quizzical pussy

You know how sometimes ConTuesday has a theme? Well, maybe this one does. If you can guess what it is, then you are probably right!

I used a vibrator for the first time this weekend. (I’m 22, female) I’m sure it’s related to the circumstances (college dorm with thin walls, minimal time due to roommate return, lack of practice/playing around, etc), but really? I wasn’t impressed. Any thoughts/advice?

Experiment! Preferably when you have a bit of privacy. Use it on your clit, use it for penetration (either penetrating yourself with it if it’s an insertable, or poising it against something you’re inserting), tease your labia with it, use it on your nipples, your perineum or ass. Use it while reading dirty stories; use it while watching porn. Use it while fantasizing about Wil Wheaton (maaaaybe). If nothing you try with it thrills you, maybe that’s not the toy for you. Maybe toys in general aren’t for you, in which case it’s a bummer that you wasted your money, but there are thousands of other ways to have fun with a pussy!

I’m going through a sexual crisis. I keep getting crushes on men. I THINK I’M TURNING HETEROSEXUAL.

…One’s straight friends are deeply unsympathetic when one starts freaking out about this.

Noooooooooooo Ladies are so fun do not forsake them!

While I was growing up, I genuinely thought I wasn’t having orgasms when I masturbated. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the end result, but it was around then that I had started reading about sex and orgasms online and based on what everyone was saying, I couldn’t possibly. It felt certainly like the end of things (or at least that round) but it felt way too short. Everyone was talking about 30 second orgasms or extending their orgasms by minutes. I can’t even imagine that! Now that I’m an adult, I know that they _are_ orgasms, and I enjoy them every bit as much (more, really). And everyone I’ve been with doesn’t really have orgasms longer than mine. So how do people come that long! I’ve tried the tricks suggested and it either ruins the moment or does nothing. I think I’ll just stay satisfied but always curious.

Once there was an H.B.O. Real Sex episode where they interviewed a couple about their workshop that taught men to give their female partners hour-long orgasms. It seemed like the process involved the lighting of many candles and meticulous grooming of fingernails. What else involves candles and fingernail clippings? Witchcraft, that’s what.

I’m not monogamous. I’m just temporarily not sleeping with other people.

I suppose I would fall into this category at the moment as well. Huh. Anyone wanna do it? No? Didn’t think so.

Whenever I date someone, we stop being able to talk about anything but sex. Should I stop fucking on the first date maybe, so we develop a firm nonsexual basis? But I don’t WANT to. I don’t want to deny myself pleasure. I just want my boyfriends to be able to talk about something other than how hot I am and how much they want to eat my pussy. Like movies or something! Movies are cool.

Date smarter people, I think. Smarter people with whom you have things in common. I’m guessing that if the conversation can peter out that easily it probably wasn’t a strong point to the relationship in the first place.

I’ve never been able to have healthy romantic sexual relationships. Either I’m terrified of being simply used or terrified that the person I love will tire of using me if I get too complicated.

I think everyone is afraid of this. I, at least, can relate to it. I always think that everyone’s either tired of me, in the process of getting tired of me, or at risk of starting to tire of me if I make one wrong move. So I don’t have any advice, except maybe to date smarter people. Smarter people with whom you have things in common. Smarter people who are smart enough to realize what you’re worth, and don’t need you to be uncomplicated because they aren’t so simple themselves.

Now you! You send me a sex secret!

A couple winters ago I was on a notdate (you know, that social expedition that no one has defined as a date, but it’s pretty clear that at least one of you wouldn’t mind it going in that general direction) with a guy whom, I was certain by the end, I definitely wanted to not date. He wasn’t good-looking (in a general consensus sense), but, though I wasn’t blind to that, it also didn’t particularly bother me. He also seemed to have a lot of mental health issues. It happens. The real problem was, the more we hung out together, the more a striking resemblance developed in his features and expressions to a chick I often, to this day, have trouble standing. There’s no harm in her, and I’m disposed to be civil toward her because she’s married to a friend, but hers isn’t the face I want to see poised on the prow of a guy who wants to do me. It surprised me how deeply and utterly this resemblance bothered me.

Our conversation quality was fair; I usually have no trouble talking at length to anyone who can even pretend to comprehend English, and I think that put him at ease. I felt that we could easily be friends as long as a) he didn’t mind that idea and b) things didn’t get tragically awkward. The face thing that would murder my peace in a paramour I could easily deal with in a platonic way.

After a movie and some wandering while talking, we ended up in my car in the mall parking lot. I was going to drive him to his car since I have V.I.P. cripple parking. Snow drifts rose up where swaths of parking spaces should’ve been, and it was snowing gently, and he kissed me.

And it was awful.

I try to be accommodating, so I went with it, although at the beginning my involvement was no better than half-hearted (and actually a good deal less). There was absolutely no firmness or pressure in his lips or tongue, no apparent rhyme or reason to what those parts were doing, and his breath lingered on the unfortunate side of middling. Every second of horrible making out that ensued made me more and more miserable, and less and less sure of how to stop it without hurting his feelings. Just then, Untrust Us by Crystal Castles started playing, and it struck me all of a sudden what a terrible waste all this was. The veil of falling snow, the dark sky against the white hills, the warmth of my car’s heater in that ocean of cold, and that lovely, delicate song all conspired to create such an amazing atmosphere for those first fragile touches that, when they’re good, are so very, very good. It could’ve been so sweet, so… not awful, such a pretty memory. As it was, not so much. Maybe someday my mind will erase annoying-friend-faced-bad-kisser guy and slot someone more eligible into that recollection.

I still like that song anyway, though.

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Recently one of my Facebook friends posted the following status update: “Smile, it makes people wonder what you’re thinking.” It’s another quote in a long line of hackneyed “folksy wisdom” gems he’s read or heard somewhere, and just had to share. But even as folksy wisdom goes, this advice is really atrocious.

I can think of countless reasons to smile: a friend’s face, the sun on your skin, the elation of running and jumping and climbing trees, remembering that puppies exist, or getting a new sex toy in the mail, just to name a few. But just to get a reaction from people, to seem more intriguing? Booooooooooring. I can get behind smiling out of friendliness, or to put people at ease, but this stupid cliche goes a step too far. It’s “I want people to think of me in a certain way, so I’ll disingenuously alter my behavior.”

This, gentle reader, is why we can’t have nice things.

Cilfton Overmangle texted me out of the blue recently to ask if three days was still the customary amount of time to wait to call a girl after getting her number (I don’t know why I’m the person he asks, but whatever. I’m here to help, I guess…) I wasn’t trying to be glib in the least when I responded that he should simply call her when it was convenient for him to talk and he would care to have a conversation with her. Has anyone not heard of the “three day” rule? And doesn’t it seem contrived and a touch desperate-not-to-seem-desperate when you can tell someone has purposely waited exactly three days to call? I’m not the mayor of dating or anything, but even my commitment-phobic ass couldn’t muster up a speck of contempt for someone calling me on days one, two, or four, especially if a decent conversation arose from it.

It strikes me that conventional wisdom encourages us too much to fake things, to play games with each other for social rewards. The fact that there’s a “rule” of how many days to wait before calling an individual with a pulse and a mother and unique thoughts and experiences betrays such cynacism. And you know if Quizzical Pussy is calling you on your cynicism you’ve gone too far.

That’s my major issue with Pick Up Artistry: it couldn’t be less like art. Art is human, individualistic, all about sharing a unique and fallible perspective. It’s against homogeneous rules; it runs counter to a jaded, cookie-cutter approach to people and the world. Hell, even if an artist is expressing a misanthropic point of view, the act of creation itself is the opposite of cynical.

In fact, the “art” referred to in PUA is more just at odds with being “artless”, in the sense that has positive connotations of sincerity and being unaffected.

Instead of embracing the natural, PUAs (and girls that follow The Rules or whatever the kids are calling it these days, or other con artists) devote themselves to running through life like it’s a role-playing game. And the person you’re trying to date isn’t even the princess you need to save or a member of your party. Your “target” is just another monster to vanquish on your way to your goal. So if you don’t get results with one chick, you just need to beef up your stats, or else you threw the dice wrong and luck just wasn’t on your side. Either way, you’ll encounter lots of HB9s on this level, so you’re cool… you’ll get the next one. How is it a good idea to treat a potential partner like a non-player character? Like ultimately, they don’t matter.

There has to be a better way to deal with rejection than dehumanizing people. Can’t a person not want to fuck you, yet remain fully human? Can’t social interactions be more about discovery and less about achievements? Can’t you just relax and see where and with whom you fit naturally, without trying to force perceptions and opinions you can’t control? Can’t you just smile because you feel like it, call when you want to, and acknowledge that if you’re playing a game, we’re all in it together and probably actually all on the same team?

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