As I remember all the erotic moments I’ve had in my life, the ones that stand out as “the best” or “the one moment I cannot forget” are very few. I could count, but I don’t quantify; and I’m terrible with numbers. Besides, I’d rather not count. The one lover that has come along and, with a sweeping kiss, undone all of my notions of what “the best sex” is has done so without realizing it. Chemistry and all.
When I was a girl of thirteen, one of my aunts told me that sex was good and healthy to have when I’m ready. That last statement was added for precaution by my auntie, the hippie, the flower child— she had three boyfriends at the time she gave this advice. She then sealed her comment with “and it’s the best when you are in love.” So I thought that this magic combination would be waiting for me when I fell in love one fine day, I expected it would happen like all young girls that age tend to do.
But falling in love wasn’t easily found, and, when I did have sex, the first time, I was fourteen. That was a year after my auntie gave me her words of wisdom. I wasn’t in love with the first boy I had sex with, of course. I wanted to have sex, and I was ready, or so I thought. The years that followed were explorations in sex and many a guy I wasn’t feeling anything for. I was searching for love and not finding it. I watched awful porn with my so-called boyfriend and thought I was suppose to act like those 80’s porn stars. I had no idea what the best sex was. I did whatever was required to get the approval of the boy I wanted to be loved by. I wanted to be loved, so I moaned and made lots of noise and even let him come all over my face. I swallowed, I sucked, and I fucked him wildly, but clearly this wasn’t the magical “best sex ever” experience I had in mind.
I wasn’t having orgasms during sex in my teenage sex life either. My boyfriend was older than me by a number of years, and he wasn’t very emotional or tender. I was lost in the act of sex. I had thought that sex would be as good as my auntie said. Especially so if I was in love, which I wasn’t. I wasn’t in love, and I was having lots of sex without feeling, straight ahead fucking without romance or sweet nothings. When he and I had sex in the back of his Chevy Impala, David Lee Roth was on the tape deck singing Jamie’s Cryin’ which taunted my young heart. While the lyrics said that Jamie’s been in love before, and that it should mean a little more than one night stands, I got the idea that it should mean more. It could mean more. But, I was fifteen year old girl, and my boyfriend wasn’t in love with me.
I knew I could orgasm by myself, but the mystery of sex was clouded with the idea that other women could orgasm so easily (as I’d seen in porn). But, I wasn’t having such an easy time doing it in real life. One scene I remembered watching was a couple fucking hard. The woman was being taken from behind in an all fours doggy style position— a moaning and gasping blonde porn star, her glistening buttocks shimmying like jello with every thrust as she was being fucked into a frenzied orgasm. Inspired, I tried that position with my boyfriend. He came right away. I didn’t.
The best sex evaded me.
As I entered my twenties, sex became much better. I knew my body, and I was familiar with toys and what worked for me to get off: vibrators, dildos, and anal play, mainly. I read Women on Top and My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday. I read Anais Nin’s erotica and Anne Rice’s erotic writings as A.N. Roquelaure, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. I was stripping down nude daily at a seedy club in the San Fernando Valley, affectionately called “The Ball,” and my best friend was a former porn star from the 80’s. She was dancing at the club and found love with a sweetheart of a man. They married, and I was her maid of honor. I wondered what exactly it was that she understood about sex and love that I didn’t. What was good sex with real love? During that time of my life, I had many girlfriends, mostly from the club. Finding a boyfriend or a serious lover was difficult when mostly what men wanted from me was to be had for the price of a table dance or a round of dollar bills around the stage. Men wanted to watch me dance naked. The loneliest time of my non-existent love life was when I was a stripper, in fact. It was a terribly lonely feeling to be sexually sought after day after day but have no one who cherished me once I left the club. The idea of someone taking me to dinner without paying me for my time was a silly notion. Who would just take me out to dinner, just because?
Not that I minded being alone. I preferred my solitude and enjoyed my beautiful apartment, my new car, and my growing bookshelf full of books. Most of the time, after a long day naked in high heels, I popped open a bottle of my favorite champagne, put some jazz on the stereo, and happily made myself a lovely dinner. I dined in candlelight on my patio alone with a good book. I had erotica to read. If the mood struck, I had my fantasies to help me along while using my vibrator. The thing was I still had no idea what the best sex was or how to imagine it happening to me.
I did figure out how to orgasm with a partner, finally. I had a sweet boyfriend who cared a little about me. Me, the young nineteen year old girl-woman. My clitoris was my best friend in that discovery. As long as I touched myself while he slowly went in and out, I came and came. It was good sex, but I wasn’t in love. We never said anything about love at all. Ever.
Playing with other women was exciting— observing how they pleasured themselves and how they liked it. One memorable moment was with a girlfriend that I lived with. We had one of those ‘papasan’ bowl-shaped couches from Pier One Imports that proved itself to be a sex chair of the deluxe kind for two nubile young women. We slathered some oil on each other’s pussies and scissored our legs together while holding each other’s hands. Grinding our pussies together allowed us to come in ways I had no idea existed. The slippery feeling of her pussy on mine was arousing beyond compare. We loved that chair for all its fabulous reasons. That was the best lesbian sex I had ever had. But did Jen care for me? I know she felt something like desire. I did feel a sense of something with her, too, but it was simply lust and sexual curiosity. She had two other boyfriends as well as me. She loved the way I went down on her and used toys to get her to come in a shaking orgasmic release. And it was Jen— the one who climbed on top of me and, with a naughty smile, she knew just what to do. She went down and licked my clitoris while slowly moving a vibrator in and out of me until I came. She also used toys in my other parts, both anally and vaginally penetrating me, while licking my clit and getting me so juicy wet. So far, it was Jennifer that gave me the best sex. And I was barely twenty years old then.
But the idea of romantic love and sex combining itself together into “the best sex” was still mysterious. My gal pal, Kristy, from the dancing days of The Oddball Cabaret, a.k.a. The Ball, was a piano teacher by weekend and stripper during the week. Kristy was a warm and wonderful redhead. She wore thigh high leather boots onstage and danced to Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science. We spent most nights hanging out while mixing up Kahlua and cream in iced glasses, watching films, or soaking in her big round bath tub while listening to endless loops of Enya. She had a crush on Rutger Hauer in Ladyhawke, and, for the most part, she was closer to straight than anything. She was a sweet woman and yet .. . Sex with her alone was not really quite ‘it.’ Kristy was a flirt with all the men we knew, and finding boy toys to satisfy us was our specialty. We had one weekend long romp with a lovely guy we met and tired the dear man out between the two of us. But did I remember that as the best sex?
There were many other boyfriends until I had a year-long fling with a musician who didn’t mind that I was a stripper. We did have delicious sex, and I did orgasm every time. I began to discover that I was multi-orgasmic. I felt a slight tenderness for him, and I am sure he felt something similar. But there were no “I love you” moments from either of us, and we never discussed our relationship beyond a sexual one. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He was just a guy I had really good sex with. As far as the idea of love went, he compared me to liking a chocolate chip cookie rather than to a summer’s day. But he never admitted a darn emotion. Not once.
As the years went on, the best sex was hard to find. Even while I was engaged to a chef, our best times were in the kitchen, cooking for our dinner parties, or traveling together to luxurious locales. In bed, it was vanilla and lukewarm. One hot steamy night in Kona, he was overwhelmed by my hungry need for good and lusty sex. It was too much for him— he rejected my intensity. I had a lot of sun that day. Sunning in the nude always makes me aroused. I had masturbated outside on the grass while at the house we were staying at. The scent of plumeria flowers, the ocean, the sun, and the relaxed Hawaiian air had me wriggling around in the island heat until I touched myself, feverish for some kind of passion. So I made it known that I wanted ‘it,’ but he just liked ‘it’ when I was sweet and demure, half asleep, with my legs spread open. It was a few thrusts, and that was that. I thought that perhaps the idea of ‘the best sex’ or even good sex was something I might just have to give up. The fantasy of having sex with a passionate lover that involved hair pulling and wild sweaty abandon may never happen to me, I thought. I was in my mid-twenties. I had yet to have that magical combination of amazing sex and loving emotions. Maybe the idea was just a dream?
But I wanted passion. I realized that it was something I could not live without. I hadn’t experienced true passion before, but there was a yearning deep within me that ached for it. I wanted passion, and I couldn’t get married unless I had that with my fiancé. But, we were more like good friends and less like lovers, and I wanted more.
He compared me to a diamond in the rough. If I could just polish you, he said, you’d shine. I coiled from the mere comparison, which suggested that I wasn’t good enough the way I was, just as me. So, that led me to a question. Wasn’t I enough for someone just as I am? Why couldn’t I have amazingly good sex with heaping amounts of love? Why was I labeled the ‘diamond in the rough’ and just a chocolate chip cookie?
All these years, I have waited for that mind-blowing orgasmic bliss with a man I am so very into— with passion, desire, and intense kissing. Wanting someone so much like this, I can’t embrace, kiss, and orgasm upon him enough. The desire to bite him out of sheer lusty want is my wild expression of intense affection. I feel so much desire, it’s animal. It’s almost cannibal. I want to eat him because I feel so much. And is it the best sex of my life? Yes.
Yes, years later, now in my forties, I am experiencing what I think is the best sex of my life. And yes, love has something to do with it. Passionate sex has found me. I’m getting close, and I’m coming… closer. I’m closer to that passionate experience I have been longing for. Yes. Finally, the universe has answered my heart, mind, body and soul. James Joyce couldn’t have written it better: And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.
]]> https://eroticadujour.com/the-best-sex/feed/ 0“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clearing, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.” ~ Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Aphrodite awakens in us, born from the sea of our soul. She is symbolic of erotic dreams and desires. The ocean, saline, amniotic, the primordial sea, womb of life. We are made of stardust and seashells, and all of the yearning that stretches beyond our bodies. The erotic within us is that yearning, the coming together and ignition of our souls. We are longing to feel that magical passion for life when we seek the erotic, as Eros was spirited away by his love for Psyche.
From Wikipedia:
The story of Eros and Psyche had a longstanding tradition as a folktale of the ancient Greco-Roman world long before it was committed to literature in Apuleius‘ Latin novel, The Golden Ass. This is apparent and an interesting intermingling of character roles. The novel itself is picaresque Roman style, yet Psyche and Aphrodite retain their Greek parts. It is only Eros whose role hails from his part in the Roman pantheon.
The story is told as a digression and structural parallel to the main storyline of Apuleius’ novel. It tells of the struggle for love and trust between Eros and Psyche. Aphrodite is jealous of the beauty of mortal Psyche, as men are leaving her altars barren to worship a mere human woman instead, and so commands her son Eros to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest creature on earth. Eros falls in love with Psyche himself and spirits her away to his home. Their fragile peace is ruined by a visit from Psyche’s jealous sisters, who cause Psyche to betray the trust of her husband. Wounded, Eros leaves his wife, and Psyche wanders the Earth, looking for her lost love.
In Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, Psyche bears Cupid a daughter, Voluptas (“Pleasure, Desire”).
“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.” ~ Haruki Murakami
I could say that I’ve been asleep. Dreaming, for how long I’m not sure, perhaps years. My soul has been caught in the tide of reverie and longing. There are layers of my being that I do not reveal that are sediment, deep within. Places within me that I didn’t know existed. Just as grains of sand are eroded rock and shell, thousands of years have created it— our souls have mysteries like that. When the light sparks and the glimmer of something beautiful is discovered, then that is the moment. It is a memory. So I have been going along this current of memory, like the ocean waves, lost in it, not caring where it takes me. I have had many lovers in my life and many erotic experiences. All fragments of my erotic landscape. It’s all there to use as a palette, along with the imagination. Writing about the erotic is really an adventure on the soul level.
“Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.” ~Isabel Allende
You might say I’ve been in the mood for love. I’ve been dormant, sleeping within. But there has been a marvelous phenomenon happening inside of me lately, an awakening of my soul. This awakening has been sparked, like Sleeping Beauty, by a kiss of life, and now I am vibrating with passion. Like any birth, there is blood involved, and pain, and things that I had not known about myself. All this time, I think I have been sleeping. Now it’s all fire and passion and living in every moment. I haven’t had much time to sleep. My mind is restless, and I am hyper-aware, even my flesh is alive with sensitivity. My soul is awake and my heart is full of passionate fire. Awakening.
“Erotica is using a feather; pornography is using the whole chicken.” ~Isabel Allende
I’ve been writing stories, erotic love stories, but in the process of writing, I am learning something new about myself. I make discoveries. It’s like sifting through soil, finding fragile treasures, tiny shells, whorls of prismatic layers and inner pearly chambers. Inside oneself is the treasure. My erotic self is tender within and soft. I am beginning to see the beauty of this process, searching through my memory, finding things that I never realized until the writing revealed it to me. When I say “erotic” what I am attempting to say is “passionate nature” and thus, we are naturally erotic and passionate beings. Passion is about life. And life is about sex and love, and all the complexities of being human. It is our instinct, to love. Longing is the yearning, to discover what lies within.
“Writing is like making love. Don’t worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.” ~Isabel Allende
When I first started writing erotica, I had no idea what path I was choosing. It is easy to say, “Oh, yes, I will write about sex,” as if doing so automatically makes it something delicious to write about. But what ends up happening in the process is an unearthing of one’s psyche and all the contents. It’s a veritable Pandora’s Box. Sex is life. So I’m writing about life. Yes, even creating fiction is writing about life. Creating characters that are part of one’s self, so you really cannot get away with hiding it all. Sooner or later, it all comes to surface. As a painter, I thought of my paints and brushes as my language. Writing poetry and erotica were secondary. I kept it secret like a diary. It revealed too much of myself. Painting, on the other hand, was pure expression, all color and light. I didn’t have to explain my reasons or confess my darknesses and shadows. I just had to apply the paint to the canvas and allow the feeling to come through.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ~Anaïs Nin
I love Anaïs Nin’s “Delta of Venus” and “Little Birds” out of all her writings. I admire her use of dream-like imagery and poetic layering. I like that her characters are imperfect and human. When I read various writers’ works in erotica anthologies, I enjoy some the modern stories, but in general, the lewd and formulaic writing is disappointing. I want to say I enjoy most of it, but, just like anything worth its weight in salt, most of the stuff our there sounds the same. I don’t want to churn out the stories full of “cock” and “pussy” and “cunt” and “thrust” without those words being used in a creative way, adding some juice to them; those names for our body parts that deserve more than being thrown about in between verbs and periods and paragraphs. Reinventing those “fuck words” with new life and energy, charging them with cosmic fuel.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anaïs Nin
So, in the quest to write erotica, I have begun to discover, I am writing about life, love and human beings. Writing about being human, sexual and flawed, vulnerable, and other aspects. Fantasy, dreams. Romanticism, shadowy recesses and hidden corners of my erotic mind come into the realm of the written word.
I want it messy. I want it raw and real and vibrant. I want romance and longing. Passion. I know it may sound cliche or corny, but I want love. I want to be covered in the musky scent of sex. I want the stories I write to express something about human emotion and how life isn’t perfect. I want to create dreams and pleasure. I want to write about passion and the impermanent and sometimes heartbreaking beauty of life.
(painting by Gajin Fujita)
Henry Miller loved Anaïs Nin. She was married to Hugh Guiler. Her diaries, Vol.1, 1931–1934, were written when Anaïs lived a bohemian life with Henry Miller during her time in Paris. Her husband (Guiler) is not mentioned in her diary at that time. Henry and Anaïs remained lovers and kindled their passion for one another as artists, as writers, in love with each other; in love with life and the creative fire, passion.
Henry Miller to Anaïs Nin on March 4, 1932
“Three minutes after you have gone. No, I can’t restrain it. I tell you what you already know – I love you. It is this I destroyed over and over again. At Dijon I wrote you long passionate letters – if you had remained in Switzerland I would have sent them – but how could I send them to Louveciennes? Anais, I can’t say much now – I am in a fever. I could scarcely talk to you because I was continually on the point of getting up and throwing my arms around you.”
Anaïs Nin to Henry Miller on March 26, 1932
“This is strange, Henry. Before, as soon as I came home from all sorts of places I would sit down and write in my journal. Now I want to write you, talk with you. [...] I love when you say all that happens is good, it is good. I say all that happens is wonderful. For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living – god, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness, the fullness … Before, I almost used to think there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on. [...] I never feel the brakes. I overflow. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, then it makes me dizzy.”
Passionate souls and creative spirits, Anaïs and Henry wrote erotica together with other writers and artist friends, for a dollar per page commissioned by a secretive patron. The patron was a wealthy Oklahoma oil millionaire Roy Milisander Johnson. He commissioned these erotic manuscripts from writers like Anaïs and Henry. But. He wanted the poetry cut out. He just asked for the matter-of-fact details of sex.
Anaïs Nin on writing erotica for the eccentric patron:
“I gather poets around me and we all write beautiful erotica. As we have to suppress poetry, lyrical flight, and are condemned to focus only on sensuality, we have violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica becomes a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery…We have to cut out the poetry, and are haunted by the marvelous tales we cannot tell. We have sat around, imagined this old man, talked of how much we hate him, because he will not allow us to make a fusion of sexuality with feeling, sensuality and emotion, and lyrical flights which intensify eroticism.”
Anaïs could not continue removing the poetry from the erotic. The wealthy patron became an albatross to her creative juices, and, finding the arrangement intolerable, she and the other writers could not go on writing sex without the poetry of life. She wrote a letter which the patron never received:
“Dear Collector;
We hate you. Sex loses all its its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships, which change its colour, flavour, rhythms, intensities…You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood…”
And in the art of writing erotica, life is what it’s all about. Life and living passionately, as if every single moment was as precious as our breath. A great big “Yes” when we are lost in pleasure. A “Yes” when we are in the arms of our lover.
“All night I could not sleep, because of the moonlight on my bed, I kept on hearing a voice calling: Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered “yes.” ~ Zi Ye (6th-3rd century B.C.E.) Chinese poet
(painting by Gajin Fujita)
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Erotic Freedom. We have had 25,000 years of it, according to Alan Moore in his book titled 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom:
With each new technological advance, pornography has proliferated and degraded in quality. Today, porn is everywhere, but where is it art?
25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom surveys the history of pornography and argues that the success and vibrancy of a society relates to its permissiveness in sexual matters.
This history of erotic art brings together some of the most provocative illustrations ever published, showcasing the evolution of pornography over diverse cultures from prehistoric to modern times. Beginning with the Venus of Willendorf, created between 24,000-22,000 bce, and book-ended by contemporary photography, it also contains a timeline covering major erotic works in several cultures. 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom ably captures the ancient and insuppressible creative drive of the sexual spirit, making this book a treatise on erotic art.
TIMELINE OF EROTIC FREEDOM
(excerpt from Alan Moore’s 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom)
Erotic Freedom has survived since the Victorian period. Since playwright Oscar Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” in the stifling era of censorship for his writings and sexual preference, we have begun to loosen the bindings of sexual & erotic repression, dancing with the Great Goddess into the next millennium. Artists, writers, poets, novelists, photographers, sculptors, painters, musicians, burlesque dancers, belly dancers, prostitutes, web cam performers, lesbians, gays, straights, bi-sexuals, transgenders, hermaphrodites, erotic models, pornographers, erotic artists, shibari enthusiasts & artists, polyamorists, creative beings of the world, male and female, have the right to be sexually free and express themselves.
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” ~ Oscar Wilde
(1885-1930) D.H. Lawrence, an English writer, was a famous novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and literary critic. His novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was censored when it was first published in 1928, and it was later part of a trial under the Obscene Publications Act. But D. H. Lawrence was true to his erotic expressions in his literature, not to be cast aside as “smut” :
Lawrence’s opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his “savage pilgrimage.”At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, “The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.” {quote from Wikipedia}
He was not alone.
Henry Miller, James Joyce, and Walt Whitman, to name a few. Here is a list of Banned Books in history. Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome” was deemed “vulgar,” and Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” was “controversial” because of the story of a woman’s rape and mental decline.
Writer Henry Miller, lover of Anaïs Nin, published his first printing of Tropic of Cancer in 1934, and all of his books were banned in the United States, as his works contain detailed accounts of sexual experiences. His writing opened the doors of sex in American writing. He continued to write novels that were banned in the United States on the “grounds of obscenity.”
James Joyce’s Ulysses was banned for “obscenity.” In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Ulysses was an epic groundbreaking novel that was cause for much controversy due to its “Obscenity Allegations” :
“Written over a seven-year period from 1914 to 1921, the novel was serialized in the American journal The Little Review from 1918 until the publication of the Nausicaä episode led to a prosecution for obscenity. In 1919, sections of the novel also appeared in the London literary journal The Egoist, but the novel itself was banned in the United Kingdom until the 1930s. In 1920 after the US magazine The Little Review serialised a passage of the book dealing with the main character masturbating, a group called the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who objected to the book’s content, took action to attempt to keep the book out of the United States. At a trial in 1921 the magazine was declared obscene and, as a result, Ulysses was banned in the United States. In 1933, the publisher Random House arranged to import the French edition and have a copy seized by customs when the ship was unloaded, which it then contested. In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled on December 6th 1933 that the book was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene, a decision that was called “epoch-making” by Stuart Gilbert.The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in 1934.Contrary to popular belief, Ulysses was never banned in Ireland.” {quote from Wikipedia under “Ulysses”}
All artists, writers, and creative people have the right to express themselves in art. Erotica, literature, paintings, poetry, music, and dance forms have the artistic freedom to involve the erotic. What about French Erotic postcards? Love letters? Erotic photography?
But we have much to celebrate. The latest and greatest news of New York Legislature passing a “same sex marriage” bill has us all shouting Let Freedom Ring!
“All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
Fig leafs once covered genitals on sculptures. Paintings that were deemed “immoral” were covered and banned from museums. Writers were censored, and even criticized for their sexual identities. Like Oscar Wilde’s homosexual preferences, Walt Whitman was insulted for his presumed “bisexuality” based on his writings:
“Whitman’s sexuality is generally assumed to be homosexual or bisexual based on his poetry, though that has been at times disputed. His poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality in the late 19th century. Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author’s presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review, Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of “that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians”. Whitman had intense friendships with many men and boys throughout his life. Some biographers have claimed that he may not have actually engaged in sexual relationships with males, while others cite letters, journal entries and other sources which they claim as proof of the sexual nature of some of his relationships.” (quote from Wikipedia)
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (known as Fanny Hill) by John Cleland was the first published erotic novel in England in 1748. Fanny Hill is considered the first original English prose pornography in novel form. It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.
Quotes from Fanny Hill:
“I felt her dear lips again pressing and sucking my engine of love.”
“…and now, disengag’d from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant. Its prodigious size made me shrink again; yet I could not, without pleasure, behold, and even ventur’d to feel, such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory!”
Let’s rejoice! Let us Sing The Body Electric! We have Erotic Freedom! No more fig leafs, no more censorship, freedom for all. And for those who are in difficulty, pain, in oppression and suppression, those in sexual slavery, let us work toward freedom for all human beings to be healthy, happy, and free.
Find organizations to help stop violence towards all people for their erotic, sexual and human rights.
(photos courtesy of www.abbywinters.com)
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{photo of Sovereign Syre by Angelo de la Fuente}
To begin this post, I bring you Sovereign Syre… a brainy beauty that I have come to discover while meandering the multitude of erotic art realms. Sovereign Syre is the stage name for this Goddess du Jour— tells us about her sultry self in her BIO:
Sans-Culotte/Sans-Papier. Louve/fillette. Sex-Object. The Dollface Killah. Co-Foundrix http://darlinghouse.net I produce & perform in explicit erotic content. I started in the industry in 2009 as a model for the alt.porn site God’s Girls.
Since I started in the industry, I’ve shot with George Pitts, Tony Stamolis, Kenn Lichtenwalter, Andrew Einhorn, Nathan Appel, Keith Major, Dave Dawson, Ken Penn, Corwin Prescott, Ellen Stagg, Holly Randall, Collin J. Rae and many others. I can be found on godsgirls.com, zivity.com, staggstreet.com, hollyrandall.com, latenightfeelings.com, and have been featured many times on fleshbot.com.
I’ve kept a blog of my adventures in and out of adult modeling, Sans Jupe. I was featured in the 2011 NYC Sex Blogger’s Calendar and my blog has been reviewed by Hustler in their July 2011 issue. Sans Jupe is slated for publication next year in an expanded version. I’ve been featured as a model and poet in Whore magazine and interviewed/featured in various others.
I am becoming intrigued by this Goddess of Alt Porn. She is a woman that has that feminine mystique, that mystery, even ‘sans jupe’. As Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) in the Thin Man put it, “A woman needs a little mystery,” and Sovereign Syre has that ‘ol’ black magic’ that puts you under a spell.
Anais Nin wrote about ‘eroticism and women’ (among other topics) in her book, “In Favor of the Sensitive Man and other Essays,” and I felt it important to quote a few passages from this insightful piece of women’s wisdom. Whenever I read Anais Nin’s writings, regardless of it being “erotica” per se, or a non-fiction “essay,” it demonstrates the timelessness of her thoughts, perceptions, ideas. I am always astounded by her ability to capture these thoughts and put them to the page. Anais speaks of women as a true feminist, breaking the old patriarchal concepts, letting in new light, fresh air, to the collective of female sexuality:
“Women through their confessions reveal a persistent repression. In the diary of George Sand we come upon this incident: Zola courted her and obtained a night of lovemaking. Because she revealed herself as completely unleashed sensually, he placed money on the night table when he left, implying that a passionate woman was a prostitute.
But if you persist in the study of women’s sensuality, you will find what lies at the end of all studies, that there are no generalizations, that there are many types of women as there are women themselves. One point established, that the erotic writings of men do not satisfy women, that it is time we write our own, that there is a difference in erotic needs, fantasies, and attitudes. Explicit barracks or clinical language is not exciting to most women. When Henry Miller’s first books came out, I predicted women would like them. I thought they would like the honest assertion of desire which was in danger of disappearing in a puritan culture. But they did not respond to the aggressive and brutal language. The Kama Sutra, which is an Indian compendium of erotic lore, stresses the need to approach women with sensitivity and romanticism, not to aim directly at physical possession, but to prepare her with romantic courtship. These customs, habits, mores, change from one culture to another and from one country to another. In the first diary by a woman (written in the year 900), the Tales of Genji by Lady Murasaki, the eroticism is extremely subtle, clothed in poetry, and focused on areas of the body which a Westerner rarely notices: the bare neck showing between the dark hair and the kimono.
There is a common agreement about only one thing,—- that woman’s erogenous zones are spread all over her body, that she is more sensitive to caresses, and that her sensuality is rarely as direct, as immediate as man’s. There is an atmosphere of vibrations which need to be awakened and have repercussions on the final arousal.”
Susie Bright recently put out a blazing memoir, Big Sex Little Death.
Fragments of stories weave in and out of my thoughts after reading Susie Bright’s memoir, Big Sex Little Death. Stories that Susie experienced, with guts, audacity, and sexual independence.
She begins with her family and by no means is she excusing them. They are necessary for her tale to be told. Beginning where she herself began, from the lives and union of two complicated people—- her parents. Perhaps the raw emotions and scars are still too palpable to fully express her feelings about her parents, but Susie does well in illustrating her childhood nonetheless.
Susie, “intellectually precocious but socially inappropriate,” wearing glasses and hand-sewn dresses, artfully explains her parents’ divorce that coincided with the deterioration of her mother’s mental state. Her mother, Elizabeth Halloran from Fargo, North Dakota, and the Halloran family, her mother’s Irish side of the family tree— they come, arms full of all the misgivings that bring her to where she is now. The darkness can create beauty, as the old-fashioned photographic process of a darkroom exhibits, how photo paper placed into developing fluid, magically transforms paper into details of captured light. Her prose of memories develops from the darkness, her childhood desires to be held and loved, but instead hurt in so many ways.
As difficult as it is to describe a relationship between mother and child, Susie is honest in her description of her mother. You can feel her unspoken words in between the lines. The pain, anger, and sense of abandonment, layered with the remnants of love, and the longing to be loved by the one person she came from, that gave her life. It is heartbreaking and messy. Gracefully, eloquently, she carries on, and discovers her strengths. With a valiant spirit and strong sense of power, she is a lotus rising from the dark mud.
Susie is a natural born rule breaker, a non-conformist, and a sexual revolutionary. Her words glimmer and spark through the pages, multi-colored, glittering. A firecracker, a wild thing. She is a cosmic kaleidoscope of a human being. Bi-sexual, lesbian, heterosexual, there is no box. There have been many who wanted to box her in, put her in a category. There is no category for Susie Bright. She is coloring outside the lines, she is messy finger painting, she is strong and delicate all at once, and she is beyond it all.
Her first menstrual cycle marked the beginning of her teen angst. She skipped school during lunchtime for a luxurious moment of solitude, reading, watching Petticoat Junction on TV, and ironing her grilled cheese sandwich on the ironing board, using it as a sandwich press. Suddenly, bleeding from her first menstruation, she figured out a tampon insertion before returning to class:
“I saw a blue box on the laundry hamper I hadn’t paid attention to before. Tampax. Yes! A new box. It had a paper diagram. Annette Laurence, who sat behind me in algebra, had said tampons would ruin your virginity. But I felt like ruining something. I slid the tampon into my vagina, and it was like folding a perfect paper crane. I felt nothing— in a good way— and the blood was no longer running down my leg. Now I just had to clean everything up. I was really late for class.”
When Susie (or ‘Susannah’ when she is in trouble) returns to class, she is sent to the school principal’s office:
“I walked into Dr. Shalka’s office like a mad bear. A mad menstruating bear with Germaine Greer on my tongue.
“This is not right,” I said, before he could motion me to sit down. “My period just started at noon, and I had to figure out the Tampax all by myself and I am never late and you can’t discriminate against me just because I am menstruating—“
I probably didn’t get that far, actually. I remember the look on his face when I said the “female” word. Was it period or the one that started with m? You would’ve thought I had sat on his face with my “vagina.” He flushed, his giant hands fluttered at his desk, and he coughed repeatedly into his cloth hankie.”
Thus begins the tale of Susie Bright.
I have much more to say about her memoir, but feel my words inadequate. I get the sense that I need to read this memoir again. No words can capture the essence better than “Sexual Freedom” to express the life path of Susie Bright. So many moments where society and people want to put her in a category. I won’t do that to her. I cannot, therefore, say enough about Susie, outside the lines, outside of paragraphs and sentences, where she exists, free and wild and wonderful and 100% herself.
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More often than not, I prefer what is called, the Missionary position. A terribly unsexy name, I must admit. It conjures up visions of Missionaries, and I’m not sure if they have a sensual connotation for you, but it’s not something I find sexy.
Having difficulty in imagining a so-called Missionary, I can only begin to imagine the dowdy brown tunics they must wear, and of course, the fabric isn’t made of silk. Silk robes, like the Chinese ones, would be sensual. The feeling of silk is suggestive of skin against skin, and the deliciousness of it all. Oh no, my Missionaries wear wool. Scratchy brown wool. The brown wool isn’t a lovely chestnut, nor is it espresso. It is brown. Without any imagination whatsoever. Brown as blah as brown can be. And why bring Missionaries into the naming of sex positions if they won’t talk about it? It’s like naming ice cream flavors with someone who is lactose intolerant. Did Missionaries actually have sex? It a good question to ask if they are involving themselves as enforcers of sex positions that are the proper way.
It’s like naming ice cream flavors with someone who is lactose intolerant. Did Missionaries actually have sex? It a good question to ask if they are involving themselves as enforcers of sex positions that are ‘the proper way.’
The myth of “Missionary Position”, the name, came into existence because of Christian Missionaries. Thus, the appellation “Missionary Position” was coined due to their teachings. They taught, like a celibate schoolmarm, that the “man-on-top” position was the only appropriate way to have sexual intercourse. They believed it should be face-to-face, “man-on-top” so all the semen flowed into the woman’s vagina properly enough to conceive. And, of course, that would be the only reason to have sex. Goodness.
We can only guess that Missionaries themselves weren’t doing it doggy style, or they would have chosen that position as the “only proper way.” The sole purpose for doing it in the first place was simply to make babies. Naturally. Horses do it from behind, and so do many animals, including our doggy friends. But it works for them. (I cannot imagine dogs or cats trying other positions). However, Bonobos monkeys, gorillas and armadillos do it, ahem, Missionary style.
In Western civilization, writing about sex (and sex positions) was generally frowned upon. Henry Miller and Anais Nin were daring and revolutionary, writing erotic stories for an unknown patron. Why, then, after such brave writers have written about sex, blazing the trail for sexual freedom, do we not rename this luscious position? Why do we still call it… Missionary?
Tuscan Italians call the position “Angelic Position”, which feels downright appropriate.
It’s heavenly.
Historical sex position preferences are found to differ around the world for various reasons. The Greeks preferred it from behind. Marrying young girls, bending them over beds, and taking them was preferable. Of course, young boys were also favored this way. But that’s another subject entirely.
The Chinese were superstitiously inclined to choose “man-on-top” due to their belief that males were born face down and females were born face up. Some Colombians liked the “man-on-top” position because the woman could hold still: if the woman moved during sex, the earth would fall, because the four giants who supported the earth on their shoulders would be shaken and therefore drop the planet. It took much female shaking to cause world disaster. Sex with the “man-on-top” was a primary safety precaution in Colombia. A woman should not move her pleasure-filled body, lest the world be ruined. Indians in Kerala believed the “man-on-top” position created warriors. Brazilian Indians avoided Missionary Position, as they preferred equality during sex, with neither partner above or under one another. The Balinese also avoided the “man-on-top” position and favored the “lotus position” with the man sitting and the woman squatting and moving her hips.
Curious to think about this wonderfully intimate position as approved of by the Medieval Catholic Church. And let’s not forget our friend Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas believed that it went against nature to have sexual intercourse in “unnatural” positions (with the “Missionary Position” being considered the only natural one). Everything else was full of sin and lust. Alright, Thomas. We like the idea of a little lust in our sexual explorations and pleasures. But maybe he didn’t like sex very much.
And while we are on the subject, why is the slang for penis a “John Thomas” anyway? Thinking of poor Thomas Aquinas, I think of his sad John Thomas, aching for a roll in the hay. And “Lady Jane” is 19th century slang for vagina? Of course, once again, because our brave and daring writers! Dear D. H. Lawrence had to come up with names for sex organs in order to write about sex. He would have been much more adventurous if it wasn’t for the pressure of censorship.
“Thrusting alone is typically insufficient to bring a woman to orgasm: “What does bring her to climax is having a nice stiff penis in there, plus weight, pressure, and friction on her entire genital area (especially the clitoris), as well as on her thighs and stomach. It’s the way a man presses down on her, puts his weight on her, and rubs her with his body that makes her have an orgasm.” ~ Xaviera Hollander
I must agree with Xaviera Hollander, because that explanation is why I love the, um, Angelic Position.
home decor at it's best.
And while we are on the subject, I found a few things to decorate the bedroom with.
Check out Cafe Press : http://www.cafepress.com/+missionary-position+pillows
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