The Joy of Sex (30 page)

The real high-velocity swing is the woman’s turn-on unless she gets airsick first. The operative thing is the swoop, the falling-elevator sensation of negative G-force. Swinging with a well-implanted partner is a sensation every woman should experience at least once in a lifetime: solo swinging with the Japanese
rin-no-tama
(
see
ben-wa
balls
) is another wild experience of inner movement.

For intercourse, he sits on the seat, and she astride facing – he works the swing, or a third party pushes (traditionally the maidservant). Ideally, one should try the roller coaster, but we haven’t found a fairground that permits that. If using a conventional garden swing, watch out for the woman whose orgasm under these conditions is so intense that she blacks out, even if she doesn’t do so normally, as she may fall if he doesn’t hold her (
see
little death
). Start at rest and penetrated, and use the movements of working up the swing to drive your coitus.

jokes and follies

jokes and follies

laughter is a measure of how well you love

Sex, contrary to cultural traditions among prudes, is preeminently the right place for these. The best jokes too tend for this reason to be at the prudes’ expense. The finger-raising quality of lovers vis-à-vis society is as necessary psychologically as their tenderness to each other. That, and not just the spice of danger, is what makes love in odd places and under other people’s unperceptive noses so attractive. This is childish, but if you haven’t yet learned to be childish in your lovemaking, you should go home and learn, because it’s important.

One mustn’t let the joke go wrong and sour things: if you can have intercourse in a public restaurant or on Auntie’s dining table and bring it off, you can laugh about it after (but if you don’t bring it off, you will be lucky if you speak to each other again). Most couples contain, for any given occasion, one danger lover and one restraining influence, and achieve accordingly a common-sense balance, helped by the angel who watches over such lunatic antics and protects lovers from the consequences. All in all, it would be stupid to recommend them, but a pity to have missed them.

The amount of laughter you have in intercourse, pranks apart, is a measure, we think, of how well you are managing to love. It’s evidence for, not against, the seriousness of your communication. If you have this, the laughs never fail, because sex is funny. If you haven’t, you end with boxed ears or tears or no orgasm all around, through some remark “destroying the atmosphere.” When it’s really going, laughter is part of the atmosphere – even mockery isn’t unaffectionate, though you should never laugh at, only with, and there is no joke like love well and mutually completed under unlikely circumstances. It’s one of the few contemporary occasions that gets a laugh out of pure joy.

Taking a partner (usually female) round to social occasions nude, or in some sexy gear, under a long coat is a game that some couples relish. It can be dangerous – if you must do it, make sure she really enjoys it. The no-panties bit is on the whole dangerous enough for most women unless it’s very much their thing.

mirrors

mirrors

turn lovemaking into a viewing occasion

These have always been an important part of sexual furniture in any bedroom not wholly devoted to sleeping. They turn lovemaking into a viewing occasion without loss of privacy and help it progress at a practical level. They also provide a turn-on by letting you see yourselves – he can see his own erection and movements without stopping. She may be turned on by seeing her own body, watching herself masturbate, seeing herself bound, or any of the other fantasies one can enact, so that both experience viewer as well as participant pleasure.

Those who don’t like them, by contrast, say they spoil the shut-in, non-spectator feeling they need to appreciate sensation to the full, and make the bedroom less like a womb with twins in it and more like Tiffany’s. Plus it must be said that the feelings of exposure mirrors bring may make her in particular struggle with internal insecurities that she is not as magnificent as the current media icons, who – we too often forget – have been enhanced by specialist lighting and computer magic. Loving and genuine fascination with her body is the best way to silence her self-doubt.

If you have never made love in front of a big mirror, try it. You really need more than one to enable both of you to see clearly without having to shift around. The exercise is worth it, not only for voyeur effect but to show you how unridiculous you look making love. Sex described in cold blood, like instructions on how to put up a deck chair, sounds undignified, but seen as one participates, it is natural, attractive, and formally beautiful to a morale-boosting extent. If there does come a time when it’s better to feel only, and never look, we haven’t reached it yet.

Old-style brothels went in for rooms of a hundred mirrors. Expense apart, these may or may not work for you; a hundred couples acting in unison may be your turn-on, or they may remind you of Red Square on May Day or a Roman orgy rather than lovemaking.

trains, boats, planes

Railways were an old and favored site for “different” sex – now hardly possible given new-style open compartments, except possibly in sleeper
cars when there are only two of you. Whether it’s the motion and acceleration or the association with love on the run that provides the turn-on isn’t clear: it’s said that the classier Parisian and Viennese bordels used to have a compartment fitted up, complete with train effects and noises, and vibrated by a motor and cams. Since it’s probably the motion that scores, choose a hard couch, and a winding track with numerous intersections and switches. In emergency, there is just enough room for an upright in the washroom.

More usual nowadays – and also dependent on washroom use – is sex on planes. Otherwise known as the
Mile High Club – whose founder
, Laurence Sperry, inventor of the autopilot, once emerged naked from a crash landing in water along with his female passenger; the ensuing headline read: “Aerial Petting Ends in Wetting.” The rush with air travel may be due to the vibration, the lower atmospheric pressure increasing orgasmic intensity, or simply the illicit nature of it all. If desperate and unwilling to go the washroom route, one can work wonders with wandering hands under strategically placed airplane blankets and a tolerant cabin crew.

Boats, despite the challenges of instability, offer huge possibilities; big ships have private cabins; small ones can be sailed away to remote locations.

cars

These approach the ideal form of locomotion, the “double bed with an outboard motor.” Big old cars come very close to it (there is room to lie flat, even on the rear seat). Current smaller machines call for neat handling of anything more than breast-and-petting work. The classical postures (she on the backseat, he kneeling between her legs, or both sitting, her legs around his waist) were developed for use by Madame Bovary in hansom cabs. All cars, whether adapted to petting or coition, can be goldfish bowls unless you live in a climate where the windows quickly mist over. If you rely on condensation, it’s nevertheless a good idea to have a powerful light ready to dazzle potential prowlers.

For alfresco love, the least-screened parking site is the safest, like a French 18th-century bower, because you can’t be crept up on. Remember, however, that in most countries motorvehicle action visible from outside can earn perpetrators a stern police warning, or worse (
see
voyeurs
). If you want to do much of this, buy a small van, or one of those mini-campers known as adultery wagons, which are in effect mobile houses. It takes confidence to strip naked in any of these.
Mutual masturbation while on the move, and trying to score the number of orgasms per gallon, are popular fantasies, but against both the law and the interests of safe driving. For those who like restraint, seat belts can be worn or you can tie one party to his or her seat and approach your work slowly.

open air

open air

enthusiastic larks call for very remote areas

Countries with a warm summer have advantages that can’t be overstated. In England, to have regular and full love outdoors, you need to be frost-proof and own a park. In Ireland or Spain, even though it’s warm in Spain, you need to be priest-proof as well. Most parts of the USA should count their blessings in this regard. What is odd is that they don’t do more about garden design. The walled or hedged gardens of Europe are nearly all practicable, at least by night.

Outdoor locations in wild areas are often flawed by vermin, ranging from ants and mosquitoes to snakes and officious cops. Nevertheless, respect flora and fauna. Don’t ejaculate – or anything else – without clearing up after yourself, and never in natural water sources. Also remember that discarded
condoms can kill the wildlife.

Surface-wise, the best venue is often sand dunes, which give shelter and keep the heat, besides not harboring stinging insects. Lawn grass is fine if well screened. The safest cover, if you intend to strip right off, is the thicket standing on its own, where you can see out, but they can’t see in; the “bower” of Fontainebleau painters. Europeans, who live in crowded landscapes, are adept at quick dressing and using places such as Hampstead Heath and the Prater.

With so many landscape opportunities to choose from, there should be no problem finding somewhere appropriate – if you do take risks, however, cultivate the quick getaway; danger turns some people on, and others, of both sexes, right off. Enthusiastic larks one gets lost in, like stripping right off or tying each other to trees, call for very remote areas or a walled garden.

Even more crucially, check out local customs and laws, particularly religious mores, and be respectful of them – otherwise you risk both offending local feeling and incurring serious penalties. The many ethical systems in the world view sexual display in different ways, and an affectionate kiss, in some countries, is a deadly insult to deeply held beliefs. A flat roof at night is a standard Eastern venue – you can make love and see the whole city.