Forbidden Flowers (43 page)

I sit down in my small space, a little out of breath, being careful not to disturb anything or squash anyone. The earth is still shaking. I see that my Lilliputians are having the orgy of their lives, and a few thousand orgasms – even in miniature –

can create quite an earthquake.

The next night, I request that I be given a longer, larger area, because I think it would be great fun to have more cock-men, some of them rolling about and squirming and climbing over the soft flesh of my gigantic breasts, belly … while others take turns climbing up my great loin-crevice to dip themselves in and out of my soft red bathtub clitoris. This would have to be done while I'm lying down, stretched out to my full seventy-five or eighty feet. Then I can just lie there and feel them pushing themselves up into my cavern until the sensation drives me out of my mind ….

During the week that I was a Giant Sex Goddess, the impresario’s son wrote some of the greatest symphonies of his career. As late as the twenty-third century, people were still going into orgasmic spasms just listening to them …. Then everybody got too jaded for that. Some rather extraordinary genital evolutionary changes had occurred … but then, that's another fantasy.

294

AFTERWORD

I have been able to print only a fraction of the letters I have received since publication of
My
Secret Garden.
As I stated in the opening chapter, the overwhelming note of self-acceptance in these letters, the low level of guilt about sex, places this collection of material a generation ahead of those women who contributed to
Garden.

In a sense, it took more courage for the women who appeared in my first book to talk about their fantasies. That was still a time when it was widely thought, even by therapists, that only “troubled” women had fantasies. The subject had not yet been given mass media okay, it had not been widely discussed on television, in newspapers and magazines.

The women who appear in these pages, above all, had the comfort of having read
My
Secret Garden
before they wrote me. It helped them to look at themselves and their sexuality in a new light; it gave them information on the most intimate ideas and experiences of other women with which to compare themselves: As you have noticed, almost every letter contains the phrase, “Thank God, I'm not the only one.” But women's sexuality is only half the picture. If we believe in liberation, we must accept the logic that women cannot be free if our men are still chained to old, outworn, macho notions. If women are experts at sexual fantasy (as I believe we are), perhaps our outspokenness about it, our honesty about what we really think and feel will encourage men to reassess their sexual lives too.

Half the mail I have received since
Garden
has been from men. Most of them have been fascinated to find there was an aspect of female sexuality that up to now had been hidden or closed to them. I originally wanted to include these letters from men at the back of this volume. I thought it would be informative and exciting for women, but I thought men too would receive reinforcement, finding broader dimensions to their own 295

sexuality. It was this latter idea – plus lack of space – that made me change my mind and go along with the suggestion so many men made in their letters: why not give male sexuality the space it deserved, and do a totally separate book on men's sexual fantasies?

If
Garden
had freed women to roam in wider sexual lati-tudes than they had believed possible or were capable of, it had also suggested to men that they too might be erotically more imaginative than their own literature and culture had so far depicted them. Any person reading
Garden,
or this book, can feel how liberating it is for a woman to know that even her most bizarre tastes and ideas are shared by other women. It is the compelling emotion of both books: “Thank God, I am not alone.” I used to think men shared some mystic mass camara-derie, that simply being a man meant you belonged to “The Club.” I have come to believe that many men, in their sexuality at least, are as hidden and lonely as we women have been.

The fact is, I don't know anything about men's sexual fantasies … except for the glimpse I've been given in the mail to date. The main thing it has taught me is that I have been wrong to assume that male eroticism was the simple stuff on which we were all raised: the films, magazines, advertisements, and so on, that depict men in our culture as compulsive consumers of the Penthouse Bunny, the man who can't get enough tits and ass, who dreams of devouring women like peanuts, and who doesn't feel sexual unless he's aggressive.

At the close of this book, there is an address where men can write me. I hope they will be as frank as the women whose letters we have just read, and will send in their fantasies – during sex, masturbation, and those that pop into the mind at all other times, too – for a forthcoming book. Please use the language which is natural to you, and include as much autobio-graphical detail as possible. What makes a fantasy most interesting and valuable to a researcher is an understanding of the life out of which it grows.

I expect to be surprised by what I receive. It is time that men too were released from the normative bludgeoning of the media that equates cowboys in cigarette ads with masculinity, and a 296

cold heart with virility. If we have been surprised by the variety and extent of women's sexual imagination as seen through their fantasies, why should we not expect to find a new dimension in men's sexuality as well?

And if we do, won't both sexes be all the better for it.

A LAST-MINUTE WORD
FROM

NANCY FRIDAY

In my continuing work on women's sexuality, I would be grateful for readers' help. I would like to hear your sexual fantasy. Please be as detailed as possible about what happens in the fantasy; include as much of your own autobio-graphical history as you can: age, sex, marital status, family upbringing, sexual preference. As always, I guarantee your anonymity. Please write to me: c/o P.O. Box 634, Key West, FL 33040

NANCY FRIDAY

July, 1982

297

• TITLE
  
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
  
• AN INTRODUCTION
  
• Part One - Where Do Sexual Fantasies Come From
  
  • Chapter 1 - Childhood
    
    • Dorothy
      
    • Carla and Tom
      
    • Jennie
      
    • Sarah
      
    • Claudia
      
    • Janice
      
    • Denise
      
    • Frank
      
    • Lana
      
    • Robyn
      
    • Ivy
      
    • Bonnie
      
    • Sophie
      
    • Dr. John Harrison
      
    • Deedee
      
    • Loretta
      
    • Sharon
      
    • Brenda
      
    • Gena
      
    • Joyce
      
  • Chapter 2 - Adolescence
    
    • Sis
      
    • Beth Anne
      
    • Penelope
      
    • Jenny
      
    • Veevee
      
    • Katherine
      
    • Muffie
      
    • Carina
      
    • June
      
    • Tina
      
    • Toby
      
    • Penny
      
    • Cecillia
      
    • Isabel
      
  • Chapter 3 - Looking
    
    • Roxanne
      
    • Sharon
      
    • Molly
      
    • Jackie
      
    • Sally
      
    • Marylou
      
  • Chapter 4 - Frustration
    
    • Laura
      
    • Biba
      
    • Lyle
      
    • Dot
      
    • Gloria
      
    • Callie
      
    • Arlene
      
    • Bunny
      
    • Sherri
      
    • Ginger
      
    • Ricky
      
    • Stella
      
    • Jill
      
• Part 2 - The Uses Of Sexual Fantasy
  
  • Chapter 5 - Daydreaming
    
    • Lulu
      
    • Jackie
      
    • Ethel
      
    • Samantha
      
    • Debbie
      
    • Connie
      
    • Elaine
      
    • Sophie
      
    • Killie
      
    • Libby
      
    • Phyllis
      
    • Marilyn
      
    • Moreen
      
    • Janet
      
    • Lucia
      
    • Lilly
      
    • Wilma Joan
      
  • Chapter 6 - Masturbation
    
    • Emma
      
    • Venice
      
    • Libby
      
    • Dorothy
      
    • Liberated Lady
      
    • Noranna
      
    • Fanny
      
    • Liz
      
    • Anonymous
      
    • Diane
      
    • Cecilia
      
    • Carole
      
    • Gabbie
      
    • Isolde
      
  • Chapter 7 - During Sex
    
    • Lynn
      
    • Jan
      
    • lsabel
      
    • Kate
      
    • Helen
      
    • Riva
      
    • Beth
      
    • �Shoulders�
      
    • Monica
      
    • Delia
      
    • Daisy
      
    • Vi
      
  • Chapter 8 - Dreams Come True
    
    • Carolyn
      
    • May
      
    • Chessie
      
    • Rose Ann
      
    • Nessie
      
    • Kellie
      
    • Lizzy
      
    • Joni
      
• AFTERWORD