Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm (15 page)

Just for the record, these are the easiest cues for a woman to, shall we say, elaborate on.

And—at first, anyway—neither of these particularly applies
during OM. During OM, her only instruction is to feel the stroke; to feel how orgasm is expressing itself in her body. There is no call to perform and no requirement to reassure her stroker that he’s doing it right through auditory or visual cues. All she’s doing is feeling. For her, this can be a freeing experience.

For him, it can feel like someone just turned off all the lights.

So the instruction I give new strokers is: keep your attention on your partner’s genitals and watch for signs of orgasm there. Are her labia swelling and getting darker? Is her pussy more lubricated? Can you see her genitals contracting or vibrating? These are all signs that “you’re doing it right.” More obvious cues will develop over time—as her orgasm starts to open up, you can expect her to start breathing more heavily and even starting to moan with pleasure. But even if her get-off isn’t audible, you don’t need to worry. Sometimes the most powerful orgasm is totally silent. In fact, one of the ways to access the deepest possible orgasmic sensation is to quiet both the body and the voice.

Over time, the idea is for the stroker to start feeling, via the sensations in his own body, whether the orgasm is ignited between them. Men who have been stroking for a long time report feelings of electricity when the finger meets the clit, the sensation of warm liquid flowing throughout their own bodies, a tingly feeling from head to toe, and, of course, sexual turn-on in their genitals. All of these—and many more feelings—can be signs that things are going just as they are supposed to. But don’t fret if you aren’t able to feel very much in your own body at the start. This is a learning process. The more you OM, the more sensation you can expect to get.

And when all else fails (or even if it doesn’t), there’s your old standby: communication. Ask your partner yes-or-no questions about direction, speed, and pressure. Let her guide you toward what feels good for her. You’ll be surprised how often the result is that you, yourself, start to feel good, too. Just remember, this whole enterprise is a process of trial and error. It’s about the connection itself. As long as you feel even one stroke you give her, you’re on the right track.

I couldn’t find her spot. (Or: I found her spot, but then it disappeared.)
On most women, the spot you’re looking for is that tiny upper-left quadrant of her clit. (Though of course, as nature may have it, each woman is different. Don’t worry: the Clitoral Mapping OM in the next chapter will help you find it, wherever it’s hiding.) There’s so much power at that one little point that many strokers find they actually feel some sort of “click” or “landing” when they touch in on it. Yep, we’re back there—to intuition. In this case, you’re letting the clit tell you where it wants to be stroked. Feeling for such subtle sensation takes practice, though, so don’t be surprised if you have some trouble at first. The good news is that most women report getting stroked is pleasurable even if the guy doesn’t quite hit her spot, and most strokers eventually get there. One new OMer describes his partner’s spot as a “finger magnet”—it’s as if the spot itself draws his finger in. My best advice is to let go of expectation and feel your way. But if you would feel better having some instruction, this is what I have to offer you:

• Look closely.
  Pull her hood back and see if you can locate her clit visually. It often looks like a little round bump, brighter pink than the skin around it. If you are able to see it, you’ll have a better idea where to put your finger as you feel for the spot. In this case, two senses may be better than one.
  
• Start slowly.
  Take some time to run your finger across and around her clit, feeling for the spot before locking in. Finding the spot is an art form, so let her body speak to you through your felt sensations.
  
• Try, try again.
  If you found the spot and then lost it, pull back her clitoral hood and try again. It’s completely normal and expected for her clit to retract at times throughout the OM, so don’t sweat it. Just put your finger back into the “pocket” of her hood and feel for it again.
  
• Stroke lightly.
  One student says this maneuver is like “enticing the cat out from under the bed with a bowl of milk.” Sometimes if you lighten your stroke, the clit will actually come out to meet you. It happens: as her arousal ignites and her genitals start to swell, her clit will often rise up and meet your finger without any effort on your part.
  
• Ask for feedback.
  Let your partner guide you to where it feels good. Unless she’s having a hard time feeling her clit—which can be the case early on, as described previously—she will be able to tell you if you’re getting warmer or not. Be sure to pose your questions in yes-or-no format (“Would you like me to move a little to the left?”) so she can answer them easily while staying connected to her own experience.
  

I’m afraid of hurting her.
Men have been conditioned to see women as delicate—especially where our private
parts are concerned. And it’s true, our clit can be sensitive, and sensitivity can sometimes roll over into pain. But to those men who come to our Slow Sex workshops worried they will be like a bull in a china shop down there, I have only one thing to say.

We push babies out of those things.

Okay? There’s pretty much nothing you can do with the tip of your finger that’s going to cause permanent damage. Even if she’s feeling painfully sensitive that day, one stroke isn’t going to kill her—she’ll just ask you to stroke more lightly and that will be that. Still worried? There are two rather eye-opening exercises I love to give apprehensive strokers. The first one uses the moves we learned in the “grounding” step of the OM practice. With your partner’s consent, press your hands firmly against her genitals as if you were grounding her after an OM. As you press, ask her if she can take more pressure. If she says yes, press harder. Continue in this way until she says that she has reached the limit of pressure she can take. You may discover that your arms give out before her pussy does.

The second practice I love for this purpose is to take hold of your partner’s inner labia and pull on them gently. Slowly begin to pull more firmly, asking your partner to tell you at what point she feels the first twinge of discomfort. In almost every case I’ve seen, the strokers have been shocked to discover just how long it takes for her to feel the first twinge of pain. We’re more resilient than we look!

The lube was out of control.
It’s true: it takes some practice to keep the lube where you want it—and
only
where you want it. The problem is not just one of neatness; too much lube in the wrong places and a stroker will find he
is hard-pressed to keep her hood back far enough for her clit to emerge. The secret of mastering the lube is twofold: First, be judicious. Start with a small dollop and increase from there if necessary. You can always go back for more mid-OM if required. Second, make sure that when you first give her the “lube stroke,” you apply the lube from the vaginal opening up to her clit, but not beyond. (See the figures on
here
for a refresher.) Try to avoid applying it
above
the clit, on the clitoral hood itself, or you’ll have a hard time keeping a steady hand as you pull the hood back to stroke.

Finally, it never hurts to keep an extra towel on hand just in case you need to wipe her down and start over. No shame there, man. No shame at all.

Sitting in that position for fifteen minutes is really uncomfortable.
Unless you’re a practiced yogi, the stroking posture will likely take some getting used to. The good news is that it gets easier every time you do it. In the meantime, here’s a refresher on how to make the posture as comfortable as possible:

• Make sure you’re well supported—your knees are supported and your back is straight. At first it can be helpful to bring several extra pillows to the OMing nest so you can adjust your posture during the OM if necessary.
  
• Consider OMing with your back against a wall. Some strokers find the posture more comfortable if they have something to lean against.
  
• Rest the elbow of your stroking hand on your left knee, and try not to break at the wrist. Both of these maneuvers will prevent arm fatigue.
  
• Make sure her legs aren’t resting on top of your right leg. If there is any pressure at all on that leg, you have a good chance of losing the use of it for several minutes after the OM is complete.
  
• Throughout the OM, pay attention to what you are feeling in your upper back, shoulders, and arms. New strokers tend to focus so intently on the stroke that they don’t realize their own bodies are frozen. So check in with yourself. If you’re feeling tense, rigid, or stiff, take a deep breath and relax.
  
• If the position is so uncomfortable you can’t concentrate, don’t hesitate to interrupt the OM to adjust your position. Better to take a break than be miserable for the entire fifteen minutes.
  

I have no skills with my left hand.
This is something we hear a lot from right-handed OMers, especially in the beginning. The instruction to use the left hand is entirely practical: you’re stroking the upper-left quadrant of her clit, and it’s simply easier to reach if you’re sitting to her right and stroking with your left hand. Don’t worry if it feels a little awkward at first; like the posture, it’s one of those things you’ll get used to in time.

She seemed to like that a little too much. I’m afraid she’s never going to want to have sex again.
This is a concern we hear often, and for good reason. If you’re like most men, you’re probably working with a sense of scarcity around the amount of sex you’re having. It’s natural to worry that if you turn over some of your pussy exposure time to a practice like OM, you’ll end up with even less sex than you were already getting.

Here’s perhaps the best news you’ve heard yet about OM: for most women, the experience of filling up with sexual energy during OM actually
increases
desire for “traditional” sex. In most cases, the level of turn-on women have access to when they are stroked slowly and deliberately far exceeds the amount of turn-on they get from penetration (which doesn’t focus on the most sensitive spot, the upper left quadrant of her clit) or even oral sex (where we often feel torn between the experience of pleasure and the pressure to perform). So no matter how long you’ve been with your woman, you’re very likely about to see her more turned on than you ever have before. And for most women, the result of more turn-on is an increased sexual appetite. As one longtime stroker tells it, “I had never met a woman who wanted to have sex more often than I did until I started dating in the OM community. We used to have this saying about the community that still stands: ‘OneTaste. Where the women are turned on… and the men are exhausted.’ ”

I got hard. Sorry, it’s the truth.
At some point during their OMing practice, most men have had the experience of getting a hard-on. I hear that the frequency decreases the more OMing you do, however. Many men also report that the “grounding” step at the end of the OM works as well to reintegrate his sexual energy as it does to reintegrate hers. My theory is that this happens out of intention. When you decide to OM, you’re agreeing at the outset to have a fifteen-minute experience with your partner. There’s really no way of telling what will happen during that fifteen-minute period—you’re pretty much just along for the ride—but there is one thing you can be sure of: the experience will have a “hard stop” fifteen minutes later.
So it’s as if your body prepares for that inevitability even before it begins. Somehow, if you take the time to ground her well, you, too, will feel like you’ve had a complete experience when the OM is over.

“I admit I agreed to go to the class because I thought OM would be a way to have sex more often. I figured her pants are going to be off, right? I thought we’d jump right into it after the stroking was over, but that wasn’t the way it happened. There was something about the ritual, the grounding and the frames, that I ended up really liking. It was a really intimate experience by itself.”

—Ross, 43

Troubleshooting for Both

We were rocking out. It seemed a shame to end after just fifteen minutes!
In our “more is better” world, it is logical to jump to the conclusion that if a fifteen-minute OM is good, then a twenty-or thirty-five-or sixty-minute OM must be better. Alas, all the rules of the regular world seem to break down in the world of OM, including this one. It’s not that you
can’t
go longer; it’s just that you may discover you’re getting a different experience than you bargained for. One of the things we’re learning when we OM is how to sustain a high level of sensation for longer than a split second without automatically tamping it out. There is a lot of sensation during an OM, for both partners, and most beginning practitioners discover that fifteen minutes is long enough (and then some).

If you and your partner would like to play around with a longer session, however, I would suggest one rule: decide at the outset exactly how long you plan to OM, and then don’t go over that time limit. Keeping a firm “container” of time for your practice allows both partners to really relax into the experience, knowing it has a set end point. At the same time, make sure both partners have permission to stop the OM at any time if it is getting too intense.

Should we have sex less often if we’re OMing?
Absolutely not. You should have as much sex as you like, in whatever positions you like, as often as you like.

I don’t have a partner. Can I do this alone?
The short answer is no. Although it’s certainly possible to masturbate in an OM-like way for fifteen minutes, it is not the same as Orgasmic Meditation. First, OM is designed to give your voluntary mind a break—in other words, to take you out of control for a period of time. (Out of control is where we all secretly long to be. Don’t take it from me.) Stroking yourself pretty much defeats that purpose. If the sensation is high, you can turn it down. If it’s low, you can kick it up a notch. It’s kind of like trying to tickle yourself. You may feel tickly sensations, but you’re not at their mercy because you’re the one doing the tickling. Same goes for OM.