And you can see why. Do I really want to write about this, you may ask? I mean, isn’t it, like – private? The simple answers are – ‘I don’t know’ and ‘yes’. It would be so much easier to learn all this in private and write a book on lionfish. But this subject is long overdue. In the past I have not had a partner with T’s courage. An honest man who is prepared to admit that he, like me, doesn’t know it all. He and I have both been married; we’ve both had children. We have both had some sexual relationships that have been good and some bad. We both know very little.
‘Hold on a minute …’ T interjects when I read this back to him. ‘Who says I know very little?’
‘Well, relatively, surely you must acknowledge that you know very little?’
‘Compared to what?’
‘Compared to all that there is to know.’
‘I suppose. Relative to the sum total of the knowledge about human sexuality, then, yes, I know very little.’
‘OK then.’
I proceed …
• • •
The larger part of me would love to keep what I learn in the beautiful privacy of my velvet relationship, shielded behind curtains and protected by locked doors; or write dry factual information while keeping myself hidden. But this is not what I do as those of you that have read my previous books know. So, if I get accused of, well – heaven knows what I’ll be accused of in broaching this subject material – I’ll just do my best to dodge any of the sundry opinions that may come my way. If, as the spiritual teachers proclaim, the identity itself is illusory, then I don’t have to worry about either praise or attack do I? I’ll become a duck, attempt to appear serene on the surface, let much slide off my back like water and paddle like crazy under the surface.
I have so much I need and want to learn myself and I know, from letters that I receive, that there is much unhappiness and lack of connection out there in bedrooms. As I’m in the fortunate and privileged position of being able to learn, which is more selfish – to learn and lock my own bedroom door or to learn and share what I learn with you? So, I’m taking this on as my job for a while.
‘But what about T?’ I hear you asking me. ‘How does he feel about this?’ Well, this was his suggestion. Honestly. I was amazed. He said that, as this was an area we were exploring, why not write about what I learn? So I not only have his consent, I have his interest and his active enthusiasm. Good for him. I don’t know many men that would have this courage. But I’m going to keep him out of this as much as possible just the same.
• • •
I’ve been asking questions on social media and inviting private responses from readers and friends.
This morning I read:
‘I’m sure there is something wrong with me. Maybe I need to see a therapist.’
‘Sex is fine for me with no orgasm … I suppose.’
‘I have great sex with my lover – just lousy sex with my wife.’
‘The sex is much better with my lover than with my husband.’
So, just one day after committing to this project I’ve seriously decided I don’t want to write this. How about a tome on the international economic situation? A series of mystical cards on the Tarot (channelled, preferably, by some higher being so I’m not responsible for bad grammar). A series of hand-stitched cloth artworks on the joys of flowers found in the works of Proust? How about a book on any sodding subject apart from this one? The answers to simple questions like ‘How is your sex life?’ keep arriving:
‘The quality of my sex life has gone down with my husband since we got married.’
And more messages,
‘My husband left me because he said he could give his girlfriend more pleasure.’
‘Orgasm is all in the mind, isn’t it?’
‘I think there is something physically wrong with me.’
‘I have to admit that since my son was born four years ago, I’ve had sex with my husband twice.’
‘I’m fed up with all his pushing and shoving. I just fake it so he feels that he can finish.’
Alternatively, there is a kind of smugness as if the ability to have good sex is some kind of personal success.
‘I’ve been having G-spot vaginal orgasms all my life.’
‘A man’s only got to play with my breasts and I can come.’
‘I met a man in a tantra workshop and I came just looking at him. We were both fully clothed.’
‘I can orgasm just by having the man pull my ear and kiss my neck.’
‘No woman has ever faked anything with me.’
Strangely I’ve never heard, ‘Lots of the women I have sex with exaggerate their pleasure and fake their orgasm.’
The difference between the two lists and the amount of pain versus the amount of pleasure fills me with a kind of apoplectic rage. How is it that when there is so much information many people know so little and suffer so much? How is it that so many men, who want nothing more than to please the women that they love, don’t know how to? How is it that so many women seem to suffer but feel helpless to do anything about it? Why doesn’t everyone wise up a bit? Why are so many people watching cat videos and then having bad sex?
As you can see – I get a little passionate about this.
I ask on my Facebook page: ‘What books about sex have both men and women read?’ One man writes – ‘I read a book called Sex and Boys when I was a teenager.’ But, of course, he hasn’t read anything since. The myth persists – we are all supposed to be perfect lovers ‘instinctually’. Sheesh. This myth has got to go. A human body, or at least a woman’s arousal and orgasm, is complicated and the factors that go to create these stigmatized pleasures are, I radically suggest, worth a little study. And learning how to really please your partner and please yourself too is great research.
Hey – the subject we’re exploring here is PLEASURE!
• • •
Maybe one reason that more people don’t learn about this area is that there are so many industries based on befuddling us. I just typed ‘sex advice’ into Google and have been offered 317,000,000 suggestions. Nothing even vaguely useful like suggesting people ask themselves, ‘What sensation am I feeling?’ The top one is, ‘10 Sex Tips Inspired by Game of Thrones.’ Then I began to rend my clothes and dance naked in my garden. No, not really. But I felt like it.
OK, I want to avoid the ridiculous. I really want to learn about sexuality in a serious and dedicated way. I know that there is a source of traditional knowledge. There is an area that stands outside the sex industry, outside porn, outside most of what we know about when we think about sex, and outside the religious traditions that divide the soul, the body and my local archery class. It is a spiritual tradition, not widely understood but which is woven through much Tibetan Buddhism and Hindu thought.
Yes, you know, don’t you? It’s the tantric tradition; the one and only tradition in which sexuality and spirituality are one. So I’m going to start this journey with learning a little bit about what is now promoted as ‘tantric sexuality’.
Tantric Sex Workshops for Women Only?
I thought I’d start with an all-women’s tantric sex workshop even though any kind of women’s work scares me. I have these terrible images of us being carried off to the woods by large groups of very well-endowed women with gold teeth and lots of nose rings and informed that I have to masturbate in front of them all or the development of my sexuality will be eternally doomed. I have never heard of a workshop where this happens but it would be just my luck to end up in one.
Even the thought of the conversations we may be having is slightly terrifying. What will we be talking about? Maybe there will be a competition? ‘Sexual failures I’ve had. Major disasters with lovers. Memories I’d rather not have.’ I have a few of those. I may as well confess now – it’s easier to talk to you. After all, you are just my reader. You’re not actually a living person, sitting in front of me with empathetic eyes and weeping silently. I don’t mind talking to you. OK –
so a few of my worst sexual misadventures.
Some of the worst sex I’d ever had was with one of the best-looking men I’ve ever slept with. A sportsman, an Adonis, he was so good-looking and so perfect that when he took his clothes off I felt as if I’d won him in a raffle. But as soon as he got horizontal it was as if he just wanted to get everything over as soon as possible. I’m not averse to a quickie sometimes but this was almost rudimentary. Zero ‘foreplay’ (terrible word that suggests it’s just a preamble to intercourse – whereas with a good lover everything is part of making love) then past the finish line before I was even in the running. Maybe it was my fault and he was put off by the fact I don’t have the body of a model. But he must have noticed that while I still had my clothes on. I wasn’t upset; I was stunned. So much so that I didn’t even raise an objection. I simply didn’t know what to say. I don’t know what deeply sensual experience my absurdly optimistic sub-conscious mind had anticipated but whatever it was, it was purely fictional. It’s an old mistake to assume that a great body will mean a great lover. But it’s not true, of course. Despite what the entire advertising industry tells us every day.
There was a man I slept with only once. He’d been a friend for some time and shortly after my marriage broke up I went to him one night for a little love and comfort. Instead we ended up having sex and he made animal noises – no, I don’t mean he made sounds that were loud and wild and free, he deliberately, consciously, when he was having intercourse, made noises like a dog, then a pig, then a donkey, a horse or whatever. I’m happy to say I’ve forgotten the order and the details so I can spare you this information. I remember I wanted to stop and say ‘What ARE you doing? Are you SERIOUS?’ But he evidently was and became very carried away in his verbal expression of excitement – or something. Perhaps if we’d been in hay I could’ve got a little more into it. Somehow my inner dromedary remains suppressed.
And I had a Chinese boyfriend. Not Westernized at all. As you may know, there is an ancient belief in Asia, still observed by some Chinese men, that it is bad for a man to orgasm more than once a week. This would have been fine had we not been young and in love and having sex all the time. I remember distinctly him lying on top of me, with no penetration, sort of having sex with the air instead of my body, in some attempt to both be aroused and not aroused all at the same time. It was intimate but, you’ll not be surprised to hear, predictably unsatisfying for us both. I now know that we had seriously misunderstood the ancient teachings. Whatever we were doing was certainly not what the sexually enlightened ancients had intended. Couples are probably making similar absurd errors of interpretation all across China still. In Tibet, meanwhile there are still women with more than one husband. And women there, who work in the fields and dig roads, sing while they work. But I digress.
I’ve never been a woman who picks up men in bars and takes them home for ‘no strings attached’ sex. I’ve always regarded women who can do this with a mixture of fascination, bewilderment and admiration. If an unknown man said to me, ‘Get your coat you’ve pulled,’ I’d just laugh and run the other way. To have sex with strangers you must have to be so totally uninhibited and have a kind of sexual confidence that is totally unknown to me. It’s scary enough sleeping with people you know well. I’ve always wanted to know someone and even – er – to love them, before getting naked with them. I’d have a trouble even showering with a stranger, so how does anyone get naked and under the sheets? Did I miss something really obvious? Now I’m writing this I’m questioning everything about my sex life. I want to feel, at least, HUGE affection for someone before being so supremely intimate or sharing my morning coffee with them.
I began my sex life living with a man for two years, before we made a predictable mistake and got married. It was a marriage that, although happy in some ways, was a traditional disaster sexually, which was not my young husband’s fault any more than it was my own. We had lots of sex, which was great for him, and I formed habits of not caring about my own pleasure. This experience between heterosexual couples, where women’s pleasure is viewed almost as an optional extra, is encouraged by many cultures. In the church and in many religious contexts the subject isn’t discussed at all and it’s certainly not on the curriculum in our schooling system. (Or, at least, I’ve never heard sermons or school lessons in praise of sexual pleasure.) In terms of sex for procreation we were OK and I’m eternally grateful to my ex for giving me our beautiful daughter, but in most other ways we were so incompatible we couldn’t have agreed on how to make a pizza. But we stayed together for seven years. As you do.
By the time we split up we both thought I was broken or defective. Divorce is such a wonderful and liberating institution. Really, people should have divorce parties. We celebrate the end of a life with thanksgiving parties, why do we not celebrate the end of a relationship? Partners could give speeches and say, ‘I’d particularly like to thank you for the sex we had under that tree once on holiday in Greece.’ And everyone could stand around, drink champagne, applaud and then tie cans on the back of cars before the couple drive off joyfully in opposite directions. All you would need to achieve this would be for both partners to tell the truth, ‘Darling this has been great but I can’t do this any more. Please release me. Let me go.’ Burst into song if necessary.
As Paul Simon says, ‘There must be 50 ways to leave your lover.’ But I digress again. I was talking about my inability to master one-night stands. I’m not knocking this experience if that’s really what both partners want. But I can count mine on one hand. I have always had this desire to associate love with sex and, in a rather predictable way, to want something more: emotional connection, intellectual connection, spiritual connection – all that stuff. I don’t think I’m so unusual. [Cue sound effect of daughter sighing, ‘Don’t be so old fashioned. People simply don’t operate like this anymore.’] Well maybe, but I know lots of women, most of them younger than I am, who all seem to want boyfriends that they can love and who will love them.
Then there are the married men who want to have ‘uncomplicated’ sex with single women without, of course, mentioning this to their wives. I never see how this can be good for them, for the single woman or for the wives. Is there any quality of sex that would be worth that level of heartache? I have done this, very briefly, and hated myself. Either everyone tells the truth to everyone and lets everyone deal with reality so that we can love each other as we are – or I’m not playing.
Another weird experience was being in a relationship with a man who wanted to have anal sex while I did not. Who wanted to try group sex while I did not. Who wanted … well, he just wanted lots of things that I didn’t, while I wanted a kind of emotional, mental and spiritual connection that he didn’t seem to be interested in. I guess that’s one definition of incompatibility – just being on totally different wavelengths, having a feeling that you are not really compatible and yet still trying and failing to make anything feel harmonious.
I’ve had lots of very bad sex.
• • •
So what else might women do on a tantric workshop? Eat delicious homemade curries? Sit by log fires? Maybe there will be stories about good sex? Now there is a subject women like to discuss with a glass of wine. But do I have any? There was a man once who lay in bed beside me and said, ‘I’m shaking.’ It wasn’t cold but we were very much in love. I cherish that moment in my mind, heart, soul and body memory. We weren’t even touching.
But back to the present. Sigh. The woman running the workshop is Hilly Spenceley, who I’d met once before, years ago when I did a mixed weekend that I wrote about in The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment. Hilly. She’s in her 70s: an earth mother archetype with a sense of humour. Having had six children by six different men (and now with an impressive 11 grandchildren) she’s had a lot of experience of male sexual energy. Hilly has been a healer, a masseuse and a professional sex worker – a fact which she doesn’t hide and says that, although it still shocks some people, the expe
rience taught her a lot about men and sex. Hilly’s been teaching tantric sexuality for 30 years. If we could clone people it would be a good idea to make millions of Hillys. Every town needs one, every village, every street.
I’m terrified of her. And somehow I’m about to overcome all my qualms and fears and go away with her and about thirty other women to some place that you’d never find on a map.
• • •
I always have a feeling of dread before any kind of retreat that requires work on the self, but the thought of an all-female workshop creates a silent inner scream. There is something about a group of women sitting in a circle that makes me think of witches. I have to become a witch. And I don’t want to.
Resistance is all part of ‘the process’, apparently. The process is to change my perception of being a woman from ‘female form of meat package that I just happen to have been born into but male would have been just as good, in fact considerably more useful in many ways,’ to ‘I am an incarnation of the Divine Feminine, the goddess Shakti, The Great Mother and I enjoy and celebrate that.’ I swear if they could work growing more buxom breasts and giving birth to triplets into the timetable that would be included some time on Sunday morning.
Sensation Page 2
