of how people who are going to be adults are educated.

Or, if I weren't a virgin, maybe I would've married the first guy I wanted to have sex with. Dear God. Whatever emotional damage I might've theoretically sustained from fucking the wrong guy too young and with too many delusions of Eternal Wuv, it sure as hell wasn't as bad as if I'd married him.

Here's a pretty typical debate on the subject and the inspiration for this post. I'm amazed by the people saying things like "teaching contraception doesn't stop unwanted pregnancies" or "Imagine going into a classroom, and instead of assuming they're all a bunch of animals who can't control their urges and pushing condom use, you tell them sex is special."

Hmm. Sex is special. That's why you shouldn't have any for years! Too special for you! Only people who are in real magical special love get to have sex! And teenage couples are always very realistic about knowing they don't have that!

We are animals. We're animals who can control our urges, but not when we see no good reason not to. And in this case, well, there is no very good reason. Nothing about marriage makes "heartache, std's, unplanned pregnancy, etc." impossible and nothing about safe, respectful unmarried sex is wrong. Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Lateral Thinking.

The naughty board game card read "take off your lover's shirt without using your hands."

I thought about it for a second, looked my boyfriend dead in the eye and said in a certain voice, "Take. Off. Your. Shirt."

Scene from Sixteen Years Old.

"Holy shit, someone put horse porn on the network!"
"That's horrible... open it up!"

It was a woman under a stallion, somewhat awkwardly guiding the tip of the horse's massive penis into her vagina. Was that illegal? I think it wasn't in Washington at the time--this was before Mr. Hands.

"God, that's horrible. Is that real? Is that going to hurt her?"
"Jesus, this is disgusting."
"I can't believe this exists."
"Ew ew ew."
"I think I need to have sex with you right now."

Kicked out.

"You can sleep over if you're sleeping with me. You can't stay here to hide from your problems over there. Go home and sort your life out."

It's a pretty special man who can kick me out of his house and make me respect him more for it.

Sometimes I need friends to hug me and say it'll all be okay you poor dear, but sometimes I do need a small kick in the ass and I'm glad to have a boyfriend who knows when to do it. Maybe I'm only grateful because when I was a teenager I experienced the opposite.

When I was sixteen, I had a boyfriend who would gladly take me in whenever I had problems, tell me that absolutely nothing was my fault, and let me stay with him until the problems had gotten much worse from being ignored. (Fucking me all the while, natch, but I really don't think he was deliberately exploiting my angst; he just wasn't mature enough himself to know that what I asked for wasn't always best for me.) Eventually I stayed with him so long that a missing persons report was filed on me. The police took me home.

Of course it can be taken too far the other way (anything can be taken too far) and I certainly don't want someone who always knows what's best for me. But I think it's important and in a way more loving when you can avoid being an enabler and tell me to do not what I want, but what I need.



(To not be entirely cryptic about "problems," I'm flunking out. Although it certainly sucks, in a way I'm relieved, because I've already got a college degree and a living-wage job, being out of school earning my own keep will give me more independence than I've ever had, and once the "OMG DROPOUT" dust settles, I think it'll actually relieve a lot of family tension.)

Saddest.

Probably the saddest confession I will ever make on this blog: way back in my teenage years, when I was with Kevin, I used to sleep on the floor next to his bed. He told me he didn't like to share, so I lay down on the wood floor, no blanket even, just so I could be next to him all night. In the morning he'd let me back in the bed for a quick fuck.

Now that I've all growed up and got me some self-respect, I can't even share covers fairly.

Size.

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Young Love.

When I was fifteen, my twenty-one-year-old boyfriend told me he loved me. In hindsight I still believe it. It wasn't a very mature and healthy love, certainly (I tried to run away with him, it ended in missing person reports and restraining orders), but I really don't think it was a lie. He was my best friend and he was a giant creep, but he wasn't a liar. I loved him. Goofy fifteen-year-old "me an mah bf is soulmates!" love, but it felt real.

When he broke up with me (three months after the drama, no mere court order can keep a teenage girl from her Twoo Wuv), it was possibly the most humiliating moment of my life. I screamed, I threatened suicide, and I tried to seduce him into staying with me. It was Crazy Chick Greatest Hits. He had to literally pull my hands out of his pants and push me away to break up with me.

I met back up with the guy once when I was nineteen. We spent a weekend together in bed and then went our separate ways again. We didn't mention the love or the craziness at all the whole time. I didn't get "closure" (fuck, I still faintly miss him; it doesn't make me cry at night but now and then I think that I'd still take him back any day), but it didn't make me feel worse. At least we got to part on amicable grounds with a nice hug and kiss instead of hideous histrionics.

Am I over him? No, or I wouldn't be posting this. I'm dating other guys and I'm getting on with my life, but... man, I still believe it was love. There was a lot of sex mixed in (we took each others' virginities and fucked like crazy bunnies every time we saw each other for the next nine months or so) (he had a goddamn NINE INCH COCK), but I don't miss that. The guys I'm seeing now are more skilled and sophisticated about it anyway. The only thing they can't do for me is tell me they love me. And there are good, sane reasons for this--Jon is just a fuckbuddy, Brandon has only known me about three months--and I don't really want them to love me. I just want to be loved.

Wah wah wah. I also want to be a doctor and have kids and buy my own house, and I'll wait for love and work up to it just like I'm working up to those things. Love is one of the big rewards in life and shouldn't be quick and cheap. At my age I have no more right to cry about being unloved than I do about not owning a corporation.


Why is all this going in my sex journal? I promise the next two entries will be nothing but steamy fucking with nary a girly whine. By way of apology.

Handrails.

"Why are all handrails roughly the diameter of a penis?" Kevin asked me once.

"Because that's the size a hand goes around," I said, very sensibly.

Every time I have to stand on the bus, I think of that conversaton.

Losin' It.

This is the story of how I lost my virginity. Not how I first had intercourse; that was not really a life-changing event, just a minor milestone. But the first time I was sexual with another person was a very defined and momentous event. It happened while we were watching Red Dwarf.

I was fifteen, and had just started college. (I was a child prodigy. Long story.) I was fat and weird-looking and socially awkward, and I'd never had any romanantic interaction with a boy, not so much as a backrub or a slow dance. He was twenty, and we'd been friends for three years. Friends was all; never a date, never a kiss. We were in his parents' basement watching cheesy old British sci-fi, him lying on the couch, me sitting on the floor in front. We were sort of cuddling, bodies in contact, his arm hanging down loosely over my side, but not really more than friends would do.

He didn't say anything. His hand just started rubbing my ribs gently, and very slowly, tentatively came around to stroke my breast. I didn't say anything. He slipped his hand under my shirt, stroking me over my bra. I was thrilled and terrified. Not because I felt assaulted, just because it felt so damn good and yet so new and intimidating, and because in some strange idiotic way I was afraid of rejection, that he would be disatissfied with what he felt and never do it again.

He slipped his hand under my bra, caressing my nipples. I still didn't react, didn't resist, didn't grope him back, didn't say "hey do you know what you're doing there?" or whatever I should've said. I just sat there and liked it.

After a few minutes he stopped abruptly, in chagrin I think, and asked me "Are you okay?" I told him yes and he went upstairs and I lay down on the couch and fell asleep.

In the morning he apologized. I told him that I'd liked it. I had. I was scared as shit, too confused to be really enthusiastic, but... it felt good. It was the first time that I'd been horny for a person who was also horny for me, and known it. And even wrapped up in awkwardness and silence and statutory rape, that's a damn good feeling.

One of the best in the world, even now.