Orgasms for Two

by Betty Dodson

  When I turned seventy I realized I was in the youth of old age. It looks as if the rest of my seventies, however, will be spiced up, since I’ve given myself permission to continue to enjoy sex with my young man. Although I’m fully aware that I am far from average when it comes to sex, I’m convinced one of the important reasons I’m a sexually active senior is because I had a history of masturbation and orgasmic partner sex.

  Along with our pleasurable and playful sex and affection, it’s been wonderful having Eric to help me out around the house. Since he moved in, I’ve had the apartment painted, laid new carpeting, installed shelves, and updated my office equipment and furniture. He often works a few feet away from me at his computer stark naked when the room is warm. Seeing his beautiful, strong body and a vase of fresh-cut flowers keeps me in touch with nature as I live happily in the middle of New York City. Although there have been times I’ve missed my solitude, our camaraderie, with all the playfulness and laughter, is a constant source of joy.

  For people inclined to make the comparison between Harold and Maude and my relationship with Eric, I can assure them we are quite different. Although I loved the movie, we have been our own sexual lab rats combining his youth and virility with my sexual knowledge and experience, we test out different angles for penetration, experiment with subtle shifts in our bodies, and try new positions.

  While companionship and mentoring is highly desirable, there is no stronger glue than sexual compatibility and like-mindedness. While I have no idea how long our intergenerational affair will last, I intend to enjoy every orgasm and all the affection for as long as it does.

  The first year we were together I was pumping out orgasms like an automatic weapon. At the beginning of the third year, there were days my pussy felt like an old musket that could still misfire even with the latest in hormone technology. Although I thought about trying Viagra, the idea of getting a negative side effect wasn’t worth it, and I wasn’t about to fall for all the hype about Viacreme or other magic potions to enhance female sexuality.

  More effective was adjusting my expectations about having the big O every time we had partner sex and adding some new fantasy material. Eric was worried he was not pleasuring me adequately, so I assured him I adored every minute of our sexual connection with or without an orgasm. Although I can still be wiped out by the power of a big come, it just doesn’t happen every time we have sex.

  When I was in my forties, I remember a friend who was in his late sixties telling me that he had partner sex or masturbated nearly every day, but he only had an orgasm once a week. At the time I remember feeling a bit sorry for him, but now that I’m a sexual senior, I completely understand. Interesting how the first part of my sex life was struggling to have an orgasm during partner sex, and now the second part is claiming the freedom not to have one with every sexual encounter.

  One weekend I had an incredible orgasm running a new version of my “Fuck Bar” fantasy. A dozen women are bent over an aperture that locks us in place, similar to the old puritan stocks. The bar’s circular counter is above us. Our behinds are exposed, making each woman’s pussy accessible. The men walk up to the bar, unzip their pants, and fuck us while they have a drink, light up a smoke, and shoot the shit. My buildup increases as I imagine each man’s technique. The revised version has analsex, and if we have an orgasm while on duty we will be punished. But when one client shows up (Eric), no matter how hard I try to fight off an impending climax, I can’t help myself and I come.

  Several days later I was running the same fantasy while we were fucking, but after making several passes without reaching orgasm, I stopped trying. As I began savoring our connection, I drifted into a kind of erotic meditative state where I floated in my bodily sensations. Most orgasms are over after a few marvelous moments, but this lasted for five or maybe ten minutes as my body shivered and quaked. All forms of sexual pleasure seem to last much longer than they actually do. In the past, after having a big orgasm, if I continued clitoral stimulation with my vibrator I had what I called a “state of ecstasy” as the orgasm energy continued to move throughout my body. This time it was happening without my having an orgasm beforehand—something new.

  Since I was not involved in my ascent to a climax, I was more aware of feeling him. He slowed down by sinking his dick deep inside. As we both held still, I felt his cockhead swell as the semen surged into it and then subsided without ejaculating as he relaxed his pelvic floor muscle. When he finally moved toward his climax, I rode his energy until I heard his moan slowly crescendo into a bellow, and I pumped my vaginal muscle on his cock, draining him completely.

  We stretched out in each other’s arms to wallow in the hormone of bonding—oxytocin. I had none of the feelings of physical discomfort due to pelvic congestion that I’d experienced in the past. One of the reasons women get so grumpy after having sex and not coming is that it can take up to ten hours before the blood drains from our sex organs.

  After thinking about it, I figured being in a high state of sexual arousal for an extended period of time and then dropping back into total relaxation allowed the blood to drain more quickly. The other component was that my deep breathing during our sex session had oxygenated my blood, helping it to flow more freely.

  There is no doubt in my mind that fantasy and masturbation grow more important as we age. After having three strokes, my old friend Grant is still enjoying his porn magazines and X-rated videos, happily masturbating as he races toward eighty. When he was ready to go home from the hospital after his first big stroke, the doctor said he might have retrograde ejaculations and the semen would eventually be urinated out. Although he was told to wait a couple of weeks before having sex, his first night home he had to beat off to see if he could ejaculate. He discovered he could still shoot a load, and that was reason enough to carry on.

  Today, Grant gets regular massages that include his penis from his young, attractive housekeeper, who is also a trained nurse. When she first started working for him, she spoke only Spanish. Grant started teaching her English in spite of his speech impediment from the strokes. He also showed Maria how to use the vibrator, and she had her first orgasm at thirty-three. They are very fond of one another.

  Thanks to my website, I hear from sexual seniors all over the world who are enjoying their sexuality. This is from a man who is sixty-one and a heart attack survivor:

  Without a physical relationship with my late wife I found it almost impossible to obtain sexual relief for many years. Then I met my recent lover and everything worked fine. But the last few times she visited me, I had difficulty with erections. I thought it was my anxiety over failing to satisfy her, but after seeing a clinical psychologist, the term “penile dysfunction” was used. I went to the urology department of the university hospital. Unable to use Viagra because of my nitro-lingual spray, I was given a prescription for Cavaject and it worked perfectly. Within half an hour my lover and I were tearing our clothes off in the bedroom. You’ve no idea how good it was.

  This e-mail is from a postmenopausal woman:

  During marriage, I masturbated with a vibrator, having orgasms several times during the day. Of course, hubby was not around to satisfy my needs, nor was his desire for sex as strong as mine. At forty-eight, I had a hysterectomy and things changed. It took a long time to recover any sexual feelings. I felt numb for so long. Sexual encounters with hubby have been few and far between since the surgery, so I continued to take care of myself. Two years ago I went on-line and started going to chat rooms. My first Cybersex was somewhat scary but very exciting, and I begin to recover those feelings that I’d lost after surgery. I was not sure if what I was doing was morally right or wrong.

  Now, at fifty-eight, I think a lot of people do Cybersex, and I don’t believe it’s wrong. It is quite stimulating. I equate it with reading a good juicy novel except now I’m verbally participating in the scenes. I don’t seek out lots of different partners and I am very choosy as to the ones I pick. To chat with someo
ne who cares about your satisfaction as much as you care about his can be very rewarding. After all, I believe sex begins in the mind, and what you say you are doing to the other person is very important. Even the idea that the person might be a woman pretending to be a man is quite exciting, too.

  Here’s an e-mail from a man heading toward ninety:

  As an electronic engineer I am constantly impressed by the intricate mechanism devised and installed by nature in the human male, primarily for procreation but happily available for pleasure. Recalling as best I could and factoring the frequency at various ages, I calculated that at eighty-eight years of age, my joy machine has cycled to climax 24,497 times since childhood. My penis has served me well these many years, although it has begun to show its age. I no longer ejaculate. My uncircumcised cock no longer stands at attention to salute its target. It has shrunk about three inches in length but the circumference is the same. On the plus side, the urgency to jack off continues three or four times a week, and believe me, the spasms of climax are as intense as ever. I cannot help but wonder where I would stand on the scale of my peers. None of the surveys I have seen include men over the age of seventy-five.

  Since I have joined the ranks of sexually active seniors, goddess willing, I hope to document what happens to older folks past seventy-five who remain sexually alive and well. While I’m not crazy about the aging process, I am thankful for inheriting good genes and having good health. I’m looking forward to enjoying the rest of my seventies and designing the decade of my eighties with yet another sexstyle that I promise will not be age-appropriate.

  I’ll be forever grateful that I emptied my living room of all the period furniture and turned it into a space where I could run workshops and hold feminist gatherings. Since 1970, this modest twenty-by-twenty-two-foot room has improved the lives of countless women who had the courage to join me in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. Today, when people enter the room, most comment on how beautiful it looks even though it’s simply furnished. I’m convinced people are responding to all the orgasm energy that has been stored within the room. Teaching women how to have orgasms turned out to be a fabulous career. From monogamous wife to erotic artist, sexual adventurer, and sex educator, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

  16

  SEX COACHING

  Teaching Sex in the New Millennium

  Scientists and educators have been investigating the complexities of female sexuality for many hundreds of years. However, the one glaring omission has been the relevance of self-sexuality in healing women’s sexual problems. The remedy to this omission is providing women with the means to gain sexual self-knowledge. To address this problem, I have been teaching basic sexual skills that will enable women to have orgasm through self-stimulation. Once a woman takes sexual pleasure into her own hands and claims her genitals as her own, she can explore her body and mind to discover her sexual desires. Then she can share this information with her partners.

  An adult woman who has never experienced an orgasm often feels less than whole. Everywhere she turns, she is confronted with idealized images of romantic lovers having passionate sex. She buys sex books and devours magazine articles on “How to Please Your Man.” Yet she rarely receives any useful sex information that deals directly with “How to Please Yourself.” Without any experience of self-pleasuring, her sexual ignorance and neediness sets her up as a potential victim, a target for an unscrupulous, sex-starved man who is more than ready to take advantage of her. He’s not necessarily evil, just responding to primeval urges of the instinctual brain.

  In contrast to a victim, every sexually sophisticated woman I’ve ever known is well aware that men fake love to get sex just as women fake orgasm to be loved. Her healthy ego and self-esteem allow her to master some form of birth control. She is more likely to avoid situations that might lead to date rape. A total person in her own right, she doesn’t desperately need a man to have a sex life or to pay her way.

  Sexual and financial self-sufficiency gives a woman a choice of lifestyles. She might want to devote her life to a career. If she chooses to marry, she has a better chance of making a more thoughtful decision. It is my strong belief that an orgasmic wife and mother has greatly increased odds for having a happy married life with well-adjusted children. Experiencing sexual pleasure on a regular basis improves everyone’s quality of life. That is why I have stayed the course, teaching women about self-induced orgasm since the early seventies.

  Today I work directly with individual women using a system that grew out of twenty-five years of hands-on teaching in my workshops. I call it Sex Coaching. Although I have often said I teach people how to have orgasms, I’m actually teaching a range of masturbation skills so each woman can discover her own orgasmic process and develop her individual style and preference for experiencing sexual pleasure. I also provide information that will improve partner sex, such as demonstrating positions that facilitate clitoral stimulation during intercourse along with the best way to incorporate sex toys.

  My clients are basically middle- or upper-class women who are successful in their own right or have married moderately well. Many are divorced. Some are lesbians. They represent a cross section of ethnic groups. These women are educated and therefore a more sexually motivated group. They come from all walks of life and represent every profession. The age range is from early twenties through fifties. I’ve also worked with seniors in their sixties and seventies. The oldest woman who had her first orgasm was eighty-three.

  A Sex Coaching session begins with a thirty-minute conversation that includes sharing some good laughter or shedding a few tears as a client talks about her sex history. To model speaking honestly and frankly, I share some of my own experiences, both positive and negative.

  When I ask a client about her current experience with orgasm, many simply don’t know if they are having one. More than half turn out to be having small orgasms, but they are unable to identify them because they are expecting a climax to be like a cataclysmic seizure. Others think high arousal is an orgasm. A few have what appears to be a full-body orgasm, but they’re convinced nothing happened. Most of these women have no memory of childhood masturbation and they have lost interest in trying to masturbate as adults because they feel nothing and get discouraged.

  A woman who comes to see me knows in advance that she will actually be masturbating while I coach her. Even if she has read my book or watched my video Celebrating Orgasm, which documents five women’s private sessions, I still go over the process in detail, making sure there are no surprises. I explain I’m like a dance instructor teaching basic techniques. Or a spotter in the gym who will encourage her to push through her current limits of tolerating pleasurable sensations in her body.

  She is then asked to disrobe and I offer her a T-shirt to wear, explaining we will be working with massage oil. Another consideration is that any amount of nervousness lowers the body’s temperature and I want to make sure she feels warm. A few women prefer to be completely nude, which is fine. I remain clothed.

  The first process allows each woman to claim her sex organ as her own, which is central to her being able to enjoy sexual pleasure. As we sit on the floor together to begin her genital examination, I often discover she has never looked at her genitals in a freestanding mirror, which frees both hands to explore her self inside and out under a good light. Some have taken a cursory look to see if something was wrong under poor lighting with one hand tugging at an outer lip. This gives a distorted view of the vulva. Maybe that’s why so many women believe their genitals are unattractive. Imagine what we’d think of our mouths if we only saw them with one lip pulled over to the side?

  Adjusting the makeup mirror so we can both view her sex organ together, I aim the bright light between her legs and immediately make a positive comment pointing out a detail of her particular style that’s pretty. Many women are shocked and remain silent, while others make a negative comment. A rare few admire what they see.

  Afte
r she covers the palms of her hands with oil, she is asked to massage the entire genital area with long, gentle strokes. The degree of tentativeness I have observed when a woman first touches her own sex organ is shocking; it’s as if she is feeling something so foreign it might harm her. We stay with genital massage until she feels some degree of comfort.

  As she is guided through the intricate folds of her vulva, I make analogies to shapes in nature like a flower or a shell or architectural styles like Renaissance for the elaborate drapery of long inner lips, or the simplicity of Art Deco. We locate the shaft of the clitoris and she pulls back the hood to expose the glans. We discuss what she wants to call her sex organ as I suggest clitoris, pussy, vulva, cunt, twat, or a more personal nickname. The most common name for our sex organs is vagina. It’s safe because it limits female sexuality to the birth canal and procreation. Including the clitoris questions how men have been doing intercourse for centuries. Some women choose pussy or vulva while others want to think it over. I tell them that since my mother named me Betty Ann, I call my sex organ Clitty Ann.

  We then go on to discuss concerns over dangling and uneven inner lips, moles, skin tags, coloration, and texture of the inner and outer labia, search for lost and found clitorises, observe vaginal secretions, discuss genital hygiene, and put to rest a few imaginary genital deformities.

  Many women today know the importance of doing Kegel exercises. For those who don’t, I explain that PC is short for pubococcygeal muscle, which is sometimes referred to as the pelvic floor or vaginal muscle. When I tell a client to lift and squeeze the muscle, at first many tighten the surrounding muscles in their stomachs, thighs, and buttocks. For best results she will want to eventually isolate just the PC muscle. A toned muscle ensures better orgasms, overall genital health, and bladder control, and helps to regulate bowels. Doing PC exercises can shorten delivery time and restore vaginal muscles after giving birth.