The Joy of Sex (14 page)

beds

beds

take one another at any hour of the night and relax together immediately afterwards

Still the most important piece of domestic sexual equipment. Really enthusiastic sex usually involves, at one time or another, almost every piece of furniture in the house, at least experimentally, but the bed is its commonest venue. Most beds on the market are designed by people who think they are intended to sleep on. The problem arises from the fact that the ideal surface for most kinds of intercourse needs to be rather harder than is comfortable for a whole night’s sleep. One solution is to have two beds, one for sex and the other for sleeping, but this is a counsel of affluence, and in any case the need to move disrupts the best part of the night – the total relaxation that follows complete love. Enormous or circular beds look suggestive, but have no real advantages over a full-size double bed.

There are a few points we would consider before giving a seal of approval. First, since one uses the sides as well as the surface, the height needs to be right. The top of the
mattress should be exactly level with the man’s pubic bone – then, if he puts her on or over it, she will be at the right height from in front or from behind. For some operations, especially
bondage scenes if you like them, bedposts are essential, preferably tall ones, like those that hold up the canopies of antique beds, but not a footboard, as you may want to use the end of the bed for bending her over, backwards or forwards (
see
ligottage
, and
ropework
). Massive old bed frames have great advantages in that they don’t rattle or collapse. The mattress needs to be as hard as you can tolerate for comfortable sleep. A double bed is essential; anything less forfeits the chief sexual joy of living and sleeping together – the fact that you can take one another at any hour of the night when both want it, and relax together immediately afterwards. If you have room, have a single bed as well, in case either partner is sick and feels more comfortable solo – twin beds have no place in a full sexual relationship.

Besides the bed itself, you need four
pillows – two very hard to go under the buttocks, and two soft to sleep on. The room must be warm at all times of the year – warm enough to sleep without getting chilled, and without nightclothes if you wish.
Duvets are generally better than blankets; they move with you as you move and don’t restrict.
Water beds, now reminiscent of glitzy glam and lava lamps, and only encountered rarely, nevertheless produce extraordinary sensations, and they have a natural period of resonance that tends to take over – one has to move in their rhythm, but this in itself is a stimulating constraint.

kisses

kisses

a mere touch or a second penetration

These, at one level, don’t require teaching, but it’s easy to be so set on insertion that one overlooks them (
see
real sex
). Lip and tongue kisses add immensely to lovemaking in all face-to-face positions. Breast kisses are essential if the woman isn’t to miss a whole range of feeling, while
genital kisses (
see
mouth work
) are a tender resource on their own. Kisses can be put anywhere on the body; they can be given with lips, tongue, penis, labia, or eyelashes – mouth kisses range from a mere touch to the kiss
à la cannibale
, which leaves a bruise.

A lot of people maintain mouth contact continuously throughout intercourse, and prefer face-to-face positions for this reason. The
deep tongue kiss can either be a second penetration, the man’s tongue imitating exactly the rhythm of what’s going on elsewhere, or she can give it, penetrating him, to call the rhythm. Even without any penetration, some people favor a tongue battle, which can last minutes or even hours, bringing several orgasms for the woman; this form of non-genital heavy petting is called
maraîchignage
. If you are in private, move on to breasts, and go from there.

Another pleasure is to make her a carpet of flowers, by covering every inch of her body with small, close kisses: then she can reply, using lipstick to mark where she has been. From there it’s only a little way to doing the same with a tongue tip (
see
tongue bath
): moreover, unlike a man, she has two mouths to kiss with, and some women use them beautifully. Eyelashes too can be used for nipple, lip, glans, and skin kisses.

If he hasn’t at least kissed her mouth, shoulders, neck, breasts, armpits, fingers, palms, toes, soles, navel, genitals, and earlobes, he hasn’t really kissed her: it’s no trouble to fill in the gaps for the sake of completeness and makes a touching compliment. And there is no reason why she shouldn’t do the same for him.

A good mouth kiss should leave its recipient breathless but not asphyxiated (leave an airway open), and nobody likes their nose squashed into their face. Clean your teeth before making love, and if you are having whisky, garlic, and so on, both of you have it.

pattes d’araignée

pattes d’araignée

the whole essence is in the extreme lightness of touch

Literally “spider’s legs”; the French description of tickling erotic massage using the pulps of the fingers with the lightest possible touch, aiming to stimulate not so much the skin as the almost invisible skin hairs: not on the genitals, but all the next most sensitive places – nipples and around, neck, chest, belly, insides of arms and thighs, armpits, hollow of the back, soles and palms, scrotum, space between it and the anus. Use both hands; keep a steady progression of movement going with one, and make surprise attacks with the other.

The whole essence is in the extreme lightness of the touch – more electric than tickling.
Feathers
,
skin gloves
, or
vibrators
deliver a quite different sensation. If you are agile, don’t forget you have toes as well as fingers, and hair in various places, including the eyelashes, to vary the sensation; the real and original French style using the fingertips is difficult to learn but unforgettable by either sex. It’s one of the two general skin stimulants (the other is the
tongue bath
) that work even on not very skin-conscious males.

friction rub

The original meaning of shampoo, which is gentle kneading massage all over. Much more pleasant if you rub each other all over with a condom-compatible massage oil. Sit on something that doesn’t matter and rub together or in turns. (Steer well clear of vulnerable body parts like scars and infected skin, and never put firm pressure on organs or on places where the bone is near the skin.) She kneads his muscles, with fingers and a vibrator as well if they like; he concentrates on her breasts, buttocks, loins, and neck. With practice, these sensations are well worth cultivating.

This always ends in genital hand work, then intercourse, followed by a bath together.
Semen would be the ideal medium in this context, but sadly it’s a case of too little and too late. Bottled lotion, however, offers a practical substitute for this particular fantasy.

feathers

feathers

try soft feathers for exoticism, wiry ones for arousal

Recommended by some for skin stimulation (of breasts, body surface generally, more than the actual genitals, and palms and soles). Try soft feathers, such as peacock feathers, for exoticism, stiff wiry feathers for arousal, or the feather “mops” sold in
sex shops (
see
pattes d’araignée
).

aphrodisiacs

History and urban myth are littered with mentions of “aphrodisiac” foods – these are either symbolic (phallic asparagus and so on), olfactory (fish, tomatoes straight off the plant, which smell sexy), or magical (Brazilian women were reputedly told to pour coffee through their panties and then get their boyfriends to drink it). The
Kama Sutra
recommends spicy foods;
Casanova relied on oysters; Aztec
king Montezuma claimed it was the fifty cups of hot chocolate he drank a day that kept him capable of serving his harem.

It’s an understandable obsession.
Desire is so vital and lack of desire so devastating that humankind desperately wants to know the secret of creating and controlling it. Until recently, however, it has been the stuff of dreams; the active ingredients in most reputed aphrodisiacs, including the aforementioned chocolate, are actually so small that they would have little effect, and the ones that work by overstimulation – such as traditional
Spanish fly and its modern counterpart,
amyl nitrate – can be life-threatening.

In this respect, we have a lot to thank current pharmacology for.
Testosterone for both,
dopamine for her, an upcoming nasal spray that activates brain receptors; no point in being more specific – the landscape will have changed even before this book goes to press. Particularly intriguing is the idea of the antidepressant that caused research subjects to climax uncontrollably whenever they yawned, though it doesn’t sound altogether practical if one gets tired or bored on a regular basis.

Science is only just discovering that emotion can also be an aphrodisiac. While festering anger and real fear kill desire, mild versions of each can have the opposite effect. Hence couples who leap into bed after a
fight, hence the effect of edgy sex where uncertainty breeds passion, and “safe” anxiety breeds arousal.
Grief, surprisingly, has an effect too; if you find yourselves making love after a recent bereavement, you are neither heartless nor unusual but affirming life in the most fundamental of ways.

In the end, for regular use, most lovers will simply take
Euripides’ advice and have just a little wine for lubrication and relaxation, along with their food of choice. Because here’s the real secret: aphrodisiacs work largely because you think they will. If caviar, champagne, and strawberries create the right mood for you, they will work; if a hamburger and fries are set in the context of “tonight’s the night,” they will work just as well. No aphrodisiac, it should be added, is a lifesaver or comes up to the combined effect of “the time and the place and the loved one together.”