The Guide to Getting It On (7 page)

Guys Worry: Wood Good, Wood Bad?

When it comes to getting naked, men sometimes worry whether they should or shouldn’t have a hard-on. It doesn’t matter. It’s fine if you have one, it’s fine if you don’t. The point is learning to associate nakedness with something other than just sex or taking a shower.

Some people don’t have the slightest hesitation to get naked for sex, but if it’s getting naked just to talk or hold each other, good luck. They sometimes become fidgety and fire off a rapidly dismissive, “Sure, we’ll have to try that sometime....” Perhaps that kind of nakedness feels too intimate.

Naked & Getting Off

While getting naked together doesn’t need to include orgasms, some couples find it uplifting to have one or two somewhere along the way. So plan your naked time to include lots of holding and touching, try an orgasm or two, and then even more holding and touching afterward. (One reader comments, “Good luck on this one. I’ve spent a lot of lonely time while my partner sleeps immediately after orgasm.”)

Coming is usually the last thing that couples do when they are having sex. Yet it might be nice to spend extra time holding and touching each other after you have orgasms. Coming clears the senses in a way that allows many of us to share a special kind of warmth and tenderness.

Sex Tips with a Cranky Marxist Edge

We’ve now put designer labels on our near-nakedness, with the belief that the name of a high-priced fashion designer or tennis-shoe manufacturer on our underwear will make us more attractive. This type of philosophy has helped fuel the multimillion-dollar lingerie business, which has made a handsome profit selling flimsy wisps of underwear to women under the name of lingerie. Now manufacturers are gouging men with similar intent, charging $10 to $20 for a pair of men’s briefs that could otherwise be bought at Walmart for $2.50.

Counterpoint: “I have read portions of
The Guide
out loud to my girlfriend, and we are enjoying it very much. I have but one complaint: stop the lingerie bashing. It is perhaps the only good thing about American consumerism.”

If you find underwear to be erotic, here are a couple of possibilities:

• Women who wear nylons and garters might consider putting their panties on over the garter belt instead of under, so their panties can come off while leaving the stockings and garters intact. Fine tips such as these can be found in Cynthia Heimel’s classic
  Sex Tips for Girls.
  Her lingerie chapter offers insight about women’s underwear that no male writer short of a crossdresser would ever get right.
  
• A common garter
  faux pas,
  according to Los Angeles’ Trashy Lingerie, is wearing the rear garter all the way back instead of to the side. On the right leg, the front garter should be worn at dead center (12:00), and the rear garter should attach to the nylon at 3:30 to 4:00 as opposed to 6:00. On the left leg the front garter attaches at 12:00 and the rear garter at 7:30 or 8:00. This helps keep the seams straight.
  
• Another Trashy Lingerie tip: if you wear a push-up bra, put it on, and then reach across your chest with your right hand. Grab your left breast from under your armpit, lifting it up and dropping it into the bra cup. Do the same thing with your left hand and right breast. Another bra misdemeanor: incorrectly adjusting the straps so the bra rides up too high or droops down too low. See Chapter 68:
  The Historical Breast and Bra
  for info on how to make sure your bra fits right.
  
• Here’s a piece of shagadelic seduction advice from the 1960s: When going out, a woman might let a man know that she is not wearing underwear, or reach into her purse and pull out a pair of panties while saying, “Oops, I forgot to put these on!”
  
• When sitting down to lunch or even for a long plane flight, some women briefly hike up their dresses and intentionally adjust a garter in view of a man whose salivary glands they hope to make flow. The art of doing this is in the ability to disguise the purposefulness of the act. Reaching for something in the overhead compartment can achieve similar results if you are wearing a dress or skirt that’s short enough.
  
• Here’s a way to add a bit of variety and challenge when doing oral sex: Go down on your partner while she or he is still wearing underwear. You can reach under the material with your tongue, push it to one side for proper access, or pull it off with your teeth. You’ll probably need a fingertip assist, but the gesture is what counts!
  
• If you are having a quickie, you might keep your underwear on and try working your way around it. Also, some couples enjoy having oral sex and intercourse with one or both partners wearing crotchless underwear.
  
• Dry humping with only your underwear on can be fun. So can taking a shower or bath while still wearing your underwear. Plenty of dry humping gets done at the beach when it’s not very crowded and people are wearing swimsuits.
  
• Women shouldn’t hesitate to take their lovers with them when shopping for lingerie. Shopping for a new bra or other intimate apparel might seem mundane to a woman, but it could be a fun treat for a man. It will help give him ideas for when he wants to get you a special gift. If it’s possible, ask him to accompany you into the dressing room. A drawback is that a man’s presence might cause other women to feel self-conscious.
  
• For men, the next time you are in a department store with your sweetheart, nudge her into the men’s underwear department and ask her what style and colors she thinks might look best on you. Think about it!
  

Men’s Underwear

Men have a choice of wearing briefs, boxers, boxer-briefs, men’s G-Strings thongs, nothing, or even women’s underwear if they’re so disposed. Most of us end up wearing whatever our mothers bought for us as kids, usually briefs or boxers. Each provides a different kind of feeling that a man gets used to, thus casting him for life as either a briefs guy or a boxer guy, although there are probably some men who are switch-hitters. Boxer-briefs can offer the best of both worlds.

While a briefs man might experiment with boxers for a couple of months or even years, there is a tendency to go back to what he started with. Same with a boxer boy. A woman shouldn’t push the issue one way or the other, unless the man doesn’t care or is the type who tells her when to wear a bra.

Cramped Penis Alert

A guy’s penis usually hangs downward when it’s soft, but as it stiffens it needs extra head room to accommodate the expansion. If a man is wearing jeans, the expanding penis often gets trapped in a downward position (ouch!) or gets stuck in a horizontal pickle. So if you are fooling around with your clothes on, the penis will usually need a quick assist to rise above it all. While it might be presumptuous for a woman to lend a helping hand if you are making out on a first date, this can be a really nice gesture once you are on groping terms. When the bulge starts to grow, reach inside his pants and pull the penis up so its head is pointing toward the man’s chest, unless it naturally bends down.

Jocks

Some men like to wear athletic supporters for erotic purposes. Perhaps one reason for this is the athletic supporter emphasizes a man’s rear end by keeping it naked while highlighting his genitals by keeping them covered. Some women get turned on by seeing a lover in an athletic supporter, as long as it isn’t wringing wet from playing four hours of rugby.

Learning from Lady Lawyers

During the second half of the 1900s, lady lawyers suddenly began to penetrate the traditional male lair. Being confused about how to be taken seriously, most of these women started wearing boring wool suits with blouses that had floppy bows (the “lady lawyer” uniform). The intent was to look as nonsexual and unalluring as humanly possible, as femininity was considered to be a liability when arguing matters of law. Short of wearing a body bag to court, most of the women succeeded handily. Some of these lady lawyers made it a point to wear steamy lingerie under their boring suits. It was a way of saying to themselves, “At least some part of me is still feminine.”

In our society, wearing lingerie has been an important way for women to feel feminine. Some women feel sexier wearing lingerie than they do being naked. And some women feel better masturbating while wearing lingerie or panties. As for guys feeling more masculine while wearing boxers, briefs, or jockstraps, some do and some don’t. What feels best of all is when a lover pulls off whatever it is you are wearing.

Girls UnderGear

In case you have been on another planet for the past couple of years, here’s a brief list of what today’s earth girls are covering their celestial crotches with:

• Thong:
  A narrow piece of material that passes between the legs and up through the butt where it attaches to a waistband. Thongs were traditionally the underwear of strippers. Then, women in Brazil started wearing them, and it was only a matter of time before they worked their way under North American dresses and jeans. There are different types of thongs, including G-strings or T-backs, which are the underwear equivalent of dental floss; the Tanga, which has more material in the seat; and the Rio, which has straps on the sides. [Sorry, but our gyno-experts say thongs can cause a puss to chafe. Also, the butt-floss part of the thong provides a zipline for butt bacteria to get into the vagina and cause an infection.]
  
• Hipsters or Boy Shorts:
  The comfort favorite of many girls, hipsters and boy shorts are like low-rise briefs that offer full coverage without looking like granny panties. Materials can range from cotton to lace.
  Hipsters
  stop higher on the thigh while
  boy shorts
  have the start of a leg.
  
• Bikini:
  The modern bikini was born in 1946. It was named after the island Bikini Atoll, which is part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean where nuclear weapons were tested. It was so daring that the only model who would originally wear it was a nude dancer. It did not become popular in the US until the early 1960s when Brian Hyland’s song
  Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
  hit the charts, and American women suddenly started gearing up—or down. (The
  Itsy Bitsy Bikini
  song sold nearly a million copies in its first two months, which was an obscene amount of records in those days.) No one back then would ever dream that bikini panties would become commonplace and seem conservative when compared to today’s popular
  G-strings
  and
  thongs.
  String bikinis have a strings on the sides that connect the front and back panels.
  
• Granny Panties:
  These occupy the women’s underwear niche that’s between the bikini and Depends.
  
• Visible Panty Line:
  No matter what a girl wears underneath,
  VPL
  or
  Visible Panty Line
  is one of the more serious of the female fashion felonies. The biggest cause is panties that are too tight. Some types of thongs and boy-shorts can help, but not if what you are wearing is extremely tight or transparent.)
  

Stripping

Getting naked for an audience is called stripping. Until the advent of Chippendales, stripping was something that only girls did, and it usually fell into one of two categories. The first was the playful, private stripping that a woman does for her significant other. Even evangelical marriage manuals nod and wink when a good Christian wife puts on a show to get her man’s baby-making gears going. The other kind of stripping is for pay in front of strangers. Society frowns on women who do this. If you doubt that, try telling your mom you are dating someone who strips at the Kitty-Kat Lounge.

Contrary to what you might think, it’s the girls in the audience at the male strip shows who go wild and get aggressive, while men at girlie strip shows are expected to be more subdued, even when they pay for lap dances.

The US News and World Report
says that Americans spend more money at strip clubs than at the opera, ballet, Broadway and Off-Broadway theater, and classical-music performances combined.

If the thought of stripping for your partner turns you on, a great book to consult is
The Stripper’s Guide to Looking Great Naked
by Jennifer Axen and Leigh Phillips, Chronicle Books. The authors interviewed strippers from all over the country for suggestions that could be helpful to girls who want to make an impression in front of their partners.