The Guide to Getting It On (137 page)

CHAPTER

65

Sweet Dreams and Wet Dreams

S
ome people have dreams of misty-eyed romance, the kind of dreams that leave you floating in the clouds. Some people have dreams that include sex. These are the dreams that this chapter is about. And some people have dreams that combine sex and romance. These are the dreams that we dream about dreaming — the rocket-fuel variety of dream that fills the soul and tugs at the edges of who we are.

Sex-Dream Statistics

Less than 10% of American parents inform their children about sex dreams, yet the majority of young adults at one time or another have them. More than 50% of women have sex dreams, yet many women don’t start having their sex dreams until they are in their twenties. With the male of the species it is different. Males often experience sex dreams as teenagers, with the frequency tending to decrease as they get older.

Sex-Dream History

In the mid-1800s, it was believed that sex dreams were caused by immoral thoughts. Some of the more fanatical experts of the day proposed bizarre operations for the penises of men who had wet dreams, and all sorts of devices were patented for a man to wear on his penis at night to prevent him from having erections and the dreaded sex dreams that were thought to follow. One device was designed to wake him up by pulling on his pubic hair when he got an erection. Another machine poured cold water on him whenever he became erect during his sleep.

Dreamtime Sex Cinema—Pass the Kleenex, or Not?

During an average night of sleep, human genitals get hard or wet several times. This usually happens whenever you are dreaming, regardless of the dream’s content, even if the dream is about your grandmother or someplace you once visited. A “wet dream” happens when you are actually dreaming about sex and have an orgasm.

A lot of “wet dream” orgasms are actually dry and don’t include ejaculation, which makes the term “wet dream” a bit of a misnomer when it is used to describe men’s sex dreams. While having an orgasm in your sleep isn’t much of a problem for a woman, it sometimes leaves a guy with a sticky mess. In a more understanding world, a male wouldn’t have to feel embarrassed about wet-dream stains. But wet dreams often leave a splotch on the sheets or in your underwear, and what’s a boy to say? Since there is no way of predicting when you will have a sex dream, packing your shorts with Kleenex at bedtime isn’t going to help.

Sex Dreams vs. Masturbation

Talk about difficult bedtime decisions. Some people assume they will be more likely to have a wet dream if they don’t masturbate. They might hold out, trying not to masturbate for as many days as possible in order to force a wet dream. This usually doesn’t work. Sometimes a person can have a wet dream the same night that he or she masturbates or has sex, but not masturbating doesn’t seem to increase your chances by one little drip.

There is simply no way to will yourself a wet dream, unless you are good at lucid-dream enhancement, or whatever the people at Stanford are calling it these days. A seminal book on the subject of lucid dreaming is
Lucid Dreaming
by Stephen LeBerge, Ballantine. Another helpful book (except for its dumb title) is
Lucid Dreams in 30 Days
by Keith Harary and Pamela Weintraub.

Sex-Dream Complications

Not only are sex dreams a sign that you are growing up, but they are a great way of having sex when it is not readily available. Some people even have their first orgasms while asleep and dreaming. Still, other people feel upset by their sex dreams. For instance, you might have a sex dream that includes someone you know, maybe a friend, boss or teacher. This might make you feel a bit sheepish when you see that person in real life. This book’s suggestion is to scope out the person from head to toe. Check everything from subtle mannerisms to what kind of clothes he or she is wearing. Then ask yourself: “Is he or she as good (or bad) in real life as he or she was in my dream?”

There can also be wet-dream downers. Wet dreams can leave you feeling frustrated when the love of your dreams doesn’t want anything to do with you in waking life. This can be particularly bittersweet when the person is a former lover and is now with someone else or is no longer living. Also, it is not unusual for heterosexuals to dream about having sex with members of the same sex, and gay people have occasional “straight” sex in their dreams with members of the opposite sex. Gay men call these nightmares.

The Family That Dreams Together...

People sometimes have sex dreams that include members of the family. This doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem. Actions that transpire in dreams are often symbols for something very different than what meets the eye, so you can’t assume that the sexual partners or the sexual activity in a dream reflects what the dream is really about. Psychologists might refer to this as the manifest content versus the latent content of the dream. If, however, disturbing dreams happen on a regular basis and you are bothered by them, consider seeking the help of a trained mental- health professional.

Another reason to get outside help is if you usually end up frustrated, hurt, frightened or angry in your dreams. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to realize that repeated dreams of a disturbing nature reflect an inner struggle of major proportion. The exception is with children, since bad dreams are quite common during the younger years. It is not unusual for children who are happy and whose emotional development is normal to have bad dreams two to four times a week. If, on the other hand, the child is also struggling during the waking hours, it might be prudent to seek a professional assist.

CHAPTER

66

Dirty Word Chapter

Y
ou might be wondering why a chapter on dirty words would be in such a fine and upstanding book. Perhaps there is more to dirty words than meets the ear.

Frackin’ Unbelievable

We at Goofy Foot Press probably use the word “fuck” more times each day than the Pope says Amen. The sad thing is, we mainly use our fucks to express anger or frustration. Seldom do we use them in the fun way. This is often the case with sexual slang here in America, where swear words and sex words are often the same.

“Fuck” as an expression of anger or despair is such an integral part of our language that we have created more acceptable ways of saying it, such as “friggin’”— as if friggin’ doesn’t really have fuck at its core — or “frackin’” as was used on
Battlestar Gallactica
.

While people who use fuck-slang aren’t always aware of the sexual connection, there’s no way that texting “WTF” or saying “It’s the Cylon, we’re totally fracked!” have any power without a connection to sex.

Calling People by the Female Genitals

When the author was a kid, the worst thing he knew to call another person was a “cunt.” He never could bring himself to use the word, but then again, he had yet to work with anyone in the entertainment industry.

Another slang word that kids often use is “pussy.” While pussy is a term that refers to the female genitals, it is also an expression that boys use to taunt other boys who are being wimps, cowards, or who are using good sense and not acting on impulse alone.

Why does our culture associate cowardice with being a woman or having a woman’s genitals? And why would we want to discredit the very female genitals that so many of us crave to touch and know more about?

A Fascinating Comment from Sweden

We assume that using sexual slang to swear with and insult others is the hallmark of a sexually-repressive society. This makes the following reader comment all the more interesting — when you consider that few people think of Sweden as being sexually-repressive:

“As someone living in Sweden (and fluent in Swedish) but American, I have to say that there are plenty of sexual swear words in Swedish. One of the worst things to say is the word “fitta,” which can be translated as “cunt.” Many are trying to (slowly) reclaim this word. Most girls in high school will also say that “hora” or “whore” is one of the worst insults for them. “Slampa” (slut) is also another derogatory word used the same way as in English. In many cases “kuk” (cock) can be used to express frustration although it is not intended to insult a specific person.”

Mother-Fucking, Titty-Sucking, Blue-Balled What?

Warren Johnson, a researcher, studied how normal eight-year-old boys and girls use slang. According to Johnson, the children’s favorite expression when out of parental earshot was “mother-fucking, titty-sucking, blue-balled bitch.” Johnson hadn’t expected to find America’s eight-year-old children capable of outswearing his former Marine troop.

Of particular interest is Johnson’s observation of an eight-year-old girl yelling “Suck my dick!” to another child who was annoying her. As long as she was going to use sexual slang for swearing, why didn’t the little girl yell the more anatomically correct “Eat my pussy!”? Perhaps even an eight-year-old child knows that the way to insult someone in our society is to tell them to take the woman’s place in sex, with terms such as “You cocksucker!” and “Screw you!” being crude ways of demeaning a person by saying, “You’re the woman in sex!”

It is difficult to understand how something as delicious as sex could be linked to anger or frustration, unless you haven’t been getting any in a long time. It is equally difficult to understand why being perceived as a woman or as a woman who is having sex is a put-down. Yet these are the premises about sex that we grow up with.

When Eight Turns Eighteen

What’s going to happen when the little girl who yelled “suck my dick” gets older and wants to share sex with a boy? We expect her to enjoy performing the very insults that our society has taught her to hurl at others.

Equally disconcerting is what this attitude does to boys. The message is that you either screw or get screwed, the former being associated with winning, the latter with losing.

Sluts, Whores, Virginity & Sewers

Few religions have done well with the notion of women and sexuality. According to early Christians, a virgin daughter occupied a higher place in heaven than her mother, since the mother had sex for the daughter to have been born. Around 400 A.D., Christianity’s St. Jerome wrote, “Though God can do all things, He cannot raise a virgin after she has fallen” (Epistles 22). Not even God can help you when you lose your virginity, if you are a woman. It’s never been a problem for men, but then again, men are the ones who wrote the scriptures.

Rigid as St. Jerome may have been about women’s virginity, he was quite the feminist compared to some of his Christian and Jewish predecessors. One early church father described woman as “a temple built over a sewer,” with sewer referring to her genitals. Men who made statements like these were later declared saints.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that many women who are unable to have orgasms were raised in households where the temple/sewer notion still holds sway.

To this day people still equate a woman’s personal reputation with her appetite for sex: if her sex drive is too low, she is cold or frigid; too high and she is easy, a slut, whore, ho, or nympho. While young men are free to strut their sexuality, young women learn to carefully regulate theirs.

Note:
Contrary to what makes sense, women are often the first to accuse other women of being sluts or whores. Men may have been the bozos who wrote the anti-woman theology, but women can be its cruelest enforcers. Also, if the human body was made in the image and likeness of God, as scripture says, why were church leaders so rejecting of women’s genitals and sexuality? Had God been drinking the day He crafted the clitoris and vagina?

Dicks, Pricks & Morons

Why do we refer to a person who is being a total jerk as a “dick” or “prick”? A dick should be someone who brings pleasure, but that is not what our culture teaches us.

Adults will praise a young boy for his latest drawing or for making it to the toilet on time, but if he proudly displays his pint-sized boner, throats get cleared. Boys in our society are encouraged to spend eons learning how to make a baseline jump shot or to hit an A-minor flat nine on a guitar, yet they are taught to ignore their own sexuality in hopes that it will simply go away until they get older. Maybe that’s why many of us grow up having more sensitivity for what happens in music, art, sports or video gaming than for what happens in bed.