Erotica du Jour © :: Erotica

Moving forward using all my breath

Making love to you was never second best

I saw the world thrashing all around your face

Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

You’ve seen the difference and

It’s getting better all the time

There’s nothing you and I won’t do

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

(Modern English)

Touch is the essence of bonding between lovers. The deepest and most profoundly erotic moments might be the ones we may not realize as such. It might be the way our skin feels against each other’s during sleep, or a kiss along the back of the neck. Their finger hooked into the crook of yours during a walk together. The scent of their skin remaining on the neck of a shirt. It might be more erotic to discover how much your mate loves his or her feet rubbed during a loving foot massage, when you can allow them to fully let go without expectations. Kissing and licking their toes can be highly erotic in such cases, and chances are good that kissing the arch of their foot expands the horizon on foreplay.

Bonding and intimacy are enhanced by caressing, touching and being together. Touch itself  doesn’t need to involve anything more than just the touch of skin together. Eroticism can be found in the familiarity of our lover’s scent, the tone of their voice or their heartbeat to our chest. Eroticism is discovered when we are being present. Being aware of our senses allows us to open to any state of pleasure. Stopping the world to melt together is pure joy. The pleasure of the discovery of each other can be unlimited.

I’ve been reading a few articles on pair bonding— neurobiology has it that we bond through affectionate gestures like any other pair bonding sort of mammals. Caressing, grooming, cooing, sighing, and eye contact keep us together but not the act of sex itself. So in other words, penetration isn’t the main course of sex and bonding, but touch is. Oxytocin, the “love” hormone, is part of this magical state of being.

When oxytocin is released in our brains and bodies, we feel like we are softly melting. We are high on oxytocin. Oxytocin makes us feel contentment, reduces anxiety and increases good feelings around our mate. Studies have shown that oxytocin levels increase after orgasm and are part of sexual arousal. This does not surprise me at all. Each time I was pregnant and ready for birth, nipple stimulation during active childbirth helped the delivery along. Nipple stimulation produces more oxytocin, which is necessary for increasing uterine contractions. Sex is enhanced by oxytocin and so is childbirth. And so is love.

Oxytocin helps us orgasm too.

Brain chemistry alone isn’t enough. We have that mysterious aspect of us that we call the soul. Our souls must feel safe, secure, cared for and, in the words of Thomas Moore from his book The Soul of Sex, “Like everything human, sensation cannot be separated from the imagination.” Our lover’s body, face, scent and touch inspire us to let go and we succumb to the pleasure of love and loving, of being loved and giving love.

Our minds are also  full of all that buzzing and bubbling chemistry and electric neurological magic. Erotic love is a shape-shifter. It comes alive in the imagination. We can imagine anything we want to during sex, about sex. Erotic fantasies are the playground for our deepest desires and lightest whims. If we want to imagine an orgy in which we are the central focus, perhaps that fantasy satisfies something in us that we need or attentions that we require. But fantasy doesn’t have to mean something psychologically deep either. It can just be a fascination with orgies and a curiosity that we wouldn’t play out in our reality. It can stay in fantasy. The fluidity of erotic fantasy is like dreaming.

Being present with our lover enhances our bond with them. There have been a few times that the idea of only kissing together was discussed with my lover. We tried it a few times. Just caressing and kissing — even in the car. Well, I have to admit, we gave in to having sex in the car. But, it worked. Kissing was powerful foreplay for us.

Kissing is actually highest on the charts for both men and women as the main thing that turns them on the most and brings them together. Men, according to Your Tango Tokii survey, put kissing at the top of the list for foreplay, and 57% of men say “yes” to kissing. So, pucker up and smooch away. Men love it more than you think. They love it even more than women do, supposedly.

 “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes’ to your adventure.” 
~ Joseph Campbell

Sex and love. It’s an adventure. Be present. When we are solely focused upon reaching orgasm we can lose sight of being present. We seek that climb toward ecstasy rather than simply losing ourselves in our lover’s eyes and dissolving into the other. We are preoccupied with orgasm as the goal— for some men trying to hold back from orgasm is the distraction. For some women, trying to have an orgasm is the elusive goal. And when we are yearning too strongly for that marvelous feeling, it becomes the antithesis of letting go. We can try too hard or focus too much on that one moment. Thus, we aren’t being present. We strive for that feeling that will lead us to a better sensation, and then even better: orgasm. If it happens effortlessly, then the beauty of sex is breathing through us naturally. The flow of erotic touch inspires us. There are many women who cannot achieve orgasm at all. Psychological blocks, physical problems, and difficulty staying erect and/or achieving orgasm due to age, along with hormone changes, can all affect a man’s ability to orgasm. Anorgasmic men exist as well.

There are some men that fear that they won’t remain as virile or as hard, and if they can’t then women (their wife, their girlfriend), may not be satisfied. A myriad of worries can run through their minds. What if I can’t stay hard? And, what if? Then what? Will she want another man? What if I can’t please her? Well, women are very forgiving, generally. There are other ways to stay connected and give pleasure. Kissing, touching, oral pleasure (for both— even if he can’t stay hard or orgasm— go for it anyway), caressing and fingers work wonders. Giving each other a massage, pillow talk, and laughter can be satisfying ways to bond and stay bonded.  Believe me, just kissing while naked in bed is really fun. And so is watching your lover’s favorite sitcom while snuggled together in the nude. Do it once, and you’ll feel like teenagers in love again.

The psychological and emotional satisfaction levels increase when we are touching each other with affection. The pornographic internet-generated depictions of sex and its one-dimensional façade is junk food compared to the poetry and art of intimacy: the richness of a lover’s kiss, the soulful expression of their eyes, the sigh of their chest when love fills them with emotion, the tight embrace and the feeling that you just cannot get close enough. The meaningful experience of sex can be discovered before and beyond penetration. In fact, penetration, although satisfying in its own right, isn’t really necessary when all the ingredients for soulful sex are present. It becomes superfluous. Yes, that’s right, I said it. Penetration isn’t everything. Don’t read that as if I don’t enjoy it. Oh, I love it. What I’m saying is, penetration is part of, but not the whole of, sex.

Intimacy is delicate; a vulnerable spot in the heart of our erotic selves. We want and crave the closeness. For women (and I say most of this without any scholarly study, just my experiential references), could it be that the weight of their lover upon them echoes an instinctual craving to be taken, to surrender, to be mated with? Male lions grasp the nape of the female’s neck with their teeth while they mount and mate with them. I found this intriguing and it sounded pretty nice too, the whole act. I love my neck bitten, don’t you? The female instinct to surrender is part of the mating dance.

 Then, the Eastern wisdom of tantric sex and all its mystery lifts its veil. The pleasure of receiving expands our awareness, the height of erotic transcendence.

Ancient Chinese Taoists believed ejaculating depleted a man’s vital life energy, or “chi,” so men were taught to preserve their sexual fluid in order to build their vitality.

In Taoist sexual practices, women are encouraged to have frequent and multiple orgasms. This gives the man even more vitality so he can also stay within the woman for as long as possible in order to absorb the woman’s vital life juices and powerful energy, or “yin essence” (“yin essence” is also a euphemism for “sexual fluid”). Well, it makes me want to be a Taoist.

When I am making love with my man I often, and sometimes with mixed emotion, wish that he would just suddenly come inside of me. (Remember, I’m the one that said “penetration isn’t everything?”) I want him to come because I love him so much; it’s instinctual and in that moment I want him to make me pregnant. I want it down to my bones. Love is made of such dreams. I want to melt with him.

So, yes, I’ve been dreaming about it as well. One dream made me smile during sleep. He was awake and watching my face. He asked what I was dreaming of. In the dream, it was so vivid: I was in a hospital recovery room and I had just given birth. Next to me, my lover’s mother cradling our newborn child. She, his mother and the new grandma, hummed a song and rocked the baby softly. The warmth of the dream, the sweet feeling it gave me inside, radiated through my face while I slept. As my darling caressed my face and asked softly what I was dreaming I just smiled a sweet, happy smile. It was a soul deep happiness and a feeling of wholeness in my relationship. I felt belonging. I felt like everything was right.

Not just for my own pleasure do I want to melt and belong to him, but I want to satisfy his desire, his instinct. We make sex complex when sometimes the instincts are just so true to our human nature. I long to feel his slick come inside of me, hot and milky, smelling like springtime and freshly cut grass. That beautiful tenderness overwhelms me when he gives me so much pleasure. I want to feel him fill me with the pulse of his orgasm, the flood of his ejaculation and that dripping tickle when it runs out from me. When I stand up I want to feel his come trickle down my thigh. Sometimes what brings me to orgasm is the notion that he is going to make me pregnant. When he gazes at me when we are making love, I wonder where he is taking me or how far into me his eyes are going. What does he see in me when he gives me one orgasm after another? It’s an adventure, this tantric kind of sex. In a way, we have transcended to another level of sexual pleasure together.

One day we spent the entire day making love. This sounds exaggerated, but really, the entire day just making love. Parts of “making love” involved him making an omelette for me, some tea for us to share, but still we had sex numerous times and the resting moments in between were still “making love” as far as I’m concerned. Because my body was so attuned to his and I had multiple orgasms each round of lovemaking, the last time we made love I came so intensely I felt an energetic flood of orgasm begin in my sex, radiate through my body going upwards through my belly, through my breasts, nipples, and up further out the top of my head, simultaneously—- I felt this orgasm move through my hips, my legs and down through my toes. I was tingling and shaking. That, my dear readers, was a veritable “full body orgasm” without question. That is what tantric sex is all about. Gosh, everyone should experience that in life. I was so high from that orgasm, I felt it tingle through me for hours. Hours. I was giddy, giggly and completely goofy.

“Love is touching souls.” ~ Joni Mitchell

I already have children and I am a mother; happy with my three children, not wanting anymore. Besides, I’m not young anymore or young enough to handle more pregnancies. I know the dream of becoming pregnant again is just a dream. But something else penetrates me when we make love. I become one with him. It sounds corny, but I feel like we are together when we are apart. I believe in soul mates, and I believe we are part of each other when we love deeply.

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