In Bed With Married Women

Dawn: On Lesbian Bed Death and Lexapro Sex

2012-05-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

An email exchange on Lesbian Bed Death with Dawn, who is, indeed, a lesbian. Please, no flash photography.

Dawn: So, I've been irked by the Kurt comment on Glee! about lesbian bed death. [IBWMW: In the scene of which she speaks, Kurt worries that he and Blaine are becoming too familiar with each other (including 'familiar' in the sense of 'family-like') and might be suffering from lesbian bed death.]

Here are some thoughts:

I don't remember the last time Lyn and I had sex, but it definitely isn't because I think of Lyn as "a sister" (or a sista' either for that matter), which is how Kurt described it to Rachel. Frankly, I think it is that we are just both exhausted. I guess all couples probably are, so what makes us "special" I don't know. We should be all over it, I suppose, with no risk of an "oops" baby. And we have so much more disposable income to go out on dates not having to pay for birth control. Except we both only make 70 cents on the dollar if Rachel Maddow is to believed - and she is - so crap, there goes that theory. Maybe two vaginas* (today's secret word) is too much subconscious ugly for one room? Perhaps we are still subject to being conditioned not to be sexually assertive so neither of us makes the first move? One of us (OK, me) being on Lexapro doesn't help since that cuts the potential drive by half, or a quarter, or something - math isn't my strong suit so we'll just say diminished. Or is this something that happens to many married couples, but since it is two women, one of the pair can't blame the other for "holding out" and using sex to manipulate? So, they came up with this label. Probably to scare people away from lesbian relationships. "Sure you may double your wardrobe if you choose a partner wisely, but you will die a horrible bed death." I think that's it.

OK, creative juice depleted. Entering refractory period.
TTYL

* You use this "*" thing all the time, so I wanted to use it too. How fun! OK, focus. Spell check doesn't like vaginas. Its first recommendation is singular "vagina" - so I think it is probably homophobic. Except that penises is somehow OK, so they are women haters. "Vaginae" does make the suggestion list - but that reminds me of alumnae, which makes me think we are all graduates. In a way we are, I suppose, of the vaginae of mothers everywhere. What does it take to graduate summa cum laude? Get an APGAR score of 10?

In Bed With Married Women: So to clarify, you are irked because everyone has bed death and it unfairly makes it look like a lesbian thing? Yes?

Btw, I too am on Lexapro and although the negative sexual effect (in my case, more difficult to come, TMI of all times) appear to be lessening (oh, please let it be!) my shrink once advised that you can take drug holiday over the weekend if you decide you want to get it on. Not sure how long you can be off safety and to get results. If one of us is brave enough to do it, let's report back on our results. Because that's the scientific thing to do. [Note: Readers? Any of you tried this? Oh, c'mon, surely you aren't all happy and well-adjusted, like, naturally...]

Dawn: I think I'm irked because this may have been the first time a lot of people have heard of LBD and now think that lesbian relationships are even more weird than they thought. Interestingly, Lyn and I have been out places and have been asked if we are sisters. We don't look much alike, really, but I think people must pick up on a degree of closeness beyond friends, so they guess sisters because thinking about two women in bed together bothers them. Guys *say* they like to think about it, but they really mean 2 straight porn stars with breast enhancements and shaved cunts, not the real deal. Watch some lesbian porn for lesbians sometime - the comparison is comical. Anyway, the sister comparison makes the sex part go away, like some soothing ointment for an oversexed imagination or something. Who the fuck knows, but I don't like it. So there.

For the Lexapro, I can only go about a day and a half and I'm off my titer. I get nauseous and dizzy, and not in a cute school-girl way, both coming off and going back on. Not so great for setting the mood. I do have a similar side effect to what you describe, but it isn't too bad since it has throttled back my drive to nearly nothing. The up shot is that Lyn and I used to have a lot of conflict about our different drives, so now it is all harmonious. Harmonious like, like, I don't know, sisters?

(photo: Giulio Aristide Sartorio - Nus Féminins, n.d.)

Okay, ONE more thing about vaginas. Then I'm done. Possibly.

2012-05-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

Today I'll tell you a quick story from the book I just read which is--this will come as no surprise to you--The Vagina Monologues
I'm telling you the story because it's just so fucking heartbreaking but also to remind us (me) why it's important to talk about this $%$# even though some people (well, this one dude on reddit who said I'm like a 12 year old boy) think it's unladylike. (Motherfucker calling me unladylike! What the fuckity fuck?....oh...yeah...I see.)

In the story, Eve Ensler interviews an old lady from Queens who was extremely hesitant about talking about her "down-there." "What's a smart girl like you talking to old ladies about their down-theres for?" she barks. After much prodding, she finally tells about the last time she ventured down there, in 1953. The woman--let's call her, oh, Agnes--tells about a date she had with Andy Leftkov, a real catch, a cute tall boy who asked her to take a drive in his new Chevy.

She and Andy were sitting in the car, recalled Agnes when "he just kissed me in this surprisingly 'Take me by control like they do in the movies' kind of way. And I got excited, so excited, and, well, there was a flood down there. I couldn't control it. It was like this force of passion, this river of life just flooded out of me, right through my panties, right onto the car seat of his new white Chevy BelAir."

Instead of realizing he'd found himself one hot little number, Andy was horrified. He said she'd stained the car seat and that she was a "weird, smelly girl." Agnes tried to explain that the kiss had caught her off guard and that she normally wasn't like this, but Andy drove her home in silence and never spoke to her again. "When I got out and closed his car door, I closed the whole store. Locked it. Never opened for business again. I dated some after that, but the idea of flooding made me too nervous. I never even got close again," said Agnes.

Years later Agnes got cancer and the surgeons pretty much cleared out her reproductive system, thus ending any worries about flooding ever again.

When Ensler asks Agnes a typically squirm-inducing Vagina Monologues-esque question, "If your vagina wore something, what would it wear?" Agnes replies, "It would wear a big sign: 'Closed Due to Flooding.'"

As the interview ends, Agnes says, "You happy? You made me talk--you got it out of me. You got an old lady to talk about her down-there. You feel better now?" [Turns away; turns back.] "You know, actually, you're the first person I ever talked to about this, and I feel a little better."

Knowledge is power, brothers and sisters.

xoxox
jill

(photo source)

The Lush Sexuality of a Woman in Full Bloom

2012-05-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Kelly over at Studio30 Plus thinks I have some sort of vaginal obsession. She writes me messages like, "Oh, you'll like new member X. They wrote about vaginas." Yeah, yeah, Kelly, ha ha. Whatever. But after she mentioned it (and continued to do so), I realized it was kinda true. I have been writing about vaginas a lot lately.

Which is weird, because I can barely even say the word "vagina." (I'm even a little iffy on "angina," though rest assured, if there were a medical emergency, I'd probably manage to choke it out.*) I'm not alone in this. Even Eve Ensler, Little Miss Vagina Monologues, said: "Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say."

True that. However, I think I am going through some sort of vaginal consciousness raising which, I know, sounds completely horrible, like it would involve attending meetings, holding hands with caftan-clad strangers, and answering dreadful questions like "What is your vaginal song?"

But you see, vaginas don't just exist as they are--well, I mean, they do--but they're also subject to the Prevailing Attitudes of the Day. In the 19th century, for example, girls who learned how to masturbate were considered to have a medical problem. Writes Ensler: "Often they were 'treated' or 'corrected' by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or 'miniature chastity belts,' sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach.'" Which, I imagine, certainly did the trick.

It was only a few hundred years ago that the existence of the clitoris was still a matter of serious scientific debate. And even today, we're still sort of iffy on some pretty major issues such as the G-spot's validity, what the hell a woman's ejaculate is, and whether or not there are different types of orgasm. Science, it seems, doesn't quite know what to make of female sexuality, and by association, vaginas.

So, yes, vaginas are mysterious and hard to figure out. But guess what? That's what so good about them. What fun would it be if you solved it all at once?

I think that's why the Prevailing Attitudes of the Day re: vaginas and the stupid bleaching and plastic surgery are bothering me so much. Because all of those things are about making the vagina chaste-looking and less, well, womanly. Like a beginner vagina that doesn't know anything. The lips of a vagina that has birthed babies and been well fucked are lush and flushed and swollen. They are not tiny and pink and virginal. They are full and open and just...so ripe.

I started thinking of them as being ripe, like a rose in full bloom, after reading this passage from Michael Pollan's Into the Rose Garden on roses and female sexuality. (Yes, I said "like a rose in full bloom." And yes, I know I sound like I'm talking about singing your vaginal song and all that, but hear me out.) In the piece, Pollan writes about his Maiden's Blush rose, also known as Cuisse de Nymphe Emue which means "the thigh of an aroused nymph."

Maiden’s Blush...seems to press her sexuality on us. Her petals are more loosely arrayed than Madame Hardy’s; less done up, almost unbuttoned. They are larger, too, and they flush with the palest flesh pink toward the center, which itself is elusive, concealed in their innumerable folds. The blush of this maiden is not in the face only. Could I be imagining things?

No, Maiden’s Blush is certainly not the old lady I expected when I planted roses. And though Maiden’s Blush bears an especially provocative bloom, every one of the old roses I planted, and all I’ve since seen and smelled, have been deeply sensuous in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Compared with the chaste buds and modest scent of the modern roses, these old ones give freely of themselves. They flower all at once, in a single, climactic week. Their blooms look best fully opened, when their form is most intricate; explicit, yet still so deeply enfolded on themselves as to imply a certain inward mystery....More than most floral scents, the fragrance of these roses is impossible to get hold of or describe “it seems to short-circuit conscious thought, to travel in a straight line from nostril to brain stem." Inhale deeply the perfume of a Bourbon rose and then try to separate out what is scent, what is memory, what is emotion; you cannot pull apart the threads that form this . . . this what?...

If the allure of old roses is in the frank sensuality of their blooms, then what are we to make of the development and eventual triumph of the modern hybrid tea? Maybe the Victorian middle class simply couldn’t deal with the rose’s sexuality. Perhaps what really happened in 1867 was a monumental act of horticultural repression. By transforming the ideal of rose beauty from the fully opened bloom to the bud, the Victorians took a womanly flower and turned her into a virgin, "a celebrated beauty when poised on the verge of opening, but quickly fallen after that."

Deeply sensuous? Frank sensuality? Short-circuiting conscious thought? Oh, Michael Pollan, this is why I love you so! (Oh, also for your excellent points on monocultures, sustainable farming techniques, and whatnot.)

But I wonder, are we doing the same thing with our bodies? Will we keep trying to bio-engineer chaste-appearing closed-up girl vaginas, forever "poised on the verge of opening," while foolishly missing out on the best damn part--the extreme fuckability and lush sexuality of a woman in full bloom?

xoxo
jill

*This is a lie. Instead of "angina," I would say "chest pains."

(photo source)

"Shocking (fine) details of a gentle vagina," aka the Misguided Googlers' Quarterly Report

2012-04-25T14:11:00.001-07:00

A German variation on Pesäpallo

In preparation for the IBWMW International Summit in Helsinki, in which we will discuss Important Matters over plates of Karelian pasty (karjalanpiirakka)--a traditional Finnish dish made from a thin rye crust with a filling of rice and topped with munavoi--I am creating a presentation tentatively titled Trends in Misguided Googlers®.

As we saw earlier this week, the IBWMW Ministers of Science, Grammar and Homographs are a prickly bunch (so far, thankfully, the Minister of Technology is staying neutral) so I want to make sure I don't unduly rile anyone up. Plus the stockholders are, well, let's just say they are beyond pissed off at the blog's financial statements.

There's a lot at stake and to be honest, I'm getting kind of wigged out. So mind if I run it by you first?

Good, then, here goes:

*Clanking of spoon on glass filled with Salmiakkikossu, a drink made by dissolving salty-licorice in strong spirits resulting in "an intense black liquid with a stingy smell that tastes like old fashioned cough syrup." I will only pretend to drink said "stingy" drink in order to appear polite to our Finnish liaison, Jaakko.*

"Assembled IBWMW Ministers, welcome. My remarks will be brief today as I have been advised of the Minister of Science's afternoon session of Pesäpallo, the national sport of Finland, which is a baseball-like game similar to brännboll, rounders, and lapta.

I've been reviewing the list of search terms used by Misguided Googlers®. My findings may interest you. Besides the usual items, your penices and veginas, the seemingly endless variety of endings to the phrase married women like to fuck..., and the multitude of boob descriptions (i.e. matronly, sagging, pointy, perky, jutting, disappointing), I've identified several less obvious trends. I say we ~~exploit the fuck out of~~ find ways to serve these underserved markets. Perhaps we can direct our outreach efforts to the following users:

1. People with passion: These are the Googlers that don't just drearily type in their search terms, they infuse them with passion! This expressive group dynamically searches for things like sex in bed yeah ass and titys, ooooh, vibrating cock ring oh yeah, oh little dick, and wow! boys wanking. These on-the-go, high-achievers are a natural market for Kindle subscriptions to IBWMW.

2. People who treat Google as genie/slave: This practical group says--nay, demands--exactly what they need. Their on-point, direct searches include: Let's see some older women getting fucking and I need to see women being fucked with gridle on. (A sidenote: I'm pretty sure that last searcher meant "girdle," but I have our Finnish intern Kyllikki researching that to make sure.) This demanding group knows what it wants. They want service and they want it fast. I recommend we push the Good Vibrations merch on them, hard.

3. Needs more research: Despite international cooperation, no one can decipher what these potential customers actually want. Terms include: miraculous bra groping me, on March 8 big boobs and penis on the cult, and anus looking. Oh, there's a change on your handouts: Kyllikki has just informed me that her research indicates that pictures of sewiest womens pussy may contain a typo.

4. Way too fucking specific. Butt shot with pink panties in a bed with a white headboard, a horse with no name fucks women, floppy foreskin, feather duster in the butt, stuffed animal teddy bear bondage, girl masturbating with a spatula, woman masturbating with candy, woman touching balloons, nice cow looking tits on a woman, and finally underwear with inflatable pads and genital enhancements and hidden pickets and hidden pouches and patents. I think we can appeal to this demographic directly. When I get back to the States, I will prepare posts on anonymous horse sex, nice cow looking tits, and whatever the fuck that wordy underwear weirdo is talking about. We'll appeal to them in their "sweet spots"--then bam!--make the sale.

5. Easily pleased. Searches include: Boobage, good vagina, and porn regular. These simple folk don't need flippin' pink panties and white headboards, they're perfectly happy with 1 pic of penis in vagina. Let's hit these folks up for a straight donation. They are cheery, angst-free folks who are happy to contribute.

6. Way too upsetting. Hansel and Gretel + naked, yak and woman fuking (so far no interest indicated for yak and woman macking lov) and smelling Grandma's vagina. Here we run into legal as well as aesthetic ramifications. I say we leave these folks alone.

7. Oddly poetic/Things I wish I had posted about: fascinating boobs, a smart and fabulous fucking experience, and my very favorite, shocking (fine) details of a gentle vagina.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going for my afternoon sauna to contemplate precisely how handy one would have to be to come up with a DIY homemade inflatable sex doll that wasn't completely and wretchedly unfuckable."

xoxoxo and Näkemiin
jill

photo source

"Don't you fucking move," Reader Mail from a Feminist Submissive

2012-04-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

Didn't I tell you not to strive for
equality in the workplace?

Today's letter came in response to a Newsweek cover story on Fifty Shades of Grey, the insanely popular S&M-y mommy porn, unpromisingly spawned by, of all things, Twilight fan fiction.

Reader Submissive and Truly Fine With That was but one of the people pissed off by the article, which tied (yes, and I'm too lazy to think of a better word) working women and feminism to S&M. You can read her response below.

If you are unfamiliar with Fifty Shades of Grey, see this Daily Beast article on the book's 14 Naughtiest Bits (a genius idea!) Here, you can witness Perfectly Good Smut being ruined by a few ill-chosen words. For example, when heroine/virgin Anastasia (she would so be named that) watches Christian's (same deal) "erection spring free" (so far so good), she thinks--much like a middle-aged fan fiction-writing author might--"Holy cow!"

Later, when she takes him in her mouth (again, a good start...) it's described thusly: "He's my very own Christian Grey-flavored popsicle. I suck harder and harder...Hmmm...My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves."

By the time Anastasia's "inner goddess is doing the dance of the seven veils," my own inner goddess is "confused and ready to go to the kitchen and get a cup of coffee."

But I digress. Please give a warm welcome to Submissive and Truly Fine With That:

Dear IBWMW;
God bless you for being the one place I can send this email. I just finished reading an article in Newsweek about how (or why) today’s feminists have a more-than-passing interest in S&M, or more to the point, being sexually submissive. Now I feel the need to rant because of all the sources they consulted, they neglected to ask one of us, ie. a feminist who craves domination. (To be fair, they did quote Simone de Beauvoir, but, last time I checked, she’s dead.) I thought, what better venue to rant to than this column? (Actually, there is no other option. I really don’t want to disgust any of my friends with details of my sex life beyond relative wang dimensions or whether a guy was “orally efficacious” or not.)

For starters, I have to admit I believe I was born into this desire. My first sexual fantasies all involved bondage; usually, some guy I hated or found grossly unattractive would tie me up and have his way with me. In retrospect, I think it had to be someone I didn’t like for the submission to feel “honest”.

If I go backwards in my life to my first physical sexual feeling, it was this: a happy little tingle between my legs while watching a TV episode of "Batman and Robin." The boys were tied up in a hot air balloon that was continuously ascending and their ultimate demise was imminent. I didn’t recognize it as sexual excitement at the time, but I do now. The numerous episodes of “Electra Woman and Dyna Girl” that followed elicited the same phenomenon. And they were tied up or trapped at least once per episode. No wonder that was my favorite show.

As adults though, our every desire has to have a reason; I've never read a source that claimed to have located the “bondage gene” or the “anal gene” or what have you. So here is my explanation for why I like, fantasize about and crave being held down, tied up, spanked, talked dirty to, forced to submit even after I’ve said no.

Yes, I am a feminist. Yes, I am in control of my own life, my own finances, my own household. No one pushes me around or takes advantage of me. Most people wouldn’t even try. I am taller than most, smarter than the vast majority, attractive and confident. At work, I am “Bad Cop.” People may be a little afraid of me, but they also respect my results. I am powerful. And we all know how power is an enormous aphrodisiac. I am certain that most men who are attracted to me fantasize about me dominating them. And a lot of other men are way too intimidated to even consider me a viable possibility.

But once in a great while, I’ll meet someone who gives me that carnivorous gaze that says he wants to eat me for breakfast and make me beg for more….and I just go weak in the knees. Because I too am attracted to power and confidence. And it takes a confident man with balls the size of the Jupiter to suggest that I meet him at his hotel room and be prepared to leave the word “no” at the door.

Full disclosure: I am married and I have been known to show up at said hotel room once or twice. Lucky for me, men like that are rare, so I don’t abandon my marriage vows very often. The last time, still fresh in my mind after 18 months, was delicious. This man, who barely knew me, had me stripped naked, spread-eagled and climaxing before he even took his tie off. When I attempted to make a mildly aggressive move, he laughed appreciatively and said, “You don’t get to be in charge here.” Later on, when I said I was done and wanted to stop, he didn’t. He slowed down. He asked me, “You want me to stop?” I said yes. He didn’t. When I realized he thought either I didn’t mean it, or he didn’t care, I got turned on all over again and came (again) within minutes.

This man has so-so looks and is hardly my type. He has a so-so job and a degree from an okay university. He's not rich or marvelously athletic. He is quite clever and our conversations are never boring and he can definitely make me laugh. But would I look twice at him in a bar? Nope. Would I want him as a husband? Absolutely not. He’s petty and childish, self-centered and vain. But when he calls me on the phone, I still get tingly.

I recall one past phone-sex conversation with him. I was alone, in bed, listening to his voice tell me how to get myself off. As I neared the finish line he said in a serious, threatening tone, “Don’t move. Don’t you fucking move.” Needless to say, hearing that pushed me over the edge in a cataclysmic fashion that I have never since been able to replicate, alone or otherwise. And I know why. It is because this man, who doesn’t deserve me and couldn’t even handle me as a spouse or girlfriend or co-worker or whatever, can shove me down on a bed and show me who’s boss. And that takes guts. Who wouldn’t want to fuck that?

Sincerely,
submissive and truly fine with that

(photo source)

Reader Mail Week, Day 4: Blue, "It was the perfect penis"

2012-04-23T11:38:00.001-07:00

Oh god, please tell me I didn't send an email last night to
IBWMW about my lover's ruddy, noble, well-formed penis

Reader Blue sent in the following missive. When I asked her what pseudonym she'd like, she answered, "I can't believe I sent that! I wrote that while drunk a few weeks ago and sent it while drunk last night."

Don't worry, Blue, lots of people write to me when they're drunk, which is probably not at all flattering, but I'm just gonna decide that it is actually highly flattering and be done with it.

Besides, the whole drunk Internet/texting/sexting possibilities available to Today's Modern Drunk makes me so so so happy that my own drunken days were pre-all of that. I can't even fucking imagine the hideousness of waking up all bleary-eyed and hung over and having to face my Sent Mail folder to see what horrors might lie within.

To her credit, Blue is not the incoherent mess of a drunk I was, so I reprint her story here unedited and in its full glory. Enjoy.

a few weeks ago i saw your invitation to "Just sit down at the computer, rip your heart out, and jot the results down" and started writing this. i don't know if this is what you want, and that was awhile ago but here's my story:

i started writing this because of the part of dusky's letter where she writes "the idea that naturally the greatest sex of your life will be with the love of your life." for me sex was indeed "a litmus test of the true inner feelings of two people" although love has always been a Big Deal for me, sex had never been the highest on my list of priorities. i had attributed my lackluster sex life to my complete disinterest, not the other way around. it had kind of escaped my notice that the way people feel physically and the way they feel emotionally have a lot to do with each other. there is no aphrodisiac like love...

so i didn't know this but not everybody is ...you know... anatomically compatible. there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. sorry guys, but now you know. it CAN be too big. but i didn't learn this little secret until i cheated. and let me tell you, for those lucky people out there who have never cheated on anybody: it a repulsive experience, don't do it! but then, the marriage sucked and sometimes you don't know the grass is greener until you get on the other side of the fence. sure it looks greener, but.... now i know.

there are people in the world who are really good at having sex. just like mozart was a great composer, da vinci was a master painter, and stratavarius made the best violins ever, some people are really REALLY good at fucking.

now i knew this, intellectually. and i knew, through hearsay and good sources, that this friend of mine, i'd had a crush on for the better part of a decade, was an unusually talented fucker. i didn't know what that meant exactly and i was trying not to think about it. so imagine my surprise when, wonder of wonders, he can get me off like nothing ever has with just his hands. seriously, ladies, this is unreal. i came with the force of a multi-ton atom bomb and we were still wearing our undies.

now ok, why is it that when we're talking about penises "good" and "big" are essentially the same? i mean even saying a woman's tits are small is not at all the same calliber of insult, if it even is an insult, as saying a man's penis is small. we are doing penises (and vaginas, mine specifically) a grave disservice by grading them on size rather than performance and aesthetics. now some ladies like them big. that's cool, it takes all kinds. but for me, big is painful. did you know the average is 5.5"? my fingers are shorter than that and they do quite well. anything much larger is painful. really painful. like guys, can you imagine if something thumped your balls while you were trying to get off? ow. you size queens can have 'em.

so here i finally get this boy naked... well he's working with a different set of equipment than i'm used to. it was the perfect penis: well formed, noble of carriage, ruddy in complexion, and, wonder of wonders, uncircumcised! i realize this is a contentious topic, but in my extremely limited experience (sample size: 2) uncircumcised has my vote. and this penis came in a decidedly more manageable size. suddenly i was able to try positions i'd only dreamed of! sex didn't hurt no matter how i did it! i could get off without having to micromanage!

now it wasn't all about sex, the marriage wouldn't have ended if sex had been it's only shortfall and the other guy had more going for him in basically every way, but i offer this as a cautionary tale: sometimes if the shoe fits, wear it.

If you want to rip your own heart out and tell us something true about your sex life, get brave and drop me a line.

(source Inner Optics, Anonymous, c 1870)

Reader Mail Week, Day 3: Underrubbers, reader has sex with a U-shaped device, and the newest IBWMW Minister

2012-04-20T13:36:00.001-07:00

The new IBWMW Minister of Angsty Posing

Yesterday the reader mail was about an exceptionally dickish dude, a sort of Master Ninja of Psychological Abuse, who told his (thankfully now) ex-wife that her vagina was "ugly." It was all too much. I mean, "Of all the nerve!" as people were often exclaiming in the out-of-date used books I read as a pre-teen. I tell you, that fellow could have used a smart slap across the face accompanied by a richly deserved, "Fresh!"

Today let us return to a happier place in which men and women don't psychologically torture each other. Except, you know, in the fun way.

To that end, here's a review of the We-Vibe couple's vibrator by Sabrina who, with the pluck and aplomb characteristic of all IBWMW readers, bravely got down with the vibe and a guy.

"Meh." That's my whole review. It vibrates, and I suppose it'd work for some women. Alas, I must have "funky vagina" because I couldn't get the rotter to stay in when not actively getting dirty (my vagina muscles of steel would just slooooowly push it out), and DURING sex the stupid thing would torque to the side making it pointless. If I wanted to hold something in place I'd just buy a bullet that has REAL power.

In summation, I think what Sabrina is saying is that a) she has a funky vagina, b) with muscles of steel and c) in foreign lands, "rotter"= sex toy. If you are in England and someone says "rotter," they mean "sex toy" so just make the translation in your head.

If anyone else has tried it the We-Vibe, please feel free to send in a review of your own. I'm especially curious if you've tried the next gen model, the We-Vibe 3 (note: both funky and non-funky vaginaed reviewers welcome.)

Meanwhile gentle reader Ciana Pullen, who I think I might be a little in love with, raised some Very Pressing Issues regarding the post about the Bikini Condom:

I'm a little late to the bikini condom party, but I suppose in the year 2012 we all are. I'm confused. I have so many questions.
--So, the tubal part is automatically inserted into the vagina upon "coitus." Where is the tube *before* coitus? Is it scrunched up like a bendy straw fresh from the package, then the penis stretches it out? When one re-uses it does it scrunch back up or is the tube all stretched out? Does the tube hang down (does it wobble to and fro) like an inside-out jacket sleeve? Sometimes when I shove my arm into my jacket sleeve and the sleeve isn't completely right-side-out my arm gets stuck. It seems an analogous problem might occur with the bikini condom?
--Is it one size fits all?
--To me the term "pouch" suggests something in which a baby marsupial might dwell, and that is truly the most positive connotation, and even then those pouches are only cute when they're in cartoon form. As alternatives I suggest "pussy pocket" "pocket protector for her" "underrubber" "safety knickers" or, if you continue with the marsupial pouch idea, "underoo's."

Ciana, as usual, I have few, if any, answers. But I like your style. "Pussy pocket" is an incredibly excellent name. It's spunky, naughty, kinda cute. (I am also quite smitten with "underrubber.") I am quite certain that today you have discovered your Superpower. Too bad it's thinking of spot-on names for obscure and unloved contraceptive devices. We don't all get to have X-ray vision.

And finally, we have a new IBWMW Minister of Grammar. I'd tell you a little more about them, but I have no idea who it is. They gave themselves the title and, as their first official duty, promptly corrected the grammar in a comment from the IBWMW Minister of Science. I sense some tense moments at the next IBWMW International Summit in Helsinki.

If you need a title of your own, feel free to grant yourself one and start making decrees and such. Why the hell not? Seems I lost control of this thing a long time ago.

xoxox
jill

And btw, IBWMW Minister of Grammar, don't even bother telling me that "vaginaed" isn't a word. I just made it up and I love that motherfucking word. Love it! So back off.

(photo: "Moments before, during and after sex," Daido Morivama, c. 1970s)

Reader Mail Week, Day 2: High-Level Mind Fuckery

2012-04-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Maybe these gigantic pink panties will distract
him from my abnormal vagina-looking vagina.

When my post about vaginal "rejuvenation" ran on Blogher, most of the comments were along the lines of "risky," "medical community shouldn't support," "irks the crap out of me" and so forth, but one in particular really stuck with me. It was this from CreoleQueen:

I was married to my high school sweetheart for 15 yrs. We recently divorced, and he has no qualms about telling me before, during, and after our marriage, how ugly my vagina is. I started looking into medical intervention, and found a few blogs and doctors who are able to help. While I know many women will disagree with my wanting to do this, I cannot see myself with another man and risk him seeing my vagina, and feel like my husband did. I guess my post is to kind of speak for women who may need this kind of surgery.

This makes me so sad/mad in about 17 different ways. Because of this dickhead of a beau, this poor chick is now convinced that she has a problem and "needs" help. Surgical help. Expensive, risky, weird-ass surgical help.

And this guy! Even if this crass asshat of a bf/husband/ex actually thought her vag was unattractive, why the fuck would he be boorish enough to mention it to her? I mean if her equipment was truly so repulsive to him, shouldn't he have just broken up with her, telling her he had "commitment issues" or some b.s.?

Of course not. And you know why he didn't do that? Because he had discovered the perfect manipulative put-down. It's genius in its many tentacles of evilness. Not only is he handing her one HELL of a neg, he's also completely insulting the very center of her womanhood. That is some heavy-duty mind fuckery. But, best of all, it guarantees she will never stray. You see, exactly as he'd planned, dear CreoleQueen is now terrified to be with another man and "risk" him seeing her heinous vag.

Mission accomplished, dickhead.

(photo source)

"Her Swarthy Snatch" that is, Reader Mail Week, Day 1

2012-04-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

"This made me think of you," wrote reader Cathya, as *sigh* they all do when they see some fucked-up article about people falling in love with lawn chairs, having sex with toasters or whatever. (To Cathya's credit, I believe she meant it ironically. See also: "I saw this and thought of you".)

If you haven't already received your own copy of Jezebel's Your Vagina Isn't Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too Hairy--It's Also Too Brown* from your cool feminist friend, do take the time to click over, it's well worth it. (And if you don't have a cool feminist friend, I suggest you get one at once. Might I suggest Cathya?)

The article raises the possibility that the next thing on our To-Do List of Societal-Created Bodily Problems We Must Eradicate Immediately Lest We Become Unfuckable (note to self: think of shorter To-Do List title) may well be bleaching--not only our buttholes--but our vaginas** as well. (And God forbid if you become addled by bleach fumes and accidentally put anal bleaching cream on your vag or vice versa. Can you imagine the others--oh, how they would laugh and laugh!--if they saw that your vag was anus color or your anus was vag color? Whatever colors they are supposed to be. This week.)

The article, written by my new hero Lindy West, was so damn good, it made me feel like giving up writing and just throwing away my 10 year old Mac (or, less dramatically, responsibly disposing of it at the next city-sanctioned e-waste collection). I mean look at her opening paragraph!

Good news, ladies! Society has discovered another new thing that's wrong with you, which means another opportunity for you to make yourself more attractive for your man. Score! Turns out, the color of your vagina is gross and everyone hates it. So bleach that motherfucker. Bleach it right now!

West goes on to describe an ad running in India for a vag bleaching cream that makes your vag, well, non-vag colored.

In this commercial for an Indian product called Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, a (very light-skinned) couple sits down for what would have been a peaceful cup of morning coffee—if the woman's disgusting brown vagina hadn't ruined everything! The dude can't even bring himself look at her. He can't look at his coffee either, because it only reminds him of his wife's dripping, coffee-brown hole! Fortunately, the quick-thinking woman takes a shower, scrubbing her swarthy snatch with Clean and Dry Intimate Wash ("Freshness + Fairness"). And poof! Her vadge comes out blinding white like a downy baby lamb (and NOT THE GROSS BLACK KIND)

I was so sold on West with "bleach that motherfucker," but when she got to "his wife's dripping, coffee-brown hole" I was beyond in love.

Here's the ad, if you want to be angered and/or develop a new and exciting insecurity. (In due credit to the collective wisdom of the YouTube viewing public--a phrase I have never once used--"thumbs downs" are beating "thumbs up" by a ratio of 3 to 1.)

Vag bleaching is yet another one of those "body enhancement" products--like bras with built-in nipples, vaginal rejuvenation, shapewear for sex, mints to hide the taste of semen, etc...--that, in the quest for "beauty" screw with basic biology.*** Screwing with biology, as in, how we experience pleasure (i.e. a boob job making a woman lose sensitivity in her now For Display Purposes Only rack) and screwing with biology in how we communicate sexual signals to each other. A highly aroused woman, for example, will get a vivid dark flush of color between her legs. This indicates, "Hey, you're doin' fine. Please proceed at once." (If it's really really dark and very flushed, it indicates, "Oh, god! Please please please proceed at once!")

An artificially light vag indicates...what?
"I am an Indian woman possessing an improbably Caucasian vagina."
"I may be aroused or I may be thinking of stocking up on cereal when it's on sale."
"I'd better not pee because, as I vaguely recall from chemistry, ammonia and bleach mixed together create a toxic cloud."

So why do we need this product? Let's let the ad copy explain:

Designed to address the problems women face in their private parts, Clean and Dry Intimate Wash offers protection, fairness and freshness. To be used while showering, its special pH-balanced formula cleans and protects the affected area, and even makes the skin fairer. Life for women will now be fresher, cleaner, fairer!

To restate, you have problems in your private parts. All women do. The problem, as we now know, is having "private parts." So bleach that motherfucker! Bleach it right now!

xoxox
jill

*If you are the cool feminist friend, please be aware that the horribly unflattering subject line automatically generated for your dear friend's email will be Your Vagina Isn't Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too Hairy--It's Also Too Brown. Might want to change that...

** Yes, yes, I know that the term "vagina" refers to the hole part and that "vulva" is the proper term for part I'm actually talking about. And if you correct me in the comments, I will come to your house and punch you.

*** We are not the only society that does crazy-ass junk to...well, our junk. According to Mary Roach, in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, in parts of Africa, Haiti and Indonesia, moistness between a woman's legs is considered to be a turn-off. So to facilitate the "dry sex" their men want, the women use drying agents, including shredded newspaper, cotton, rock salt, detergent, bark and--ack!--dried animal poop.

Thus, if we combined these two regional traditions in sort of a vaginal melting pot (I think there was a Schoolhouse Rocksong about the vaginal melting pot), instead of a lover confronting a wet, deeply flushed, obviously-aroused pussy, they'd find a vaguely bleachy-smelling white vag, festooned with dry bits of shredded newspaper and animal poop hanging out. Viva progress!

(photo source)

How Wanking It Created the Universe and Other Theories on Masturbation

2012-04-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of masturbation this morning. Not in the sense of putting it on today's "to do" list (although--what the hell--maybe I was, you don't need to know every damn thing), but in a more general, historic context way.

It was spurred by Kathleen telling me about a sexuality talk she gave some 'tween girls, based on the excellent book Changing Bodies, Changing Lives. Armed with some notes* and pads of paper for the girls to doodle on (secret real purpose: to give them a place to pretend to stare at if things got too embarrassing) brave Kathleen laid it all out for these girls--including the hows of orgasms, the phases of sexual response, and the role of masturbation in a healthy sex life. Kathleen even talked to them about sexual fantasies and told them different ways that girls might want to touch themselves. The eminently sensible idea being: people armed with knowledge are better able to make smart and responsible decisions about sex.

It was completely revolutionary to me. The one hour of sex education class I got in the 1970s contained quite a bit of information--an excessive amount, to my mind--about vas deferens, fallopian tubes and the like, but nothing in the way of practical information about sex. That is, the $%$# you actually wanted to know. I mean, my teacher described the doing of "IT" as "the sperm meeting the egg," as though a cotillion was somehow involved. There was no fucking way she was going to talk about the emotional and physical benefits of jerking off.

When I had my first self-given orgasm, I thought I had probably broken myself. I might have asked someone about it, but I was somehow aware that this was the sort of activity one didn't speak of. (Later I worried that I might have become pregnant after an interesting experiment with a pool water jet.** I was perhaps not the brightest of children.)

This kind of masturbation shame/ignorance is, fortunately, a fairly recent development. Throughout most of history, masturbation was considered natural, good, a sign of fertility and such. There are spurts of masturbation references throughout art, mythology and history. The ancient Greeks approved of stoking one's own fire, considering it a healthy outlet for both men and women. And in Egypt, the god Atum was thought to have brought forth the universe by ejaculating during what must have been a rather interesting session of beating off. ("Atum! You're still in the bathroom? What are you doing in there, young man?")

So accepted was the practice that nannies in 17th century Europe would masturbate young males who couldn't get to sleep(!) This is perhaps what people mean when they complain they can't get good help anymore. Dear Carmen, the lady who used to clean my house before I became poor, never once offered to give me a handjob, even after I pointedly mentioned I was having trouble sleeping.

How did we get from there to here? I mean, what sort of crazy-ass mind control propaganda could get people to turn against such a pleasurable activity? It was an influential pamphlet, of all things, circulated in 1700s America. It explained that semen held the Life Force and, as such, should not be squandered in the handkerchiefs of the day.

Soon, a variety of health and moral problems were added to plain ol' life force squandering. In "A Solemn Appeal," Sister Ellen G. White lists a host of old-timey ails caused by "the practice" including the dreaded "dropsy." The alarmed Sister warns, "The mind is often utterly ruined, and insanity supervenes." This perhaps explains why I have been known to stare blankly when someone asks me my cell phone number.

In Daniel Hack Turke's 1892 A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, he described a habitual masturbator thusly:

The face becomes pale and pasty, and the eye lusterless. The man loses all spontaneity and cheerfulness, all manliness and self-reliance. He cannot look you in the face because he is haunted by the consciousness of a dirty secret which he must always conceal and always dreads that you may discover. He shuns society, and has no intimate friends, does not dare to marry, and becomes a timid, hypersensitive, self-centered, hypochondriac.

Obviously such a fate was undesirable and young masturbators needed to be saved lest they, too, become pale and pasty in the face. According to Mary Roach in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, "Little hands were tied to headboards, and trousers fashioned without pockets. Hobbyhorses were taken away, and climbing ropes removed from school gymnasiums." And in 1914's Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell urges boys stricken with the forbidden urge to literally run away from temptation until presumably the boy would be so physically exhausted he would no longer have the energy to reach for his member.

This kind of hysteria fed on itself, and at a certain point, anti-masturbation advocates sound less concerned with the moral health of our youth and more like completely insane sadists. John Kellogg, the cereal guy, claimed that the "solitary vice" caused a host of health problems, up to and including death. "Such a victim literally dies by his own hands," Kellogg wrote, perhaps chuckling to himself over his wit. I knew Kellogg was wack--I mean, the dude invented a high-powered enema machine for personal use--but I didn't realize just how much of a nutter he was until I saw this in Wikipedia's History of Masturbation:

He recommended, to prevent children from this "solitary vice", bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing the foreskin shut and electrical shock. He also recommended burning off the clitoris to prevent masturbation in girls.

Enterprising Americans wanted in on this action and dutifully invented all sorts of dreadful devices to stop people from ravishing themselves. (For lots of scary pictures, see also: Stephenson Billings' The Anti-Masturbation Movement's 14 Greatest Inventions on ChristWire.) There were penis fans to keep one's member from undue warmth, full body suits to prevent lustful wandering hands, and alarm systems designed to alert parents to their children's nocturnal erections (not quite sure what the parent is supposed to do once alerted). Penis cages and trusses locked the guilty organ up or tied it down to physically prevent erections. And when those didn't work, physical pain was employed.

"The Timely Warning" (pictured at left) prevented "night emissions by arousing the wearer." "Arousing" is, at the very least, a curious choice of words. I guess it's an 1800s adman's best try at a positive spin on what would more accurately be described as: "being rudely awakened from your sweet dreams and pleasantly swelling erection by the sharp stab of a ring of metal teeth cutting into your wang."

The fetish gear-looking contraption shown at right is from US Patent 745,264, filed May 29, 1903, by one Albert V. Todd, for a device designed to prevent masturbation and nocturnal emissions. It features "a lockable belt with a tube for inserting the penis." If the errant penis were to rise while its pious owner was innocently sleeping, the device would employ spikes, an alarm bell, and an electric shock to get things back under control.

It's madness, obviously, but plenty of people are still afraid of masturbation (see also: The Dreaded "M" Word by former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, who was fired--I can still scarcely believe it!--for merely mentioning masturbation.) This article, for example, Freedom From Masturbation, offers guilty onanists a religious approach to stopping, including specific anti-monkey-spanking prayers to recite and the advice to "pray intermittently in tongues as the Lord leads you." (I would much less disturbed by walking in on some guy jacking off than some guy not jacking off while sporting a huge hard-on and speaking in tongues, but that's just me.)

The good news is that, in general, things seem to be finally turning around. Viva Changing Bodies, Changing Lives and people like brave Kathleen teaching girls how to wank it! As Dan Savage says in Savage U, "Girls should be encouraged to experiment, masturbate, learn how their bodies and orgasms work before moving on to partnered sex. Partnered sex would be less intimidating and disappointing out of the gate if more women arrived knowing how to get themselves off."

Cuss yes.

xoxox
jill

*If you'd like me to send you a copy of Kathleen's notes so you can corrupt a new generation with the dual evils of wisdom and self-reliance, email me.
**I'm pretty sure that this is how Aquaman was conceived.

Bikini Condom, We Hardly Knew Ye

2012-04-03T16:05:00.001-07:00

Pity the poor Bikini Condom. Launched in the early 1990's, it was overshadowed by its more popular cousin, the female condom. Both were part of the contraceptive group the FDA gave the perfectly hideous label "vaginal pouches." ("Hon, I need some quarters for the meter. Can you check your vaginal pouch?")

And when you're playing second fiddle to the female condom--a device most Americans have never actually seen, let alone used--let's just say you're not gonna be sitting at the popular table. Not that there is a popular table for contraceptives. Or if there is, I was, sadly, not invited to sit there.

Bikini Condoms look "like a g-string panty with a condom pouch" wrote an unnamed author in a 1991 issue of Contraceptive Technology, a magazine which I get only for the crossword puzzle.

The condom "is automatically introduced into the vagina with coitus," the writer continues, masterfully making a sentence about sex totally void of eroticism. The odd language continues to the last sentence: "They are so novel they appeal to people with an 'open mind.'" "Open mind" is inexplicably in quotes, signifying, to my mind, that the author is not only "unfamiliar with human writing conventions," perhaps fearful of these unsettling hippies with their "open minds," and probably rarely has "coitus."

So why aren't we all sportin' vaginal pouches this very second? I mean, they empowered women and junk, right? Well, offhand, I can venture several guesses.

1. The term "vaginal pouch" could be entirely to blame.

2. Its look and feel and pretty much everything about it. "Manufactured all in one piece from thin, cream-colored latex," according to the Powerhouse Museum in Australia, "It consists of a belt, which fits around the hips, attached to a pouch-like tube." In summation, it combines a pouch-like tube (oh yeah), a belt reminiscent of grandma's old-timey maxi pads, and cream-colored latex, which we all know is the very sexiest latex color.

3. It is thicker than a regular condom, for those who like their sensation reduced as much as possible.

4. The whole clothing-as-contraceptive idea. (However, other clothing/contraceptive combos such as pleated khakis, holiday sweaters and men's jeans shorts, are still in widespread use.)

5. Reusability. It can be reused 5 to 10 times. I'm as green as the next girl,** but even I would be hesitant to drag out some raggedy-ass cream-colored condom for the 9th time.

6. General confusion/inherent paradox: "Bikini" = sexy. "Condom" = not that sexy, but sex-related, at least. And yet, "bikini condom" = so not sexy.

* (if you'd like to read more about "vaginal pouches"--and who the hell wouldn't?--see also: Female Condom, Where Art Thou?, How to Behave in the Presence of a Female Condom and Someone Who Actually Used The Female Condom.)

** I have been known to force only-marginally-interested children to behold my compost pile, which in several states is legally considered eco-terrorism.

(photo source)

Misguided Googler Contest, Plus G-Spot Finding

2012-04-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

As decreed on the In Bed With Married Women Facebook page, I'm compiling a list of reading materials referenced on the blog. Said materials (mentioned by me or readers) will include plain ol' smut to smarty-pants sciencey/sociological things to stuff that's funny. (And do let me know if you have any recommendations.)

Anyway the task is way more arduous than I was expecting and the kid I hired as IBWMW Minister of Arduous Tasks didn't show up for work today, so I'm gonna need more time.

To make up for my trail of broken promises (I swear, kid, we're gonna make it big someday!), I offer you this contest. Your task:

Match the Misguided Googler's search terms with the IBWMW post Google sent them to.

Search Terms (as spelled)
1. "is it ok to fuck married women in ass"
2. "why married women deire anal pleasure with vibrators"
3. "picture ofpenise in vegina"
4. "grateful old slags getting screwed" (IBWMW is the #3 choice for this, btw. Which is bittersweet.)
5. "sex porno sperm from mouth to your vintage"

Google-suggested IBWMW landing page:
a. The Fuckiest Conest Around
b. The IBWMW home page
c. Spatula, I'm taking your ass down."
d. How Wanking It Created the Universe and Other Theories on Masturbation
e. Sorry, No Explicit Picture of Penis in Vagina

First one to correctly match the search terms with the landing page wins The Pop Tops Deluxe Silicon G-spotter from Good Vibrations. It's designed to go on top of the infamous Hitachi Magic Wand Massager (you rest the flattened end pleasantly against your G-spot). So if you don't have a Hitachi Magic Wand, you're kinda out of luck--in many ways, or so I've heard. Lack of G-spot* could present a problem as well. (If you prefer, I can send you the huge-ass bag of 20 Lifestyles condoms Planned Parenthood recently gave me, clearly way way overestimating the amount of sex I would be having in the 7 days it would take my new IUD to become effective.)

You can answer in a comment below or via email. I'll announce the winner when someone gets it right.

xoxo
jill

*To get my mind off the suddenly very depressing fact that I didn't use the 20 condoms, and even perhaps even need to go back and demand more at once ("Only 20 for 7 days? Seriously?"), let me ask you this: Did you read any stories about that largely discredited "cosmetic gynecologist" (puke) who claims to have discovered the G-spot in the corpse of an 83 year old Polish woman? On one hand, I was happy that he described the spot as "grape-like" instead the usual "shaped like a bean" description since, as you recall, the bean is the least sexy of the legumes. (see also: How to Have a G-Spot Orgasm).

But on the other hand, I couldn't help but wonder if that Polish woman was having that out-of-body death experience where her soul floats over her body. As she headed peacefully to the light, did she take one last glimpse back upon her earthly self and see this, this...guy, what? What the...? Was he sticking his fingers up her wang?!** What, after all these years? Now? NOW, someone looks for her g-spot? And a handsome(ish) doctor, no less? "No, no, not ready yet! There is more I must do!" she yells wordlessly, as she glides, no longer so peacefully, toward the warm, glowing light.

** Actually it was a billion times less sexy than this. According the Miami Herald, he "peeled back the six layers of the cadaver's vaginal wall and found a sac structure between the fifth and sixth layers that housed grape-like clusters of erectile tissue." "Peeled!" Holy crap!

(photo: Anonyme - Nu aux bras levés, ca. 1930)

Guest Post: A Jerk-Off Description in the Second Person

2012-03-30T12:21:00.001-07:00

This is from Girly Jona, a blog by Jona Hildur Siguroar, an Icelander living in India who is all about "unconventional girl power" (and whose charming pixie quirkiness is doing shamefully little to dispel my now rather entrenched racist stereotype of what all Icelandic women are like.)

I chose this because I like how it shows that, even if your sexual partner is your own hand, you can, as Jona puts it, "either do it quick and dirty — the equivalent of a drunken downtown one-night stand — or you can treat your body to the full romance of a 3rd date."

Here now, please welcome the lovely Jona with A jerk-off description in the second person:

It’s not a matter of jerking off or not; the question is how you plan to do it.

You can either do it quick and dirty — the equivalent of a drunken downtown one-night stand — or you can treat your body to the full romance of a 3^rd date.

Because you are both indecisive and an almighty force in your own existence, you create two separate timelines. For the first one, you take your pants off and throw them in the general direction of the laundry hamper. Your panties follow, but because you’re clever enough to make use of the elastic, they slingshot right in.

Next, you unenthusiastically get your laptop and type in something easily accessible. No need to get creative in this timeline, that’s not the name of this game. Something categorized and well-tagged like xnxx.com will do. You’re frustrated so you go for the rough stuff. Cattle prod tag.

You click through a few videos, but eventually you get a notification from your body: it wants to commit.

You know this because the boobs and cocks in this video, although very much like the boobs and cocks in the previous videos, grab your attention.

The video that’s on the screen features a gang-bang. A slave training. And there is a cattle prod. There is also a tied up girl begging for more cock while her dominatrix offers her up to strangers.

You let yourself get wet before you even bother putting your hand to use. You’re sort of halfway stimulated. You’re still missing the second half of that electric combo of wetness and friction. This really is the laziest possible way to jerk off. It’s the equivalent of having your morning coffee while still in bed so you’ll have the energy to get out of it.

But you get there rather quickly, no thanks to yourself, except for the fact that you’re proficient in knowing exactly what you want. You want some fucking cattle prod action; kind of in the same way you want to go to the gym. The thought alone doesn’t move your mountains but the action will. You know yourself pretty well that way.

You let your body lock on to that action. Your mind engages. It starts by narrating to the rhythm of your hand, saying stuff like ‘Fuck yeah! Fuck her in the ass!’, and ‘Yeah, that slut can take another cock!’. The brain-sensors the would usually tell you those are silly things to say are completely tuned out.

You watch the dominatrix closely: she’s better looking than the slave. And she has that whorishly high ponytail you like. She looks like a woman that gets her way. And she looks like a woman that likes to inflict pain.

As soon as your hand reaches that magically-climbing rhythm that latches on to your steadily rising heartbeat, your mind starts doing that pornorama thing it does. You get greedy, so in a matter of seconds you are all of the people.

You’re the slave with cloth-pins on your nipples and your dripping wet pussy, begging your owner for permission to cum. You’re the guy occupying the ass of a sweaty tortured girl that’s tied up and hanging by her hands. You’re the frightfully beautiful owner of a public toy that everybody loves to use. You are the voyeur looking for an opening.

You are the dominatrix again. Your fingers are lodged in that little girls throat while your other hand pulls at her cum-soaked hair. You drag her eyes up to meet yours, pull your hand out of her mouth and reach for the prod. You see her colorful mix of arousal, pain and perpetual horniness as you run the plastic tip of it down her abdomen. You switch it on but at the same time your pornorama switches over to the slave. It does so just in time for the electrocution.

You take a breath, feel the steel tip of the device caressing your clit while in a distant reality, your actual fingers are rubbing your real clit furiously. As that electric spark kicks off, your skin gives under the pressure of your fingers, your imagination and your horniness, and you convulse in a steady rhythm as your body rides the wave of your orgasm. You get a few glorious tidal waves in there before you have to pull your hand away.

As soon as it’s over, the images on the screen turn back into people. You are none of these people. You are not engaged anymore, you don’t care who fucks whom and who gets fucked. It’s amazing how much porno looses its appeal as soon as it’s served its purpose.

You close your laptop and head for the shower, not because you feel dirty, but because you are. You’re sweaty and sticky and after you blow-dry your hair, you should probably run the hairdryer over the wet spot on the bed-sheet.

The other timeline is something else all together.

In the other timeline you take of your clothes and put them away where they should go. You dim or turn off the lights and make all efforts to have as little sensory disturbance as possible.

You get into bed, naked, and just lay there until the fabric surrounding your skin reaches perfect body temperature. You keep your chosen hand on your chest until it’s nice and warm, too. In the meantime you just focus on your breathing. Nothing matters and nothing exists outside of the entity that is you.

You let your tired mind zone out as your fingers make their way down your abdomen. They feel like a trail of butterflies.

When your hand reaches your lady parts, it’s going to feel like a stranger. Not in a bad way, just in a neutral ‘pleased to meet you’ kind of way. But there is no excitement going on, no expectations and no tension. Nothing more than a flaccid manifestation of your day.

Your mind craves OJ. The thought repeatedly tries to swim past the moats of your mind. It takes discipline to get to the place you want to be: a perfectly calm mind.

Every deep breath gets you closer to that goal. Pretty soon, you manage to see only black. Your body ceases to have a physical form and just melts away. The only remaining points are your mind and your clit.

You let your hand play around for a bit. Whenever you like something, you go with it. You try different variations of that thing, different pressures and angles.

It really is a bit like dating. You ever so cautiously allow yourself to discover the relationship and its hidden potentials. And you’re not in love yet. There is much more to explore first.

Not being in love, here, means a rather dry form of communication. You have to convince your body to send blood to selected places, blood that will enable you to amplify your touch and get your glands going. Get you wet.

But for now you just play around. You don’t think about sex or the cute barista in that coffee shop or sex with that cute barista in that coffee shop. You think of nothing but the feel of your hand and how the sensation connects to your brain.

As you continue playing, your brain will start noticing your efforts. It will send the troops in aid of those efforts. Now, every touch results in a beat on your mind-monitor. Instead of seeing black, you see a fine neon green line forming between your clit and your mind. You tune into it.

Now there is nothing but the line. You can see how you respond to different touches, and when the time comes, different ideas. And rest assured, if you touch yourself for long enough, your brain will feed you the dirty images necessary to get the job done.

But since you did yourself a favor and went with the complex meditational method of jerking off, you now have full control of your fantasies. There is no haste, no characters or themes except for exactly the ones you want. You make your porn.

It’s a story. It comes enclosed with smells and touches, tastes and escalations. Half your mind controls the story while the other half monitors the pleasure that derives from it. You focus on that half. You feel your hand beat in the rhythm of your clit, which beats in the rhythm of your heart.

If something in your improvised storyline spikes your readings, you follow that notion. This is where the cattle prod originated. You follow it blindly and nothing, absolutely nothing, is off limits. It’s is your mind, your imagination and it hurts no one to go to all the lengths possible to raise that neon-green line.

You let your physical outlines disappear; nothing exits except for your mind and your clit, and the touch and the story that make them link. You have no other organs or extremities.

This is the essence of being in control. The only thing you have to do in order to finish is turn up the pressure a tiny bit and put a bit more force into your story. But you’ve been preparing for such a long time now, almost an hour, and you want to collect all the water you can before you let that dam break.

Once you feel that oncoming climax, you focus on it. Since there is nothing but your mind and your clit, the latter feels like an enormous touchpad. You feel all of it, you feel where your skin is wearing down from your touch and you focus on that area. Your fingertips erode the fine barrier that holds back the force of your orgasm until you can’t hold back anymore.

Every last drop of pleasure you’ve collected over the span of the hour breaks loose. Your entire body gives way for the release and all your pent up pleasure pours out in waves of indescribable joy. There is no sense of self or body or sex or sex-organs, only the angelic organs of ecstasy. The darkness in the room gets replaced with your white light.

You take your time finishing. You mend your touch to be able of bring out every last iota of orgasm. Your brain continues to give reports in the form of a neon green line blipping its way across a screen for a while.

In this timeline you don’t become so sensitive that it brings your hand to a grinding halt. These waves don’t toss you up on dry land, they let you lay on the beach so the the last of the water gets to caress your ecstatic figure.

When you come back to reality — to the bed — you just lay there. You feel like you possess the happiness of a million care-bears. Your whole body cheers you on and thanks you kindly. It truly loves you for what you just did.

It’ll reward you with sweet dreams and a stress-free morning. It won’t even bother you with the notifications that you’re wet and sticky.

It loves to be the object of your mental romance. It loves it when you take your time; except for when it just wants to be beaten like a cheap steak. That’s necessary too sometimes!

A Gas-Powered Vibe, a New Fangled Vibe, a Contest and a Rerun

2012-03-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Detwiller Vibrator.
Which is the sexy part again?

In honor of this scary-ass looking gas-powered vibrator (ack!) finding a new home at the Good Vibes' Antique Sex Toy Museum, I'm rerunning the post on Female Hysteria and Creepy Old-Timey Vibrators as well as throwing a new contest in which you can win a new, most decidedly non-gas-powered state-of-the-art vibrator. (instructions to do just that at end of post.)

The Detwiller Vibrator, patented in 1906 by someone who was, in my opinion, overly cavalier about putting loud and unpredictable gas-powered objects near one's own wang, contained instructions that included checking for gas leaks, yet another "deal breaker" for me that until this very second I hadn't even considered.

The Detwiller also came with a big gas tank (leakage! explosions! not the good kind!) as well as...whatever else that stuff is in the picture. All I can tell is that a judge's gavel and possibly a mini-megaphone seem to be involved.

Here again, then, is one of my favorite posts, Female Hysteria and Creepy Old-Timey Vibrators:

LADIES...

Are you exhibiting any of the following symptoms:

--Trouble sleeping?

--Fluid retention?

--Irritability?

--"A tendency to cause trouble"?

Yes, yes, yes and oh yes?

Let's see, according to my medical book, circa 1895, you have a clear-cut case of Female Hysteria. (Men with similar symptoms will need to diagnose themselves with some other old-timey disease. May I suggest "dairy fever" or perhaps "dropsy"?)

In the 19th century, as many as 75% of middle-class women were estimated to suffer from hysteria, but luckily medical science was there to help them. Doctors treated hysteria with "pelvic massage" until the patient reached "hysterical paroxysm." In modern times, we know "pelvic massage" to be "the doctor jerking off his patient" and "hysterical paroxysm" to be "orgasm." The procedure as a whole is now known as "grounds for a lawsuit."

Doctors of the day were happy to provide such a treatment, as it provided a steady stream of paying customers (patients were advised to come in weekly for their treatments). It was all good, except for one thing, doctors found the actual manipulation of their patients genitals to be tedious and tiring. According to the highly entertaining Wikipedia entry on Female Hysteria: "The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve 'hysterical paroxysm.'" (The physicians' widespread befuddlement at mastering these basic lady-pleasing skills puts Marrying a Doctor much lower on the To-Do list.)

The doctors were saved from the arduous task of trying to make these damn women come, already, by the magic device, the vibrator. The first of these "massage and vibratory apparatus" was patented by American physician (USA! USA!) George Taylor and was--and I can scarcely stand to type this--steam-powered. (The resulting billowing smoke making this perhaps the least discreet form of masturbatory tool.) Soon, physicians' offices were outfitted with electric vibrators, allowing doctors to get the job done in a matter of minutes instead of hours, and allowing most of mankind to stay blissfully ignorant about female orgasm until about the 1960s.

By the early 1900s, these miraculous health-giving electric vibrators started showing up in the American women's home. In fact, vibrators were one of the earliest electric home appliances invented, showing up ten years earlier than the vacuum cleaner or iron. Regular old, non-pervy companies like Hamilton Beach and Sears Roebuck were in the lucrative business of selling vibrators to housewives. The photo at left, for example, is from the 1918 Sears Roebuck and Co. catalog. "Very useful and satisfactory for home service," it says, vaguely, hoping you get the idea.

Vibes were openly marketed in catalogs and women's magazines. The ads weren't directly saying, "Put this on your wang" but they did refer to its "wonderfully refreshing" effect. Read one ad: "Can be used by yourself in the privacy of dressing room or boudoir, and furnish every woman with the essence of perpetual youth." The home vibe was a thrifty purchase, too. With doctors charging $2 to jack you off, the $5.95 portable home vibrator would pay for itself after only three uses.

According to this one dude, Mike, who collects antique vibrators, there were also air-powered and hand-cranked vibrators. Here's a photo from Mike's hand-cranked vibrator collection (a collection which I imagine causes some awkward moments on Mike's dates) of the Macaura's Pulsocon Hand Vibrator from the late 1800s. I don't understand the physics of the device, but Mike explains that there is "a plunging motion of the center disk." To me, it looks like a hand-mixer. And, I know it's supposed to be an erotic device, but I see this and think of the twisting motions of a hand mixer, the voluminous bushes of 1800s-era ladies, and well, I can venture a guess as to why we don't all have Macuara's Pulsocon Hand Vibrators stashed in our nightstand drawers.

If you, like Mike and--apparently, me--are fascinated by these old devices, by all means make haste and check out the online Antique Vibrator Museum they put up at Good Vibrations. There is an educational video, plus photos of all sorts of creepy-ass, early electrical vibes. Like, look at this 1902 Hamilton Beach model, the "Type A":

The Hamilton Beach, Type A, 1902

I mean, Good Lord! The giant motor! The thick cloth covering the cord! And is that an oil can in there? The Type A looks loud--roaringly loud, jackhammer loud. But most importantly, electricity back then was scary. I wouldn't even be brave enough to use a toaster from those days, much less put some shorting-out, spark-shooting, scary new-fangled doodad on my nether regions. I don't care how "wonderfully refreshing" it's supposed to be.

As all this new information (scary old vibes! hand cranks! hysterical paroxysm!) rattles around in my mind, I find that I keep going back to the 19th century doctor's office and this strangely sexless sex between doctor and patient. Were either of them aroused by what was going on? Did the females see the doctor breaking out his Hamilton Beach 4000 or whatever and feel a thrill of anticipation, or just the kind of dull disinterest one would experience while watching a mechanic change the car's oil. And I wonder about the women's orgasm. If they were not told it was pleasurable, did they experience it as pleasure, or as just a release, akin to finally getting to pee on a long car trip? And not to be all zen koanish or anything, but is non-erotic sex that is not recognized by either party as sex indeed sex?

(image source: http://wickedknickers.tumblr.com/post/341563049/lacontessa-matisse-at-work) That's really Matisse, not a doctor, btw.

*********************

The Trojan Torsion, note
very welcome absence
of lawn mower-like pull cord.

THE CONTEST: Share Your Favorite Post
THE PRIZE: The Trojan Midnight Collection Torsion Vibrator from my history lovin' corporate overlords at Good Vibrations.
THE VALUE: 89 bucks, sister.
YOUR TASK: Share your favorite In Bed With Married Women post with someone ("share" = tell them, post on Facebook, RT something on Twitter, leave anonymous threatening note at doorstep, etc... "someone" = a human)
YOUR TASK, PART 2: THEN you must fess up to your favorite IBWMW post either as a comment below or via email. I'll pick a winner Thursday, March 29, 2012.
THE OBVIOUS LOOPHOLE: If you don't share your post and just say you do, how the fuck will I ever know? You're right, I won't. But try and be good now.

The product description if you're really still here. (But really after this, go outside and get some fresh air, would you?)
Enjoy intimate sensation with a twist of orgasmic bliss with the Trojan Torsion multi-position Vibrator. Part of Trojan’s signature Midnight collection, this sophisticated vibe features a gentle, curving design coupled with a powerful variable motor with 5 speeds and 3 vibration patterns. The curving, ribbed upper shaft is girthier than many similarly-styled vibes, offering intense internal stimulation, while the twisting handle adjusts to four pleasuring positions. Made with medical-grade silicone, the Torsion vibrator is water-resistant and safe for use during your steamy shower play. An elegant storage pouch is included to keep your vibe safely tucked away between uses. Smooth, sleek and powerful, the Torsion vibe approaches erotic adventures from a whole new angle.

Diagnosis: a case of Femaleness

2012-03-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

I look GOOD. Damn good.

In the past few days, I've hit a perfect storm of media consumption that has spun me into a feminist spiral. So if you're not into wild-eyed ranting, please avert your eyes.

It all started with a friggin' Campfire girl meeting. A high school girl showed a short film she'd made on body image, then in a halting, nervous voice told about her struggles with an eating disorder. By the end, every mother there was in tears. In tears! Because we all had our thing--too fat, too thin, hair too weird, butt too little, butt too big, etc...--that made us so horribly not right.

The next night, finally off of my Hoarders bender, I watched a Netflix doc called "Orgasm Inc." It was about how in the past few years, pharmaceutical companies, along with willing shills in the medical community, have popularized the "disease" of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). (Not to be confused with FTD, which provides human females with unattractive flower arrangements).

"I think there is dissatisfaction and perhaps disinterest among a lot of women, but that doesn't mean they have a disease," said Dr. Sandra Leiblum, professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in "Myth of female impotence 'created'" in the BBC News.

Word.

I'm not arguing that some women don't have sexual problems that could be improved medically, but a lot of the FDS "symptoms" are just the way women are. Yes, women can take a long time to come, yes, women can take awhile to get aroused (note: FTD flowers will not speed arousal time), and, yes, women get pissed at their mates which, yeah, fucking does affect desire.

In this study of FDS among women in Lower Egypt:

Marital disharmony, 'hate' and unfavourable socio-economic circumstances were the most common aggravating factors (28.1%) for sexual dysfunction among the participants, followed by pregnancy-related events.

I'm not a doctor, but as far as I know, there is not a pill for curing "unfavourable socio-economic circumstances" and the like. (Although if there were, I would so fucking take it.)

One middle-aged women in Orgasm, Inc., ("middle-aged" = several years older than me) volunteered to be a guinea pig in some freaky-ass experimental procedure in which electrodes were inserted into her back. Into her back, as in under her skin. Did I mention that this was a totally untested procedure by, for all she knew, a completely iffy doctor?

The implants did nothing for her besides causing her to kick her left leg at random times. (This new trick, while novel and exciting, did not help her sex life.) The creepy invasive procedure did nothing to cure her "problem" which was--oh, dear god--inability to come during intercourse. Not inability to have an orgasm. Not inability to come if someone paid a whit of attention to her clit. No, this woman, raised on the notion that women's sexuality is just like men's--stick in it, pull it out, repeat til orgasm--believed that if she couldn't come from penetration alone, she was "ill."

I so wish she could have read an article like this from RH Reality Check which takes care to state in the very biggest and boldest of fonts:

The majority of women -- according to most studies, at least 70% -- do not and will not reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse or vagina-only stimulation (like "fingering" that's only about vaginal insertion) only.

So yeah, a little testosterone might help you out a bit (I said might--even this isn't certain), but seems to me the best way to alleviate FSD would be to spend a little time on arousal, make sure the female parts that feel pleasure are actually the parts that get stimulated (did I really just have to fucking write that sentence?)...plus a bunch of boring stuff like providing favorable economic conditions for the ladies and whatnot.

What is that? You have more sexual problems, you say? You've suddenly realized that your vag is not completely normal as you'd thought for years and years, but, in fact, hideously ugly and in need of surgical intervention. Don't worry, my ugly little freak, Vaginal Rejuvenation (i.e. plastic surgery for your vag) will fix any and all labia deemed unsightly.

What's sightly and what is not? Well, the highly lucrative ~~Genital Mutilation~~ Vaginal Rejuvenation centers that have popped up in the last few years (Hey....isn't that about the same time you started becoming displeased with your own vag? *shrugs* Weird.) have to find some way to keep the ladies coming in so currently they've determined that "too long" labia are "out." If you go ahead and get them shortened, I sure hope that long labia don't come into vogue because then you'll be bumming, huh?! (See also: The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss).

Check out these before and after ~~Gential Muti~~ Vaginal Rejuvenation photos from one place "helping" women.

Seriously!!!??? Not only did this chick not realize that she had a perfectly fine vag (I think it's a good one, actually, don't you?) but she actually thought it was so heinous that it required surgery--surgery!--to "correct". (Expensive surgery too. When I googled "vaginal rejuvenation" for you, the sponsored link offered a raffle for $1000 off. If they're offering $1000 off, you know that $%$# ain't cheap. Although I have to admit that the concept of a vag. rejuvenation raffle is sort of appealing in its utter wrongness. Coming soon...penile bleaching cake walk.)

Okay.

I would hope that we women would all come to our fucking senses and just...stop it. Realize how totally fine we are and get on with more important things (see above: taking time with and enjoying arousal). At the very least, I can think of about 6 million better ways to spend our time and money than getting friggin' surgery.

However, as it looks now, I think that the only things that's changing is that more men are buying into this crap too with their pec implants, ED drugs, and the like.

My big wish is that one day someone will be lying on an operating table, legs open wide as they watch a surgeon walking toward them eyeing their groin and wielding some sharp pointy thing and the patient ("patient" = "regular person misled by fucked up societal norms") will think, "What the fucking hell am I doing?!?"

And, O, they shall Rise Up and Spread their Enlightenment among the people, who shall toss aside their sense of shame and unworthiness, and be free to rush forth into the forest where they shall fuck freely and joyfully under the dense green canopy of the trees. (Note: future scenario includes ecological renewal, elimination of STDs, and men and women with true knowledge of each other's sexualities. Void where prohibited by law.)

xoxo
jill

P.S. Meanwhile, just yesterday, I paid $45 for a tube of cream that promises to even out skin tone. One of the ingredients "might cause mercury poisoning."

Fuck.

(photo source)

The Fuckiest Contest Around

2012-03-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

We learned a new word over at the IBWMW Facebook page yesterday: "fuckiest."

It was given to us by a Misguided Googler®* searching for "fuckiest woman." "'Fuckiest' is instantly my new favorite superlative adjective," commented Suzanne.

Agreed! Though I'm not sure about usage. If someone says, "That was the fuckiest thing you ever did," is that, like, good? Bad?

"Absolutely," wrote Brad, sagely.

And that's what makes fuckiest so great. It doesn't actually mean anything, but, damn, you sure sound like you feel quite strongly about...whatever it is. Fuckiest takes its meaning from its context. Like a word version of tofu, but a really kick-ass tofu.

Which brings us to today's contest. Your challenge:

Use the word "fuckiest" in a sentence.

The prize is the lovely Midnight Desire Pleasure Wand Vibrator (shown in the photo) from our benevolent corporate overlords at Good Vibrations. (You can also just buy it yourself if you're not a gamblin' type.)

Here are the technical specs, if you're picky about what you stick up your wang.

Get ready to conjure up sensational sensuality with the Midnight Desire Pleasure Wand Vibrator. This bewitching blue beauty is a mini-sized wand style vibrator that packs a powerful pleasure punch. The flexible head bends in every direction to facilitate proper positioning while the powerful Japanese-made motor cycles this vibe through three levels of intensity and three vibration patterns. Similar to the popular Mystic Mini vibe, the Midnight Desire is battery-powered, splash proof and suited to shallow submersion in up to approximately 3 feet of water, making it a charming travel companion. A pretty pouch is included for storage at home or on the go. For an absolutely enchanting erotic experience, the Midnight Desire will have you spellbound.
Midnight Desire Pleasure Wand Vibrator
Silicone and ABS
6” x 1 ¼” diameter (15.24 cm x 3.17 cm diameter)
Uses two AAA batteries, not included
Volume: 3, Intensity: 4

So yes, not only is it a $49 value, but you can also submerge it under 3 feet of water, if you're subjected to flooding conditions while aroused.

Drawing is Saturday, March 17. Fuckiest sentence wins. Whatever that means.

xoxox
jill

*My other fave Misguided Googler® of yesterday: "You should fuck the robot." Which, I just decided, is going to be the chorus of the first death metal song I write. It'll be blah, blah, verse expressing sentiments of angst and whatnot... then I'll yell hoarsely, "You should FUCK THE ROBOT!"

True Wife's Tale #8: Dusky, "I have had one great love and one great lover, and they are not the same man."

2012-03-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

I chose this to illustrate the concept of having two balls in
the air. However, not quite sure why model has made a
couch fort of those (exceptionally stylish!) throw pillows.

True Wife's Tales are an occasional feature of In Bed With Married Women. ("Occasional," as Webster defines it, "whenever I am too fucking lazy to write a new post and/or someone happens to send one in.")

The idea behind them is that when someone (originally it was just wives, but really, it can be anyone) tells the truth about their sex life (or lack thereof), we all Learn and Grow, and can thus scamper unfettered out into the world to have freer, better--I don't know--somehow truer sex.

At the very least, TWTs allow you to indulge in the lower pleasures of Voyeurism and/or Judging.* So enjoy.

xoxo
jill

*Judge all you want, but keep that $%$# to yourself, please. These are real people being brave and 'fessing up.

Dusky, early 30s.

   Jill, thank you for your blog, it is a great read… and also a great comfort to read different experiences of love & sex.
   I feel I live with a secret pain... I get a pang of hurt every time it is suggested that great sex & great love go hand in hand. I feel surrounded by the idea that naturally the greatest sex of your life will be with the love of your life. The implication being that sex is a litmus test of the true inner feelings of two people, that if you really loved one another, the sex would be spectacular.
   I have had one great love and one great lover, and they are not the same man.
   My husband and I had a very romantic story, falling head-over-heels in love almost instantly and moving in together in less than two weeks. We stayed up all night talking, talking, talking… and by day we spent hours on end just sitting, gazing at one another and sighing. In between the talking and the gazing, we did manage some sex too. I don't remember if it was great sex then, it was just part of celebrating our enraptured love, taking our physical closeness and affection to the extreme.
   Since the 'in love' phase of our relationship has faded, we are still a ludicrously happy couple. We are best friends, and true partners. I never thought I would want to live with someone full-time, but having found the right person to live with my life is a constant joy, full of love, affection, fun & laughter. Friends and family consider us soul-mates, strangers can see how compatible we are. And everyone assumes our public physical affection is a sign of the great sex we must be having at home.
   The reality is sex has always been the less satisfying aspect of our relationship, particularly for me. After 5 years of trying to train my well-meaning husband to please me, I have pretty much given up. We have agreed to an open marriage as I feel it is the only chance to get the satisfaction I crave. We continue to have fun, loving sex within our marriage, but now I can look outside for the intense, smouldering, sensual passion that I have missed.
   I have reignited communication with a man from my past. We never lost contact, but until recently we only shared rare & friendly messages. Now we are all the way back to regular, completely sexual communication: describing in detail what we want to do to one another, even sharing porographic photographs of ourselves. For now it is a little thrill, in the hope that we will make it a reality someday (we live in different countries). I am sure he is not the only man who can satisfy me physically, but he happens to be the one I have experienced who can. The sex with this man was well beyond any other sex I have had. I've always enjoyed sex, I tend to be quite uninhibited, but this man knew how to really blow my mind. Sometimes I am overcome with vivid memories of that sex and I just ache to experience it again. For some reason we felt an instant physical attraction to one another, and somehow that translated to an intense physical chemistry and sexual compatibility.
   I believe I have two mates in this life, one that meets all my mental & emotional needs, another who meets my physical needs. And generally, my little arrangment which allows me both makes me very happy. But sometimes I am very sad that they are not the same person, that the man I love can't really experience this sensual side of me. It is hard to have sex conversations (and I do love sex conversations!) with anyone other than people I know VERY well. People probably think I'm being prudish when I fail to join in their talk of sexy times with their partners, when I am just hiding the truth that the spectacular sex I would like to be talking about was with someone else entirely.
   An old friend told me a story years ago, before I met my husband. She said a friend had a most wonderful partner, they all adored him and thought she was the luckiest girl on earth to have snagged such a kind, beautiful person. They couldn't understand why she wasn't sure about the relationship. Then one day she confided in them - he was bad in bed. My friend said they reacted as though she'd said he had cancer - they just felt so sorry for her.
   Well my husband isn't entirely useless in bed, but I know how that woman felt. When you're with a wonderful man who is bad in bed, everyone else sees this perfect relationship on the outside, and don't how much it hurts to hide the frustration you feel on the inside.

Would you like to tell your own story? Just sit down at the computer, rip your heart out, and jot the results down in an email.

(photo source)

Reader Mail Tuesday: Canned Vagina Haiku, Bestiality, and Girdles for Sex

2012-03-06T11:42:00.001-08:00

Woman demonstrating early belly-hiding technique

Even if I didn't make tens of dollars a year on this blog, I might still do it because of the mail. Oh, child, the mail!

Like this from Matt, who I suspect is from a Foreign Land because he signed off with a "cheerio." ("Cheerio," is, what? Japanese?) Matt, who we've just determined is probably Japanese, was inspired by the posts on bad erotic haiku, and wrote:

Damn! I'm too late to the party. again. Well, I'll send the haikus that came to mind, using the funniest things I've read on your site:

rubber mangina

in his face. his erotic

asphyxiation

alone with redtube

out comes the canned vagina

can he use it twice?

Like all truly good poetry, Matt's haiku made me Think and Feel. I felt sort of like I might yak. Because I had never pondered the reusability, or lack thereof, of canned vagina. Do you just sorta rinse it out when done? Do you wait until it's full of splooge, then toss it? Neither of those options sound too great, but just tossing it after one use seems like a waste of Perfectly Good canned vagina.

Other non-productive thought spirals: Is canned vagina a third incarnation in the science of Vagina Preservation? Maybe early prototypes--frozen and freeze-dried vagina--seemed good in the laboratory stage, but didn't work "out in the field."

I do, however, suspect that they found an after-market for the unusable freeze-dried vaginas. My mother buys these supposed "dried peaches" at Trader Joes which have an odd aroma and, well, here, have a look at them.

Exactly. I think we're all know what's going on here. (One purveyor of these "peaches," perhaps trying to "cover their tracks" has this ~~secret clue~~ helpful fact on their web site: Both members of the rose family, peaches and roses have in common an intense scent that can evoke strong response. "Intense scent," "evoke strong response" = code for "yes, these are totally dried vaginas, bro.")

I could talk about vaginas, canned, dried and otherwise all day, but let's move on to this haiku by Cagey-C (His third! The dude's on fire!)

Wakened orally;

vivid pleasure. Why so ab-

rasive? No! Bad dog!

I am ashamed to admit that I too considered a haiku with a bestiality theme. The last line was "Fido gives good head," which, though containing a haiku-appropriate five syllables, seemed in poor taste, even for me.

And lastly, after the post on women and The Man tellin' them what they should look like, JT alerted me to the existence of shapewear for the bedroom.

Says the web site:

Traditional Shapewear is great to look good in your clothes, but what happens when you have to take it off for intimacy? The tummy you took such care to hide is now hanging out for your partner to see.

That's right. I don't mean to scare anyone, but what would happen if your partner accidentally saw your body during "intimacy"??? (Assuming, of course, that you still had a partner after referring to sex as "intimacy.") Everyone knows the amount of men (or women) who bolt away during foreplay after a woman shows her stomach is well....that number is ZERO. If someone's already in bed with you, sister, they're staying there.

Now. Believe me, I hate my stomach as much as any woman raised in present day America, probably even more. But fuck, now we're supposed to wear girdles during sex?

Yes, no one will have to look upon the horror that is your stomach, but....girl, you're giving up so much! No one can place sweet, soft kisses up the side of your belly. No one can lick their way down between your legs or up to your breasts. That's right, not your breasts either. Because the woman in the picture is also wearing a clearly padded, push-up bra. Which presumably, offers protection from her (not nearly as judgmental as she's imagining) partner seeing or touching her shamefully imperfect boobs.

I looked on the site's FAQ under "Am I saying you should feel self-conscious about your tummy?" I got "Page not found." Maybe because there's no possible honest answer besides, "Yes, you should--to a paralyzing degree!"

And the worst part about it? They're selling it as "A New Revolution for Women."

Bah.

(photo source)

True (Almost Ex-) Wife's Tale #7: Midge--"I have let go of my inhibitions"

2012-03-03T12:46:00.002-08:00

"Have you ever done stories about women who are NOT married, but were married and have been enjoying their sex life so much more immensely since no longer being married?" wrote Midge*.

No, but let's do it! Here, I'll get the old True Wife's Tales stuff out of the blog's attic. True Wife's Tales, if you're new around here, were the whole impetus for this blog. It was gonna be all earnest, Studs Terkel-like Real Women telling their Real Stories about their sex lives so that we could all get some fucking honesty happening. (Hence, also, the name of the blog.)

But then I learned about the existence of stuff like anal ring toss, and, well, my attention was diverted from these loftier goals.

Here Midge--who was kind enough to write down her story (and a fine job she did!)-- tells of her metamorphosis from prudish young girl to woman fully open to her sexuality. "I know what gets me excited now," she writes. "I know what makes me cum now. I have let go of my inhibitions that I had through the years and embrace my sexuality and desires."

Right on, girl! Er, woman.

(By "Midge" 40ish, in the process of ending an 18 year marriage.)

I got married when I was 24, and I was definitely not a virgin.

My first sexual experience was utterly awful. I was 16, I did it because the rest of my friends were doing it, and I had "heard" that doing it while on your period made it less painful. Well, that certainly wasn't the case, as there was blood EVERYWHERE, it hurt and I'm actually surprised that the guy I had sex with had sex again, there was so much.

When I met the person was to become my husband, and we had sex, I thought it was the most amazing thing I had had. I was 22 then. He definitely turned me on. His dick was VERY well sized, and fit so well inside me.

After a bit of a turmoil here and there (and at 22, 23, EVERYTHING is still turmoil), we got married when I was 24 and he was 22. We were married almost 18 years.

Because, having no other sexual partners and being only with him, I knew no different. And even with the partners I had before marrying him, I had never had an orgasm. There was one time later on in our marriage when I truly remember having an orgasm while we were having sex. I cried. I literally cried because I couldn't believe I had finally had one and how good it felt.

The time I was with him, I will have to say that I can recall a few times where the sex WAS really good. At least really good for the time when I knew no different. There was one time we stayed at a lodge after a Christmas party and I was so turned on I kept climbing on top of him all night long. I couldn't get enough. And there was a time in Vegas, when it was the same. While the sex wasn't bad, it was only what I can describe was nondescript. It was there. It was what you did. The basic motions. Missionary. Me on top, a "spooning" type, one time. Positions, that although they were a little different, did not change the way he felt inside me.

Now, just writing that, I realized that the best times were when we were NOT at home. Having kids definitely changed a lot, mostly for me, and I will take that blame. Taking care of kids all day, working part time, taking care of the house, it put a strain on our sex life. I didn't have the desire most of the time.

Also, my ex traveled for work and would be gone for months at a time. Back then, I guess, also, you would say I was a prude, because I was the of the mindset, "It's either the real thing, or nothing", meaning no toys. Boy was I WRONG! Back then I literally put sex out of my mindset because I knew I wasn't getting it, so no reason to think about it.

We had sex for the last time, six months before I asked him to move out. Now, if you ask him, he will say that the lack of sex was a determining factor in the demise of our marriage. Maybe he's right in a way. I had no desire to have sex with him anymore. Not because my desires had decreased but because of other factors of lack of trust, deceit, etc.

But it was during these last six months, however, that I did start to find my sexual libido. I had always read "soft porn" "romance" novels, and I found that when reading those, my pussy got warm and wet. And so one of those times, when I was home alone, I went into the dresser drawer and grabbed an electric massager that we had (he used it on me a couple of times, but I felt silly at the time and could not relax enough to enjoy it). It had a little nub on it as well. I decided to experiment. I plugged it in and put it between my legs, right on my clit. The orgasm was so amazing and I came so hard. From that moment on I was hooked. There was no turning back. I may have not been having sex with my husband anymore, but I found something else that gave me extreme pleasure.

Oral sex was also not a big factor in our sex life. Oh, he loved getting blow jobs, but I didn't like giving them. And he tried to please me orally, but he did NOT know how to do it and frankly I felt like a lollipop. A friend of mine gave me a book to have him look at it, but by that time, the end was near and we never used it.

The day after he moved out, I went to go look for the massager and lo and behold, he took it! Crap! (and I'm not even sure he even knew I used it). So that led to my first vibrator purchase. I bought a little bullet to put on my clitoris and while it was okay, it just did not do the job like that plug in one did (and seriously, how can you compare something that only requires a little battery to operate versus electric power). Then I bought a blue vibrating dildo that required a little more power, but still nothing was as good as electric. (I was using my fingers still and knew how to make myelf orgasm, on my clit) So I went back to the toy store and found an electric one. I would have LOVED to have gotten the Hitachi one, but money was getting tight and I had to watch my pennies.

My libido was just getting higher and higher. I started watching porn as well, and let me tell you how much of a prude I was, I never used to watch it.

I read up on orgasms. I learned different things that I could do, to please myself. I found my g-spot.

Then came my first post-husband sexual experience. It was with a guy I had met on MySpace (yes, they say be careful, but damn this guy was HOT. He was tattooed, cut like no one else and 16 years younger than me). It was in the back of his car (another first for me, as I had "vowed" in the past to never do it in a car) It was a one-time hook-up, and it was one that made me realize that I did NOT want younger guys like that. I wanted ones closer to my age. Someone who knew what they were doing in bed and had the longevity.

My next sexual encounter was a pivotal turning point in my sexual life. We had met at a bar and had mutual friends. I had not planned on having sex with him as soon as I did. But my sex drive had been in overdrive for a while and I was ripe for the taking. Now, while we women will state that size doesn't matter, it kind of does, but in this man's case, size had absolutely nothing to do it with. Because he was SMALL. And by small, I mean by when he was fully hard, I could have his entire cock in my mouth and NOT gag. But he knew what to do. He knew how to position me so he could hit my g-spot and make me cum. And I came. Over and over and over. From missionary position, to holding my legs up in the air, to from behind doggy style. And doggy style was a position that I never used to like, but with him, I loved it. He made me explode.

And he loved to go down on me, to lick and tease my clit, to suck on it and make me orgasm to the highest heights. There was one time when he ate me out so good, I literally just slid off the side of the bed onto the floor in ecstasy because my body was so exhausted from coming so much. He made me scream with pleasure. We tried different things: me being completely bent over in the shower, holding my ankles (I found out I was EXTREMELY limber), he tied me up, he blindfolded me and I found that I liked being submissive like that. He would pull my hair from behind just as I was about ready to cum, he would rake his hands down my back. It turned me on, being bound like that. Even holding my neck in an almost chokehold got me excited. I found that I wanted to be tied up. I wanted to be blindfolded, I wanted him to pull my hair, things I had NEVER, EVER thought I would like or even think of doing. And he even played with my ass. He would stick his finger up my ass and it aroused me. My ass. A taboo for me that I always said was an exit area, "No Entry". Now I own a butt plug as well.

This lasted 3 months. We had an agreement from the very beginning. This was purely sexual. And I think because it was purely sexual and I had COMPLETE trust in him, that allowed me to explore my sexuality and what I truly loved and I was able to relax so much that I could even squirt with him. And by being this way with him, it allowed me to be completely relaxed with MYSELF and do the same and come to those highest orgasms with myself as well.

I am now with another man who can make me orgasm and scream just as much as the previous guy. Sure his "moves" are different, but this man's dick is big, and it's gorgeous and I love sucking his cock for him. I love the pleasure he gets from me making him hard and giving him head. And I'm good at giving head. I always have been good at it, but I never enjoyed doing it. And I think I've come to the conclusion that I know why I never liked it that much, because I never got the reciprocation back of GETTING head, myself, in a way that pleasured me.

I am still learning from our sex, even over a year later. Trying new things. I am at my sexual freedom and enjoying everything about it. I love being bitten. I can almost orgasm with him just doing that. Licking, sucking and biting my nipples are one instant way to get me wet. I also had anal sex with him and I loved it. He knew exactly what to do. He was so gentle and eased himself inside. Recently he used toys and a glass dildo on me. He always remembers that night because he remembers the pool of juices that soaked his sheets from using them on me.

I still masturbate, and often. I love watching porn to turn me on, especially watching two girls. I have never had a sexual experience with another woman, but I wouldn't rule it out either. I have just never found that one woman who turns me on like that in person.

I have a little time in the morning, and so I carve out masturbation time to myself. I can always count on my electric massager to get me a quick clitoris orgasm. When my children are not at home and I have a few hours to msyelf, I will set aside about an hour, and I will combine the massager and glass dildo to bring me to ecstasy heights. I always start off by rubbing my clitoris with my fingers and can come quite easily that way too. I know what gets me excited now. I know what makes me cum now. I have let go of my inhibitions that I had through the years and embrace my sexuality and desires.

And it shows outwardly too. I weigh more than I did in the past, yet I find more men attraced to me now than before. Or maybe they were before and I never noticed it. I have had men, even married men, that I have known for over 20 years approach me, telling me how much they desire me. How much they want to fuck me. Describing in detail what they want to do to me. I can see the way some men look at me now. I know the look. I know what they want.

I went from a girl/young woman who thought she wasn't a prude, to finding out that her prior self was one and has now let go of her inhibitions to enjoy sex and all it has to offer. It's something that I won't let disappear from my life now.

*If you'd like to share your own true tale, please drop me an email. (Bonus: you get to pick your own cool pseudonym!)

I toss a cock ring into the crowd. Please no trampling.

2012-02-27T15:01:00.000-08:00

So, I can't seem to locate the winner of the Bad Erotic Haiku contest. Meaning, the prize--an O-Man vibrating cock ring*--is sitting around, cooling its cock ring heels.

This perturbs me because, not only do I like bestowing sex toys upon you, but I'm also cheap and hate waste. So a free sex toy going to waste? Well, my friends, that is a travesty in all kinds of ways.

No, I say, the cock ring must not have been created for this ignoble end! It must fulfill its Cock Ring Destiny of buzzing pleasantly upon some dude's wang.

"It should go to a good home that will take care of it, maybe a big farm where it has room to run," my dear friend B said.

So, because--unlike our opponents--we are openly and proudly "against" injustice, here is the quickest damn contest you've ever seen.

You can win our heroic cock ring and help it reach its True Purpose by:

1. Having already entered the original Bad Erotic Haiku contest last week. (Entries made via time machine to return to last week not accepted.)
2. Being the first person to comment below.

If you meet these highly stringent criteria, then email me your name and mailing address and fella (or girl, or intelligent computer-using monkey), you've won yourself a cock ring.

*It's waterproof, in case you want to wear it on a rainy day. Or are super super--some might say "excessively"--sweaty.

More Bad Erotic Haiku Than Is Probably Healthy

2012-02-26T17:33:00.000-08:00

Ask me about my "baller"!

Today is the drawing for the winner of the Bad Erotic Haiku Contest. I am going with a random drawing due to latent socialist tendencies that make me twitchy at the prospect of choosing one person over the other. (Though going with random chance, now that I think about it, is probably even more unfair.)

But there's no time for philosophical deliberations and expensive probability analysis because, fuck it, the winner is...Bill!

Bill, you are the soon-to-be new owner of this lovely O-Man Waterproof Vibrating Cock Ring courtesy of Good Vibrations! Email me your mailing address and that thing will be buzzing away pleasantly on your wiener in a matter of weeks.

Here's Bill's touching haiku:
fiercely thrusting shaft
you have bitten through your tongue
must you always cry?

And in case you didn't see all the entries, I'll run them here because, oh lordy, they were genius. (Note: The fucked up formating and cacophony of fonts is my fault and I'm sorry for the assault on your aesthetic sensibilities. Not sorry enough to take the time to fix it--somewhat less sorry than that, while still being sorry.)

Gia with "Using a cock ring with Boyfriend"
How does it go on?
WHOOPS that looks pretty painful
I'll go get the ice

Cagey-C with
Moans mean satisfied,
right? I am never certain.
Was that the right hole?

Mal with "Give It To Me, Baby - or - Prostate Poetry"
Whispering wine thoughts,
excitement, lube, and hands like
The Truckasaurus.

ohnothankyou with
i have a headache.
a blow job? are you kidding?
go the fuck to sleep.

Betty Fokker with
Lovely is his cock/
with a new vibrating ring/
for my orgasm/

jenerosity with

To go down on you
to savor your creaminess
Ack! Was that a pube?

Sherri with
Hands cuffed, on the floor
Whipped and bruised used like a whore
Shit, where are the keys?

mjs with
Pussy stays open nights/
like a moon on hot wet summer/
tampon string, teeth, braces

This from Twitter:

Buzzing adornment
Gazing at female anus
This must be heaven

Chaffyn with

A wet frog shivers
Secretive lotus stirs
This dream after the storm

Anonymous with
Soft flesh covered steel,
Unleash thy fountains of spunk
Oh, mighty cockstand!

Robin with
Throbbing bobbing cock
Could it be even better?
Yes, now it vibrates!

Darin with
I like to make her cum
She often has multiples
A cock ring? Why not.

Can't Keep Anything to Myself with "A Whole Nude World"
One too many drinks
Finger slips; wrong hole; it's new
It felt kinda good

Midge with
Licking top to bottom/
getting you hard in my mouth/
having fun with you

and finally, the In Bed With Married Women Minister of IT wrote
It had been so long
Your fingers find a way inside me
Curling, moaning, the sound of moisture arousing
Feeling the contractions as the orgasmic flood begins
Shit ... literally

I've Got Your Damn Contest Right Here, Buddy. Write Some Bad Erotic Haiku, Win a Manly, Manly Prize

2012-02-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

All hepped up by the post on Bad Erotica, reader Bill over at the In Bed With Married Women Facebook page had the genius idea for a bad erotica-writing contest. "Oh, yes," I thought, "But the Gentle Readers of Today are busy. How about a bad erotica contest...using haiku?"

Are you in?

The prize is a cock ring, because we're classy like that. Specifically the O-Man Waterproof Vibrating Cock Ring courtesy of my sex toy corporate overlords at Good Vibrations.

Here's a photo of it posing nicely for you, at left:

What the hell does a cock ring do? Well, here, let's have a look at the description.

Take a step up from standard stimulation with the O Man Vibrating Pleasure Ring. This buzzy buddy combines a battery-powered bullet vibe with a textured elastomer ring for superior stimulation, and then brings “the boys” into the action with the “baller” attachment! Just stretch the secondary ring to wear around the testicles to kick the intensity up a notch. And while the O Man makes a super ring for solo play, the additional tickler nodule on the baller makes it the perfect partner pleaser as well. Waterproof and easy to use, the O-Man is exactly the right tool for yours!

To win it, write me some bad erotic haiku and put it as a comment below or email it in. I'll pick a random winner on Saturday. Let me know you're an IBWMW Kindle subscriber and I'll give you two entries because, quite frankly, I like you more than everyone else.

If you don't have a cock of your own, or access to one, or cock is not a part of your life, I guess you are out of luck, unless you have a hard-to-buy-for man in your life. Sorry. I'll make sure to get a lady-pleasin' prize next time.

xoxox
jill

(photo source)

Bad Erotica, that is, Erotica Other People Like

2012-02-21T12:48:00.000-08:00

As part of my affiliate deal with Good Vibrations, I get to pick from an assortment of free stuff each month which I can offer to you as a prize or keep for myself*. (My motto: if you're going to sell out to a corporate overlord, do it for a sex-positive, girl-power one that showers you and your loved ones with free sex toys.)

Usually I pass the free sex toy love on to one of y'all, but a couple months ago, Good Vibes was offering a book called Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women. Oh yes, I decided selfishly--giving not a whit of thought to you and your needs--this one's for mama.

When it arrived in its discreet brown wrapper, I snuck away to be alone with my new smut and started reading. There was a story about an anonymous encounter on a subway which was kinda good. Something about a lady working at a fruit stand and a TV star who comes and whisks her away, eh... Next. I kept reading and reading, hoping to get to "the good part," as it were, but it started to become apparent that, for me at least, there wasn't gonna be a good part.

By the time I got to a story about retiree sex, I stopped looking to be aroused by the book and started reading as sort of a sociological study. (Yes, I am this nerdy. Reading porn as an intellectual exercise. I would appreciate it if you'd not bring it up again.)

I am not at all against retirees having sex. I'm all for it, I swear! But seriously, listen to this supposed "erotica" in "Moving" by Susan St. Aubin.

We trade medical notes: he sometimes takes Viagra in the afternoon. Mornings he can do without. I tell him about the hormone cream I've started using in my cunt to bring back its raw silk texture.

What. The. Fuck???

My point here is not that it is unsexy**, but that yes, though it is unsexy to me, it's completely fucking off-the-charts sexy to someone else. For all I know, writing it was so fucking hot to Susan St. Aubin that she had to slip away several times while writing it to push her hand between her legs to relieve the growing pressure in her hormone cream-covered raw silkiness.

I find it fascinating how different people are turned on by different things. Your particular biological predilection, plus snippets from your experiences--people you knew growing up, a sexy movie scene you saw in 2003, an early lover, an idea you saw in a book--all converge in your brain to form an idea of what is erotic to you.

A friend of mine lent me a book called The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Vol. 5. I turned to something called "I Want to Watch you Do It" because I liked the title. In it, the girl makes the guy jack off in front of her while she watches, then he takes charge and bosses her around. She, overcome with lust, can do nothing but obey his sexual commands. "Just do what I ask and don't say a word until you come at least twice. Nod your head if you agree," demands the guy, as her puts her through a series of moves. Oh, darling, I loved that #$##! But that's because it happens to fire up whatever particular erotica neurons I have set up in my brain. You, by contrast, might be left completely cold. Perhaps you need a vampire involved, or a fetching Scotsman, or a fierce dominatrix wearing a specific brand of blue boots.

I can imagine that Mammoth contributor Joshua Hoobler would be among those unaroused by my beloved story of sexual instructions. His story, "Not at Risk," lavishly shares the details of some dude giving himself enemas (5 of them!) and having sex with a series of three dildos. (Each oh so very very special.)

On Sunday morning I wake up early, have my regular bowel movement, wipe thoroughly, take the enema bag out from the bathroom cabinet, fill it with warm water, hang it on the towel rack, grab the Astroglide, slip on some latex gloves, lube up my asshole and commence upon a series of two quart enemas...It takes me at least three and sometimes up to five to get to where the toilet water is as clear when I'm done as it is when I sat down.

Again, the point is not that this is unsexy***, but that this guy and I have a vast chasm--oh so very, very vast--between what we each consider sexy. When he was describing the particular quality of his friggin' poo, I not only wasn't turned on, I was whatever the complete opposite of turned on is. In truth, I really kind of wanted to retch.

However, if me retching turns you on, I would direct you to Puke Planet, a site for those with a vomiting fetish.

Which, I think, kind of makes my point...

xoxox
jill

*I also get a 20% commission on anything you order from Good Vibes through In Bed With Married Women. Might I suggest that We-Vibe 2 couples vibrator thing at the top of this page? The woman wears it during penetration, while it hums along outside and inside at the same time. Haven't tried it but, damn, sure sounds good.
**Though, c'mon it totally is!
***But, holy fuck, it is so so so unsexy!!!

How Sex at Dawn is blowing my mind in about 64 different ways

2012-02-14T14:17:00.001-08:00

Human female displaying
mating behavior

I'm reading Sex at Dawn and, as I mentioned one sentence ago, it is completely blowing my mind. Would you like to read it with me? I'm feeling an overwhelming urge to discuss it with smart people! (That would be you.)

If you haven't already read it, here's the basic premise: the assumption that humans came from sexually monogamous ancestors and are thus naturally monogamous creatures is, perhaps, completely wrong.

The book is filled with all kinds of crazy mind-fuckery like:

--maybe humans are inherently non-monogamous creatures, and that by insisting that we are monogamous--we are monogamous, damn it, we are!--we are denying our true sexual natures.

--maybe sexual jealousy isn't as normal as we think, but is instead a social construct.

--maybe the narrative of women bartering sex for security (i.e. woman marrying a high-status, responsible guy who will help her raise the young) is wrong and women actually have sex because, um, they like sex.

--maybe our ancestors weren't hair-grabbin', woman-draggin' brutes, but rather peaceful foragers who shared food, child-rearing and sex.

Sex at Dawn authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha are not saying that we should all rush out and bang the nearest hot mess (well, maybe they are. I'm not quite sure...), but suggest that we should at least examine why we are so fucking desperate to promote and conform to a monogamous ideal that, quite frankly, doesn't seem to be as "natural" as we're all constantly told.

Deep conflicts rage at the heart of modern sexuality. Our cultivated ignorance is devastating. The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species' sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment. And how many of the couples who manage to stay together for the long haul have done so by resigned themselves to sacrificing their eroticism on the altar of three of life's irreplaceable joys: family stability, companionship, and emotional, if not sexual, intimacy? Are those who innocently aspire to these joys cursed by nature to preside over the slow strangulation of their partner's libido?

"Slow strangulation of their partner's libido"--Hey, happy Valentine's Day everyone!

But it's not all depressing, in fact, it's fascinating. Here's a wee sampling of stuff in Sex at Dawn that made my head explode:

--In some South American societies, there is the concept of shared paternity. A baby is created, not from one sperm/one egg, but from an accumulation of sperm. A woman mates with a variety of partners to give her child, say, the sense of humor of one daddy, the good looks of another, the character of another and so on. Different sperm continue to influence a baby's development until the actual birth. So having sex with more partners during pregnancy is not counted as general sluttiness, but just good parenting. "Far from being blinded by jealousy as the standard narrative predicts," write Ryan and Jetha, "Men in these societies find themselves bound to one another by shared paternity for the children they've fathered together."

--The Mosuo, a matrilineal, agricultural society in China, keeps sexual relations separate from family relations. Starting at age 13 or 14, a Mosuo girl gets her own babahuago (flower room) with a private door leading to the street. At night, she can have as many different lovers as she'd like and there is no expectation (or really a place for) commitment. Guests have to leave before sunrise and people are discreet about their lovers. Any resulting children are raised in her mother's house with the help of her brothers and the rest of the community.

Writes Cynthia Barnes, a travel writer who visited the Mosuo in 2006:

Sassy and confident [a Mosuo girl will] grow up cherished in a circle of male and female relatives...When she joins the dances and invites a boy into her flower room, it will be for love, or lust, or whatever people call it when they are operating on hormones and heavy breathing. She will not need that boy--or any other--to have a home or make a "family." She already knows that she will always have both.

--The female reproductive system decides, on a molecular level, which sperm it wants. Each woman's body can judge different men's sperm quality--that is, sperm quality for her, based on genetic compatibility. She'll help along the sperm she likes with a more inviting cervix, contractions that propel sperm deeper and orgasms that create a sperm-friendlier vaginal pH. Sperm from less desired suitors will get doused with unhospitable acidity, a cervix that filters them out, and contractions that send them back where they came from.

--Women have erotic flexibility throughout their lives. But once men imprint on what turns them on, it tends to remain the same their whole lives. (Sex at Dawn notes the prevalence of men stuck with, and unable to overcome, unworkable and/or inflexible fetishes like pedophilia.) Men, in other words, want to do the same thing over and over but with different people. "Novelty itself is the attraction," write Ryan and Jetha.

--Thrusting of the flared head of the human penis, besides being quite delightful in its own right, creates a vacuum in a female's reproductive tract that can expel previously deposited sperm. It doesn't expel its own sperm because conveniently "upon ejaculation, the head of the penis shrinks in size before any loss of tumescence (stiffness) in the shaft, thus neutralizing the suction," write Ryan and Jetha.

--And this one is for the men: Among primates, your dick is, like, huge. HUGE. About 12-13 centimeters. A gorilla? 3 centimeters, maybe.

Oh, I could go on with this talk of huge dicks, suction-neutralizing heads and whatnot, but I want to hear from you. If you've already read Sex at Dawn, I'm so very curious to hear what your thoughts were. If you haven't read it yet, please consider getting the damn thing and joining me in this virtual book club. Read it, then come back to this post and tell me what you thought.

My brain is spinning with all kinds of freaky thought spirals spurred on by the book. Like what, really, are our true sexual natures? And how are men's different from women's (if they are...)? If we were to try to work more with rather than against our true sexual natures, what would society look like? Do men really want to do the same thing over and over, but with different partners? And why are women so vocal during sex? Why is it that humans have such lengthy sexual sessions? (I mean, I know because it's fun, but why evolutionarily? Chimps, by contrast, do it for 7 seconds.) And finally, was it weird that I was sort of turned on by the lengthy descriptions of "the human penis"?

xoxox
jill

(photo source)

Spatula, I'm taking your ass DOWN

2012-02-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't been hanging around the IBWMW Facebook page, the issue at hand is that IBWMW has almost, just about, so very very close to 500 fans. 498 at last counting. This would be great, were it not for the extremely painful fact that the spatula Facebook page has 553 fans.

Not to say that the Spatula isn't a worthy foe. I mean, check out this engaging prose from its page:

"The term spatula is used to refer to various small implements with a broad, flat, flexible blade used to mix, spread and lift materials including foods, drugs, plaster and paints."

But, fuck, it's a SPATULA.

Since yesterday when I started--as dear reader Jeanne Hospod put it--"bitching" about this situation, IBWMW's FB page has gained 3 fans.

However, spatula, in its cunning way, has gained 2.

It's hard to feel good about one's Important Life Work when one (that would be me) is getting bested by an inanimate object, albeit one with "a broad, flat, flexible blade."

So could you get your heinie (or someone else's heinie) over there today to like the IBWMW page?* Besides the chance to stick it to that damn spatula, you'll get regular updates on Misguided Googlers®, plus the chance to hobnob with random weirdos from all over the globe (before I cruelly delete them and their sexy sexy offers of "fat and meaty kitty tasting").

xoxox
jill

*If you are feeling conflicted because you like both IBWMW and spatulas, you can be like dear reader Andy who handled the dilemma by cleverly liking both pages. Or you can endear yourself even further, like dear reader Larry, by un-liking that stinkin' spatula. That's right. In your FACE, spatula.