The Whole Lesbian Sex Book (10 page)

Viagra will not revolutionize your orgasms. It may offer you pleasure—and that, in itself, is worth a lot, especially to a woman who may not have been experiencing much between the sheets lately.

Make sure to consult with a health-care provider—one who’s actually seen you (not just processed your Internet order)—to find out if such medications are safe for you.

How Do You Come?

I continue to have better orgasms as I get older. In my 20s, I rarely had a vaginal orgasm, and my clitoral orgasms were fine, but not as yummy as now.

How do you reach orgasm? Women come from all sorts of stimulation. Most women require clitoral stimulation to reach orgasm—from vibrators, fingers, tongues, or surfaces to rub up against.

Many women find nothing sends them into orbit quite like a tongue and lips licking, sucking, and nibbling on their clit. For others, oral sex is just not intense enough to bring them to orgasm.

The tried-and-true tongue-to-clit method is still the only thing besides my Hitachi Magic Wand that never fails to bring me to orgasm.

Many women come from penetration—either vaginal or anal—without any clitoral stimulation at all.

The first time I came with a partner, it was a vaginal orgasm—my girlfriend was finger-fucking me. That’s still how I come best, and I can have many, many orgasms in a row that way.

Others find their orgasms are intensified when clitoral stimulation is combined with penetration, either vaginal or anal.

I don’t come without clitoral stimulation. But when vaginal penetration is added, it’s like a deeper experience; it reaches into my insides and clenches me with intense pleasure.

Different kinds of stimulation produce difference experiences of orgasm. Some women make clear distinctions between the orgasms they experience from clitoral stimulation versus penetration.

Vaginal orgasms feel as if they happen deeper in my body; they feel more like contractions. A clitoral orgasm is sharper, more like an intense tingling that spreads over my body. I’m multiorgasmic, and I need one of each to feel really satisfied.

Some women reach orgasm with sufficient attention to their nipples. Others come from fantasy and mental stimulation. Tantra practitioners move erotic energy through their bodies, experiencing energy or whole-body orgasms.

I have very intense concentration and my mind becomes my orgasm. I can ride it for a fairly long time.

Some women come from pain and other intense sensations of S/M play—and some tops are known to come simply from administering to their bottoms.

My favorite way to come is from caning someone. We don’t need any other contact but the cane with her ass, to make me come—if I can hurt her enough. I come from doing, rather than from being done.

I can come from pain. From clitoral stimulation. From hard fucking or fisting. I can come just from having my nipples pinched hard. I can come from sufficient mental stimulation with no body contact.

Getting Her Off

I love orchestrating someone else’s orgasm.

Rarely do sex guides give sufficient attention to the pleasures of facilitating another’s orgasm. Discussions of orgasm are typically about getting them, not giving them. Yet getting a partner off is central to lesbian sex. It’s thrilling to feel a woman come in your mouth, to find yourself gripped between her powerful thighs, or to feel her vaginal contractions clamp down on your hand.

It is CRUCIAL that my mate has an orgasm—my jaw can lock up and I won’t stop until I feel her body pop and her moans quicken and muffle and she tries to run away from me.

Taking turns pleasuring one another is a wonderful way to enjoy sex. But not all women have reciprocity as their goal. What if your partner doesn’t want to have an orgasm? Does that mean she identifies as a “stone butch”? Maybe. Maybe not. Why not ask her? You can’t predict gender identity by whether or not someone is orgasm-focused. See chapter 14, Gender (Not Destiny). It also doesn’t necessarily mean she’s shut down, self-hating, or unable to have orgasms.

Ask your partner how she feels about orgasm and what kinds of sexual attention she likes for herself. She may share with you profound feelings about her gender and sexuality. She may feel completely gratified by your sexual encounter. After your strap-on stud has finished riding you through more orgasms than you can count, she may simply be spent.

Truly, all I care about is pleasing my femme. Sometimes I don’t have any orgasms at all, and neither one of us feels that the session is missing anything. Now, if my girlfriend didn’t have an orgasm, I imagine that we would feel differently. We have different sexual roles.

Your partner’s experience of your orgasm isn’t vicarious. Think of your partner’s lips, hand, or pelvis as a conduit for sexual energy. As your body is humming with orgasm, your partner is riding that wave with you. She may indeed feel your orgasm from her heart to the bottom of her toes.

Multiple Orgasms

Women can and do have multiple orgasms. Which doesn’t mean you
should
have multiple orgasms or even that multiple orgasms are more satisfying than ordinary single orgasms.

I’m not multiorgasmic and that’s OK with me because the ones I already have nearly break the bank.

But many women do find that one orgasm leads to another, with very little time elapsing in between.

After she fucks me really hard, if my partner goes back to my clitoris and plays roughly with it, I will usually orgasm again, and again, and again….

Rather than relaxing into afterglow, these women go right back to the plateau stage and come over and over. Some women experience this as a series of smaller orgasms; others experience orgasms that increase in intensity and duration, leading up to a really big bang.

Sometimes I have smaller orgasms before the big one. After the big one, I get ticklish and it’s hard to be touched. But if my partner works past that point I have powerful orgasms over and over.

How do you achieve multiple orgasms? In
The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex,
Cathy Winks and Anne Semans offer three rules for achieving multiple orgasms: “back off, breathe, and move.” After you come, and your clit is too sensitive to touch, back off without entirely ceasing stimulation. Winks and Semans suggest switching to a lighter or less direct touch. Then, breathe. Breathing oxygenates your body and keeps the energy flowing. And move—move your pelvis, your legs, your feet. “Let the energy build back up in your genitals. Within a few minutes, excruciating overstimulation may well give way to excruciating pleasure….”
¹

The only way I reach multiple orgasms is if my partner just doesn’t stop when I tell her to. Then they’re in rapid-fire succession.

Tantra and Extended Orgasms

You may experience extended orgasms, one long delicious coming that seems to last and last. Or you may ride the edge of the plateau almost indefinitely, without actually coming.

What if we viewed orgasm not as a peak (sharp rise, sharp drop) but as a wave or flow of sensation and energy? Margo Anand, author of the classic
The Art of Sexual Ecstasy: The Path of Sacred Sexuality for Western Lovers,
suggests that instead of thinking of orgasm as an
explosion
—sending energy outward—we think of it as an
implosion
and redirect the energy upward and through the chakras, or energy centers, of the body.
²

Mikaya Heart distinguishes between multiple and extended orgasms. In her book
When the Earth Moves: Women and Orgasm,
she defines extended orgasm as a state of “continual sensation” that can last up to six hours, while multiple orgasms are discrete “ongoing individual orgasms with a break between each one, and then more stimulation to bring on the next one.”
³

You may experience energy orgasms or whole-body orgasms. “Many women think that if an orgasm doesn’t feel like a clitoral orgasm, then it must not be an orgasm,” writes Annie Sprinkle. “They are limiting themselves.”
⁴

Sometimes when I’m being fucked, I feel my head separate from my torso—and not in any sort of get-thee-to-therapy dissociative way, but rather in an ecstatic rush of sheer exquisite sensation.

Annie Sprinkle delineates seven different kinds of orgasms—among them, whole-body orgasms, energy orgasms, and “megagasms”—“the tsunami of all orgasms…an intense full body experience, a deeply emotional experience, and for some a deeply spiritual experience.”
⁵

Want to expand your experience of orgasm? Expand your attention. You may think that more attention to your pussy is the answer to improving your orgasmic capacity—and it well might be. But for an experience of orgasm that enlarges your entire understanding of sex, expand your awareness to include your whole body: cunt, torso, face, limbs, ass, muscles, organs, juices, and breath.

Especially breath. Tantra teachers and orgasm coaches all agree: Through conscious breathing practices, you can become aware of energy as it moves through your body. You can also become more aware of your sensations.

Breathing deeply, allowing the breath in and out without pushing it, helps create a fuller sensation through my whole body.

Sensory awareness not only increases pleasure, but it helps you to know what’s going on with you. Are you breathing? Rapidly? Shallowly?
At all?

Do you contract your muscles as you approach orgasm? Try another strategy:

I prolong orgasm by relaxing and softening my muscles, which gives my orgasms a more sensuous quality. I get a suffusion of pleasure opening and expanding down my legs.

If you prefer the “big bang” to the continual wave, you might actually find extended or energy orgasms frustrating. But if you want to experience a long, unfolding ride, you may want to learn more about Tantric practices.

Body Electric is a great place to start. Celebrating the Body Electric for Women, a weekend-long workshop offered in several U.S. cities, includes instruction in breath, movement, and touch techniques. The Women’s Sexuality Center in Southern California offers the Lesbian Tantra Weekend along with other courses. Well-known Tantra teachers like Jwala, Annie Sprinkle, and Barbara Carrellas also offer workshops in various locations.

Even if you don’t live anywhere near a Tantra workshop (or the ones in your area are hopelessly heterosexual), you can learn some basic practices that you can apply to the sexual realm. Conscious breathing and sensory awareness are two practices taught by nearly every somatic discourse. Yoga instructors, Alexander Technique teachers, bodyworkers, and somatic healers all talk about breathing and sensation.

You can read about many aspects of conscious sex on
www.Tantra.com
—and search their directory for teachers and workshops near you. Books like
The Multi-Orgasmic Couple (
written for heterosexuals) and
The Tao of Natural Breathing
(exceptional on breathing;
not
a good source of information on women’s sexuality) do an excellent job of presenting the Taoist principles underlying even the most Westernized applications of Tantra.

Ejaculation

I like to ejaculate. I mean, I can really flood the bed.

Female ejaculate is produced in the paraurethral glands. Ejaculate isn’t urine, though it may contain small traces of urine. The clear fluid may contain vaginal lubrication, cervical mucus, and fluid from the uterus, and has a similar chemical composition to male ejaculate (minus the sperm).

How much fluid is ejaculated varies from woman to woman. Some women spurt streams of ejaculate into the air. Others leave a pie-sized puddle on the sheets. The amount of lubrication we produce is quite individual and is affected by menstrual cycle, age, health conditions, and even medications like antihistamines.

A lot of women feel self-conscious about what they perceive to be peeing during sex, mistaking ejaculate for urine. You can reassure yourself by urinating before sex.

For some women, ejaculation precedes orgasm. They experience a gush of wetness right before orgasm. For others, ejaculation and orgasm are separate phenomena. Ejaculation may be experienced as a feeling of release with a nice big spray of come—but not the same level of intensity as other orgasms. This may or may not feel satisfying.

Some women like having sex with women who gush or ejaculate; others find it a big mess. Place a waterproof pad (you’ll find them in the incontinence aisle of your local pharmacy) under a towel to protect your bed.

Much has been written lately about “G-spot orgasms”—orgasms resulting from G-spot stimulation and accompanied by ejaculation. Some women ejaculate with G-spot stimulation. Some ejaculate without any penetration at all. Others simply don’t ejaculate.

How can you learn to ejaculate? You can explore your urethral sponge or G-spot with a firm, curved dildo or your fingers (particularly if you have long arms or a short torso or are particularly flexible). Make sure you’re well aroused. (One review of the scientific literature regarding female ejaculation, published in the
Archives of Sexual Behavior,
cited “full tumescence” of the vagina as a requirement for ejaculation.)
⁶
Insert your fingers or dildo, aiming for the front (anterior) wall of the vagina. Stroke this area with a “come hither” motion. If you use your fingers, you’ll feel the difference in texture between this area, which is rough, and the rest of the vaginal walls, which are smooth. Some women like to stimulate the opening of the vagina just below the urethra. You can also press down on your pelvis with your free hand, applying pressure just above the pubic bone. Stimulate your G-spot until you feel intensely turned on and like you’re about to pee. As you approach orgasm, push out, as if urinating. The stream you produce is ejaculate.