The Joy of Sex (26 page)

Once you have got this right in intercourse and in other kinds of stimulation, including all the extras we have mentioned, you can go on to “motionless” coitus. It won’t, of course, initially be entirely motionless, but see, after the first round of gentle movement, what happens if you stop thinking. Movements of a sort will continue, but in time and with practice get less and less voluntary, especially if the woman has good vaginal muscle control (
see
pompoir
). Ultimately, some people learn to insert and do nothing, but still reach an orgasm in which they totally fuse, giving the sensation of being a single person – not describable, again, and probably not always realizable, but fantastic when it happens.

We should stress that this doesn’t involve going slow, holding back, or any other voluntary intervention. If you find it not working, switch back to ordinary movements, but without taking too much thought – sometimes you will both sense that the moment has come to shift position and go all out for a big one; complete fusion isn’t biddable, and ordinary, athletic sex is fine. If, on the other hand, it does happen, the sensation is so extraordinary you will want to repeat it.

Reliable relaxation, and the almost frightening self-loss that goes with it, are what most
sexual yogis have aimed at. Some of these sexual mystics are said to recommend a special relaxed posture (man on his left side, woman on her back at right angles, knees drawn up, legs bridging his hips, feet flat on the bed). Whether this helps may well depend on your build – though it’s unclear quite how to achieve penetration at this angle. What is worth suggesting, even for people who can’t totally let go, is that they play through all the techniques we have described, aiming at relaxation instead of maximum tension and adjusting their feedback accordingly. Similarly, people who naturally relax in intercourse should try occasionally to play it for full tension – just as people who like to thrash around should sometimes try being forcibly held still, and vice versa.

This sort of experimentation against one’s built-in response is better value in widening one’s range of lovemaking than mechanical variations of posture or trying out gadgets and stunts. It’s one part of lovemaking that requires effort beyond mere curiosity, but it’s essential if you hope to go as far in sexual communication as you are physically and mentally able.

afterwards

It was the philosopher
Alan Watts who commented that orgasm is a delightful punctuation in the act of making love. It is not, however, a full stop, even if neither of you is able to or wants to carry on. A gentle untwining and separation, please – if penetrating, he should leave as he entered, respectfully – followed by a mutual concentration on each other to honor what has just taken place.

Physiology can both help and hinder. A cocktail of
postcoital hormones can make both of you feel close and affectionate, or leave him poleaxed and her emotionally needy (
see
hormones
). Tears here, the classic postcoital
tristesse
, are not usually a sign of real sadness or anxiety, but rather of vulnerability and a need to be close. The hormone
prolactin can also signal to brain and body that the job is done and it’s time to turn attention elsewhere; hence after intercourse in particular he may feel a strong inclination to withdraw in more than one meaning of the word. This is one time when he should override his instincts and instead give her strong, close physical contact and a few sentences of love talk. She can help by trusting that after that, silence or sleep isn’t rejection.

If she hasn’t climaxed, this would be the time for her to do it solo; a gentleman at this point offers either to oblige or to hold her attentively while she obliges. An arm under her head – or if she likes to be controlled, a hand pinning down her free wrist – along with undistracting touches and murmurs show that his focus is completely on her; she needs to know that her arousal is arousing him in turn. This could lead to another bout. If not, after her climax all the above notes come into play.

waking

waking

it’s rewarding to be able to turn to a receptive partner

She says: “It’s the man who wakes with an erection, but women can be woken by a vaginal ache – and it’s rewarding for either to be able to turn to a receptive partner. But sleep
patterns matter, and while it’s great to be woken in the middle of the night with intercourse, this doesn’t apply when one has had a ghastly day and has an interview coming up the next morning; use some sense. It also doesn’t apply in the middle of a dream one has to finish.” Some people take minutes or hours to wake up, and though she can enjoy gentle intercourse waking – and it works far better than an alarm clock – don’t expect athletics. The trouble is that this is the time when many males are ready for action and expect to be ridden, masturbated, sucked, and what have you. Keep these early waking workouts for Sundays and holidays, and preferably make coffee and brush teeth first, erection or
no erection. Some people are lucky in having roughly the same sleeping hours, but if one were an early bird and the other a night person, that too could well give rise to real problems. If you have these, talk about them; some people do use sleep as an excuse for avoiding intercourse, but between lovers who are on different clocks it can be real and doesn’t imply rejection.

If you have
children, you have to be ready to be woken by them, and restrict yourselves accordingly (
see
priorities
).

sauces and pickles

playtime

playtime

take off your shell along with your clothes

We have said this before, but we repeat: sex is the most important form of adult play. If you can’t relax here, you never will. Don’t be scared of
role-play. Be the Sultan and his favorite concubine, the burglar and the maiden, even a dog and a currant bun, anything you fancy for the hell of it. Take off your shell along with your clothes.

A few people are immensely excited by having sex with the assistance of the oldest human dramatic expedient – a mask – which suppresses you and makes you someone else (
see
masks
). Most of us can learn to make the same change without it, and when this comes, the complete mental
nakedness between you is the most exhilarating sort of nudism – so complete that one is healthily scared of it at first. Getting unscared is probably the most important lesson of sex. Don’t use
alcohol for this – it’s a neutering drug. Real sex release, when one achieves it, is what
drugs and alcohol are inadequate substitutes for.

So let him be a Roman, or a gangster, or a woman, and let her be a virgin, or a slave, or a sultana, or indeed anything that turns either of you on. You weren’t self-conscious about this when you were three – grow backwards again in an adult context. The rules are those of child-play – if it gets nasty, or spiteful, or unhappy, stop the game: while it stays wild and exciting, it has a climax children’s games lack – the privilege of play when you are adult.

Japanese style

Intercourse on the floor or on cushions, as with most Oriental styles: partial nakedness only, numerous squatting and semi-squatting positions, a lot of
bondage, a lot of preoccupation with extras and odd devices (
see
ticklers
). We are talking here about the sexual customs known from eighteenth- and early early-nineteenth-century
Japanese prints. What would be hard to copy is the essentially Japanese mixture of violence and formality, which does not sit easily with our tradition of tenderness. Other differences are a glans cap of hard material (
kabutogata
), and merkins to hold in the hand (
azuma-gata
).

Postures cover the whole range, but the lovers of the “floating world” greatly enjoyed the
simulation of rape – what novelist
George Moore called “furious fornications” – where the artistic emphasis was on huge parts, copious secretions, and so on: sex is played hard in this tradition. Its descendants in the twenty-first century are
ero manga
or sexual comic strips: critics abhor their violence, while supporters point out that in many, sex is seen as positive and healthy, and women are portrayed as powerful. In some, young girls seem drawn to tentacled monsters. It takes all sorts.

horse

The horse is an erotic object (
see
clothes
) and playing at horses, as well as riding them, notoriously turns some individuals on. One famous aficionado was
Aristotle, who is frequently shown being ridden horseback-style by a girlfriend. Medieval moralists who took this as an awful warning miss the point.

Some men also like to dress women up as horses though they can’t usually be ridden in this manner, it is mentioned here for completeness— the game (
equus eroticus
, pony-girl game) figures somewhat in traditional
erotica. Either sex can be the steed. Odd how often children’s games and grown-up sex games converge. Some people purchase a whole outfit, including bit, saddle, and so on, or in
S&M play get the submissive to pull a small trap.

Indian style

Now widely familiar from the
Kama Sutra
, the
Koka Shastra
, and so on. Intercourse on a bed or on cushions, fully naked, but with the woman wearing all her ornaments. Features many complicated positions, including some derived from
yoga that are aimed to delay
ejaculation (
see
karezza
),
standing positions, and woman-on-top positions (
purushayita
), which are regarded as specially devout, since in
Tantric Hinduism she is Energy and he is Immanence.

All, if you do it in the original spirit and not for variety only, are intimately linked with the Indian love of living at several levels – not only sex, but meditative technique in which one attempts to be subjectively both male and female for mystical purposes, or modified dance in which besides making love one acts out a scene from the hagiography of
Vishnu and his Avatars, or the
Life of Rama. There is a section on sexual technique in the chief classical dance treatise – dancers were temple maidens or
devadasis
who gave themselves to the devout as part of a religious exercise. Difficult for us to recapture, in spite of a dawning awareness of the psychoanalytic rightness of much Hindu intuition.

Specialities include love
cries (
see
birdsong at morning
), love
blows (struck with the fingertips on one another’s breast, back, buttocks, and genitals),
love bites as tokens of possession, and erotic scratch marks – extensive skin stimulation with specially grown, lengthy fingernails, from mere brushing to a passionate scratch (classically confined to the armpit area and the “girdle path” – pantie region – where marks won’t be revealed in Indian day dress).