Are You Loving Me All Night Or Just For A Few Minutes? ( #Orgasm #RealSexTalk #TrueConfessions )

by Annabeth Leong

I was going to talk about how to tell if your story idea wants to be a short story or a novel, but then I noticed that Cameron talked about dicks and it’s getting late and I think I’ll go with a sexual interpretation of our topic, too. Specifically, time to orgasm: short and long.

First, as relates to me:

I think the time it takes to orgasm alters the character of the sensation. A quickly attained orgasm can be explosive and exciting, and there can also be something satisfying about a carefully nursed and well-earned orgasm. On the other hand, there are pitfalls along the way. I not infrequently get into long masturbation sessions where I start out by having an orgasm faster than I want to, so I’m unsatisfied because I planned to spend more quality time with myself. So I keep going, but then the orgasms I get later don’t feel worth the time I put into them, so I keep going. A couple hours later, I’m still going, sweaty and frustrated, still chasing a feeling I may or may not reach.

I have a partner with a masturbation fetish who finds the fact that I do this unbearably hot and loves nothing more than discovering me desperately in the midst of this with sex toys strewn all over the bed. I have mixed feelings about it personally, though it does work the abs.

Activities that tend to make me come quickly:

Masturbation, using my hand — I can do this in under two minutes if I feel motivated enough and think the right thoughts. It is reliable, good, solid sensation. This is the thing to beat. Speaking physically (as in, leaving aside emotion), a lot of partnered sex in my experience is not as good as what I can do this way.

Me, on top, riding some sort of phallus — If my partner can handle me moving the way I like and I get the right sort of nipple stimulation, this can be really fast, too. It feels particularly good to me to come this way. I have to straighten my legs, and the key to this position is rubbing my clit on my partner’s pubic bone while gripping the phallus with internal muscles just so. Based on feedback from penis-owning partners, though, it sounds like this does not always produce the best feeling from the other perspective, so that’s a downside.

Spanking the clit with a hand or a strap — I had a partner who asked me if the thing I do in response to this is really an orgasm. I’m not 100% sure? But I do know that I start out shying away from the strap or what have you, quickly progress to pushing toward it, and soon reach a moment that is a climax of some sort in that I want the strap really intensely and then wind up feeling satisfied and finished with what we’re doing. If I was horny when we started, that feeling is taken care of after this.

Activities that take a long time:

Masturbation, using the famed Hitachi — This takes, no joke, something like 45 minutes for me. I ride the magic wand, because otherwise my wrist would hurt too much for me to type for the next 24 hours. It feels good for brief periods but then makes me go numb. I still use this thing a fair bit because the end result is powerful, but it’s a goddamn workout. I usually have to hold my breath, flex every muscle in my body, grab the edges of the mattress so hard I’m bending it nearly in half, and thrust for all I’m worth. I usually get a headache afterwards. I’m not sure why I do this as often as I do.

Receiving oral sex — I feel like if I was more comfortable with myself this could go faster. It definitely does go faster if my partner is able to put fingers inside me while using their tongue. However, when someone starts going down on me approximately 98% of my brain is occupied with feeling self-conscious as fuck. I gradually relax as they do things with their tongue, but at some point 98% of my brain gets occupied with worrying about how incredibly long I’m taking to come. There’s a sweet spot somewhere in between, but if something disrupts it the process has to start from the beginning.

Getting fingered — I’m so good with my own fingers, but nobody else does it exactly like I do it! As a result, this is an interesting way to come but it takes about a million years. Again, I struggle with self-consciousness while it is happening. I’ve had some pleasant surprises with this method, though. I usually cannot come with someone the first time we have sex, but I once had someone finger me to orgasm through extreme patience the first time we were together. I think the key was that this partner genuinely seemed to be having fun with the fingering, not like they were waiting impatiently for me to come, so I relaxed the necessary amount.

***

I think it’s interesting to note that the methods that take the longest to me are generally thought to be the most surefire, I think.

Now a few words about time to orgasm as far as my partners are concerned.

With penis owners:

Please, please, for the love of all that is holy, penis owners, do not engage in athletics and mental tricks to “last” as long as possible, at least not with me. I do not really want a phallus in me for a significantly long period of time. Things dry out and start to hurt. You are not doing me a favor. I suffered through this mostly in my early twenties. I think at this time in my life, I would at some point suggest mutual masturbation as an alternative.

On the other hand, please do not come rapidly and promptly fall asleep. Do you enjoy watching or participating in masturbation? If so, I believe we can hang.

With vulva owners:

Perhaps this is hypocritical given what I said above, but I could do whatever thing I am doing for however long is required. I am super happy to go down and stay down, to do whatever is needed with my fingers up to and past the point when my hand feels like it may fall off, to operate the vibrator, to help you lubricate while you operate it, whatever is needed. I used to tell an ex-girlfriend, “I’m here all night,” and I meant it. This was not out of an effort to do her a favor (though I hope she benefited). It was motivated by my nearly endless desire to be between her thighs. Many women I have slept with have felt self-conscious about taking a long time to orgasm. From what I’ve written above, it’s pretty clear that I am, too. But it’s funny because I’m not remotely bothered by that when I’m on the other side of it (on the contrary—I’m really turned on by the idea of using my tongue until it hurts).

With people who don’t want their genitals touched:

The “I’m here all night” principle tends to operate here as well. I’m a foot fetishist, and I will lick a lover’s feet pretty much until they kick me away. If it takes a long time to reach the point of satisfaction, whatever that may be, I’m good—especially if I get to indulge my oral fixation in the process.

A few conclusions:

I tend to feel more awkward/limited about what is done to me. It is harder for me to deal with an extended procedure as a receiver, while I am eager to be on the giver side to the point of fetishizing it. I wonder how common this viewpoint is. I do notice a lot of people who are self-conscious about taking a long time. On the other hand, I have slept with selfish people who come and then bounce without seeing what their partner might be into. In general, as with all things sexual, talking more would be good!

I don’t think there is an ideal time to orgasm, as receiver or giver. I’ve read studies and statistics on this topic, and I notice general defensiveness around coming too quickly or not spending too long having sex. Longer is not always better, though. I think it takes however long it takes. Probably, as with most things, a middle answer will work well in general.

(Sorry to be posting so late, friends! I hope this piece still entertains!)

All That Pretty Poison

by Annabeth Leong

Instead of telling you about my favorite character from a book—mine or someone else’s—I want to tell you about my favorite character from my masturbation fantasies, who until now has remained entirely within my private domain.

Her name is Marian. She is a well-off housewife of the sort whose table is always adorned by a vase of fresh flowers, who always has a pitcher of iced tea infused with colorful slices of sweetened lime and lemon, who possesses a variety of beautiful floral aprons she sewed for herself, and who somehow maintains a French manicure while cleaning her house to spotless perfection. Marian is never seen with a hair out of place, and a person could feel comfortable eating off any of her floors, or even off the rim of her toilet bowl.

In the fantasy, I am foolish, and I let her find out a few things about me. Maybe I get a little tipsy one night after being invited over to her house. In darker versions, she tricks me, coerces me, and targets me. Specifically, she finds out that I’m queer and repressed and desperate to touch a woman, and then, more damningly, that I’m helplessly and powerfully attracted to her.

(I started having this fantasy when I actually did fear people finding out I was queer, and the power a woman could have over me if she knew that, and so that aspect of the fantasy still possesses a special force that only a closeted adulthood can provide.)

I’m a housewife, too, but I’m terrible at it. I used to have a job, but I lost it. I’m depressed and bad at cleaning and worried that people will think I spend my time leeching off my husband. Marian offers to teach me how to be like her, and I take her up on the offer, even though I can feel its danger.

It turns out that her teaching me how to be like her means I’m cleaning my house and hers, too, all under her exacting supervision. Gradually, she incorporates more and more sexual elements to this, until eventually I’m doing this naked, wearing a butt plug, punished if I don’t get the work done in plenty of time to go down on her. Her favorite thing of all, though, is to make me admit how much I want her. She loves to put me in difficult situations, situations where I really ought to say no, and then force me to confess that the reason I don’t refuse is because I want her so badly and I’m just that desperate for any access to her body.

She can’t leave marks on me herself, but she pushes me to set up kinky situations with my husband so that he unwittingly punishes me for her.

(I have a lot of specific fantasies from this era of the story—I zoom in at particular points and linger there. In one of my favorites, I am tied facedown to a Pledge-scented wooden table in Marian’s house. From my position, I can see the clock over her stove, but I can’t move. She is leisurely fucking me with a strap-on, really taking her time, and she’s previously convinced me to ask my husband to beat me if I don’t have dinner ready when he gets home from work. I watch the minutes go by, increasingly panicked as my hope for getting the cooking done in time dwindles. But Marian is doing it on purpose to get me beaten. She laughs at me as she fucks me, and then asks if I want her to stop so I can go. Of course, I don’t want her to stop. I would risk anything for this woman, even though I know there are so many saner things I ought to be doing.)

Marian is, when you get down to it, an awful person.

She manipulates my husband through me, so that he accepts it when I get tattoos that she designs for me, and thinks it’s his idea that I get pierced in the ways and places she wants me to. She humiliates and hurts me on purpose. She invites a bunch of other women in the neighborhood for tea, tells them I have something to say to them all, and watches with a smirk while I tell them I’m desperate to go down on a woman—any woman—and beg any or all of them to let me. Marian put me up to this, of course, but she acts like my behavior is shocking and strange, and then mocks me when one of the women takes me up on the offer and drags me to the bedroom.

I tend to focus on the parts where Marian is engineering increasing control over me, but I actually have a whole book’s worth of story here. There’s what I think of as Act Two, where I leave Marian and my husband, confess I’m gay, and get a nice girlfriend. This part of the fantasy is also about humiliation, though, because it focuses on how Marian’s tattoos and piercings are still on my body and, even while my lover is kind to me, I miss the way Marian used to mistreat me.

Then there’s Act Three, where I go back to Marian, but the magic is gone because I’m not ashamed of my desires anymore, so I don’t feel humiliated by what I want to do with her. Marian, in this part of the story, looks smaller than she does in Act One. I realize she’s as afraid of public admissions as I used to be. I still want her, but I’m not helpless before her anymore, and then I’m set free to find another woman and ask for the cruelty I need. I find someone who wants to brand me and control me and humiliate me for better reasons.

Believe it or not, acts two and three have come to me in the course of masturbation, scenes that play out along with whatever scenes I’m focusing on to make myself come. They often work as contrasting elements to the confusion and pain of Act One, or they function to emphasize the overwhelming desire I feel for this person who’s tormenting me.

When Lisabet writes about Raw Silk and how it poured sincerely out of her, I often think about Marian. I’ve wondered if I ought to write this all down as a story.

There are a number of reasons I don’t, though. I can’t help but hold back a little when I try to write about Marian. There are things I didn’t tell you about Marian’s manipulations and how they work that are key parts of the fantasy for me. Then I’m aware that this story is full of stuff you’re not supposed to do in modern erotica—cheating and dubious consent are major elements. There’s the element of shame around sexual orientation, and Marian’s humiliations and abuse of that, which I’d feel uncomfortable fetishizing in my work. Also, there’s a whole section that’s sort of a cuckolding in reverse story. I’ve never really seen that fetish represented in that direction, and I have a gut feeling it’s not particularly marketable that way.

When I write erotica, I like to write about things that don’t actually overwhelm me sexually. It helps me to have to work a little to turn myself on. The idea of Marian does overwhelm me. I am not sure I’d be able to remain sitting at the computer. And the fantasy is too personal and raw—I already struggle with fears that people will think I wrote something weird or too dirty, and I think I’d be even more worried about that in the case of something so close to me.

Finally, I worry something would be lost in translation. I tried to explain this fantasy to a girlfriend of mine, and I found myself breaking off into aroused sighs at the very moments she was giving me puzzled stares.

So I don’t know if I’ll ever write about Marian more than I have here, but I wanted her to have some small form of immortality.

(And I'm putting this video at the bottom because Lana Del Rey's vibe makes me think of what I imagine for Marian.)

My Favorite Sexy Tools

by Annabeth Leong

I didn’t start buying sex toys until I was in my late twenties. My ex-husband was one of those men who’s uncomfortable with the idea of a vibrator, viewing it as some sort of penis substitute that would eventually crowd his out. I had always masturbated just fine with my hands, so I didn’t think I was missing much.

My first masturbation tool was erotica. That I bought from a relatively young age, and I’d binge on it from time to time, staying up all night, not wanting to stop once I’d gotten started. Toward the end of my first marriage, I’d often stay on the couch long after my husband had gone to sleep, downloading books from the internet and reading them in long, breathless gulps—sometimes more than one a night.

Later, though, I started craving sex toys, partly because I’d gotten into reading BDSM erotica and I wanted to use the things I was reading about. I think most people, upon discovering the scene, go out and spend a ton of money on things they’ve been fantasizing about for a long time, but those things may or may not turn out to be as imagined. For me, I didn’t know at first what I actually liked and wanted to use in real life, and what things just seemed good in my fantasies. Then there’s the matter of certain toys requiring a partner who’s also into using them.

It would take way too long for me to talk about all the sex toys I’ve bought and what I thought of them, but I’ll share some highlights—both in terms of biggest disappointments and biggest successes.

Biggest Disappointments:

3. Spreader Bar
I’d fantasized a ton about these, and been turned on by what I’d seen of them in porn. I liked the idea of being forced open and exposed, and not being able to do anything to get away from, say, a spanking on the clit. (Oh, I still do—writing that turned me on.) In real life, at least with the spreader bar that I bought, I found that I could bang my ankles on the metal and twist in all sorts of dangerous ways. It’s also awkward and unwieldy. Probably lots of tying expertise could fix those problems, and maybe I’d feel different if I had some sort of built-in suspension ring in my bedroom. It just felt like more trouble than it was worth. I think I only used it once or twice.

2. Ring Gag
This is an A+ turn-on for me in an erotic story. Mention a ring gag, and I’m usually just a twist of the wrist away from an orgasm. In real life, the pain of the thing definitely works for me. I got one that I can barely fit between my teeth, and I absolutely love the feeling of my jaw being stretched. What kills it for me, though, is drool. In real life scenarios, I’m not into humiliation, and I find the drool humiliating. I didn’t realize from fantasizing and reading exactly how much gags would make me drool (the ball gag is, if possible, even worse as far as drool goes than the ring gag). This has made it mostly unappealing to use my ring gag.

1. Hitachi Magic Wand
You read that right. I love reading the Amazon reviews for this thing. One might be forgiven for thinking this was a Biblical product given how many times God and Jesus and angels are mentioned. I’m not trying to diss on a classic. However, the Hitachi Magic Wand is not, for me, the orgasm factory that it apparently is for some people. For me, it produces, even on its lowest setting, a barely tolerable level of vibration. I only ever use it through clothes. While there might be some sort of forced-orgasm sexiness to its extremes, that’s not how it goes for me. If I can’t come within the first couple minutes of using it, my clit goes sort of numb and tingly, and I’m locked in a frustrating almost-orgasm for a long time (usually until I give up and use my hands). I’ve had scenes where these qualities were harnessed to my benefit, but for the most part the Hitachi is a tricky toy, not a perfect one. There’s also the problem that, when I use it a lot while lying on my back, I often get wrist pain afterward (not at all cool for typing). I’ve tried lying on my stomach and riding it, but this exacerbates a tendency I have to get a headache along with my orgasm. That can happen sometimes anyway, but it seems to always happen when I use the Hitachi this way.

Biggest Successes:

3. njoy Pure Plug (smallest size available)
I considered just writing njoy the company, and putting them at number one, because all their toys are boss. (The things I’ve seen the Eleven do… Oh, my God). For the Pure Plug, though, I have a specific story. While writing Untouched, I wanted to use a butt plug for long-term wear (think of it as a sort of method acting for Celia, my sexually insatiable main character and constant wearer of insertables). I’d found, though, that the butt plugs I purchased weren’t comfortable while I was sitting at my computer. After a long and, dare I say, probing conversation with an njoy employee at the Fetish Fair Fleamarket, I decided to buy a Pure Plug. I did ignore her warning that many people regret buying the smallest size and wish they’d bought something larger. I love anal play, but I often feel some fear about it. I didn’t think I’d regret having the smallest one. Anyway, it was everything I dreamed it could be. It’s easy to insert, easy to keep clean, comfortable for hours, and really arousing. I like sitting with it. I also like inserting it just before sex. It intensifies all my sensations to have it there, and it’s not ever something I have to work up to.

2. Chair Dildo
I was almost afraid to buy one of these. I’d had a fantasy about them for a long time, and the words “chair dildo” in a story get me going like you wouldn’t believe. A deeply cherished fantasy of mine is to sit on one at the breakfast table, pretending nothing is going on, eating eggs, trying to look normal. After the disappointment of the ring gag, I was afraid the reality of a chair dildo would burst my bubble. Reader, it did not. It was, if possible, even more awesome than I dreamed it would be. I have a harness that quickly and easily attaches to any seat. I lube up the dildo, and slide onto it. It hurts in a good way, but I can also stay on it for a while. It’s fun to sit still on it and see how long I can resist doing anything else. I love to be watched while I use it. As I write this, it occurs to me that part of the success of the chair dildo is that it combines a lot of things I love: masturbation, exhibitionism, pain, pretending that nothing is happening when something definitely is. I think it took a lot of trying and failing with toys, though, to identify these sorts of elements.

1. Blackjack
In my opinion, the perfect impact toy. After much experimentation, I learned that my preferred type of pain is “thud.” There is nothing more deliciously thuddy than a blackjack. This is the sort of thing that comes down and strikes deep. You feel it in muscles you didn’t even know you had, and you feel it there more than you do on the surface of the skin. It leaves a sort of deep bruising that, if you’re into this sort of thing, serves as an incredible reminder the next day. Nothing takes me into my favorite masochistic place faster than the blackjack. I bought mine from Agreeable Agony, and the fact that it smells deliciously of leather hurts nothing. I tried several of their models, and I believe the one I chose could be described as medium intensity. This is nice for me because I like working into pain a bit. Starting out with very hard pain can make me call a quick stop. Also, the blackjack is one of the first toys that gave me a real desire to switch. I used to think I didn’t ever want to top, but the way I felt the first time I hit someone with a blackjack… I guess the thud appeals to me in all ways, not only on the receiving end. I think of this toy as something I came to as I matured in BDSM, something I only bought once I’d learned about myself and what I like.

***

Of course, this list is highly personal. I would definitely recommend Agreeable Agony and njoy as makers of quality sex toys, but my favorites are deeply tied to my interests and desires. And that, I suppose, is the point. A tool, after all, must serve its proper function.

Guiltless Pleasure, Pleasureless Guilt

Sacchi Green

It’s a sad thing to realize how boring one’s life has become. I’m no stranger to guilt, but pleasure has seldom been in that mix. I suppose failing to do something because it’s just too hard seems, at the time, to be less unpleasant than actually doing it, but that doesn’t make it pleasant.

There is something, though, that I do often enjoy, even though it makes me feel guilty (which tends to lessen the pleasure.) It’s an addiction, in fact. A case could be made for most addictions being guilty pleasures.

My failing is procrastination by way of the internet. If there are any possible directions to ramble online where there might be something new of interest, I’m driven to exhaust all such possibilities before I get down to writing, or serious reading. A looming deadline can get me to shape up and do real work, but it has to be looming pretty ominously, and the figurative pile of books I should have read and would have enjoyed looms high enough to block out the sun.

Fortunately I do manage to get myself out under the actual sun fairly often, and I’ve been wise enough—or miserly enough—not to invest in the sort of device that would let me noodle around online even while I’m hiking along a woodland trail. If I had such a thing, I’d probably have broken my neck by now tripping over tree roots or stone outcroppings (or moose or bears.) Getting outside and walking even saves my writerly bacon from time to time by letting solutions to plot problems float up out of my subconscious and call attention to themselves, something that doesn’t happen while I’m following seductive links on Facebook. No, not that kind of link! More like odd historical bits and scientific discoveries and information about people and places that interest me. Sometimes, it’s true, I do come across information that I can make use of, or that sets off a productive train of thought; such serendipity is more than I deserve when I’m just web-surfing as a means of procrastination rather than dedicated research.

The guilt is a sort of background music in my consciousness most of the time when I’m procrastinating like this, especially if I’m not getting any actual pleasure out of the process. All too often I just forge ahead taking any route to keep from doing what I should.

Like I said, boring. Guilt that comes with sex at least is likely to be paired with pleasure. It’s true that I don’t associate sex with guilt much, but even that indicates how boring I am. Still, there’s one kind of sex, masturbation, that most of us would rather no one knew we were enjoying, or at least (with some exceptions) would rather do in private. That’s not guilt, exactly, but it’s the closest I can come, and even then I’m not going to come any closer that resorting to an excerpt from a story where pleasure mingles with rage, and guilt. Yes, this is cop-out. I feel guilty about it. But the main pleasure involved is that I’m finding a way to fill out my post this week, on time, with hardly any procrastination.

This is from a heterosexual historical romance story I wrote for Delilah Devlin’s Hot Highlanders and Wild Warriors. I only did it because I’ll take almost any chance to write historicals, and the Mongol Invasion of Europe interests me. Plus, falcons! (Uh oh, have I quoted this bit before? If so, yeah, I feel guilt, and without the lube of pleasure.)
__________

From "A Falcon in Flight"

By Connie Wilkins (my alter ego)

When word of defeat came from Georgia’s capital, Father Kristopor searched out Ardzvik on the mountainside where she hunted with her falcon Zepyur. She knew, seeing him from far above, what his mission must be, and cursed fate for robbing her of the longed-for solace she reserved for such fine, cloudless days when the blue sky went on above forever and her hawk soared high and free with no likely prey in sight. At least the priest had not discovered her in the midst of what he would surely consider sin.

“Now is the time,” he called, and then, when he was closer, “Send at once to the Mongol General. Say that the Province of Aragatsotn in Armenia has long been a vassal of Georgia, so it is only right that its people offer fealty to the new rulers. I will bear the document myself. The Mongols are quick enough to sack churches, but I have heard that they retain some degree of respect for holy men of any faith.”

“Surrender without a battle.” The words, bitter on Ardzvik’s tongue, burned even more in her heart.

“Without blood. Surely they would rather have the wine of our vineyards and grain of our fields than the lifeblood of those who tend them. Dead men cannot be taxed.”
So it was done. Ardzvik Zakaria, lady of Aragatsotn, signed above the seal presented to her father’s father in Tbilisi by the legendary queen Tamar of Georgia.

As soon as the priest rode his mule northward, Ardzvik retrieved her falcon from the mews and rode again high onto the mountain. Zepyur was still as swift and graceful, the sky as blue, but now the lady of Aragatsotn could not shed her duty, her constraints, and be pure flesh and spirit.

Lying back on tufted mountain grass, she envisioned, as she had so often, the airborne mating dance of the wild falcon pair that had produced her own sleek hunter, but she could not rid her mind of earthbound turmoil.

Her hands knew all the ways to pleasure herself, the places to twist or stroke or beat with rough force while a part of her soared aloft with the hawks, the earth dropping away, away, until they plummeted together as one through space. Falling, falling, diving faster than anything could fall, cold air ripping past, battering, the ecstasy forced deeper and deeper, keener, unbearable...and her own ecstasy bursting forth at last like the cataclysm that had torn open the mountain’s peak.

But this time, no matter how hard she rubbed or deeply she probed, she achieved only a sharp burst of sensation, as much pain as pleasure. The scream forced from her throat was of rage, not triumph, and tears flowed hotter on her cheeks than the rivulets of sweet release between her thighs. Surrender without battle. Dishonor. But duty nonetheless.
__________

Hmm. Maybe I did get some pleasure after all from revisiting this story. And there’s no need to feel sorry for Ardsvik: this is what (or who) the Mongol General turns out to look like:

Consolation

by Jean Roberta

Strangely enough, no one here has recommended – or at least described -- a masturbation marathon as a way of consoling oneself after a breakup. (Cough) I thought this was a traditional remedy, somewhat like chicken soup for a cold.

During a long winter, life outdoors, in the dating scene (heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bi) can be harsh. Sometimes a person just wants to spend a few months in a warm bed, with herself.

Here is a quickie that I wrote long ago, when I still had fresh memories of being freshly-dumped and forlorn. I sent it in for the Do It Yourself contest run by Torquere Press in 2004, and it won first prize.

Hibernation

The moon is full tonight. I can’t see it shining on the billows of snow outdoors, but I know they look like the curves of a voluptuous woman, sparkling like a queen's jewels. I want to remember all the words of that French song: my country is winter. Je suis une citoyenne de l’hiver.

I can’t sleep, even though my comforter is as warm and soft as the sympathy of an old friend. Tara’s last words are like an annoying song in my head: “You’re not really my type. You can’t meet my needs. Let’s face it. I’m not putting you down, but you have to admit it.” Her canned speech was meant to justify her escape, so she could rush into the arms of Bo the jock, heartthrob of the under-thirty crowd. I wonder how long the new couple will last.

If the three of us were stranded in the northern woods, I wonder who would survive. My womanly body can withstand the cold, and I have good instincts. Weightlifter’s muscles and cuteness don’t catch fish or muskrats or rabbits. Political correctness and popularity don’t count in a life-or-death situation. Some women have lived such trendy urban lives that they never get to meet their true selves.

A warm heart behind warm breasts always counts, or it should. I would appreciate a woman with my qualities. I would hold a woman like that with all my strength, and not let her go. I could live in a cave with a woman like me, exploring her body like an old-time voyageur ranging over the True North. Pressed against her in our bed, I would start with her breasts.

Tits like mine deserve hands like mine: knowing hands that can support them, making them feel weightless but generous. The homage of those hands would send tingles from the flash-points of my hard nipples through my warm flesh, over my ribs and all up and down the central power line of my spine. My belly would flutter, and my clit would turn on like a lightbulb.

In the short days and long nights of winter, I could spend months in bed with a woman like me. We would not give a damn about the world outside, and we wouldn't lose interest in each other like bored children looking for new toys.

My old, favorite toys would give us endless pleasure. I wouldn't even mind getting out of bed to look through my sock drawer for my thick purple candle with the undulating shape that looks like a Coke bottle on speed. A woman like me would love to be stroked with a thing like that, and she wouldn't care what it was made for. Women like me are household witches who can make magic out of anything that comes to hand.

Wax grows warmer and softer when you play with it, almost like human flesh. My candle is more responsive than some women. More reliable too. Rubbing it between my lower lips makes me feel as if I'm melting and changing shape inside.

I want to be filled to bursting by someone like me. I can smell my own heat, and it warms the space between my sheets like some essential oil. My candle absorbs more of me each time. Someday it will smell more like me than I do, and then I can share it with a woman who will appreciate it whenever I can't be with her.

I am the butch and the femme, the doer and the done-to. The right woman would value my versatility. I am persistent. I'm almost there. Just a little more -- oh! Yes! I am so good for me.
How I wish I could hibernate in my cozy suite until spring. I'm not sure the rest of the world is ready for me yet.
---------------------

Searching for Answers

by Annabeth Leong

When I first started masturbating, I thought I was supposed to simulate sex. I remember setting my alarm clock for a time early, early in the morning when I thought I wouldn't be discovered, and then going through a long, narrative process that often involved whispering lines of dialogue to my imaginary lover. (Perhaps this was a precursor to what I do now). In the books I'd read, sex was penetration, so that was what I did. This method worked, but it was long and inefficient. It took literally hours.

Then, as I've written before, I discovered The Hite Report and learned the role of the clitoris and how to find it. It's sort of weird to me that I didn't figure this out on my own, but I remember the amazing revelation of touching myself there, no penetration required, and discovering that orgasm had suddenly become effortless. This was an important early lesson for me about the difference between what I thought sex was and what actually felt good to me.

Once I discovered masturbation in earnest, I couldn't stop. I thought everyone masturbated all the time the way I did, and refused to believe people who told me otherwise. I thought girls who claimed they never masturbated were full of shit, just trying to look like "nice girls." I'd given up that image before I ever even had it, so my contempt knew no bounds.

I don't know where I got the idea that masturbation was wrong—my mother tells me she never wanted me to feel that way—but get it I did. I remember resolving to quit as a teenager, but being unable to cut down to less than five times a day. It was too easy to start, and once I started, I felt too compelled to finish.

Then there were the fantasies. For as long as I can remember, what worked best for me to think about was violent, disturbing stuff that sometimes made me feel awful afterward. To be clear, I am not talking about "nice" rape fantasies (like the one described by Sarah in the show Transparent, about a rapist who's going to force you but isn't going to hurt you too much and wants to make you come). I'm talking about blood and torture. This may be part of where I got the idea that doing this was wrong. It was always a disorienting feeling to disturb myself in the process of orgasm.

I never masturbated about specific people. That always seemed wrong to me, violating. Maybe part of it was that I didn't want to taint anyone I knew with the violence I imagined. It also felt wrong to me to use people that way without their consent.

I was always troubled by my fantasies and tried to find ways to think about other things. I remember a therapist telling me to picture people being kind to me instead. Unsurprisingly, whatever that might have done for my self-esteem, it didn't get anywhere close to making me come. It seems obvious to me now that this was a ridiculous suggestion.

Masturbating for hours was always a shameful secret. During my first marriage, I looked forward to the times when my ex-husband worked on days I didn't. That meant I could spend the day on the couch, masturbating over and over, without fear of discovery.

I sometimes masturbated in places I shouldn't have, such as the student lounge for my grad school program or the bathroom at work.

I once masturbated in a motel in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and got caught by some people peering in the window. I heard them crowing about it outside, stopped what I was doing, and hid in the bathroom for the rest of the day and night, sleepless and afraid. When four a.m. came, I snuck into the parking lot, afraid they might still be out there, and checked out hurriedly. I have probably never driven as fast as I did leaving that town.

The revelation of my adult life was meeting a partner to whom masturbation was not shameful. When I told him that story about Spartanburg, South Carolina, he got an erection. I got used to being able to say, "I'm going to go masturbate. Care to join me, or would you just like to overhear it?" I can't overstate how much that affected me. When he asks, "What did you do yesterday?" and I say, "I masturbated for six hours," and that's a good answer to him, it heals so many things I have carried in my soul for so many years.

I have long felt that masturbation is the cornerstone of my sex life, the most important part because it's where I learn everything I know about myself. A few years ago, I started having lots of trouble with what I call "the oil-slick fantasies," the things that leave me sick to my stomach after I've come. I started looking for other things I could think about—aware that a simple reversal of the script was not going to work for me.

I'm not going to lie. Those things have always made me come. And when I do find a really sick, violent piece of porn, it's hard to resist it. But I can't always deal with the fallout afterwards.

Somewhere around then was when I really started having issues with my sexual orientation. Without thinking of the violence, I couldn't feel anything. I didn't know how to keep having a sex life without it. To some degree I could accept it, but to some degree I couldn't. And in the deafening silence left in its wake, I started to notice how much I felt for women, how I could be aroused by them without that darkness.

For a while, I thought I was kinky and twisted in such a way that a sweet kiss would do nothing for me. But then I watched a lesbian movie (I Can't Think Straight) and found myself breathless and wet during the (hot but very vanilla) sex scene.

I started to experiment with masturbating about women. But this was not easy, not even in the privacy of my own mind. No matter what I started out thinking about, my mind would drift to my first girlfriend, to things we said and did together in secret in the small Florida town where we lived, and it would turn me on but it would also make me cry. I still cry when I look at her picture, unable to bear having lost what we found together.

For the first time in my life, I went weeks and months without orgasm. I just couldn't find a place where my mind could land.

I want to conclude this post neatly, with a well-packaged resolution, but the truth is, I don't have it.

There are things I've found. Over recent years, I have nursed a foot and shoe fetish. That is lovely for me. It turns me on, and it's also (at least the way I do it) playful and sweet and fun. It has been a refuge when I feel caught between violence and unresolved feelings. So sometimes I can turn to that. I can summon the memory of the taste of shoe leather, of the feeling of my stomach on the floor, of the moans of the woman above me.

I have also healed a bit from the feelings I have about my first girlfriend. But when I think about women, I find that my emotions affect my masturbation more. If I don't feel good about something in real life, my thoughts drift to my relationship situation rather than the orgasm I'm trying to have.

I have toyed with masturbation that isn't about coming. I obtained a couple of vibrators that definitely won't make me come, and it's fun sometimes to play with them with that expectation removed.

But this is all a work in progress. A while back, I changed my bio to say, "Annabeth Leong is frequently confused about her sexuality, but enjoys looking for answers." That's one of the truest things I know to say about myself.

Solo Sex--Solitary or Shared

Sacchi Green

Does one-handed reading (or film-watching, or eavesdropping) count as masturbation, or do the stories or films or orgasmic sounds coming through the walls get credit as supporting characters? For that matter, is it really masturbation if it’s consciously done while someone is watching? Does it matter?

No, probably not. Fantasizing is a handy tool for masturbation, and stories, films, etc are fuel for fantasies, whether for solo scenes or pairs play. Masturbation is whatever you mean when you talk about masturbation, or at least think about it, because who talks much about that? Except, of course, erotica writers. And even we don’t talk about it as much as we write about it, which raises another question: is writing particularly steamy scenes that push your own buttons a form of masturbation? Or at least a prelude to the physical act?

You don’t have to answer that. And neither do I. But I’m sure I’m not the only writer who fantasizes about writing sex scenes during sex, as well as fantasizing about sex while writing sex scenes. There’s an extra oomph when just the right and new and intense descriptive phrase surges through your fantasizing mind. My own mind, anyway.

And now having brought the subject around to my own mind, I’ll confess that although I personally think of masturbation as a profoundly private pastime, in my writing I’ve tended to include a voyeur who is very nearly a participant in such scenes, so that I’m not at all sure whether the protagonist can strictly be said to be masturbating.

It’s getting hard to remember which stories have already provided excerpts. I thought of sharing “On Wheels”, my first story in an edition of Best Lesbian Erotica, seventeen years ago in BLE 1999. It was badly in need of editing, which it got, but probably in need of more from my perspective now as editor of the upcoming twentieth anniversary edition of that series. It turns out, though, that my file for that story is so old that I can’t open it on my current computer, and I don’t have time to pursue the matter, so I’ll just mention the details in passing. The setting is a mountain cabin in the midst of a snowstorm. The characters are a young woman confined to a high-tech wheelchair after a criminal assault that traumatized her, and the tall, Nordic woman who is her companion/caretaker/bodyguard. The injured woman can’t stand to be touched, so her companion, the narrator, more or less seduces her with an intense masturbation scene interspersed with quotations from The Song of Songs, aka The Song of Solomon from the Old Testament. This is one case where I wonder whether sex clearly involving two people can really be called masturbation.

Another story in this category is one I’ve shared before, “Freeing the Demon”, from Kristina Wright’s Dream Lover (reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica) in which a downtrodden call girl masturbates in view of a rooftop gargoyle in which a demon has been imprisoned. By the end of that scene the gargoyle has broken free enough to actively participate, if only briefly, but even before that he is definitely influencing the activities. Is this really masturbation?
__________

From "Freeing the Demon"

Sacchi Green

When Jayne finally climbed out onto the balcony she was wrapped in a deeply hooded raincoat. She knew the allure of mystery, and slow unveiling; she also knew all previous experience might be irrelevant. Could her demon be pleased like human men? Until she knew his pleasure, she would simply please herself.
The light from his depths glowed hotter than ever before. In anticipation of her coming? Or had he gained strength from devouring Leopold? A shiver of fear sharpened her excitement.
She pressed herself against the rain-slick stone and inched the raincoat open. Chill gave way to warmth wherever skin touched stone, and when she stretched upward from the balustrade a deep vibration pulsed through the rigid mass. She pressed closer, bruising her softness on his ridges, melding pain with pleasure, but when she sensed desperation in his trembling she loosened her grip and stepped down.
Jayne knew the art of pleasing watchers. They had been her only bearable customers. In any closer interaction it was she who would become the watcher, removed, unmoved, observing with vague repulsion what her other self must do.
She wondered whether he could see her, but when she raised the edges of the coat like dark wings the light beamed obliquely from his eyes to warm the pale flame of her body.
The coat, once released. did not fall but floated above and behind, supported by the light. She forgot the rain, forgot everything but herself and that burning presence, feeding on his hunger as it fed on hers.
Beginning with dance-like movements, slowly, sinuously, Jayne curved her hands from waist to hips, slimness to taut fullness. Her touch was the watcher's touch, but under her command.
Then she drew her fingers lightly upward, brushing them teasingly around the outer curves of her breasts, catching her breath at the sweet soreness. As she cupped them gently and then less gently the fullness, the firmness, grew; in her mind her outline transformed from slender to voluptuous.
The ripples of pleasure intensified. Urgency flowed down her body. She throbbed both with fullness and with an aching need to be filled.
Jayne thought fleetingly of pulling back. How could she bear it if this hot tide never flooded into release? But it was all she had to give. And besides, it was too late.
Hard nipples jutted from her round full breasts, yearning desperately for the stroke of hands that could not reach out, for the hot press and tug and bite of a mouth frozen in stillness. Her fingers teased their tips into greater, harder, unbearable tension, while her palms still cupped the swelling fullness. She thrust against her own hands and moaned, again and again, until a deeper echo sounded from the stone before her and she raised her eyes.
Red light pulsed from the depths. A low rumbling sound went on and on. How could she truly touch him, penetrate the shell of dark magic, bring his torment and hers to an ecstatic peak?
She had come to despise men's bodies, but now she cursed the spell, or sculptor, that had shaped the gargoyle, pressing the forelegs together to obscure the loins, leaving her without even a simulacrum of maleness to stroke, taste, press against.
Her hands slipped downward. Her breasts still yearned with fullness, but a hunger still more intense built in her depths, a pounding pressure that demanded a harder pressure in return, more, and more...
Detachment long gone, she could only open mind as well as flesh to him, projecting her own sensations, hoping for him to somehow tell her how to meet his need.
His vision of her flashed through her mind; eyes half-closed, lips full and parted, head twisting from side to side as damp, heavy hair coiled over her shoulders and slid across her thrusting nipples, rising and falling to the ragged rhythm of her breathing. It was his will that raised her hand to cradle and press one breast and then the other, gently at first, then harder, sending hot lances downward. She no longer knew which sobbing cries and moans were her own, and which reverberated from the stone.
Somewhere in the outer world there were sounds. Pounding on a door? Or her own blood pounding in her ears? The clamor of her body drowned any intrusion. Linked with this being who watched and shared and demanded, she moved in response to his will as well as her own, hips twisting, undulating, arching toward him, hands stroking and kneading and tantalizing but leaving the hot, pulsing void for him, for his filling, if only he would come to her, into her...
A sharp crack split the air. The balcony shook. A wave of force slammed her against the building, jarring her teeth into her lower lip until it bled. She force down pain-sparked anger; whatever she had incited she would willingly accept.
__________


Pretty close to not being, technically, masturbation, right? Except, possibly, for the author. I can’t say for sure that writing that turns its writer on will turn on readers better than writing that’s more detached, but really, wouldn’t researching that question be fun?


 

Wristy Business

I’m not going to delve too deeply into the psychological side of self-love here. I’m looking more at the functionality, both in real world and in fiction, and those occasions where it seems there is no recourse but to get busy and rub one out. In fiction, I love those moments. I love reading them and writing them.

Mostly, I prefer to see and read female masturbation, for various reasons. One is, of course, I’m a heterosexual dude, and was born with a fascination for women which will apparently never be fully appeased. And I’m good with that. More study means more learning.

To my eye, women have a natural fluid grace in all things physical. I understand I was born with rose-coloured glasses in this aspect, but still, there it is. It’s in the sway of her arms and hips as she walks; it’s in the stretch of her ankles as she curls her legs around his back. And it’s in the dance of her fingers as she grinds her own (or her lover’s) clit. Even the in-out pumping of her hand seems to take a more orbital approach than the steam-piston engineering a man usually employs on her.

Of course, I’m talking only from the visual sense here. How it feels to her is something I don’t pretend to know, though I imagine many of the sensations are similar between the genders. Perhaps that mechanical insistence of a male is preferable in reality. It just doesn’t look as elegant to me.

But there’s still a bunch of hawtness in having my male characters take part in hand-to-gland combat. Just to wildly generalise for a moment, men are straightforward creatures. Hunt, kill, eat. That sort of thing. Though again, there are many subtleties to how a man might pleasure himself, the job can be done at its most basic level with just one hand and access to a couple of inches of himself. Doesn’t even need to be the whole thing, just the best bits. And sometimes, those desperate, inappropriate and furtive moments are hotter than the most elaborately-organised weekend love-fest.

There are some wonderful subtleties as to how an author might employ male masturbation as well. I’ve chatted with a few friends (most notably Sassie Lewis and Chandra Crawford) about it, and they helped me distill the act of going hand solo down to its heart. Their likes and dislikes, and their suggestions, enabled me to craft a particular scene in The Last Three Days.

We’re all highly aware these days of the level of temptation the world throws at us. And a single need unfulfilled will drive a story far harder than a hundred casual orgasms ever will.

For me, in fiction, masturbation scenes are essential at certain points. Usually it’s the situation of an overwhelming need which can not be fulfilled.

With that in mind, in The Last Three Days I had two characters, Opal and Luther, who’d come together by chance, who’d developed an intimacy neither of them truly had a right to, and who’d allowed that intimacy to stretch its legs in the physical world. At the point of this excerpt they hadn’t quite gone all the way… but by golly, they could see it from there.

Excerpt:

He swore he could still taste her. Still smell her juices on his lips. Three days later, a dozen guilt-driven showers, and she was still all over him.

Luther pressed back against the cubicle door, searching for strength. His hands were birds of prey, tearing open his pants, eviscerating them, curling sharp talons around his cock. He felt her touch on him as he stroked himself. He leaned his hand on the wall above the toilet, all thought of hygiene displaced by the wordless blaze of lust within him.

In no time he was there again, with the heat and the sound and the feel of her mouth around him. How she’d salved her hunger; slaked her thirst. The reverence of her greed.

Every inch of his body prickled, a billion rogue sensations milling, on high alert. With his climax came the call to arms, a rush into action, to spill from him as if pulled from without. Hunched over, pumping like an engine, he released the only sound he could find.

“Ooooooooooohhh…”

He was weak flesh. More skin than bone. Condemned. He squeezed out his last drop of fluid, and wiped off with a square of paper.

Three days and no peace. He’d come good, pushed her away. They were done, they’d called it even.

Then she threw out that line, baited and hooked. 

Of course, I came twice and you only came once. So, yeah, it’s not really even.

He’d come three times a day since then. With the spice of her pussy on his tongue. With the fire of her mouth around him. The raw weight of her body pinned to the wall again and again as he drove into her. Maybe that made them even. Or maybe she had to come another half-dozen times now to catch up.

Webcam Amateur

by Giselle Renarde

It was a simple curiosity that grew into a fascination, and then a fascination that became an obsession.

I'm talking about girls who get off in front of their webcams and post it on amateur porn sites. As I said, I tuned in solely out of curiosity. I knew how I got myself off, but I wondered how other women played with their bodies when they were home alone. Maybe I wanted to see if I was "normal." Who knows?

So I watched an amateur webcam video of a slim young woman using her fingers and then her toys to bring herself to orgasm. It all looked very familiar. I had to watch another to make sure it wasn't just a one-off.

The same sequence of events repeated in the next webcam masturbation session. This girl was plump with big boobs. To see her on the street, she would have seemed perfectly plain, but her arousal made her sexy.

Just like the first girl, she started with her clit. She played with it over her panties while she squeezed her tits, and then she stripped to get down and dirty with her pussy. She stroked her clit until her need to be filled was visible in her eyes. Then she sunk her plump fingers inside and fucked herself fast.

Patterns repeated, video after video. There were endless variations, but every woman—young, old, curvy, thin—seemed to start with her clit and her tits and then move on to fucking herself with her fingers or her toys. The pitch and intonation of her pleasured cries were so familiar they could have been my own. It was affirming, watching all this. It made me feel like, yes, I am one of them. I bring myself to orgasm the same way they do. We all are one.

Maybe it's strange to find webcam masturbation sessions cosmic, but watching one after another after another, I did.

That's why I decided to make my own.

My intention wasn't to satisfy the male gaze or feed the desires of the voyeuristic masses, even though I knew my clip would end up doing that too. I honestly don't feel like it was the exhibitionist in me that wanted to make this video. Well, maybe a little... but mainly, I figured I wasn't the only woman out there who got curious about how other women pleasured themselves. I wanted to be one of the average, everyday girls showing the world a woman is perfectly capable of satisfying herself. It was a feminist endeavour.

That said, I didn't want my video to one day end up in my mother's inbox with a note attached like, "Look what your daughter's been up to!" Unashamed though I am of my pussy and my will to pleasure, I wanted to make my video anonymously.

After a shower and shave, I set up my webcam so the only part of my body it captured was my cunt. Maybe it seems like a strangely intimate body part to share with the world, but the way I figure, only me, my doctor and my lovers would recognize it. Filming it segregated from the rest of my body made me feel like it was somehow separate from me as a person.

I lined up my toys so I wouldn’t have to get up and fetch them mid-shoot. Then I got into position and pressed record. I watched my pussy convulse on my computer screen before I’d even touched it, and I wondered if I should say anything to the viewing public. Ultimately, I decided against sharing my voice. Just my pussy. And my fingers.

Reaching down, I tapped my naked clit to wake it up. I rubbed my pussy lips with my whole hand. I did that slowly and repeated the action until I could feel the juices flowing inside my body. As soon as I sensed the gush of my natural lube, I slathered it all over my clit. I was surprised how it glistened, even on the cheap webcam video, like there was no disguising the blessedness of a cunt.

Setting a finger on either side of my clit, I rubbed back and forth. My whole body reacted—I nearly jumped out of the shot! I had to force myself to sit still while I rubbed my bud so the viewing public would get a good look at my self-inflicted sex. I thought about watching other women doing this, and of other women watching me. Out of curiosity.

When my clit wanted more than my fingers could offer, I turned on my cock-shaped vibe. It was a big one, and a powerful machine. It brought me to orgasm in less than a minute of pressing its smooth head close to my clit. I tried to stifle the sounds of my passion, but ultimately decided I wanted the watchers to hear what my orgasms sounded like.

I wore my clit out with the vibe, but I wasn’t finished yet. That’s when I pushed the fake cock inside myself with one well-lubricated thrust. It felt so good to pound my pussy with the big vibe that I came all over again. When I finished with the toy, I stroked my pussy lips with my fingers to calm myself down. After my body stopped jumping and my breathing returned to normal, I clicked stop on the video.

I think I watched it sixteen times before uploading it to the amateur porn site, each time asking myself, “Do I really want to put this out into the world?”

Despite my silly apprehensions, the answer was obvious. Yes!

"Webcam Amateur" appears in the anthology Secret Confessions, published by eXcessica.

No naughty encounter is ever complete until you tell somebody about it. And who doesn’t feel a tingle while reading a naughty story and wondering, “Is this true? Did that really happen?”

In this collection, you’ll find a whopping 36 erotic stories, as explicit as they are wicked! These confessions involve lesbian encounters, exhibitionism, porn appreciation, voyeurism, masturbation and self-love, cheating and deception, threesomes, group sex, sploshing, ice play, public sex, fisting, sex with a loving partner, female fantasies, rimming, anal play, stranger sex, double penetration, spanking, insertions, bondage, and so much more!

Explorations in Masturbation

Somewhere along the way, I lost the track of the real reason for masturbation.  I got so caught up in having a quick tug before a shower or a quick wank before bed -- I just needed a few minutes to get that build-up and release.  But, really, masturbation should be about feeling good and about making me feel as sexual as possible -- and not the "quick, get it done!" attitude I seem to have.

I think the source of this is obvious and I think almost anyone can relate.  When I first discovered masturbation, I had to be secretive about it -- and quick.  I had to get it done and clean up before any of my family would know I was up to something.  Those early beginnings seem to have stuck with me; though I know masturbation can be much longer and much more enjoyable, I still pretty much only masturbate in quick moments.

The other aspect that I think is missing in my masturbation is a focus on my own body.  Instead, I'm usually watching porn or scrolling through a dirty Tumblr blog or perhaps reading a filthy book, and my masturbation becomes a reaction to what I'm seeing and reading.  This is, of course, totally fine and I certainly don't discourage it.  But masturbation should (at least sometimes) be about focussing on my own body, on exciting my nerve endings, on exploring the pleasure I can give myself.  In short, the focus should be on me, not what's on my computer screen.

So this past weekend, I set out to challenge my masturbation behaviours.  I planned to take the time I needed, leave my computer, phone, and books aside, and just see where my hands take me.

I got on the bed (and put a towel under me so I wouldn't have to worry if I made a mess) and got naked.  I was already hard -- my lust was anticipating this act, perhaps I was excited to focus on myself for a change.  I started stroking.  Being a bit more of a bottom, I soon found my fingers exploring south of my balls and poking at my hole.  I squirted some lube on my fingers and pressed against my opening, sliding my finger in deep.

Hmm... I'm in a coffee shop as I write this and getting a hard-on from the memory... I better calm down a bit.

I had a good time pleasuring myself.  It was a much different experience from that quick tug before I hop in the shower or the before bed jerk-off session while watching a video online.  This was much more focussed on the pleasure coursing through my body -- my entire body -- rather than just pleasing my dick.

Those quick wanks are often entirely dick-focussed.  Stroke and tug and stroke and tug until I come and I get that quick rush of pleasure through my body.  But the slower me-focussed masturbation included pleasuring my whole body -- my dick, my balls, my hole, my prostate, my nipples, and even the irregular breathing as I gasped in pleasure as my finger brushed against my prostate.

This, of course, isn't something I can do all the time -- I can't always spare a half hour or more to jack off and my ass isn't always ready to have fingers shoved deep inside.  Besides, sometimes I really do want that quick release in the morning and I often really do want to look at porn and stroke as I admire the raunchy scenes playing out on my screen.

But what this exploration in masturbation has shown me is that I should be treating myself and my body to this pleasure every now and then.  It's about being good to myself.  And it's about embracing masturbation as a healthy part of my sexuality; it's no longer that quick and dirty deed I did as a teenager.  Masturbation is about treating myself to pleasure and touching myself in ways that no one else can.


Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Go-Go Boys of Club 21: The Complete Series. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

The Hite of Curiosity

by Annabeth Leong

The summer half my family fled Hawaii, my mother regained the trove of possessions she’d left behind in Denver. Among the family heirlooms and old furniture was a collection of her old books, and that was what drew most of my attention.

I was at the age where I was desperately trying to put together the facts behind the allusions people made to sex. I could say the number 69 with a knowing inflection, but I had no idea what act it signified.

That summer, I came across several books that opened my eyes.

We’d moved into a squalid apartment in a neighborhood of Atlanta marked primarily by white flight and the large empty buildings left in its wake. The previous occupants had left behind a lot of things, including a stack of paperback novels in one of the closets.

I pounced on the novels and quickly made the discovery that many of them contained “good parts.” I was supposed to be unpacking boxes and moving into my new room, but I spent hours with the lower half of my body hidden in the closet, reading and internally pulsing. I hadn’t really worked out how to masturbate to orgasm with reliability. I knew the word orgasm but wasn’t entirely sure what it represented. I’d experienced something that maybe qualified, but I wasn’t 100% confident about what I’d felt. I’d read enough to figure out that sex involved penetration, but simulating that with my fingers enough to come required acrobatic contortions and lots of uninterrupted time. (I didn’t yet have any concept of sex outside heteronormative images of the penis entering the vagina.)

Motivated as I was, it was hard to do that while eluding discovery. Inside, I boiled with plots for what I could do or get that would work better (I didn’t know what a dildo was, but I had dim ideas for how I might make one).

In a fit of shame, though, I threw away all the books. I still regret doing that.

My mother’s old collection, however, came to my rescue.

Among it was The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality (the 1976 edition—which is where I’m pinning my connection to the topic). It had a stark, unassuming cover, and I’m sure it was only the word “sexuality” that drew my attention.

I hadn’t been explicitly forbidden from reading it, but I wouldn’t touch it during the day. Instead, I waited for night to fall and snuck down to find it in its place on the shelf. Huddled there, breathing the dust lingering from the storage unit, turning pages cracked and yellowed with age, I discovered the answers to many of my questions.

In particular, I discovered the clitoris. The book contained a large section on the masturbation techniques women reported using, and that became my instruction manual. Compared to what I’d been doing, giving myself a clitoral orgasm was ludicrously easy. It almost felt unfair.

My other questions were answered, too. I learned about cunnilingus and fellatio and encountered for the first time the idea that turnabout in these matters is fair play. I read my first description of lesbian sex.

I read the book haphazardly, in breathless snatches, aroused by its clinical language perhaps even more than by the “good parts” of the novels I’d found earlier. But I would never have dreamed of throwing this book away. It was so obviously valuable, not only for its practical advice but also for the glimpse it gave me into the feelings women had about sex.

A phrase that, for some reason, sticks in my head to this day is, “I washed, and so should he.” I believe this was a woman lamenting that her partner wouldn’t go down on her, not even when she performed oral sex on him. In retrospect, remembered snippets like this have cropped up many times in my mind over the years.

It wasn’t only that I got a view into the forbidden details I was looking for. I was also introduced to simmering resentments, difficulties of communication, inequities between the sexes, and the idea that sex did not necessarily work like magic (as those novels had pretended it would).

Very little that I’ve read in my life remains as present in my head as The Hite Report. It gave me an education when I needed it, but it also reassured me that adults did not have this sex thing figured out either.

It also makes me wish I’d been there for the seventies. The liberation I felt pulsing in that book’s pages does not appear, to my eye, to have actually come. We may throw the word “clit” around now, and many of the collections of erotic stories may be labeled as “for women,” but in my career as an erotica writer I have to work so hard to feel free enough to say what I mean and how I feel and to present viewpoints outside the mainstream (whether that’s the mainstream of society or the mainstream of erotic literature). The Hite Report made me imagine lots of individual women telling the truth about what sex is like for them and what they want. I still want to live in the world where people can do that.

By the Numbers

by Annabeth Leong

I can't think about the topic "over-sexed" without going for the data. From an early age, I felt weird about myself whenever I heard about women and sex—whether I was hearing what women are "supposed" to be like, what women are actually doing, or listening to what other women said they were doing.

In Alfred Kinsey's 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, he reported that unmarried women had a mean of 0.5 orgasms a week, and married women had 2.2. By that definition, I'm not over-sexed—I'm exponentially sexed (expo-sexed?).

For basically my whole sexual life, I've averaged a minimum of an orgasm a day, and often many more. I masturbate to fall asleep, so that's how I know it's at least one. I'm sure I've missed days here and there, but I definitely made up for those with recreational masturbation or experiences with lovers. Also, being coupled has often caused me to have fewer orgasms than I do when I'm single—when you live alone, it's not awkward to randomly masturbate on the living room couch, but when your lover's around, unless they're into that, it might be.

So, basically, when I read numbers like Kinsey's, I get pretty damn confused. Are all these women being surveyed telling lies? Or am I just that much hornier than everyone else? Do I need hospitalization? Or perhaps a shock collar? (Damn it, the idea of a shock collar turns me on…)

But Kinsey's book came out in 1953. Maybe those low, low numbers are the result of patriarchal oppression. If you don't know to call your sex organs anything other than "down there," and you're told you'll definitely go to hell if you dare to feel around down there, maybe it's hard to find the clit.

Modern numbers don't make me feel much better, though. Here's a clip from Jesse Bering's book Perv:

In a 2006 survey of 1,171 Swedish women, 80 of them (around 7 percent) were labeled "hypersexual." Why the researchers settled on thirteen orgasms per month as the critical dividing line between "normal sexuality" and "hypersexuality" in women is something of a puzzle (there's nothing special or catastrophic about that figure so far as I can tell), but nonetheless any kvinna finding herself on the wrong side of that line was considered "hypersexual." The bar for the Swedish male respondents in the same survey was set somewhat higher. Men needed a minimum of seventeen orgasms a month (another dubious figure) to be classified as "hypersexual."

Bering takes an appropriately skeptical tone about what really seem to be arbitrary definitions of hypersexuality, but I don't even need to get into that argument to feel like a weirdo nympho. Only 80 of those 1,171 Swedish women have more than thirteen orgasms a month? I shudder to think where my personal slice of the pie would be if I were in that survey. Would I have any company at all, or would they delete my figures because it's often a good idea to remove extreme outliers?

I want to pause here to emphasize that I'm not humble-bragging. I don't mean to imply that the frequency of my masturbation is somehow superior or even sexier. And I don't mean my incredulity at these comparisons to come off as shaming other women. I truly don't mean to throw any shade on women who choose to orgasm less often than I do.

I think maybe everyone is wondering what normal is. If we could remove our societal value judgments about normal or abnormal sexuality, maybe we could all just be ourselves and please ourselves without worrying so much.

Others have brought up the slut/frigid bitch dichotomy. Women are punished for both too much and too little sexual desire, and "too much" and "too little" are often defined in relation to the amount of sexual desire a male partner has.

My experiences, though, are all with the slut end of the spectrum. Frequency of orgasms isn't the only number that matters there. There's also number of partners. There was a movie that came out in 2011 called What's Your Number? It's about a woman who freaks the fuck out in response to a magazine article that correlates having more than twenty partners and having trouble finding a husband. She's been with nineteen people, and she thinks she needs to be sure that the next man she gets with is her husband.

I'll just say that I found the number twenty…quaint. I'll never forget going to a clinic to get tested and learning that having more than three partners in a year was considered promiscuous. That particular year, I'd had thirteen.

These numbers about partners are another vector along which I've always felt bizarre and over-sexed. Part of what's always been strange to me is that I can't imagine being any other way. How else would I fall asleep? And as far as the number of partners, aside from issues of coercion and the way people treat you when you're known as the town slut, I've just never seen the point in waiting when all parties involved know what they want to do. I've never been sure how people manage to hold back so much.

And I think this gets me to a very similar place to where Jean ended up. It would be so great to live in a world where we could be our true sexual selves without shame (assuming consent and safer sex practices). What if we stopped counting these things? What if I stopped counting?

For a long time, I tracked lovers according to several complicated systems. I lived in fear of discovering I'd forgotten a lover's last name, or wasn't sure exactly what I'd done with them. I obsessed over what did and didn't "count" as sex. But I think all that was part of the effort to be normal when I didn't feel normal, or to cling to whatever sense of normal I could.

What isn't normal, but should be, is to learn what's right for oneself and go with it.

I'll end with a plug for the best book of sex science aimed at women that I've ever read. Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are is the first book I've read that explained things I experienced, treated a wide variety of sexual personalities as normal, and never once made me feel like a slut. What if I'm not over-sexed at all, but properly sexed for me? I highly recommend that book.

(I'm posting on the weekend to make up for missing my normal day in this cycle. Back to normal next time, everyone!)

A party of one ...

Solo sex …

That's right, we're talking about masturbation.

For the life of me, I can't understand why some parents aren't teaching their kids more about self pleasure. I mean, let's face it. With masturbation, there isn't a chance of pregnancy, and the only STD that can come of it is if you are already infected. It's truly the only "safe sex", because we all know abstinence only just doesn't work.

We need to teach it in schools too. In addition to showing the girls how to put a raincoat on a banana, we need to be teaching them about battery operated boyfriends and how truly good to us they can be. No chance of cheating, and there isn't any worry about a two second lift-off. Only issue might be a need to buy new batteries every so often, and keeping a spare set on hand removes that problem.

Now, we all know that masturbation can be empty feeling. But it can also be entirely pleasurable, depending upon your mindset and libido. Some of the best sex of my life has come with a partner, and some of the best sex of my life has also happened while I was completely alone.

I had my first orgasm all by my lonesome, after having had sex several times. I've learned what truly pleases me, not from exploration with a partner, but from self-loving. It has allowed me to know what I like, and to guide my partner to it. I still find out things when I am by myself … which can be infinitely enjoyable to both of us when I share my discoveries.

And masturbation, contrary to some belief, isn't a fall back when sex isn't available. Sometimes, I chose it rather than sex. Sometimes, I like to watch my partner stroke himself off. And just between me and you *wink, wink* I really get off on watching a woman masturbate. Yeppers, nothing gets me hotter than seeing fingers disappear into moist, warm depths, and come back out glistening in cream.

I think that's part of why so many of my characters indulge in masturbation, for whatever reason comes up. *smiles*

Take for example Natasha, in my recently re-released The Life Not Lived. She's dealing with the aftermath of a divorce, and her realization that she had been lying to herself for years, trying to be heterosexual.

Frustrated at the way her thoughts were intruding, she forced them aside and stroked her finger over her clit, ruthlessly manipulating the ball of nerves into a shallow orgasm. Gasping at the sparks that flickered to life within her, she continued her motions, running her finger along her slit, and delving past her puffy lips. Cupping one breast with her other hand, Natasha rolled her nipple between her thumb and index finger, pinching it hard enough to sting.

Gasping at the delicious tingle it sparked, she pumped her fingers faster, grinding them hard against the thin strip of skin that covered her pelvic bone beneath her clit. As her inner muscles clenched tight, she withdrew them, returning her attention to her clit. Swirling around the taunt bud, she stimulated it to the point of pain, before she was ready to allow herself another orgasm.

Pinching her nipple hard, she arched her hips, allowing her body to crest. Natasha pulled her fingers from her panties with a soft gasp and curled onto her side.

Then there is Alisa, from Diggin' Up Bones, who is trying to come to terms with the rape she suffered, and her returning feelings for the man she loves. Scared of being hurt, she is more terrified of losing what matters the most in her life.

The water washed away her frustrations and beat at her tight muscles. She leaned back against the cool tiles and closed her eyes, allowing her hands free reign. Of their own volition, they cupped her breasts, holding the slight weight in their palms as her fingers rolled her tight nipples. She lost herself in fantasy. Zach was under the spray with her, his rough, work calloused hands holding her breasts, teasing her nipples with his thumbs as his lips pressed soft kisses along her throat.

Gliding a hand down her stomach, she paused at her belly button, tracing over the sensitive little valley, then continued. Slipping a finger past her pouting lips and dipping it into her moist core, she stroked the sensitive skin. She had been wet ever since she'd watched Zach walk across her lawn earlier, the rising sun hitting his hair just enough to bring out the deep chestnut with its natural highlights. Long-legged, his strides had eaten up the earth as he moved with purpose. He mingled with the crew, often gesturing with his hands to make his point. A fluid grace filled his movements and her body remembered well being the recipient of his caresses.

Thrusting her finger deep, she rubbed her thumb over her clit, desperately trying to take the edge off her frustrations. Zach's presence just outside her house had her emotions in turmoil, and it was only getting worse. She had almost leaned forward and kissed him at the door, she wanted his touch so badly. Just watching each of his words form on his lips had aroused her. Topped with his voice as he spoke, it had taken all her will power to turn away from him. It didn't help that despite not knowing why she'd pushed him away, he still wanted her. She saw it in his blue eyes every time he looked at her. It seemed time hadn't lessened what they felt for each other, as she had hoped. The rate it was going, a decade could go by and she would still melt into a puddle when he walked into the room.

Alternating her hand from one breast to the other, she teased and pinched her nipples while she manipulated her clit and pussy with the other. Her legs grew weak as her inner muscles tightened, trying to milk a cock that wasn't there.

Locking her legs tight, she arched her back against the shower wall as tremors raced through her. Mouth open, she gasped for air. Her insides were on fire, and in her mind's eye it was Zach's fingers driving her wild, his fingers slowly thrusting in and out of her pussy while his mouth plundered hers.

With a soft cry, a shudder wracking her body, she climaxed. Her essence leaked down her hand to wash away in the torrents of water racing down her body from the showerhead. Gasping softly, she dropped to her knees, her legs too weak to hold her. Tipping her head into the spray, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and let the water wash away her tears, as they streamed from her eyes.

Of course, who can forget the exhibitionist masturbation, a personal favorite of mine. *smile* I tried to capture this thrill in my story The Window of the Soul, which is in my Private Eyes collection that will be out soon from Phaze. (Unedited excerpt)

I angled my view back down, capturing the breathtaking sight of her fingers pulling out of her moist red pussy, shining with her essence. The musky smell of her sex floated up, teasing me, tempting me to drop to my knees and bury my face between her legs.

She thrust her fingers back in, arching her back, softly moaning as a third joined the other two. And I somehow managed to captured it on the camera, her pussy widening to accept the offering, sucking the third into her depths. Her hips writhed on the bed, until with a soft pop she pulled her fingers free and reached for the dildo, driving it into her pussy. Her other hand slipped down her body, and with an elegantly, long finger she manipulated her clit, rolling the tiny bud around.

I moved back to her side, my pussy clenching with need, as I continued taking shots. I know some of the shots were slightly out of focus, but the rest--the rest would be some of my best work. Forget farting babies, this was what I worked and slaved all day long for. To see beautiful women come apart, and to capture that moment, that intimate moment on film.

She slid her hands free long enough to grasp for the clit clamps, and our hands brushed as I reached out to grab them, to hand them to her. She let out a soft whimper as she attached the first clamp and I zoomed in, catching her fingers stroking over her other nipple, her motions as she opened the clamp up and attached it. I longed to be the one bringing her that delicious pain, attaching the gator clamps to her sensitive nipples.

Her whimpered moans drowned out the softly playing music and the whirl of the camera, as I struggled to keep up with her rapid pace as she returned her hands to her pussy. She was on fire, and I knew whoever was lucky enough to share her bed had a truly sensual being on their hands. She was sex incarnate, a living breathing Aphrodite, tempting us mere mortals with her wicked ways.

I snapped a shot of her inner thighs, glistening with her juices. I zoomed in on her breasts, shooting their rapid rise and fall, as she gasped for breath, the clamps almost obscene against her glistening skin. And as she screamed out her ecstasy, thrusting the dildo into her pussy faster and faster, I captured the look on her face on film. Her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted, her nostrils flaring. In that moment, she could have been eighteen or eighty, as her facial features smoothed out, her face completely and totally relaxed.

Some people think when you’re sleeping is when you truly have the face of an angel, but I disagree. It’s when you come that your inner radiance shines the most. There’s no artifice, no hidden emotions; it’s all there for your partner to see.

Her eyes opened and locked on mine. I licked my lips as I watched her pull the dildo form her pussy. With a soft smile she brought it to her lips and I caught it all, the tip slowly disappearing into her mouth, the hard length creamy with her pussy juice. The crotch of my panties was soaked by the time she was done sucking the dildo off, and as she trailed it back down her body, her saliva leaving a faint trail, I caught it all.

I guess there can be no doubt that I am all for masturbation, alone of with an audience (of one, or more).

I Have No Shame

I've done it on a train.
I've done it on a plain.
I've done it on a boat.
I did it once near a goat.

I've done it in the pool,
And once upon a stool.
I've done it in the bathroom,
I've done it in the kitchen,
And yes, I've done it out in public,
Now will you please quit yer bitchin'?

I've done it with my husband
And I've done it all alone;
While working on the computer,
While talking on the phone.

I've done it at my parents,
I've done it in my car.
I've done it here, I've done it there,
I've done it near and far.

I really have no shame, see?
And can you really blame me?
For doing what's so natural,
It's really matter-of-factual.

We all know deep in our hearts
That everybody...

Farts.

What? What did you think I was talking about?

Oooooooooh, that!

Yeah, I do that to.

;)

Self love and you aren't alone

"Show me."

Two tiny words that can make the biggest, bravest man cringe, or puff his chest out with delight. The same can be said of women, but perhaps with slightly more cringing than puffing. LOL

How many of us, and this will vary with age, length of relationship and a number of other issues, would leap at the chance to strip bare, lay back and spread our legs, then show our partners/lovers just how we like to touch ourselves? Cripes, how many would dare ask?

We write about it, as Jenna said, it's a great way to bring a little sex into an erotic romance when you don't want your characters to leap into be quite yet. It's also fun to add a masturbation scene into a book for variety. I'm actually a huge fan of using masturbation to torture my characters. Yup, you go right ahead and touch yourself, but don't you dare come or I'll slap/tickle/flog or whatever. The variety of how we self-pleasure and the reasons we come up with are endless. Fetish comes to mind: the sexy sod who lusts after his wife's stilettos, the sexy mature woman who adores the feel of satin, or leather between her thighs, the middle aged banker who can't wait to kneel at his master or mistress' feet.

Oh, and while you're indulging with those fetish items, stroke that pussy, cock, bearded clam, rod for us.

What are these characters thinking of while they stroke? Fantasies they've created for themselves, lovers they've had, want to have or have now. Scenarios they want to try, don't dare try or are possibly illegal, but it's still all right to dream.

Knowing thyself. That means knowing the sexual part of yourself as well as all the other aspects of what makes you... well.. you!

Liking and loving that aspect of you is enormous and often more than people can do, unfortunately. How many of us have secret fantasies we couldn't dare share with our partners? Not even partners you've had for ten, twenty, thirty, or more years? Whether it's shame or embarrassment, there are too many of us still too many of us unwilling, or unable, to share the things that excite us.

But, if you can take that leap. If you can swallow whatever fear holds you back. If you can take a deep breath and blurt out how much you're enamored with your husband's thigh high waders or your wife's frilly lace apron, chances are you'll find they're more than accepting, they're eager to play along with you.

I guess the big secret here is to realize we're all very much alike. No matter what turns you on, there are a dozen, a thousand or more who are into the same thing.

Got a kink or fetish you'd like to share? I'd love to know all about it. Told your special someone and had a good/bad experience, I'd love to hear about those too.

Hugs