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!)

"Did your father ever... touch you?"

by Giselle Renarde

Here's me in bed. I'm twenty-two and tiny and tight as they come.

Here's me in bed with my ex.

Except the year is 2002, so he isn't my ex yet. He isn't my boyfriend, either. He's the man whose mistress I am. That's the best way I know how to describe him. You remember this guy--he's fifty-three and married to somebody else.

I'm the best he's ever had.

I love hearing that, and he tells me all the time. It's nice to get my ego stroked. It's not a favour I really return--except by sleeping with him every other day, I guess.

We've been at it since just after 6. Did you know they have one of those in the morning now? I never did, until he started letting himself into my one-room apartment, undressing at my kitchen table, then slipping between the sheets on my Ikea futon.

He joins me in bed just after 6 in the morning because 6 in the morning is when he usually goes to "the club." That's what he calls his gym. If he comes to my apartment (which is conveniently located only blocks away from "the club") instead, then his wife never asks where he's been. And if she never asks, he never needs to lie. It's like he isn't even cheating at all.

Almost like I don't exist. 

But if I didn't exist, how could I wrap my little hands around him? How could I take him in my mouth?  How could I roll with him in the muddled sheets while the cat runs and hides in the closet?

I'm here. I exist. And I'm sure his wife knows, because I hear wives know these things--even if they don't know they know.

But I don't think about the wife while I'm sucking her husband's cock. I'd probably feel guilty, if I did.

The sun hasn't even come up yet and we've already got one good fuck under our belts. We'll probably get another one in before he leaves, or maybe half of one. He doesn't usually finish the second time. After all, he is pretty old.

I feel tiny in his arms, and warm and precious. He traces his fingertips up my spine and down my side. He touches me everywhere and it feels so good that I simply enjoy the sensation. I never reciprocate. I don't consider that he might appreciate those tender touches. It doesn't even cross my mind.

And then he asks me, "Were you ever abused by your father?"

I don't know how to answer that. I don't know what he means.

He says, "Did your father ever... touch you?"

No. No!  Why would you even ask me that? No!

"Well, sometimes the memories get buried and you only remember later on, in adulthood."

He's asking if I was sexually abused as a child, and I find the question shocking because it's so far from my experience. My father was a mean drunk who was abusive toward my mother, but even that abuse was rarely witnessed by us kids. My sister likes to say we were emotionally abused, and I'll concede to that, but never anything physical.

My father is far from my favourite person, but I guess there must be a trace of care left in my heart, because I don't want people thinking he's a child molester. My best friend was sexually assaulted throughout her childhood. It's a life-altering torment I'm relieved not to share.

But this man in my bed thinks he's on to something. He gets all Jungian on me. Freudian, too, and he only ever brings out Freud in desperation.

"Because, really, a young girl like you who's sleeping with an old man like me... well, you're obviously seeking a father figure."

Okay, I'll concede to that if you don't make me think about it too hard. This relationship starts to feel like a boot-sucking quagmire once you really start to THINK about it. But that's just psychological icky-ness. What's it got to do with abuse?

"Well, it's just that you seem to ENJOY sex so much."

Yes. Yes I do.

"You're so EAGER, and you're GOOD at it. You want it just as much as I do--maybe more."

Yeah. So?

"So I'm not sure it's natural for a woman to crave sex quite the way you do."

I see...

"Behaving in an overly sexual manner is a classic symptom of child abuse."

In children. I'm twenty-two, in case you haven't noticed. Hormones have kind of taken over. Sex is my God now.

"You say you weren't abused, but maybe you've blocked it out. It'll all come back to you, one day."

Doubt it, old man. But I'll always remember this conversation.

~

It's Complicated

By Lisabet Sarai

During my third year in graduate school, I blossomed sexually. Or to put it more crassly, I started to sleep around. The shy, studious mouse I’d been up to that point burst from her chrysalis (inflicting severe violence on a metaphor) to become a gorgeous butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.

I realize now that hormones contributed to this explosion of sexuality. I was in my mid-twenties. My body was trying like crazy to procreate. (Fortunately, modern contraceptive technology thwarted this biological imperative.) At the time, though, the experience felt like magic, a kind of liberation from my past self-image as nerdy, socially awkward and unappealing. All at once, it seemed, I was desirable. Potential lovers were everywhere. I could indulge myself. If I wanted someone, I could act on that desire. If someone wanted me, I could say yes, without hesitation or guilt.

Was I over-sexed? I reject the judgmental tone of that question. Looking back at those years, I feel a bit embarrassed, realizing how slutty I must have seemed to anyone observing me, but indulgent. I was learning, growing, changing—and having a marvelous time, for the most part. Isn’t that what youth is for?

I wasn’t just scratching a physical itch. This wasn’t primarily about getting off. My lovers weren’t faceless, interchangeable bodies. I wrote page after page in my journal after each encounter, poem after poem.

Here’s one of them, a particularly detailed explication of one day in my sex-drenched life. It’s not a very good poem at all—starts out well, but degenerates into adolescent hyperbole by the end—but I’m offering it as a historical document, not as a literary effort.

six-sixteen-seventy-nine

by Lisabet Sarai

1. greg
   
   and when you,
   firm, assured, proud,
   began your vows
   a summer cloud
   misted my view
   and I couldn't help
   recalling you
   between my legs.
       but the spicy tears
    and the hungering lump
    in my throat passed
    and I let you go
    (will you ever know?)
   I came to your wedding
   dressed like a bride
   in starched summer white
   and with pity and pride
   took both your hands,
   wished you the best,
   felt myself blest
   by your chaste kiss.

2. matt
  
   curiosity
   and champagne...
   excuses. 
   I chose
   to follow my hormones
   to your motel
   knowing full well
   your precocious mind. 
    another adventure
 in technicolor,
 in sun-burnished flesh,
 in salty moans,
  hunger, humor...
 stranger,
 strange but sweet
 it was
 if not for this 
 icy torrent of voices
 (which one my own?)
 drowning the moment.

   in your nineteen years
   have you known regret?
   and why should I wonder?

3. bob

   yes, yes!
   so totally right for the time,
   my fantasy 
   flourishing, blooming,
   a porch-full of roses,
   this june rejoicing
   I'll press and save
   till the end of my days.
    bob, it was better
 than ever imagined,
 real and deep,
 comfort and caring,
 effortless sharing,
     god-given fitting--
   words cannot tell
   my grateful wonder,
   but hearts can 
   (and bodies as well --
    or better)
   man 
   from my dreams,
   I thank you,
   bless you,
   release you,
   but hold the memory,
        holy-whole.

And what’s the back story here? Greg was my housemate, the good-looking, self-confident scion of a wealthy Connecticut family, who teased and tempted me until one night, when my boyfriend (who also lived in the house) was away for a week, I knocked on Greg’s bedroom door. As I discussed in an earlier post here, that rash action ultimately broke up my relationship with my boyfriend. However, all the housemates, including my ex, traveled from Pennsylvania to Darien for Greg’s wedding nine or ten months later.

Matt was the nineteen year old brother of Greg’s bride, in town with his family for the celebration. (I was twenty six.) Clever. Flirtatious. As the poem says, precocious. Enough said.

And Bob? (Who could possibly write a poem about someone named “Bob”?) Given the poem’s assertions, I’m embarrassed to admit that I barely remember him. A friend of Greg’s, I believe, who had shown up at our house parties. There had always been strong attraction between us, but he had a girlfriend. (And where was she that sunny June day? That information is lost to posterity.)

As I reconstruct things, Bob gave me a ride in the evening after the reception, back to the Hartford apartment of the female friend with whom I was staying. She was out. Bob and I shared a joint out on the apartment balcony. One thing led to another.

At the time, I clearly believed I’d experienced some sort of epiphany. And perhaps I did—even if the memory has faded.

My older self wonders whether he deliberately gave me a ride home just so he could get laid. I’d rather think his motives were less selfish. Certainly our connection that night felt more than just physical. But then, all my liaisons did.

I wouldn’t say the day chronicled by this poem was typical. However, it wasn’t some sort of fluke, either. There were other days during that period when I had sex with more than one person.

I’m not ashamed. I’m not sorry. And yes, I miss the breathless newness of sex back in those days.

That’s a big part of what I try to capture when I write erotica now.