Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression (2 page)

damning, rarely daring.

So how does anyone dare? When I do feel at ease about sex, or blunt or curious, then the rewards are so immediate and obvious that it’s a great incentive to do it again. The ease just comes with familiarity. I’ve probably listened to others tell me about their sex lives more than I’ve talked about my own,

and hearing their stories influences my advice more than anything else.

I’ve been guilty myself of trying to fix my friends’ sex problems with surefire remedies before I ever heard them say what they wanted in the first place. I’ve sent my favorite vibrator, festooned with a red bow, to a girlfriend who I thought was in need, only to have her ship it back with a note that said, “Does
nothing
for me.” I’ve shown my favorite porn film to an audience of serious erotica scholars, only to have them critique it as everything from “way too violent” to “an existentialist homage” to “pretty fucking hot except for that fat guy in the double penetration scene.”

Clearly, guidelines for erotic living have to avoid matters of taste. First, we have to resist the urge to pathologize everyone’s sex life. The puritans are suspicious of sex education because it leads to tolerance, and there’s a world of sexual learning in everything from anatomy books to
Leaves of Grass
to
Hot Legs
magazine. I used to be embarrassed that my sex knowledge came more from books than from experience, but by the time my experience caught up with my library, I could say that a great book was on a par with a great fuck, without disrespect to the lessons learned from either.

Tolerance and knowledge are the preconditions for candor. I was asked last year to teach a class about lesbian and gay social issues, substituting for a couple of teachers who had taught the course for years. One of their most effective exercises for their students was to ask them to write a hypothetical coming-out letter to their parents, friends, or work mates. I was struck by this gay phrase, since
coming out
—used in times past only by debutantes—has a much bigger definition now that we know how demanding any sexual identity can be. Gay? Lesbian? That’s not

the half of it! People make fun of organizations with names like “Gay-Bisexual-Lesbian-Transgendered-or-Wondering,” and the “wonder” part is really the most psychologically astute. We are all in a state of wonder about who we are sexually. I want to ask my new students to investigate what “coming out” means, not by the crudest labels, but when sexuality is truly individual.

Take, for example, the student whose mom is a lesbian—a mom who expected her child to be heterosexual and was well prepared for that eventuality. When her daughter says instead that she’s a lesbian, too, but not the kind of dyke her mom was, her mom ex-plodes. Daughter likes S/M, mother spits up her granola. What does
coming out
mean in their family?

Another case from my classrooms: a passionate, feminist man hides his porn collection from his girlfriend, because he thinks it’s a contradiction that neither she nor he can accept in public. Little does he know that his girlfriend, the one he thinks is so righteous, has been having sex for years without a single orgasm, though she has convinced all her lovers otherwise. Now she would like to confide in her boyfriend, but she fears a loss of sexual power if she reveals herself. When are they going to
come out
to each other?

Or how about the gay man in my class who was the center of gay politics on campus, yet confided in his journal that he’d had bisexual fantasies all his life? He might have something to share with the heterosexual man in the same room who reveals that his constant lesbian fantasies are vicarious, not something he’d like to step into as a man.

All these people have an urgent coming-out letter in the making. Mere homosexuality can just get in line with every other erotic stripe. I used to think it was only gay people who were crowding up the closet, but now it’s clear to me that it is the

overgeneralized “heterosexuals” who need to speak up for themselves. You’ve seen the T-shirt: “I’m Straight but Not Narrow.” That’s an open invitation to give up on the labels and try something a little more personal.

“What am I to say?—Everyone is gay,” Kurt Cobain wrote in one of his most-quoted lyrics. His tone of voice—“Can you please get over yourselves?”—caught a feeling that was in the air for many people. Whatever you “are,” you are first of all a sexual person who has a limitless mind. Why keep up the pretense?

We’ve all heard the gay celebrities’ testimonies about how good it feels “not to lie anymore,” how they avoided or overcame a nervous breakdown by coming clean with their sex story. What about everyone else, what are they waiting for? I’d give anything to hear some high-profile heterosexual Hollywood couple go on the record that they choose not to be monogamous, or that they read erotic stories to each other, or that they think biological gender is overrated.

Someday sexual “orientation” is going to bust open, just as notions of “race” have been torn apart in recent years, and it will become clear to everyone that we’ve only made these stupid categories so that some people could fancy themselves superior to others. “Coming out” applies to all of us. This very personal sword of truth slices through the knotted vines that have choked off our erotic develop-ment. The hardest part of it is knowing yourself well enough to make the first cut.

CHAPTER THREE
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BIG ENOUGH

W
hen I was a kid, I would ask older friends—the baby-sitters, the playground divas—to tell me everything they knew about sex. I wanted to know what the four-letter words meant, what the jokes were about, how the rules operated. The big girls informed me that sex was a terribly big deal but that I was too little to understand it. They said I didn’t know how to “do it,” that it was way beyond my body and over my head. Too bad I didn’t know the word
orgasm
at the time, or I could have mentioned that I was having some of them. Maybe that would have cracked their smug exteriors.

By the time I was a young adult, I had the idea that I was “big enough” to do it, but now, because of the combination of wrong genes and lost opportunities, I was unfit for seduction. No one was ever going to want me, I wasn’t beautiful, I wasn’t

powerful, I didn’t have enough
gain.
I still didn’t understand half the dirty jokes.

Finally, someone came along, and I did do it. I remember going to school the next day, euphoric but amazed, like I was wearing a special pair of glasses that could look into every other teenager’s sex history. I peered at everyone trudging toward the bell and whispered, “Why was I ever bamboozled by this? I thought everyone was in the golden circle except me.” But I could see, from the look in their eyes, how practically everyone on campus was as small and lonely as I had been the week before. It was one dirty joke all right. When I recognized the same loneliness in some of the teachers’ eyes as well, I realized that my afterglow bubble wasn’t going to last.

What’s so strange about those “first times,” and other conquests is that they never seem to give you any security for the future. I eventually went back to gnawing on my own paw, an easy prey for jealousy, competition, regrets, and ambivalence. Even when I found one person who wanted me, it offered no solace that this miracle would happen again. I was in that despicable sexual ice cube tray where I thought the only good things that would ever happen to me would be because I got “picked.” And it wasn’t that I was so passive, either. I just wouldn’t cop to the remarkable power I had. I wasn’t convinced that I was big enough, so someone else had to be.

How did I ever get to the point of knowing I was attractive enough, worthy and loving enough? It was from listening to my lovers and friends tell their stories. At first, I admit, it was pretty shallow—I just got the biggest kick out of having my body admired. I had al-ways been noticed for being an egghead, and to have puberty transform me into a sex object was like the typical Marian the Librarian taking the pins out of her hair: I’m a goddess
and
a nerd!

At the same time, I noticed that my lovers’ impressions of me, at their most poignant and appreciative, didn’t come from my being dressed up or at my most self-prepared. If someone adores you when you’re down and out, you start to get the idea that your attraction isn’t based on a clean shave or the perfect lipstick. The most uninhib-ited sex I’ve ever had was not neat and tidy; my orgasm was not a set piece. I know those experiences are not always enough for lovers to feel secure; many keep doubting that anyone wants to be with them, in spite of evidence to the contrary.

In front of me is a current magazine, and in it a famous actress says that not a day goes by when she doesn’t wonder what on earth her boyfriend sees in her, since she’s not a perfect beauty. It makes me cringe to hear women talk like that! All day people tell her that she’s a babe, and every day she receives piles of fan mail from men who’d give anything to be with her. This is in addition to her adoring boyfriend. I don’t think the solution lies in one more person telling her, “No, really, you
are
desirable.” The remedy for people who feel unlovable is to get off their
toilette
and love someone back. Can Miss Movie Star stop scrutinizing her own belly-button defects long enough to consider how she expresses her own love and desire?

I know that the deeper I have felt desire for another and the more I could express it, the less weight I have put on my own worthiness. Loving other people’s flaws has made me a lot less dedicated to my own. At eighteen I may have been in my physical prime, but my erotic life was in its infancy, with its concerns of appearance and worthiness. I was so
surprised
when I fell in love, and surprised at how much I loved to make love, because I had no idea how personal, and chaotic and defiant it could be. Why did I ever think that sexual confidence was something you could

buy or put on, something for the perfect ingenue? Sometimes I feel like taking out a mock advertisement that says:
Improve your sex life! Get older!

I deepened my sexual life, not because my résumé improved, or my vital statistics went up the chart, but because I realized being “good enough” was nothing but a scare tactic. I had everything I needed except the courage to admit that I was the one holding the door, playing with the keys.

When you’re born, you’re ready for sex. This whole business of being “ready” is strange, because some people are never going to get to the starting line, no matter how many gray hairs they have. And that’s such a shame, when we all have bodies that are so ideally sexual to begin with. I remember the old Hollywood romance where the hero gazes upon the damsel in his arms and says, “You were made for love!” Well, really, who isn’t? We’re accustomed to saying that the only all-accepting love is maternal; we feel pity for people that “only a mother could love.” But maternal love is just one facet of erotic love—because it is the erotic imagination and generosity in our spirit that makes such “maternal” sacrifice and unconditional appreciation possible.

Motherhood often gets to stand in as the wholesome face for sexual appreciation and devotion, because it’s so much more accept-able to people’s idea of the Virgin Mary as the ultimate woman. In fact, childbirth—as I have said since I first went into labor—is the ultimate sex act. I wish I were one of those people who say they can remember being born, but I can only hold on to my memories of being the deliverer. All those hidden parts of my body that I once thought were for pleasure, or had otherwise ignored, suddenly be-came the center of the universe. From between my legs, like a legend, someone alive and breathing emerged. If having

someone make an entrance to the world through your cunt isn’t the last word in sexuality, I don’t know what is.

Nevertheless, we all arrive erotically perfect. From the moment we respond to a loving touch, we learn to suckle, kiss, and respond to the warmth of a caress and an adoring voice.

Sex actually starts out being big enough for
one:
one person who has a body, enthusiasm, affection, and imagination. Are we big enough to get excited about things, to give and take affection with pleasure? Do we understand, without melodrama, that our genitals are part of our natural body? This is the large place where we want to live.

There are precious few adults in this country who grew up feeling at ease with their genitals or with masturbation or nudity or any other strong solo sex feeling. We all confronted these sensations at some time, and luckily some of us wondered what all the secrecy was about. Our curiosity, rebellion, wonderment—and last but hardly least, our very own sex drive—kept us alive and questioning when almost every adult and institution around us said no.

Affection and imagination also are shamed and silenced out of so many kids’ lives. It’s no wonder we find ourselves erotically crippled as adults. Why do so many people feel desperately uncomfortable either giving or receiving a warm hug or casual kiss, let alone anything else more nurturing and intimate? Every time someone gives me one of those strange A-frame hugs, I always wonder what the problem is. Why do friends hold their hearts away from each other? One time I had an affair with a fellow who had the hardest time touching me except in the middle of intercourse. Foreplay, afterglow, cuddling—everything was such a struggle for him. Yet he kept

saying he wanted to “learn.” I’m impatient, but during

the couple of weeks that our affair lasted, I slept several nights with him. In the morning, he started to play absentmindedly with my hair, so softly and gently, with no particular concentration at all. His eyes were closed, and they only flew open when his cocker spaniel leaped up from the other side of the mattress.

“I thought you were Scruffy!” he said and snatched his hand back, as if in some distraught apology.

I never thought I’d say this to a man, but in this context I had to: “I wish you’d treat me like you treat your dog.”

He didn’t need to learn anything about how to touch someone sweetly. He already knew how, but something in him was terrified of what would happen if he tried it on a real live person. I agree, dogs are much more reliable when it comes to reciprocating affection. But it hurts to see someone think that he doesn’t know how to hold hands when it’s his fear of betrayal that’s really the issue.

Too many people have had their delight and amazement worn right out of them. They hide it, and they squelch it, and they let it come out only in the most tortured little ways, thinking they can control it entirely. But everyone has the inspirations and dreams that can make them the “happiest girl in the whole U.S.A.” If you can’t remember the last time something pleased you into passion, exclamation, or total silliness, then it’s been too long. A lover is someone who can be moved by the smallest things, someone who can touch without fear—who is big enough for the biggest kind of sex that there is.

CHAPTER FOUR
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ALONE AT LAST

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

H. G. Wells

W
ith a great deal of haughtiness, our culture declares that the one sexual thing we can all agree upon is
privacy.
The bathroom and the bedroom doors are closed. We say we would rather not be privy to the details. With a knowing air, we say that not only is it uncivil-ized to pry into sex, but it’s also an exercise in self-defeat—that to know it all and say it all is to render sex lifeless. Without mystery, we believe that our sex life will have no life at all.

Just what that “great mystery” is supposed to entail has always been controversial. Is it the uncanniness of seduction, the riddle of sexual taboos, the puzzles of arousal?

I’d say 90 percent of what’s supposed to be intriguingly mysterious is nothing more than superstition. It’s irresponsible because the lack of sex education in this country has nothing to