My Secret Garden (Women Sexual Fantasies) (5 page)

Either he has quietly slipped under the table on the pretense of picking up a dropped napkin, or he’s excused himself –28

supposedly gone to the gents – but in fact raced to the cellar below only to emerge through a trapdoor at my feet, there gently to part my willing legs. It’s funny how little time during a fantasy it takes to sort out the mechanical details…but time, during a fantasy, is not like normal time. Sometimes this man is black, more often he is unknown. Perhaps he is a new face in our dull little group, a face I have responded to all evening, as I respond to his touch on my thighs. I want him, this fantasy man, as much as I want the man who is actually between my legs.

There is always the most amazing amount of detail. in the fantasy at this point: me, casually arranging the tablecloth over my lap so that no one can see he has, raised my skirt, or see his head tight up against me, or his tongue…yes, there is a lot of the lips, actually seeing them, and the tongue. Or there is the intricate arranging of feet, like a ballet, under the table, with me praying that no one will bump into him with their feet! Funny thing is, all this detail makes it even more exciting. But mostly there is the fear – sweet agony – that someone may ask me to dance! Or, worst of all, that the man under the table will
stop
…that someone will call for the bill and say, "Okay, everybody up, let’s go."

What I am really afraid of, I suppose, is that the real man, the man who is making love to me, will stop, will tire. I do take a long time to reach a climax…mostly because I enjoy getting there so much. And there have been men in the past, lovers, who get impatient, who will suddenly stop before I have reached an orgasm, when I already know that I am going to…and you know what a letdown that is.

All of this suspense in my fantasy, of course, heightens the
real
excitement, and what ultimately makes the pleasure excruciating is the thrilling fear of what in the hell I am going to do in the fantasy restaurant when the man between my legs makes me come. So I put one hand on his head – don’t stop! –and with the other hand I accept a cigarette or toy with my salad, always this perfect social smile on my face, but always the 29

clutch: What am I going to do when I come? (I’m pretty noisy.) The closer I get to actually coming, the realer the suspense in the fantasy becomes, until, thank God, there is a sudden power failure in the restaurant. All the lights ‘ go out. Then pow! In the darkness and shouting of the fantasy restaurant, I have my very real, very loud orgasm. [Taped interview]

I realize how much anxiety is aroused by the mention of fantasy during sex…but was there anything threatening in that fantasy? It’s an exciting little scenario, and it’s also fun; as a follow-up, Patricia states that it made her real lover feel and enjoy her own excitement…without ever having to know what caused it. (And as he was Italian it would be better that he never did know.) Most people – men and women – understandably don’t like to hear that their lover’s minds are on anything but them during sex. Anxiety in bed is one of the most contagious emotions going; the smart woman will know just how much her lover wants to hear. The only way Patricia’s lover will ever know about her fantasy is through the added emotion that fantasy communicates to him through her body. Because you don’t always feel that it would be an unalloyed joy for your partner to hear about your fantasies doesn’t mean you yourself should not have them. How much she tells and how much she keeps to herself is a true measure of a woman’s subtlety.

Patricia and the other women who contributed to this book are admittedly in a minority; the average woman is not consciously aware of her fantasies, and if she is, would not dream of telling anyone. Most women never get beyond this; their fantasies are not merely unspoken but unacknowledged even to themselves, never deliberately put at the service of their sexual lives. In the end, both these women, and their men, lose what fantasy might have added.

I know there will be some men who will say that Patricia’s fantasy is no example of how sex can be enriched by sexual 30

fantasy, for the simple reason that when a man goes down on a woman, it is not real or complete sex at all; that of course a woman has to fantasize in that position: She isn’t getting the full benefit of him. If she were – if he were giving her a good old-fashioned man-into-woman fuck she’d have no need to fantasize at all.

For myself, when Patricia says her fantasies make her (and her lover) enjoy sex more, I feel I have nothing to add. However, if that is not enough, here is Suzanne’s letter which argues the case for fantasy in all positions.

Suzanne

When I was sixteen, I read a sex instruction book in which there was a case history that had a great effect on me. This girl described how she was alone in the cloakroom at a dance, bending forward, when a man came in behind her, lifted her dress, put his penis into her (obviously before the days of tights) and had intercourse with her without her looking around or even knowing who the man was.

This excited me. I had not had intercourse at this stage, but I would think about what I had read while masturbating and, of course, after a while I started to put myself in the girl’s place, imagining that it was happening to me.

This basic fantasy went on for a long time. I started having intercourse when I was seventeen, but I am sure you will agree that to carry through a fantasy while having intercourse it is necessary that neither partner should talk too much or the theme is lost. As this was not the way it usually went in those early days, I did not fantasize very much during intercourse, but I always did when masturbating.

I met my husband when I was nineteen and married him at twenty. Once we had settled into a pattern of prolonged 31

intercourse, I found I could have fantasies, which of course increased my pleasure, also my husband’s. I was able to tell my husband of these fantasies, and he was very understanding and encouraging.

The fantasies expanded from the original, but there were always similarities. The idea of the anonymous approach from behind continues to excite me, but the fantasies took on more scope, although the man would always do whatever he wanted without any form of lead up or courting. I am rarely nude, usually wearing a dress; but never panties or tights so that I show myself very easily and am always available. The scene is usually at least partly public, at a party, in a park, at the office so that other people see what happens. They never get in the way or object in any way.

A typical example: We are at a party, all nice attractive people standing around talking. I am talking to two men. I am wearing a dress just long enough to cover my crotch, with nothing else.

They each put an arm around me and play with my breasts. One puts his hand between my legs. The other people carry on as before while I am led over to a settee where I am laid down, my dress pushed up, my legs spread and I am entered by one, then the other, and then by all the other men in the room, last of all my husband. At this point where the fantasy is returning to fact, my husband and I will work up to a wonderful climax.

I would like to say that we do not use the expression "making love" as we feel that love is the feeling we have for each other all the time, and the enjoyment of sex is something else, so that while we love each other while we are having sex, which includes me thinking of other men, of being fucked by other men, we prefer to use other words. I feel sure you agree. I have never felt there was anything unusual in fantasies. I cannot imagine masturbating without them, and my husband’s attitude during intercourse was a big help.

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No doubt you have given some thought to the connection between fantasy and fact, where one might try to make the fantasy come true. In many cases where perhaps unobtainable people are involved, this would not be possible. In my case, whereas the people are just ordinary, the circumstances are larger than life, so it would still be very difficult to do what I fantasize, impossible really to fuck with maybe ten men in full view of passersby. Even going around without panties can be risky, although I realize that a great many men, including my husband, are turned on by the idea of women doing this, so that when I do have intercourse with another man it is usually under fairly conventional circumstances, which I later enlarge on in fantasy. I have at times been able to have sex in some degree like my fantasies, but invariably it has been contrived to some extent, so that it is not quite the real thing.

We have tried group sex for this purpose, and in this way I have had sex with up to five men in one evening. I do not want to make too much of the panties thing, but going back to the original incident I read about, which was not only before tights but before minis too, it simply said that her dress was lifted, without any reference to whether she wore anything below, as if they were the wide-legged type that would not get in the way. But whatever, there was no obstacle, and this is very important in my fantasies. I have read of girls saying they go out every day without panties, but frankly I haven’t the nerve for this, although my husband supports the idea, so I tend to pick occasions when I feel there will be no danger, as when I am in the company of people I know will approve. Simply, I love sex, but I don’t want to be raped.

I would just repeat that I get much pleasure from my fantasies, and wish you well. [Letter]

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FOREPLAY

In my desire to lessen the anxiety about fantasy during sex, I don’t mean to imply that if you don’t have sexual fantasies there is something wrong with you, or even that you yourself may not prefer it that way. What I am trying to do is establish a more acceptable climate for fantasy, so that women who do fantasize will not feel so alone, so estranged, and will realize that there is nothing wrong with it – that in fact, for them as well as for women still unaware of their fantasies, a more conscious use of them can add an exciting new dimension to sex.

But we all respond differently to different stimuli, and some people, I realize, do not fantasize, just as there may be some rare people who do not dream. I happen to believe, however, that most do – and that while reading this book, many will, in fact, discover theirs beneath the thin skin of childhood training or prudery – call it what you will.

I’ve already said why I think women’s fantasies are often far richer and more adventurous than men’s. They are a true women’s underground. But just as some people do and some do not fantasize, some fantasies are meant to be shared and others not. By opening up the underground, I am not suggesting we have to tell or act out all our fantasies to be sexually happier; just accept them without anxiety for what they are.

For example, no one objects to the idea that certain props like a martini, music, low lights – elements outside the man – can get a woman "in the mood"; then why should he feel threatened by what is going on in her mind? Some people get warmed up looking at erotic pictures or reading a bit of porn; does it matter that the people in the pictures are other people or that the words that excite her were written by another man? Then why should it matter what, or of whom a woman is thinking? A woman doesn’t need an erection to have sex; she can be entered at any time, and a man can have an orgasm while his wife’s thinking about the 34

grocery list. Is that preferable? Wouldn’t they both enjoy it more if, say, at the outset, during the preliminaries, she deliberately changed mental reels, put on something a little more highly charged than what to give the kids for supper tomorrow? And would it really matter whether her imagery were a rerun of one of their own earlier more erotic sessions together (such as in Bertha’s fantasy which follows), or if she got her sexual charge by imagining that she was being fucked by some tennis stars she doesn’t even know (as does Bellinda)? What matters is the quality of the real sex, and if a private screening of her own favorite erotica gets her in the mood quicker than a martini, and ultimately gives him a better fuck, then why not? It’s not telling him your fantasy that’s important, it’s telling yourself it’s okay to have it. For some women, fantasy is the strongest sexual foreplay of all; what they should both remember is that it’s the real man she really wants – or presumably she wouldn’t be there.

Bertha

While having intercourse with my husband, I will sometimes go over our past lovemaking sessions in my head, ones that were particularly exciting, where we both did and said things we don’t normally do. I’d like it to be that way all the time, of course –with the bed practically torn apart and us ending up on the floor, wet and sticky and happy – but of course it doesn’t always happen that way. So I re-create it, rolling him over in my mind when, say, all he’s really doing is lying there on top of me and thrusting away.

We’ve had some incredible times in bed and out, especially in the shower playing catch-me-if-you-can with our bodies covered in Sardo oil. Those are the times I remember. I do it especially if I’m not particularly excited and it helps me to reach the aroused state I want. Then when I get there he does, too. My husband 35

knows of this and fully approves; I sometimes think he even relies on it, say, when he’s tired. It’s as though he were saying,

"Come on, baby, remember how it was, get us up there."

We’ve been married two and a half years and enjoy a good sex life. But I’ve invariably found that re-creating these scenes with my husband (in my mind) leads to a more erotic session, which in turn gives me new material for the next time. For me, my fantasies are money in the bank, if you know what I mean.

[Taped interview]

BeIlinda

While I was putting this book together, I met and talked with Dr. Robert Chartham, psychologist and author of
The
Sensuous Couple.
He showed me a letter he’d received from a woman we’ll call Bellinda, in which she complained that her sex life was dreary, that her mind wandered to the day’s trivia during sex, and that she felt guilty that the only sexually exciting thoughts she seemed to have were of tennis star John Harrison’s thighs: