Swinging on a Slow Pendulum

by Giselle Renarde

Songs from your childhood make you feel young again.

I forget where I heard that. Probably on TV. But it makes me think of documentary I watched about music therapy. They interviewed a guy whose job was to visit long-term care facilities and lead singalongs with the residents, many of whom had dementia. This singalong guy figured he'd learn a bunch of songs from across the decades, but he found that when he played popular music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, the residents weren't interested, or they didn't remember the tunes.

It was only when he started singing songs from the 30s and 40s, when the elderly residents were young, that everyone joined in. From then on, it was all WWII era music all the time. Even residents whose dementia was very advanced remembered the old songs word for word.

I'm not exactly elderly, but lately I find I'm drawn back to the music of my youth. I didn't have the easiest childhood (in fact, I lived through a lot of what they're now calling Adverse Childhood Experiences), but I was lucky enough to find an escape hatch in the family record player.

When I was a preteen, I fell in love with Broadway musicals. Don't ask me how I got my introduction to musical theatre. My father was obsessed with Elvis. My mother never listened to music at all. My dad's record collection was vast, but it didn't include any Broadway. I used to go to the library and flip through the record stacks and check out every soundtrack I could get my hands on. I'd bring my records home and copy them onto cassette tapes so I could listen to them in my bedroom. I had a tape player of my own, but not my own turntable. Vinyl was on its way out. (Now it's on its way back in--funny, that.)

I think one of the things I most loved about musicals was that they were stories I could get lost inside. I would play my tapes over and over and over again. It's a wonder they didn't snap. I would listen until I'd memorized every lyric to every song. I could have sung the entire Phantom of the Opera soundtrack to anyone who was interested. (No one was.) And I recall a weirdly obsessive crush I had on some girl at my school because she looked (in my mind) like the actress who played Jenny in Aspects of Love.

After finding a bunch of my old tapes in my mother's basement a few months ago, I discovered something pretty amazing: all these years later, I still remember the lyrics to all those soundtracks. I haven't heard them in ages. Doesn't matter. The music's locked in my brain and the words are there with them.

I've read that as Carl Jung got older, he would go down to the river and carve tiny rivulets into the earth, leading the water off in different directions. This was a favourite childhood activity of his, and he came back to it in old age. 

More and more, I feel like life swings on a slow pendulum. I'm going back to the place I came from, and maybe I'll get there one day. There's a word I learned in university, a word I no longer remember--it means nostalgia for a past you never actually experienced. I've got a case of that, big time. My childhood was full of trauma, and yet there's something about it I want back. I'm not sure what. Maybe just the music.

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in well over 100 short story anthologies, including prestigious collections like Best Lesbian Romance, Best Women’s Erotica, and the Lambda Award-winning collection Take Me There, edited by Tristan Taormino. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, Cherry, Seven Kisses, In Shadow, and The Other Side of Ruth.

Mirabella

She lays on her back, the little girl, Mirabella, listening to the voice of her mother and father arguing downstairs.  Sometimes it turns bad.  Tonight it's not so bad yet.  She stretches her hearing, her senses, moving between sound and something like smell, hearing and touching the air to know which way their talk is going.   Coffee.  Alchohol, sharp and sweet.  A tonality.

She forces her senses to stretch and stretch because she doesn’t want to be here.  If she can just stretch hard enough she can make herself "swing".  Make her mind pop.  She doesn’t like it when they fight.  She feels the tingles, first in her fingertips and the inside of her ears, tickling.  Now her legs won’t move.  She is not falling asleep, but she feels herself stretching like taffy  into the air as she begins to leave her body.  Soon she will ride the night with the special gift she has which she had always thought everyone had.  When she discovered she was the only one it made her cry to feel herself so different and then to feel sorry for the other people – the ones who couldn’t stretch, the normal people, who couldn’t swing between minds.

Her senses stretch.  And stretch.  The fuzzy, taffy feeling in in her head now and she feels like she wants to sneeze as the feeling creeps through her nose.  Then her eyes itch and she pushes the stretch, the swing of her senses, further, boldly, as far as it will go, like pushing out a turd on the potty, she pushes out her soul.  

And then feels herself pop.

She imagines a dandelion seed spread on the wind.  How would it be, what would a dandelion want?  To be a flower?  Does a dandelion fluff know its destined to be a flower?  To be so self contaied and eager to die to itself to be a flower that someone will pick and hold under someone else's chin and say "You're in love."

She is a seed.  She is absolutey a seed and feels herself float on the breeze from the window.  Her body, inert below.  The dandelion seed floats to the door, wills itself down the stairs, slowly to where the mother and father are fighting.  

The voices are harsh.  They feel different to her as a dandelion seed.  She doesn't see them, has no eyes to see, has forgotten how to understand the words but feels them in the air, the warmth of their breath.  She wills herself up the stairs again, in through the door, there to the breeze of the window where she floats and feels the air.

Outside the open bedroom window a bat is looping and darting through the light of a street lamp, snagging the bugs that come to the light.  She touches the bat with floating senses and swings delicately into the bat, not breaking it's attention  Only visiting, because she loves the way bats think.  Holding her thoughts still so she won’t confuse it and cause an accident.  A bat knows how to be a bat, she does not.  But oh – what bats can hear.

Inside the bat, she feels blind but resists the urge to use its eyes.  This is swinging, to move the soul in and out, to let the creature dance your spirit within itself, like the lady in the circus flying through the air between trapezes.  She feels the world the bat makes for her with its sound, it radar so fine.  There, a mosquito's moving blip, the pinpoint of sound, so perfect as the bat dives and snatches.  There a delicate moth, the evening is full of food, but the echo of the moth is sour –a sour sound! – that says it is poisonous.  But then another comes and the bat circles, loops, snatches, triumphant.  A tasty moth sounds different from a poisonous one.  The night is so alive.

But tonight she wants a whale.

She wants to sing.

Leaving the bat.  Floating free, a bubble on the ocean of mind and sound.  Far flying in the deep dark.  A moon, full and high and peach as she moves to the shore of the sea and out and out.  Flying fast, the ocean throbbing vast with life.  Far out, far out a white spout in the moonlight and the smaller spout of the calf.  The girl loves mothers.  And whale mothers are the best of all – she swings.

The feelings of a whale, of a mother whale, they are vast.  They are alien.  In the mothers ears she hears the whale song of a big male – she knows it is a big male but doesn’t know how she knows – the male is not singing to her only, but sending its sound in the vast and living deep.  It’s far away, but the water carries it clear.  She hears the music, the calf hears it too and turns toward the sound and the emotions that move through her, the thrill, the rare thrill of an intelligence so vast and still so far from human in its contentedness.  Its food is all around.  Its calf is with her.   What the whale hears is a world far away from the dry practicality of the bat.  The bat hears to eat.  The mother hears to feel and know itself.  The sea is full of life, and on the shore the parents are fighting.

Let them fight.  She feels the big animals sweep of emotion that is so inhuman and so exquisite and all the world full of vastness and blindness and smallness and singing sound.

Someone is standing over her at home. 

She swings.  

 The street light.  The window. She hovers and her mother is there closing the window.  Her mother's left eye is swelling.  There is the aroma of blood in the room.  Below,  Mirabella's empty body is breathing softly, but she is ready to swing home to it if her mother speaks.  She has frightened her parents with her empty corpse in the past when she swings.  They know she is doing something, but they don't know what it is.  Once they rushed her to a hospital and she had to spend all night finding herself.

Something has happened to father.  She doesn't hear him, the talent of the bat still in her ears.  Something has happened.

Her mother picks up a book with animal pictures from the floor and puts it on a shelf.  Sighs, leaves, shuts the door.  Her slippers slap slapping down the stairs.

She feels afraid and wants to visit her friend Johnny.  Johnny the worm lives in the ground.

She loves johnny.  He makes her feel strong.

She hovers over the flower bed in the dark.  There.

Swings.

Johnny the earthworm, does not know what eyes are or what they would be used for, deaf without ears, feeling the vast silent ocean of earth witgin the small sealed universe of himself.  Johnny is never frightened because he is never curious.  Johnny is indifferent to the earth’s vastness, though once she tried to bring the image of it to his mind.  Johnny feels her, gives a little twist in the cool damp ground – and moves.  Reveling in his beastliness, in his earthworm strength.  Like an earth moving machine, throwing aside the earth, moving the world with its snout.  She feels her muscles that turn the earth aside when she needs to feel strong.

She swings out.  Upstairs, the window.  She swings in.  She is home and her eyes are open.  She's strong for whatever is waiting downstairs.

Love =/= Sex

I find the concept of non-monogamy intriguing.

Being who I am — a gay male — I’m fairly immersed in the local gay scene and gay culture. It’s been a slow discovery and understanding to learn that a lot of the openly gay guys I know in long-term relationships or marriages have sex on the side.  And, like, it’s not even something to hide or feel ashamed about.

One married friend came back from an LGBT conference and talked about the hook-up scene he was involved with at the hotel. Another friend who’s relationship is as solid as marriage has talked about the “dates” he goes on with men that are not his partner. And another friend has mentioned that he won’t have unprotected sex with his boyfriend because he doesn’t “trust” him.  (He loves him, but doesn’t trust him.)  These are just some of the recent examples.

It’s not cheating, but as far as I know, they’re not in open relationships or poly relationships, either.  It is what it is, apparently.

Perhaps what’s thrown me off about this is that I didn’t come to understand my sexuality until my late twenties, so until then I was immersed in “straight culture” and heteronormative values. So, to me, you fuck the one you’re with and no one else.

But the more my friends and the people around me open up to me and tell me what they get up to when their partners aren’t around (or perhaps while their partner is around or even with their partner), the more I find that monogamy isn’t widely practiced in gay culture.

I wonder, though, if this non-monogamy happens just as often in “straight culture”, but it’s talked about less openly.  I do, after all, know of at least one woman in a poly relationship. In our patriarchal culture, women are to be seen as chaste and devoted, whereas men are not. So perhaps this is why it’s not spoken of among straight couples but is widely and freely discussed among gay couples?

I’ve had to do a lot of thinking on this. It might seem strange given that I’m an erotica writer, however, most of my fiction has been of the monogamous or the “single people hooking up” variety. I believe there’s a separation of sex and love. (This is probably something all of my colleagues on this blog have long understood.)

Sex does not always have to mean intimacy and love — it can just be a carnal act of pleasure.  And love doesn’t always have to be expressed through sex.

My partner and I don’t have the most active sex life and at first I worried that meant we didn’t have the strongest love. However, over time, I’ve come to understand that he sees our other forms of intimacy — holding hands while watching TV, always eating dinner together, and our shared hobbies — to be a vital act of love.  Sex is the icing on the cake, but the cake is still satisfying and substantial even if there’s not much icing.  I’ve begun to also see the act of sex as being separate from love — they are often together, but they can exist separately, too.

Will I be a swinger?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  What I will be, though, is more understanding of how swingers and those in open and poly relationships approach the topics of love and sex.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is The President And The Rentboy (co-written with Sandra Claire). He is also the publisher and co-founder of Deep Desires Press, a publisher of erotica and high-heat-level erotic romance. 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.

A Visit to Le Trapeze (#swinging #sexclub #adventures)

By Lisabet Sarai

[Note: this is a repost from another blog. Furthermore, the experiences discussed date from more than a decade ago. Apparently the club is now closed (https://www.yelp.com/biz/le-trapeze-new-york). Very sad. Still, it’s a perfect fit to the topic, so I thought readers might enjoy it anyway.]

Have you visited a sex club?

Would you like to?

I’m no expert on swinging. However, I can share my personal experiences at the famous New York sex club, Le Trapeze. My husband and I have spent close to a dozen evenings there over the years, when we happen to be in the city on a weekend.

Le Trapeze does not exactly match the way such places are portrayed in erotic romance. It's not particularly glamorous, and definitely not dangerous. However, I don't think that you'll be disappointed either.

Le Trapeze is less well known than Plato's Retreat, but I believe that it dates from the same era, the swinging seventies. There's a nondescript door on East 27^th Street with a sign—the name but nothing more. When you enter, there's a kiosk to your left. You'll be asked for your membership card and the substantial entry fee. Everything's on a first name only basis. Entrance is restricted to couples or the occasional threesome; single males are prohibited.

There's a buzz and you pull the door open, stepping into a world where you just might be able to realize your fantasies.

The light is pleasantly dim, with a flattering rosy tinge. Rock music with a heavy bass thumps in the background. Ahead of you is a counter with a coat check and a bowl of free condoms. A nude soft sculpture angel swings on a trapeze over the head of the smiling clerk. To your right you'll find a dance floor complete with a twirling disco ball, surrounded by couches which are occupied by people in various stages of undress. A TV on the wall displays adult movies, a never-ending parade of penetrations to get you in the right mood. To your left is the bar and buffet—no alcohol is served, although you're welcome to bring a bottle, but the entry fee includes soft drinks and all you can eat.

Of course, you're not thinking much about food.

If it's your first time, Len, the manager, will give you a tour. He's a friendly bear, with a powerful body, curly gray hair, and a relaxed manner. He leads you down a corridor lined with closed doors. “Private rooms,” he says. “No one will disturb you if the door is shut.” The area at the end of the corridor includes a kind of mezzanine, a raised platform shielded by a wrought iron barrier, the floor strewn with mattresses. Although it's early, you can make out a few naked forms on those mattresses, limbs entwined or humping away with frenetic energy. You try not to stare, much as you want to. Later, you'll come to understand that it's perfectly okay to watch. That's the whole point.

To the far right, Len points out the entrance to the locker room. “Rick will give you a number. Just ask him when you want to get in to your locker. You've both got to be there, though. Any couple who comes together has to leave together.” This is one of the few rules at Le Trapeze. The other one, which everyone seems to know without being told, is “no means no”.

Next to the mezzanine, a spiral stairway leads to the second floor. At the foot is the entrance to the spacious orgy room, which features wall-to-wall mattresses and a mirrored ceiling. You blush. You've never seen so many naked people playing, not even in the porn flicks you and your husband sometimes enjoy together.

Len points upward. “Upstairs are semi-private rooms. Some of them have—equipment.” When you investigate later, you find odd chairs of twisted metal tubes, with stirrups to support spread thighs, vaguely reminiscent of a doctor's office but offering far better access. The “semi-private rooms”, you discover, have no doors. They tend to be occupied by triples or quartets. The narrow hallway running between them is crowded with naked men and women, all craning for a view. You feel a hand weighing your breast, a hardness brushing your rump, casual, exploratory. Do you want this? You can say yes. You can say no. Or you can simply be silent, allowing things to happen.

After the tour, you can return to the locker room and strip, wrapping up in the towel Rick hands you. Or you can stay dressed for a while, relaxing on one of the sofas, making out and getting turned on by the people around you.

When we visit, I like to wear something risqué and accessible. Think plunging necklines, fishnet stockings, high-heeled boots. So I don't necessarily want to get naked right away. We'll settle down near the dance floor, on one of those plush couches. My husband will slip his hand under my miniskirt and finger me through my split crotch; I'll loose his erection from his pants and start to stroke. I might slip to my knees and take him in my mouth, feeling my skirt ride up my damp thighs, deliciously aware of the lustful eyes that might be feasting on us as I feast on his cock.

There's no pressure. You don't have do anything, if you're not comfortable. But there's this wonderful sense of permissiveness. You're allowed to ogle the men and women around you—you're expected to. You don't need to feel guilty. You don't need to torture yourself wondering if they might be interested in a sexual encounter—it's understood, though of course any particular individual or couple might decline your invitations. The social constraints are relaxed. You're not going to offend or shock someone with your desires. Everyone here is horny.

The physical variety of people playing at Le Trapeze is remarkable. There are taut, athletic twenty-somethings as well as well-worn couples ten years older than we are. Given New York's multicultural population, you'll see complexions of every hue, buzzcuts and dreadlocks, tattoos and piercings. There are always a few pairs who are simply drop-dead gorgeous. My husband and I know that we're unlikely to be of interest to them, but they're a lot of fun to watch.

About half the times we've visited Le Trapeze, we haven't gotten involved with anyone else. The other times, we've started with conversation and then adjourned to a private or semi-private room. I don't really care to be intimate with someone based entirely on a physical attraction. In fact it's difficult for me to separate physical from emotional attraction. As I've shared in other blogs, my husband and I have always been interested in polyamory. We come to Le Trapeze hoping that a connection might turn into a more enduring relationship. So far we haven't been successful in our quest. However, we've had some good times during the search!

You might wonder about jealousy. How does it feel to watch your husband having sex with another woman? How does he react when a stranger goes down on you or fingers you to orgasm?

I can't speak for other couples, but somehow neither of us are bothered. We know that we're going home (or back to our hotel) together. I have no doubt at all that I turn my husband on. The fact that he's aroused by other women as well does not reduce his attraction to me. The fact that I'm bisexual makes things even easier, since we tend to have similar tastes in women.

Do I get nervous? Certainly—pretty much every time we visit. I feel shy and embarrassed at first. However, it soon becomes difficult for me to distinguish the trembling of anxiety from the buzz of excitement. The atmosphere at Le Trapeze is ripe with sex. You can't help but feel it and react.

We tend to end up in the orgy room on nearly every visit. Usually we're just concentrating on each other. He'll be on top of me. Our reflection in the mirror above us amplifies every sensation. Perhaps a finger will trace a circle around my nipple. Unfamiliar pubic hair will rub against my thigh. A solid, foreign cock will brush my palm in invitation. I can accept or decline.

Or I'll be straddling my darling, hands braced against the wall, grinding myself against his luscious hardness. I arch my back, knowing that in some sense we are performing, and enjoying every instant. Perhaps there will be hands cupping my ass or stroking my cleft. My husband feels them, too, and groans.

The one disappointing aspect of Le Trapeze, for me, is that it is close to 100% vanilla. Also, there's no male-male sex. In that sense, it's quite traditional. I know that fetish clubs exist, but my husband has zero interest in BDSM, and I wouldn't feel comfortable going on my own. (That is something that would make him jealous, a sexual experience that we couldn't share.)

I guess that in this case, I'll have to continue using my imagination.

Ritual or Habit

by Jean Roberta

Sigh. It’s hard to be the caboose on the train, the person who posts last in a fortnight, or two-week period. What to say that hasn’t been said before?

So far, no one has discussed short vs. long in terms of sexual relationships. Whether you prefer to spend a few hours with a beautiful stranger or date for a few months or bond for many years and many children is more than a personal choice.

There are various terms for a sexual encounter between strangers who never met before, and don’t intend to meet again. For centuries now, this type of relationship has been considered low-class, immoral, and especially repulsive to “nice girls” or respectable women.

What this actually means is that female-identified people get blamed more than those on the butch end of the gender spectrum for engaging in hookups or one-night-stands. If the girl/woman/transwoman gets paid for her service, in some jurisdictions, she and her customer can both be charged with a crime. Before Christian values came to dominate Western culture, things were different.

Let’s consider the reasons for this.

Stranger-sex is often compared, at least implicitly, with marital sex, which is/was presumed to be blessed by God. Yet marriages are not necessarily based on personal attraction, and until very recently they were male-dominated by law. Abuse in marriage (including forced sex and pregnancy) is generally harder to escape than a hit-and-run assault by a stranger.

Luckily, marriages can be legally dissolved in the modern world, and this is a good thing for the victims. Conservative Christians generally disapprove of civil marriage, divorce and abortion (or even contraception) on grounds that marriage was originally intended to be a sacrament, a lifelong commitment which included a promise to God, and was a context in which to raise “legitimate” children who could inherit property from their fathers.

There is a theory that the sex trade as we know it developed from a most un-Christian ritual in which a priestess or devotee of the goddess of love, pleasure and beauty would wait in the temple to offer sexual service to any passing stranger. The stranger who was blessed in this way would be expected to make an offering, usually in cash, to the temple and indirectly to the goddess herself.

The principle involved is not hard to guess. Sex between strangers, especially if one of them is a professional pleasure-giver, trained and motivated for that purpose, can be a celebration of sexual energy as a good thing in itself, unmixed with the baggage of a personal relationship. It can be a generous sharing of sensual joy, a way to give thanks for the privilege of living in a sensitive human body.

The degradation of this kind of exchange into a secret, illegal and widely scorned activity didn’t happen by accident, nor as an inevitable result of historical progress. Stranger-sex was deliberately discredited in the past, as it is now, by those who don’t want sexual pleasure to be separated from heterosexual marriage and childbearing.

More recent and more credible evidence than the temple-sex theory suggests that the pagan (pre-Christian) people of Europe held spring festivals, including sex parties, for centuries before the Christian establishment managed to drive such practices underground. A child with an unidentifiable father, conceived in an orgy on May Eve, was called a “merrybegot.” This term sounds more respectful than “bastard,” a patriarchal term which is still used as an all-purpose insult almost independent of its original meaning.

Aside from, or in addition to, a general sex-party was another sex ritual now called the Great Marriage, in which a tribal king or chief would mate with a woman representing the Goddess or the land or the natural world to ensure the general welfare of the tribe for the coming year. This ritual still holds great appeal for psychologists, anthropologists, and fantasy writers because of its symbolic value.

A lot of what passes for “morality” in Christian-based cultures has morphed into concepts of “mental health.” Even among people who don’t use Christian terms, stranger-sex is still widely considered unhealthy as well as dangerous, especially when contrasted with the security of long-term relationships. (Ha.)

Now that stranger-sex no longer carries a whiff of hellfire, it gets criticized because it doesn’t last. This seems to me to be an implied comparison of apples and oranges, or edibles that aren’t even in the same family.

The claim that hooking up with a stranger is not an adequate substitute for personal love seems self-evident to me. Even in ancient times, did anyone really have to choose between those two extremes? As far as I know, the Great Marriage was never meant to replace more ordinary sexual relationships, nor was the ecstasy of Beltane or May Eve meant to replace sex in a context of shared personal history. I suspect that those who still celebrate May Eve in the old way don’t deprive themselves of sex or companionship for the rest of the year.

Even for those who hope to find a soul-mate and live “happily ever after,” long-term monogamy might not be bearable. And even though the internet has made it possible for one seeker to find hordes of potential mates from outside the seeker’s immediate vicinity, dating burnout is likely to set in at some point. Who wants to go through the ritual of speed-dating or exchanging text-messages with hordes of strangers in the hope of meeting a dream lover? I wouldn’t. (And a good thing too. My spouse would divorce me.)

I’m not sure that anyone has found the perfect combination of sex, love, and companionship, but I know that most of what I was taught in my youth about sexual “love” is a pile of manure. Stranger-sex is far from “casual” in many cultures, and long-term commitment was not even expected to be an expression of personal love before the Renaissance.

I don’t care who gets it on in which ways with whom else or for how long, and I would love to believe that Western culture (especially in cities) has become sophisticated enough to accommodate a variety of sexual relationships. What concerns me is the ongoing contempt for those (especially the female-identified) who engage in stranger-sex. Hookups happen a lot, as apparently they did in ancient Babylon and Greece, but now they don’t usually include the mutual respect of people who recognize a spark of the divine in each other.

If there is still a sense of reverence between people who interact sexually, but who don’t (yet) have a personal relationship, I suspect this happens only in a context of BDSM, or in cultures that have somehow been isolated from Christian prudery. Pity.
--------------------------------------------------

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!)

Short v Long (# Flash fiction # Erotica Readers and Writers Assn. # Proust)

by Daddy X

What does it take to tell a story? How many words?

When I read for my own pleasure, it’s usually a longer work. I like novels that work like a blanket, enabling me to wrap myself in it and wallow in the intricacies relevant to the world the artist has created. A set-up scenario that can essentially be lived in, at least for a time. That’s my idea of a great book. Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost, @ 1300 pages. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Anything by T.C. Boyle. For non-fiction there’s Krakatoa by Simon Winchester, to learn how the earth operates beneath the surface and how that affects us living on the crust. I’m the guy who actually enjoyed Proust.

Of course, I also read short stories, but they’re usually for convenience, obligation, and time-killer purposes. As one of the ERWA Storytime editors, I read a lot of short stories. I have T.C. Boyle’s Stories II, (a very thick book. Dude’s prolific) and from time to time will take it to a doctor’s waiting room. Or on a plane. I have also reviewed Etgar Keret in these pages, Israeli master of flash fiction. In fact, Keret has inspired me to attempt a collection of my own short fiction, which will be out April 21.  Look for Flash Daddy at your favorite pervy purveyor.

Contrary to my reading habits, several stints as ERWA’s Flash Fiction editor have geared my writing to the shorter forms. Most of my work is under 1200 words. How and why does that happen? Why do I usually write the shorter stories when my preference as a reader is just the opposite? 

I don’t often question that reality. I try to take inspiration if and when it comes. If my limited talents are best served by the shorter works, why not? It’s about writing after all.

Come to think, it could just be my own laziness. If you discount an attempt at a (non-erotic) piece back in the early 90’s, I’ve never even tried to write a novel. From what I have seen, short stories can be effective with a single plot. Novels, especially ones that I prefer, employ plots and sub-plots, well-rendered characters encountering a host of issues that all need to be addressed (and ultimately tied up) for some attempt at that elusive scope. Too much for this tired old brain.

Some writers have trouble with flash fiction. We all have processes that, either by habit or intention, work for us. IMO, if you can write an outline of a simple story, it’s just a matter of smoothly connecting those loose elements in the most economical fashion, then bingo, you’ve got a flasher.

The most common (and rewarding) method in writing flash fiction is to take a longer work and cut enough connective tissue to present something more concise, more powerful. That skill can be valuable if only as an exercise to see how many words it really takes to tell a story. Learning ways to affect an economy of words will also serve other skills in presenting a choice of how much to tell versus how much to leave to the reader’s imagination. How to control readers’ imaginations the quickest and most efficiently. How to jump from one subject to another in the cleanest and clearest ways. From my experience, the story most often benefits by the trim.

I also employ another, less common process: I will often write a complete flasher in as short a form as possible; then, since it’s erotica, I’ll use the rest of my (200wc for ERWA specs) words to affect the heat necessary to the genre.

Any way you work to make flash fiction happen, and make it happen smoothly, will benefit your versatility when writing longer works. To be concise is to be clear, and clarity may just be the most important element in any literary endeavor.

Speaking of Proust: When “Remembrance of Things Past” (Now translated as In Search of Lost Time) was garnering its early revues, criticism was that it was such a massive read, what with sentences that went on forever, paragraphs running for pages, using six complete novels and a massive 1,267,069 words, simply too big an undertaking.

Proust’s answer was: “Yes, but it is concise.”

All a matter of opinion.