quizzical pussy

The following personal story can be seen as a supplement to my series on rape and consent, although I didn’t set out meaning to write it. I started relating the experience as a brief example in an upcoming entry and it got longer and longer until I realized it was its own piece. To be clear, I’ve never called this incident rape; I’ve never known what to call it. It was a bad experience, though, so if reading it will upset you, read about tentacle dildos here instead!

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Reginald Sleeth and I were having a fight again. We fought a lot: snarling, ugly fights. He’d threaten to kill himself, or to hurt me. I’d bawl until the salt from my tears formed little icicles on my lashes. Sometimes the battles started when I’d raised my eyes too high from the ground in public and looked another man in the face, which always convinced Reginald that I was hell-bent on fucking that visibly-faced man. Sometimes they started when I found out he’d been making promises to other girls behind my back again. Sometimes I didn’t even know what the problem was and the fight just seemed to start without me.

We sat on his futon. I was sobbing, and he was only getting angrier. I just wanted things to be okay; I apologized again and again, not really knowing or feeling why. I said the words “I’m sorry” so many times they stopped sounding like words and became a strange background noise interrupted by the gasps and hiccoughs spewing from my wailing, puffy face. The part of me that I considered my personality had been broken for a while, and whatever was left of me seemed to cry a lot.

His face got crueler and he looked more disgusted with every sorry I said. But I couldn’t stop. It was mechanical now; it was the whirring gears that kept me breathing. Finally, I said the “I’m sorry” that tipped him into a rage. His movement was so abrupt and violent that I assumed he was going to hit me, and I flinched. But he turned away–toward the door–not toward me, so then I thought he was going to leave me all alone in his apartment with no car, no phone, no self. That scared me too. I reached out to stop him from exiting, but I realized I was already being pulled, dragged to the floor by my shirt. He ripped it trying to take it off. He tore my favorite bra too but it clung, wounded, to my body. His grip was too tight on me. The air conditioning was suddenly too cold on my newly bared skin. I shook my head, tried to back up, struggled to regain the safety of the furniture, to get away. I was sure he was going to hurt me. Badly. Maybe he would kill me. He was stronger.

Reginald was on top of me, holding me down with his knees while he undid his belt and opened his pants. He was hard and I was terrified. His anger and his force and my misery transformed even the erection I’d always been happy to see into something frightening. He grabbed my hair and moved me around to my knees, facing him. I cowered as he loomed in front of me, and I couldn’t look at him. I pulled away but he had my hair and I was too afraid of him to really fight. I didn’t say any real, human words because I wouldn’t stop screaming, and then he slammed my head down and rammed his cock into my mouth, and it felt like my face was on fire. I choked on my tears as much as his thrusts. My mewling panic was muffled now, less shrill and more like a ragged, guttural hum. I wonder if the vibrations made it better for him.

It didn’t take him long. When I felt him release into my raw throat it was bitter and nauseating. I wanted a drink of water. I wanted to be sick. But then his fingers jammed into me between my legs, raking against the dry flesh there and now a new pain tore through me. I was afraid to tell him no and I’d run out of screams, but I shook my head again and whispered “please”, mute tears running down my cheeks. And he did stop after a minute, and I curled myself into a ball thankful he hadn’t killed me, all the while just wanting to die.

Why why why why why? It kept buzzing in my brain. It was punishment. I’d finally done something that bad, and I didn’t even know what it was. The amount he must hate me is unfathomable I told myself, like hovering at the edge of a bottomless pit.

Reginald sat on the floor with his back to the wall, looking away from me. His presence nearby was ugly, but no part of me was willing to move. I was still and he was still as I tried to ride the roaring whys in my head. It wasn’t until I heard him crying that I looked and saw that he’d covered his face with his hands. I don’t think there were any tears.

“I’m scared now,” he told me, in a shrill voice that threatened hysteria. “I’m scared because I thought you wanted that and now I’m afraid you didn’t like it.”

Of course I hadn’t liked it! What the fuck? I probably looked at him like he was speaking Icelandic, like he was a Martian teapot or a huge aphid-shaped gumball. Why would anyone want that?

“Remember?” he sputtered. “Remember how you told me you wanted that? I didn’t think I could, but I wanted to try. For you!”

Oh shit. It fell on me, a cold, dead weight. Months ago I had told him that I’d fantasized about “forced” blowjobs. I had wanted it to be like a game, defined sex play done in fun. Not like this. Never like this. How could a misunderstanding be so profound? But it had happened. He’d done it for me. He’d taken my throat while I cried, while I was terrified. And it was my fault because I had literally asked for it.

I unraveled myself from my fetal position on the floor and gestured toward him affectionately. I could not bring myself to touch him yet. I was fighting back nausea and shudders, and tears leaked silently from my eyes. I was so thirsty I couldn’t afford the tears, but they wouldn’t stop. “I’m sorry,” I told Reginald. My voice sounded tired and raspy, but I tried to make it soothing. I knew I had to say this or worse things would happen. “I’m sorry I made you do that, baby. I know it was so hard on you. It’s okay. You never have to do anything like that again.” I hoped like hell he never would. I stared vaguely at his cheap, stained carpet because I couldn’t look over at him and I couldn’t look down at me. I hated us both too much just then, as I kept purring my lies and his breathing quieted. “You were so good, baby. You were only doing what I wanted you to do, and it was very wrong of me to ask. But I’ll never, ever force you to do those things again.”

Sometimes I wonder if we awkward-phasers who were unpopular in the dating department early on all have trouble mustering up “romance” from our misanthropic hearts, or if it’s just me.

As a literary genre, I can get behind romance (in the old school sense; I’m not talking harlequin here): high adventure, quests, Camelot, and fucking up bad guys are all pretty awesome in my book. Or Latin-based languages, those are fine. It’s the other kind of romance that trips me up: flowers, and the thin line between grand gestures and restraining orders, and… flowers? I don’t really even know what else people consider romantic. But that part where you’re supposed to declare your emotional attachment and minimize your sexual lust for someone? Obviously that wouldn’t be my strong suit.

When I was sixteen all my friends seemed to be single on Valentine’s Day for once, and we decided to wear black and purple to school to commemorate the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre. I guess it was something to take everyone’s mind off not having a date to focus instead on historical bloodshed. I wore the purple and black with them but I didn’t feel all giddy and “sticking it to the system” like everyone else seemed to. It never occurred to me that I might be doing something different with my day. This is partly because it had never occurred to anyone else to ask me out on date at that point. A big part of being anti-romance is admittedly sour grapes.

A year later I was in the early stages of semi-dating a cute little Mormon boy (semi-dating because I never get the “we’re more than friends” message until there’s kissing, and he wasn’t allowed to do that because smooches make Joseph Smith cry). He hid a heart pin in my locker, then later that day showed up at my after-school cashier job with a bunch of mylar balloons and a huge, puppy-dog grin. I knew it was a very sweet, “romantic” thing to do, but I was so embarrassed I wanted to die. And then puke. And then die again. I had no basis for understanding how to deal with this type of treatment. As a result, I didn’t really like it. Maybe I wouldn’t have liked it anyway. Maybe it just isn’t me.

Ever since that day, even when I try to make a Valentine’s Day or any other sort of romantic gesture it falls flat, mostly because I don’t understand what I’m supposed to accomplish. I don’t know how to be “romantic”. I’m up for all kinds of boning (to me that is romantic) or giving a “thinking of you” present to try to show the people I care about that I’m happy they’re in my life, but the kind of weird frenzied gestures that people expect each other to make? I can try to ape those sometimes, but it never feels right and I’m pretty sure I always suck at it.

Reginald Sleeth used to leave love poems under my windshield wiper while I was at work or while I slept, and after months of this I finally got the picture that he probably wanted that from me. So I wrote some of the worst poetry in history (although his may have actually been worse than mine, to be honest) and obliged, but it felt silly and forced. It was just another way of keeping the peace with him, really, and in that way it was always calculating and pragmatic, never romantic at all.

Part of me is always going to think that the best Valentine’s Day present is scandalous amounts of sexual intercourse. And all the other parts of me will always admire that part of me for being so infuriatingly clever and sensible.

When I try to talk about marriage I feel like a little girl dipping into her mother’s makeup and clopping around in size eight high heels. I’ve been in relationships with people who had marriage designs, but I’ve never been able to take it seriously. I’m too immature, or something. I haven’t felt those “lifetime commitment” kind of feelings yet. To me, although I’m old enough that most of my peers are getting engaged and married, it’s still something that, well… grown-ups do. Also, husbands have cooties.

There’s one thing I do know: if there was nothing but a tissue-thin shred of common sense keeping me from marrying Reginald Sleeth, a man who hit me, when I was 20 years old, I think my uncle who’s been in a strong and monogamous relationship since I was four should be able to marry his boyfriend if he feels like it. His right supersedes mine if we’re going to start ranking whose rights are more rightier.

But people all over are being stupid and saying that men have to marry only women, and women just men. I’m not entirely positive if they think transgendered people should be allowed to marry anyone, and if so, whom. I suspect there’s about as much disagreement about that as anything else they can’t paint in black and white absolutes.

These people, the ones who are being stupid, may certainly indulge their feelings and freak out about same-sex marriage as much as they like. They can rail against it, publish hateful books and websites, and thunder “Yo butt ain’t made for that!” into the cold, unfeeling sky. Their freedom to speak their minds is just as valuable as mine. However, I refuse to let them legislate against same-sex marriage if I can possibly help it. What’s wrong with hating it while it’s legal? Isn’t freedom just another word for leaving other people alone? It disgusts me that they devote so much time and energy into fucking up nice things (for the sake of argument, let’s just agree that marriage can be one such nice thing) for people who are lucky enough to find “lifetime commitment” love.

I’ve often thought that if I found myself in the position where I wanted to marry a man, I’d feel pretty shitty about enjoying a perk that many of my friends (or even I, if I found myself in the position where I wanted to marry a woman) are currently denied. I’m not saying life is fair, but this is the kind of unfair that really sucks because it’s the kind we could avoid if we could just all stop being asshats. So it’s a quandary: how much would I hypothetically let my distaste for the unfairness intrude on my personal desire to get a free stand mixer?

I came across this October 8, 2009 Savage Love column about hetero marriage. Dan Savage (a sex columnist who is gay, if you’re not familiar) recalled a wedding he’d recently attended, where the heterosexual couple chose the following selection as a reading in their ceremony:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.

It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a ‘civil right.’ Without the right to choose to marry, one is excluded from the full range of human experience.

Source: The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in that state.

Dan goes on to say that it would be wonderful if the passage caught on as a wedding reading. I agree. Sure, hetero couples can boycott, or move their weddings to states that have legalized same-sex marriage in an economic and symbolic gesture of support. But not many do, and maybe it isn’t practical to expect them to let even deeply-held political concerns influence their romantic commitments. That reading, though? I think it’s a perfect and fitting gesture, and I would love to see it become the new 1 Corinthians 13.

Sometimes when I didn’t want to do the things that Clifton Overmangle wanted me to (e.g. meet him for a quick blowjob when I was tired, let him give me hickeys, send him naked photos) he’d pull out the squirting card. “Well,” he’d say, “my intention to bring you pleasure overcomes my preference to not have you pee all over my sheets. You should be more giving and generous, more like me, and do whatever I want.” I can’t remember this rhetoric ever working, but it did make me feel self-conscious, so I guess no one won. Of course my solution that I’d tell him if I felt I was in danger of ejaculating and he could back off was completely missing the point, as he saw it. We should be making sacrifices for each other or something.

Two things:

1. IT’S NOT PEE!
2. This is not a good method of getting a chick to accommodate you in bed; it’s an excellent way of making sure she becomes determined never to ejaculate around you again.

I have a friend who squirted the first time she masturbated. She also freaked out, of course, because what the fuck just happened? When you’re not prepared for it, squirting/gushing/female ejaculation can be a slight shock.

I can safely say I had thousands of orgasms not realizing that there was such a thing in the world as a Skene’s gland. I was visiting my boyfriend Reginald in Los Angeles, and one afternoon he fingered me for what felt like hours, he rode through every orgasm as I bucked and bleated. I was in such a delirium of pleasure I fell off his futon, and he followed me down to the floor, his fingers still pounding and flickering, not missing a beat. He was concentrating mostly on the strange rough patch near the front on my vaginal wall, which I knew was the G-spot, although I didn’t know what was about to happen. I don’t know how long it took, but eventually something sprayed out of me in the middle of a searing climax. And I was absolutely mortified. I hadn’t even felt like I’d had to pee, but I was sure that somehow I’d just wet myself.

Reginald, who’d been researching a thing or two, looked very proud. “Do you know what just happened?” he quizzed me. I shook my head, miserable. My skin felt hot as the blood bloomed red in my cheeks. “You just had your first complete orgasm.”

Reginald was wrong about that. Squirting orgasms are definitely intense, but they’re just another type of orgasm. They’re not any more “real” or “complete” than a clitoral, vaginal, anal, or any other type of orgasm: believe me, I’ve had enough different kinds to know this. People can and do have favorites, but that doesn’t make those favorites any better or more orgasmy than any other type.

I don’t squirt with every orgasm, every time I have sex, or even every time someone stimulates my G-spot and clitoris together, which is normally how it ends up happening, although it can certainly result from attending to one or the other location with especially dogged resolve. Are the best orgasms always like majestic geysers? Not even always.

I think Reginald’s misapprehension about this, and any feminist distrust of squirting you might run into, is due to how damn analogous it is to male ejaculation. Sometimes a woman’s orgasm (not mine, but a woman’s) is a maddeningly subtle thing. A partner– hell, even the woman herself– can be left wondering if she actually got off. Guys are easier: semen comes out. Mystery solved. If women start doing that too, illumination! She definitely just came, and the wet spot just got a whole lot fucking wetter. Enjoy.

It’s messy. It can be inconvenient. It feels awesome. I’m not sure what’s in it for the person not impersonating a fountain. I guess it’s got to be the novelty and the extra emphatic proof of a job well done that accounts for the fact that very few guys have complained about it. Clifton was the exception, and I half think he griped about it only as a bargaining chip, considering that the first time it happened he was gleeful but a bit disappointed I hadn’t warned him so he could catch it in his mouth. Most guys are fascinated by it, and feel pretty cool when they pull it off.

Of course, I’m terrible about warning them. Squirting isn’t something that I expect or plan; it just happens sometimes. Plus, it happens more often during oral/digital sex than the actual penis-in-vagina playtime, so this is probably early in the saga of sexual exploration when “foreplay” takes longer, and I’m not totally comfortable yet talking about what fluids might come out of me. But I seldom account for the enthusiasm people can have for a new toy, and too often I’ve squirted with a new partner before I gave myself a chance to bring it up. This, as you might well imagine, is embarrassing. “It’s not pee…” I usually end up saying apologetically. I swear it isn’t.

I was born into an attractive family. My parents had about a million kids, and in the looks department they mostly range from “pretty cute” to “damn, girl!”. But I’ve always felt like a spectator in this particular sport. Early on, a family friend informed me that I was not the best looking of the litter, and that’s been reinforced in countless ways over the years. I’ve been described as “the smart one”, “the funny one”, and occasionally “the talented one”, which are honestly pretty awesome titles, maybe even preferable to just looking hot. But it still rankles that I was never, even if everyone else was knee-deep in an awkward phase, “the pretty one”.

I’ve always felt like I have to rely on my personality to attract people. I can (hopefully) get you to forget the bump in my nose or my too-round face by being charming and making you laugh. If I can rope you into a real conversation, I may have a chance at intriguing you, winning you over, and then maybe you’ll consider boning me. I do not feel confident that I can do this on looks alone. Without the personality factor, I’d probably still be waiting to go on my first date.

I’m not saying that everyone is going to like me for what’s inside: some people think I’m annoying, don’t find me funny, and wish I would shut up so much. But I have a fairly distinct personality that some people are drawn to, and I think that’s been responsible for whatever social and romantic success I’ve had.

Maybe that’s why I find humor, kindness, and intellect so central to what I find attractive in others. I actually find that these affect my evaluation of physical merits. This sort of thing probably happens to most people: you meet someone who seems sort of so-so at first glance, but as you get to know this person’s mind-blowingly cool personality, he seems to get better looking each time you see him. Or, conversely, your first impression of someone might be “Wow, she’s stunning,” but you learn that she’s hideous inside and it’s not just that you’re turned off by her personality, she actually seems to get uglier right before your eyes.

The latter is what happened with my first boyfriend, Reginald Sleeth. When we started seeing each other I thought he was beautiful. It wasn’t just me. I had a picture of him up in my dorm room at university, and girls would sometimes pass through, stare at it, and gush about how gorgeous he was. But by then he’d already flashed his true nature as controlling, abusive, and venomously angry down to his bones. Those girls could say what they wanted; I didn’t see it anymore. Sometimes I could barely even bring myself to touch him, he’d become so unattractive to me.

A less traumatic example occurred in the elevator at a recent Sci Fi convention I attended. Laramy and I stepped on from the twelfth floor, and we both noticed a chick with great tits and a cute face wearing a corset, flying cleavage like a banner from the back corner of the elevator. We both smiled appreciatively to each other; we generally check out the same women, and it’s wonderfully bonding. But within seconds she opened her mouth and started loudly complaining that no one was complimenting her boobs, and she wasn’t getting enough attention. Her aggressive griping continued through three stops on the way down and all the way to the first floor. By the time Laramy and I had reached the lobby we were completely irritated and turned off. She actually went from fetching to repulsive inside of five minutes.

So while looks matter, they’re not everything. I’d rather have someone interesting, witty, sweet, silly, and funny. Okay, and adorable. And I’ve had the good fortune and excellent taste to get more than my fair share of genuinely pretty people into bed. But sometimes adorable comes later, after all that other good stuff, and that can be pretty awesome too.

I may never come out to my parents as bisexual.

I haven’t identified as bisexual for very long. I didn’t actually have sex with a girl until last year, and although I quietly wanted to–was terrified to–for years before that, I never did, and wasn’t comfortable calling myself bi until I had actually interfaced with a pussy that wasn’t my own. I figured that was what the term “bi-curious” was for. Also, for me, if there was such a term as “bi-terrified”, that would’ve also applied. I was fairly certain that I would never actually be able to get together the courage to eat a girl out. It seemed so daunting and advanced and, although this is counter-intuitive…alien.

Of course, that was roughly the feeling I had about sucking cock before I tried it. In fact, to my teenage mind putting a penis in my mouth seemed like a disgusting, degrading endeavor. When rumors went around my high school about any girl “needing a pair of kneepads” as we put it, I always thought, “Poor thing! Why on Earth did she do that?” Remember, blooms just don’t happen much later than mine did. Obviously, once there was finally a cock rearing in front of me all hard and enticing, it finally clicked and I swallowed it with alacrity and without a speck of doubt. Similarly, when I finally had a pussy waiting under me, pretty and beckoning, I was suddenly way less scared and way more bisexual than I had ever given myself credit for. I only ached to make her feel something amazing. I only felt humbled, elated by the way she bucked and moaned as I tried to be less inept, to faster figure out her spots and secrets.

After that experience, I started to shyly define myself as bi. I sort of looked around the couple times I said it out loud to make sure it was okay, to see if anyone objected or called shenanigans on me. No one batted an eyelash (I don’t think anyone I told was all that surprised), and I didn’t get struck by lightning either.

I’ve never had a relationship with a woman. I’ve had weird pseudo-relationships, definitely. My best friend in high school had a meltdown when she learned I was thinking of going to Homecoming with a guy; my other best friend and I used to share chewing gum the fun way. The girl who became my Sophomore year roommate in college decided to become my friend when she watched me during a courtyard session of our Freshman Comp class, my hair backlit by the afternoon sun, and determined that she thought I was pretty. We read books about sex to each other late into the night, gave casual caresses that crackled with sexual tension, and our fights were practically lovers’ quarrels. I spent a lot of time during my late teens/early twenties thinking I could well be a lesbian (I did have a boyfriend, but I wasn’t physically attracted to him so much as in some kind of occult thrall, and I knew it). I was always sure I could date a chick; that was never the question.

Now that I’m no longer afraid to fuck a chick, there is no question. I could easily have a relationship with a woman. But I’m attracted to guys too, and so I have the bisexual privilege of never having to deal with being in a same-sex relationship if I don’t choose to. This makes it really easy for me to just not mention that I lust for, desire, could love women. It makes it easy to have a boyfriend and play with girls once in a while and never have to ask people to confront any facet of my sexuality that might be uncomfortable. And for my parents, my liking women would be a problem. Probably THE irrevocable problem. Maybe even worse than getting… gasp!… an abortion.

My friend Eloise Chestlegrinn didn’t come out to her family when she identified as bi, but as she became more and more sure that she preferred innies to outies it grew into a big issue. She started feeling that not claiming her sexuality was like lying to her very close (and very religious) family. What had been an acceptable deception as a bisexual woman was suddenly intolerable as a lesbian. And that makes sense: once you eschew men you can’t “pass” anymore. The option of camouflaging as straight has disappeared, and you’re no longer hiding what may be one aspect of yourself; you’re now hiding your entire romantic life. The fact that she fell in love with an amazing woman only adds to her yearning to be out. She wants to say “This is who I am and this is who I love!” fearlessly from the rooftops. Of course, she also feels like she’s going to need to add “…and please don’t hate me.” because her parents are probably going to shit bricks and then tell her she’s going to hell.

And that’s more or less what my parents would also do. They would be very, very sad and talk a lot about “urges” and “choices” and “lifestyle”. My mother would cry that she won’t be seeing me in heaven. It would honestly suck, and I don’t want to do it. I never want to deal with the mess it would make. And in a way, they’d be right about one thing: it is a choice in my case. I don’t have to fuck girls; I want to fuck girls. I really want to fuck girls, and it bothers me that anyone is pathetic enough to have a negative reaction to that choice, but I went through over two and a half decades not fucking them, and I can obviously choose not to. I just find that choice insipid and limiting, because my attraction to women is not a choice. And if I ever really fall for one, I may very well want to holler something from the rooftops about it and not get lectured about Leviticus 18:22.

Same-sex attraction isn’t a choice. Behavior is a choice. My father has worked with churches his entire adult life (does it surprise anyone that I’m a preacher’s kid?), and has counseled many well-meaning people who were terrified of hell on how to modify their behavior and “resist homosexual urges” by becoming half-hearted heterosexual spouses. You know how that turns out? Fucking badly! When I say behavior is a choice, I’m talking about Eloise’s parents, and potentially, someday, mine. We can’t change the fact that we want to touch boobies and lick clits and make pussies quiver and their owners writhe. And we shouldn’t be the ones to adjust. It’s a lot easier to choose to react to the news that your child’s gay or bisexual with understanding and love than it is for that child to eternally resist her truth. Our parents could modify their judgmental behavior and choose to embrace the parts in the Bible (if Bible-thump they must) that deal with not condemning others, loving everyone, and leaving the tough questions about who and who is not damned for all eternity to the great big Dom in the sky rather than focusing on the couple places that say “OMG fags are evil!” right next to where it says that eating shrimp is an abomination. How about THAT lifestyle choice?

Reginald Sleeth and I sat in his Pontiac, dully admitting our powerlessness against traffic. It wasn’t rush hour; just L.A. The ribbon of cars in front of us was inexorable, unmoving.

The evening before the roads had been open enough that we could flout the speed limit as the good Chief intended. We were young and stupid enough that we played all these risky sex games while driving: let’s see how many times you can get me off between the restaurant and movie theater; how fast can you go without getting us killed while I give you a handjob? I’m not sure if it was that teenage myth of immortality or the teenage reality of barely caring if we died.

That night, Reginald had been at the wheel and somehow me taking my top off came up. I think I said that I wasn’t too scared to, exactly, but I just didn’t really like the idea. I’m naked shy. (Yes, the crowing sex blogger is naked shy and has been for some time. But in all fairness, you’re not reading the intrepid pussy blog, so if you’re disappointed you have only yourself to blame.) I don’t remember if he dared me or commanded, but somehow the conversation didn’t get much farther before I was down to my bra.

It was nearing twilight but not dark yet, and I knew any motorist who cared to look could see a swath of pale skin where all respectable people were keeping their shirts in those days. It wasn’t much worse than wearing a bikini top, of course, and those were practically de rigueur in the California sun, but this was psychologically different. Also, my bra was a very sheer orange mesh, and the nipples underneath it blushed and reared, making a living, lurid, double sunrise diorama on my chest– orange and pink, effulgent to me in its blistering horror. But at least the bra wasn’t off. I still had something to hide behind.

“You’re not really topless,” Reginald observed.

“Errrmphlmsssht,” I groaned. I was as topless as I was comfortable with, but I had already committed halfway. Fuck it, right? I reached around behind my back and unfastened the single hook. I watched the tiny piece of cloth that protected me flutter to the floor mat.

Reginald’s speed slipped from 110 to 96 as his right hand strayed from its regular six o’clock position. Some guys like to roll nipples between their fingers, some like to pull, some like to brush them reverently with the backs of their hands, as if the pads are too common to provide the right type of touch. Oh, and there are others. There are countless others. But Reginald was all of those three, and he somehow managed to do all of them and not kill us. I squirmed, of course. Everything suddenly seemed thick, like how they used to photograph old film stars through gauze. Reginald, the dashboard, the road, all became remote as I felt the searing bliss/pain radiate outward from beneath his hand. I felt my eyes glaze over; I was no longer seeing anything. I often have orgasms just from having my breasts played with, but this one might’ve been just as much from all the eyes I didn’t want to be, and couldn’t even have seen, seeing me.

Nobody had been looking when just my shirt was off, but in between orgasms I thought I noticed drivers noticing my very bare and highly satisfied tits. But we passed them too quickly for me to be sure that it wasn’t just my paranoia, my arousal, my mid-climactic feeling that somehow the entire world was mine.

But now, the day after, we weren’t moving at all, and I wore a short little dress and big fuck-off boots, all very much still on. My bra and all that lurked beneath was safe.

We seldom ran short on conversation. Reginald loved to talk, and I loved to listen to him; I’d been infatuated with him since I was 15, and thought that everything he said was both marvelous and true. I was frequently wrong on both counts, but that’s all part of growing up more than it’s a part of this story. I got to talk too, though. Sometimes he’d ask me questions, although he often phrased them in the imperative.

“Tell me a fantasy,” he said as the car bumped forward briefly, like a sigh.

“I… I’ve always wondered about what it would be like to be with another girl,” I confessed shyly.

Stay tuned to The Pussy Philes to learn of Reginald Sleeth’s reaction to my earliest out-loud admission to same-sex attraction, which couldn’t possibly go wrong in this, an unhealthy relationship between two impossibly immature people. Could it?

When guys learn that I have and use sex toys, they often want to try to involve them in our playtime. Once or twice a guy I’m boning has adorably suggested that I bring “it” over, betraying his naive belief that I have a single vibrator or dildo. This is clearly misunderstanding the scope of my not-immense-but-respectable collection. I tend to ask “which one?” in response, with an innocence that belies pure evil, because it’s fun to watch the sordid truth dawn on them. Sometimes, when I know someone a little better and may have described my menagerie a bit, he’ll have a specific request. Sometimes I’ll be asked to bring whichever is my favorite. Usually, though, in whatever form, there’s interest.

I’m not sure if it’s an insecurity thing where they want to insert themselves into that hemisphere of my sex life, checking it out to see how intimidating it really is, or if they’re genuinely curious. People being the precious snowflakes they are, I’ll go ahead and take the safe bet: some have the former motive, others the latter, and still others have both in various proportions. I’m mind-blowingly intuitive, right?

I relate to the curiosity part. That would be me, all the way. When someone gets a new phone, puppy, blender, car, or pair of nipple clamps, it’s hard for me to resist the urge to want to see, and play, and maybe make smoothies. I guess the other motive makes sense too, though. For instance, I think every guy should have his own masturbator, just on principle. There should be some kind of secular, sexular bar mitzvah: turn thirteen, memorize Closer by Nine Inch Nails, get your first fleshlight, and start practicing ennui: now you are a man, or at least a teenager. But, as much as I want every guy to have a sex toy or fifteen, part of me still hopes it doesn’t make my pussy feel less awesome by comparison.

My first boyfriend, Reginald Sleeth, bought me my first vibrator, which is pretty enlightened considering he didn’t actually seem to like sex (…or at least sex with me. I really never have grasped the depth and breadth of the problem there.) It was a purple insertable, a little thicker than a man’s thumb, with a curve at the top to hit the g-spot. We went to an “adult book store” to pick it out together. I was cowed by all the lurid packaging under the too-bright lights and the smiling woman at the counter trying to help me decide what would feel good, while I squirmed. Maybe Reginald tried to sooth my intimidated deer-in-headlights psyche by suggesting only slimlines and clit vibrators, but it’s also possible there was something else at work. Maybe, considering the fact that he was human (and not anybody’s definition of secure) he also wasn’t comfortable with me having a phallic presence in my life that threatened or even thrashed his penis. Either way, it was a nice gift that I put to very good use.

It’s always interesting to see how a partner uses a toy on me as opposed to, say, how I use a toy on myself. When I masturbate with something that vibrates, I usually apply it with steady pressure directly on or adjacent to my clit (depending on the intensity). It isn’t fancy, but the orgasms come in delicious waves. In my experience, a toy novice will try to tease me with the toy, running it lightly over nipples, clit, and labia, not giving the vibrations much purchase in any one place. I realize that’s more visually interesting for the person wielding the tool: tracing along the curves of the body, watching muscles tense and skin moisten along the path… it probably beats just holding a gadget in place while my clit silently laps up the tremors. But the visually interesting method supplies a psychological and physical tease, but it doesn’t actually feel all that good. There’s little hope of getting me off that way. I’d rather just have hands exploring the skin of my breasts or neck or back: that will turn me on more and has an excellent chance of giving me an orgasm as well.

Personally, I’d prefer to watch a woman get herself off with a toy before I used it on her. It’d be an excellent education in pleasuring her, and I can’t think of a better didactic tool than to get to watch a sexy woman come, preferably while making out with her between the being attentive parts. Or I’d at least ask her how she generally likes pressure, vibration, position. The questions wouldn’t have to be too clinical; when you know the nuances of how a toy can kiss a body (and I’ve certainly made a study of that), a husky “you like that?” can actually take on a wealth of meaning, in context.

But really, I’ve never found toys necessary with a partner. They’re fun to experiment with together, but I don’t miss them when they’re not in play. While battery operated devices are a vital part of my solitary sex life, and if you try to take them away from me I’ll cut you, sometimes a real, warm, aroused person proves the best possible sex toy there is. I mean that, of course, in the least dehumanizing way possible, you pretty snowflake, you.

It was a while ago at this point, so I’m not entirely sure where it all went wrong. The idea was good. I would write erotic fiction for a semi-popular porn website and they would pay me $20 for each short story I cranked out. Not only was this easy money, but it presented an ideal excuse when it came time to actually do my homework. I was always on the lookout for novel ways to avoid homework.

The stories I came up with weren’t the worst to ever infect the genre, but that may be the best I can say for them. Once in a while I’ll linger over the old backup files because I need a good laugh, and will I ever laugh! At the two-dimensional characters fucking through showers of synonyms and tinny dialog (ex: “You geek, there’s no such thing as a superhero. I am, however, a super-human screw, if you care to try it out,” after which the character gives a saucy wink, naturally. Sweet Christ why did no one stop me?) At the more and more absurd scenarios I manufactured as paper-thin pretexts for ineptly written sex scenes. At how altogether silly they seem now. Occasionally, though–out of nowhere, I’ll find a sentence or two that’s almost hot… to me. Usually these sentences tend to somehow invoke the concept of tension.

I was still a virgin: a technical virgin, the most hilarious kind. Believe I knew tension. I’d fooled around with my oddly sex-adverse college boyfriend, but “sex-sex” was an odd taboo between us. Showing too much interest in intercourse was tantamount to spoiling for a fight back then. My inexperience may have thrown the wrenchiest of all the wrenches bogging down my fledgling erotic writing career. Of course virginity really never stopped anyone from writing about sex (I’m looking at you, fanfiction.net), but when a 10-year-old boy first draws two concentric circles and calls it a boob is it really fair to call that erotic art? And he certainly shouldn’t expect anyone to hand him $20 for his trouble. Getting paid to clumsily explore one’s sexuality is, of course, a pretty nice job if you can get it, but the results are bound to be awkward.

When I reread my old erotic fiction it occurs to me that although I knew the rudiments of orgasm, I didn’t really understand how sex works: the logistics, the sensations, the movements and blistering chemistry of bodies really overlapping. I also didn’t, DID NOT, understand attraction. It was all but impossible for me to navigate the murky waters between rawest acquaintance and bareback. All too often that transition was settled with a jaunty “wanna fuck?” proposed by one of the characters, usually the girl because the porn site was (brace yourself) targeted to men, and it seemed to me the kind of thing a guy might like, having a hot-as-only-fiction-allows female offer sex completely unsolicited. Come to think of it, my reasoning there was fair.

If I’m being honest, I still don’t have a handle on attraction, but we’ll revisit that some other time.

It’s odd to me that I never got any complaints from the client. They seemed perfectly happy with my work, although frankly, who reads erotic fiction on a pay site anyway? I could’ve gone on for decades. Maybe I would’ve hit some kind of stride, once I had a little more familiarity with my subject.

Eventually I just lost interest and stopped writing smut. One of the most frustrating things about writing for a glorified Girls Gone Wild porn site with a (for lack of a better term) frat boy demographic was the fact that as much as I didn’t understand my own sexuality I just absolutely,  7,000 times more, didn’t understand theirs. I mean, it’s possible… just barely possible… that that saucy wink I threw in really spoke to them. But if I knew that for a fact, I really couldn’t live with myself.