The Joy of Sex (4 page)

Partners who won’t do this over specific sex needs are usually balking not because they have tried it and it’s a turnoff (many experimental dishes are nicer than you expected), but through ignorance of the range of human needs, plus being scared if these include things like forcefulness, cultivating extragenital sensation, or
role-playing, which previous social mythology pretended weren’t there. Reading a full list of the unscheduled accessory sex behaviors that some normal people find helpful might be thought a necessary preliminary to any extended sexual relationship.

Couples should match up their needs and preferences (though people don’t find these out at once); you won’t get to some of our suggestions or understand them until you have learned to respond. It’s a mistake to run so long as walking is such an enchanting and new experience, and you may be happy pedestrians who match automatically. Where a rethink really helps is at the point where you have gotten used to each other socially (sex needs aren’t the only ones that need matching up between people who live together), and feel that the surface needs repolishing. If you think that sexual relations are overrated, the surface does need repolishing, and you haven’t paid enough attention to the wider use of your sexual equipment as a way of communicating totally. The traditional expedient at the point where the surface gets dull is to trade in the relationship and start all over in an equally uninstructed attempt with someone else, on the off chance of getting a better match-up by random choice. This is emotionally wasteful, and you usually repeat the same mistakes; better by far to repolish.

As to practicalities, we suggest couples either read the book together or (perhaps even better) read it separately, marking passages for the other partner’s attention. This works wonders if – as is often the case – you don’t really talk easily about sexual needs, or are afraid of sounding tactless.

Finally, if you don’t like the repertoire or if it doesn’t square with yours, never mind; the aim of
The Joy of Sex
is to stimulate your creative imagination. Sex books can only suggest techniques in order to encourage you to experiment. You can preface your own ideas with “this is how we play it,” and play it your own way. But by that time, when you will have tried all your own creative sexual fantasies, you won’t need books.

ingredients

tenderness

tenderness

a constant awareness of what your partner is feeling, plus the knowledge of how to heighten that feeling, gently, toughly, slowly, or fast

This, in fact, is what the whole book is about. It doesn’t exclude extremely
forceful games (though many people neither need nor want these), but it does exclude
clumsiness, heavy-handedness, lack of feedback, spitefulness, and non-rapport generally. Tenderness is shown fully in the way you touch each other. What it implies at root is a constant awareness of what your partner is feeling, plus the knowledge of how to heighten that feeling, gently, toughly, slowly, or fast, and this can only come from an inner state of mind between the two of you. No really tender person can simply turn over and go to sleep afterwards.

Many if not most inexperienced men, and some women, are just naturally clumsy – either through haste, anxiety, or lack of sensing how the other sex feels – so don’t grab breasts, stick fingers into the vagina, bend the penis, or (and this goes for both sexes) misplace bony parts of your anatomy. More women respond to very light than to very heavy stimulation – just brushing pubic or skin hairs will usually do far more than a whole-hand grab. At the same time, don’t be frightened – neither of you is made of glass. Women, by contrast, often fail to use enough
pressure, especially in hand work, though the light, light variety is a sensation on its own.

Start very gently, making full use of the skin surface, and work up.
Stimulus toleration in any case increases with sexual excitement and even hard blows can become excitants (though not for everyone). This
loss of pain sense disappears almost instantly with orgasm, so don’t go on too long, and be extra gentle as soon as he or she has come.

If we could teach tenderness, most of this book would be superseded. If you are really heavy-handed, a little practice with inanimate surfaces, dress fastenings, and so on will help. Strength is a turn-on in sex, but it isn’t expressed in clumsy hand work, bear hugs, and brute force – at least not as starters. If there is a problem here, remember you both can talk.

Few people want to be in bed on any terms with a person who isn’t basically tender, and most people are delighted to be in bed with the right person who is. The ultimate test is whether you can bear to find the person there when you wake up. If you are actually pleased, then you can be sure that you are onto the right thing.

nakedness

nakedness

the normal state for lovers who take their work at all seriously

The normal state for lovers who take their work at all seriously, at least as a basic requisite. They don’t so much start clothed, and shed what they must, as start naked, and add any extras they need.

Nakedness doesn’t mean lack of ornament. A woman may take off all her clothes, but put on all her jewels – the only practical need, as with wristwatches, is to see they don’t catch or scratch. This is for daylight; it is difficult to sleep in them. For night, an increase in the value put on lovemaking is probably the main reason that many people now sleep naked. The only exception may be after; warm bodies tend to stick, and a blotter worn by one or other can add to comfort.

Nudists used to be associated with health fanatics enjoying a strict regime of cold showers and vigorous sports. Now, thank goodness, a more relaxed attitude prevails. Today, nudity is
natural, not a ritual.

Organized “
nudism” in most countries is a family affair. This is probably a good idea; the nudity of one’s own parents can be worrying to some children, and shouldn’t be overdone. There is, however, a lot to be said for the opportunity to look at men and women in general under unforced conditions; it is the discharge of residual anxiety of this sort about our body acceptability that probably makes group nudity so relaxing, rather than the opportunity to get an all-over tan. There is also evidence that children brought up in a naturist environment may be more responsible when faced with sexual opportunities and asked to make sexual choices. You should be able to pick a naturist club to taste – they offer facilities for open-air nakedness, which are hard to organize at home, and are universally tough on sexual advances, which makes for an almost uniquely relaxed atmosphere.

women (by her for him)

Women, like men, have direct physical responses, sure – science proves that we get turned on just as much as you and as quickly; it’s simply that traditionally we have been discouraged. But our
triggers are different (
breasts and skin first, please, not a direct grab at the clitoris), and can’t be short-circuited. It matters to us who is doing what, far more than it does to most men. The fact that, unlike you, we can’t be visibly turned off and lose erection often confuses men into hurrying things or missing major resources.

It isn’t true that nudity, erotica, and so on don’t excite us – probably the difference is that they aren’t overriding things and that we don’t separate them from emotions as easily as you do. Is it fair, I wonder, to give a simple instance? You, sir, can make orgiastically satisfactory love with a near stranger in half an hour flat. But please don’t think for that reason that you can do the same for a woman who loves you personally if, at the end of the half-hour, you turn over and go straight to sleep. Granted this however, there are common reactions.

Granted this difference, however, there are common reactions. We seem to be less heavily programmed than you for specific turn-ons, but once we see one of these working on a man we care about, we soon program it into our own response, and can be less rigid and more experimental because of this ability.

Often, if we seem underactive, it’s because we are wary of doing the wrong thing with that particular man, like touching up his penis when, in fact, he is
trying not to ejaculate – tell us if you see us at a loss. The penis isn’t a “weapon” for us so much
as a shared possession – it’s less the size than its personality, unpredictable movements, and moods that make up the turn-on. We like penetration because it makes us feel close to you – but don’t feel put down if we don’t then necessarily climax through it alone (
see
her orgasm
); work with that rather than being discouraged by it.

Another important thing is the
tough-tender mixture: obviously strength is a turn-on, but clumsiness (elbows in eyes, twisted fingers, for instance) is the dead opposite. You never get anywhere by clumsy brutality; however brutal good lovemaking sometimes looks, the turn-on is strength-skill-control, not large bruises, and the ability to be tender with it. Some people ask “tough or tender?” but the mood shifts so fast that you have got to be able to sense it. Surely it’s possible – because some lovers do it – to read this balance from the feel of the woman.

No obsessive views about
reciprocity – who comes on top and so on evens out during the passing of time: there can be long spells when we are happy to let you do the work, and others when we need to control everything ourselves and get an extra kick from seeing how we make you respond.

Women aren’t
“submissive” any more than men – if we have knuckled under in the past, it’s only through social pressures. If we are
dominant, we don’t always act it out in bed by wearing spurs and cracking a whip. Men have a real advantage here in the constructive use of
play (and can help women to act it out too). Since we all have some
aggressions, good sex can be wildly
forceful, but still never cruel.

As for
sexual equality, nobody can possibly be a good lover without regarding their partner as a person and an equal. That is really all there is to be said on the matter.