This fuzziness is why, starting in the 1980s, the field moved toward adding the notion of “distress” to the DSM.
“We do not consider something a disorder unless there is a clearly defined description of this entity and there is clearly some significant dysfunction and distress associated with it,” explains Regier. “I would say also if there is no victim involved… this behavior is not imposing a person’s will on another person, that is a critical component when one looks at conditions in this area.”
If you aren’t distressed, and everyone is a consenting grown-up, then there probably isn’t a disorder. But things won’t be that simple for the creators of the new DSM.
“How do you make a criteria that does not pathologize low desire?” Leiblum asks rhetorically. You add the need to be distressed about it. “But then whose distress should be looked at?” she asks, referring to a sexual partner. “You can have hypertension and not feel any distress because there is objective criteria for what is high blood pressure. But there is none of that for sexual diagnoses, even premature ejaculation.What constitutes premature?”
(At a press conference Monday, the International Society of Sexual Medicine made a stab at a definition, saying premature ejaculation is “a male sexual dysfunction characterized by ejaculation which always or nearly always occurs prior to or within about one minute of vaginal penetration; and, inability to delay ejaculation on all or nearly all vaginal penetrations; and, negative personal consequences, such as distress, bother, frustration, and/or the avoidance of sexual intimacy.”)
This problematic lack of clarity, Leiblum argues, is especially acute for the paraphilias. Does the criteria amount to “If it’s mine it’s okay, but if it’s yours it’s kinky? These issues need to be grappled with.”
Unleash the Beast
“Josephine Thomas”
I am faithful to my husband for 2,292 days. But on the 2,293rd day, I have hormonal teenage sex with a veritable stranger in his divorced-bachelor pad by the train tracks. I’ve slept with some sixty men over two decades and yet it’s with this middle-aged man—graying, with wrinkles and soft muscles—that I truly discover sex.
He is a stranger, but we have a history. One day two years ago, we sat next to each other on the commuter bus, chatting, flirting. I found him incredibly sexy. Our thighs touched in a way that suggested it wasn’t a coincidence. I fantasized about him a good deal in the following weeks. I imagined that, engrossed in conversation, I’d miss my stop, and he’d offer, like a gentleman, to drive me home once we got to his place. Of course we’d have incredibly hot, animalistic sex on his enclosed sunporch, and there’d be nothing gentlemanly about it.
Now, all this time later, I am waiting one morning for the commuter train when I see him walk onto the platform. He comes straight over to me, smiling broadly, as if we’re old friends. He’s just come from the chiropractor because he hurt his back. He looks good. He remembers my name. I learn within minutes that he’s separated from his wife and is living a couple of blocks away. He neglects to mention that he has a steady girlfriend because, consciously or not, he knows what I know: We’re going to fuck. Soon.
The fact that I don’t feel one ounce guilty about contemplating adultery should make me feel like a coldhearted sociopath, but it doesn’t. The plain truth is that I’ve had a problem with fidelity all my romantic life. I was never faithful to any of my boyfriends. I would cheat on current boyfriends with new ones, on new ones with exes. I once left a lover in my bed for a dalliance with another, then came back as if I’d just run down to the store for milk. In fact, infidelity is a pastime of which I am rather fond, a behavior that I tamped down when I exchanged vows with my husband but that I never truly buried.
The moment I see train-station man, with his impish grin, I am instantly my good old, bad old self again. Maybe it’s because he turned up after a long, tedious spell of monogamy. Maybe it’s because childbirth deeply wounded my body image, and his flattery is just the balm to soothe it. It’s also possible that I’m more resentful than I realize of my husband, who refuses to take a turn getting up early with the kids on weekends because he’s so tired from doing the very important job that pays for our really nice house.Whatever the reason, train-station man manages not only to revive my mischievous, affair-loving streak, but ultimately to open me up to something that is, oddly enough, new to me: the exquisite joy of sex.
His first email, later that day—after the train doesn’t show and he gives me a lift into the city—is fairly innocent but suggestive enough if I choose to take the bait: What a treat to see you waiting for the train this morning. I thought it would be nice to talk to you for a few minutes before it arrived. Little did I know I would get to have you all to myself for an entire car ride into the city. Now I’m glad I hurt my back. :)
I feel no shame or fear in pursuing this, only pure adrenaline-pumped pleasure. I know exactly where it’s going to lead because that’s where I want it to lead. I admit in my reply to him that I wasn’t able to concentrate much at my meeting since my mind was “elsewhere.” This time he takes the bait and writes back:I remember very well the feeling of sitting so close to you on the bus and the pull you describe. And, to tell you the truth, I thought about it yesterday when we walked to get my car. I imagined asking you to come upstairs with me for a minute so I could get something I’d forgotten.You are ahead of me on the stairs and we’re making small talk as we walk. The sound of our foot-steps and our breathing is echoing slightly in the hallway, but otherwise the building is quiet. Most everyone has gone to work already.
As we start up the last flight before my door, you stop and turn toward me to make a joke about something I just said. I don’t stop, though. I keep walking until I’m on the step below you.You pause for a second because I’m standing so close, and the atmosphere changes. Suddenly things are very electric, and the sound of our breathing is now quite pronounced.
My right hand is on the banister, but my left slides up the wall and comes to rest, very lightly, on your hip. I never take my eyes off yours, but my hand moves slowly around the small of your back and pulls you in a little closer. I lean in and place my lips so that they are almost touching your neck, just below the jawline.You can feel my breath warm against your skin, while my other hand grazes your hip and comes to rest on the back of your other leg, just below the hem of your skirt, and slides slowly up and stops just at the point where it meets your…
The emails quickly cross the line from PG to R, and then NC-17. They reach such a frenzy that a rendezvous is all but inevitable, and about twenty-four hours later, I am in his apartment, naked, my legs wrapped around his torso, his strong arms guiding my body up and down on his. It’s amazing. He’s amazing. I haven’t felt this alive in years.
It’s possible that I’ve had other great lovers before, but that I was too young to fully appreciate their prowess, or maybe I was too distracted by my ulterior motive—the conquest itself—to relax and enjoy. Or maybe it’s just that train-station man is more experienced and more confident in bed than any man I’ve ever been with, so he understands what women need. I do know that he’s an extremely generous lover, and that he genuinely wants to give—it’s not just a ruse to get to intercourse faster.
Even if the sex weren’t stellar, which it is, the ego trip is out of this world.
Here I am, approaching forty. I’ve had two kids, one by C-section, with a nasty scar to prove it. My breasts have fallen, my hips have widened; I’ve got grandma arms and saddlebags. And yet here is this very attractive man, well into his forties, beholding my naked body in wonderment as if I’m a Victoria’s Secret model, no, make that the Botticelli Venus herself, landed on his futon, a gift from heaven. His hands trace the curves up and down my body. He tells me I’m an incredibly tasty thing, hot and sexy and interesting and compelling. I’m addicted.
Why don’t I feel guilty? In part, I blame my upbringing; the daughter of a very public figure, I always seemed exempt from the rules everyone
else had to follow. My parents, overachievers themselves and dead set on impressing the world, encouraged me to take shortcuts, to use connections to get things first or more easily, cheaper or faster. If I did the conventional thing, if I actually filled out a job or school application and sent it off cold to an anonymous person, or walked into a store and bought something retail, I was not being clever, not using every resource to my advantage. And nothing succeeded like success.The message was clear: achieve your goal. The subtext was even clearer: whatever it takes. With each success, I lapped up my parents’ praise and then got greedy for more.
Somehow that need for praise and attention translated into sexual conquest. I found, well before puberty, that getting boys to notice me provided the same gratification. By age fourteen, I was a raging slut, seducing boys at school, at camp, in the neighborhood. Every encounter left me high. It was like crack.
For many years I believed I had an insatiable appetite for sex, but whenever I was in a committed relationship, it lost its appeal almost entirely. No, for me sex was about the invincible power I could wield over the opposite sex. And the more illicit the encounter, the better: in a coatroom, in a kiddie pool, on a stage in a darkened theater after hours. I loved feeling I was getting away with something, getting it first or more easily, cheaper or faster.
I slept with so many men that the only way I can remember them is to go through the alphabet, making allowances for those nameless conquests—bouncer at the Ritz, American University senior at the beach, the DJ who got me an autographed Madonna album. When I finally settled down at age twenty-eight, it wasn’t so much that I’d found my sexual match as that I’d found other qualities to value. We played Scrabble and did crossword puzzles together; we liked the same bands. Neither of us ever carried a balance on a credit card. He liked when I cooked for him; he loved how I looked in a miniskirt. We got along swimmingly, effortlessly. He’d had his share of conquests too. I felt understood. I had a best friend. I was happy.
Fast-forward ten years. I’m working from my home in the suburbs to be close to my two kids. I hardly ever see my husband, who’s gone for some thirteen hours on weekdays, and I hardly see men other than my husband, let alone sexy ones or, even more unimaginable, sexy ones who undress me with their eyes. I feel old, invisible, practically dead. I hired a fairly attractive exterminator once, but then he cleaned up bat shit in my attic and I lost my very mild interest. The closest I ever got to flirting now was with the cute fathers who occasionally picked up their kids at my daughter’s preschool. And that’s when the beast inside me—the one that once fed voraciously off male attention—roused from its hibernation long enough for me to feel a flicker of adrenaline, a pang for my glory days as a wild seductress of men.Then it usually sighed, curled up, and went back to sleep.
Not this time. On this day I allow the beast, ravenous from years of starvation, to come roaring back to life. I don’t even try to quiet it. I send train-station man another email, and it’s practically pornographic:I swear I’ve been totally WET now for days, just from periodic—okay, nearly constant—thinking about your electrifying sexuality. In fact, I actually think my nether regions are kind of swollen from all the excitement. Is that possible?
He replies:God, I am so fucking hard thinking about your sweet little body and the things I want to do to it that I can barely concentrate on anything else. I didn’t tell you this, but that day on the bus, I was slouched down in my seat (so I could feel like I was closer to you) and I was fantasizing about doing things to you, like fucking you with my fingers, and you would have to keep really quiet so the bus driver wouldn’t know.
I know that what I’m doing is wrong, but I know it only on an academic level. Inside, I don’t care. I can’t care. It feels too good. It feels like home. I feel like me again, awash in the euphoria of a new relationship and drunk with the power I’m thrilled to realize I still have. And this time it’s not over a pimply teen or a brooding college student but over a fully grown man (who, as such, should know better). I get him to leave work early, to duck out of his son’s birthday party, to lie to the people he loves just to see me. It’s not that I’m mean. It’s that I’m addicted—to the ego boost, certainly, but also, perhaps for the first time, to the sex itself.
After the birth of my second child, I cried the first few times I slept with my husband because I just felt so undesirable, like he was sleeping with me out of pity. Poor fat Josie with a nasty scar and a pouchy belly. He told me, charitably, that he “didn’t find me unattractive” but his soft dick proved otherwise. We had sex pretty infrequently after that, occasionally noticing a month or more had passed since our last conjugal visit. The frequency picked up slightly over the following year and a half, but at some point during his pushing and grunting, long after I’d lost any lubrication I was able to achieve, I would count the seconds until it was over. Sex began taking place only in the middle of the night when, half-asleep, my husband would get turned on by our spooning and begin clumsily removing my pajamas. I considered it a new low.
Train-station man, with his alabaster skin and pool blue eyes, changes all that by giving me something I so desperately need—permission to accept and even embrace my body. He writes:It was delicious doing all the things to you that I had envisioned beforehand, especially approaching you from all different angles. And take it from me: your extremely hot body looks good from any angle. My personal favorites so far are you on top of me, head thrown back, eyes closed, riding me; you standing, hands against the wall, half turned back to look at me while I put my hands all over you; you lying naked on your side, back to me, while I stroke and caress you, then slip my finger slowly inside you.
I keep wanting to come over there and throw you down on any available surface and take you, again and again and again…
What amazes me most is that this man didn’t know me when I was young and nubile with perky breasts and flat abs, so that now he might merely be looking past the ravages of time and childbirth. This man is attracted to the woman I am now, warts and all. And though his emails have slowed to a trickle and become more perfunctory (Okay then, see you at three), the legacy of the affair remains very much alive, even affecting the way I take care of myself: I’m shaving my legs more often, applying face masks, actually flossing. I’m wearing makeup most days, even with no plans to leave the house, and I’ve joined the gym.
The fourth time I sleep with train-station man, the thrill is beginning to wear off. He’s still amazing in bed, but the fireworks are gone. We’re just two grown-up people enjoying a fine afternoon fuck. And as I descend the three flights to the parking lot behind his building, I wonder if it will be for the last time.
I also realize it almost doesn’t matter. I’ve already reaped an incredible, unforeseen reward from this affair: far from detracting from my sex life at home, it has significantly improved it—and, by extension, my relationship with my husband—simply by making me feel desirable again and by showing me how much fun sex can be. This affair has been like a giant “aha” moment that’s enriched my life beyond belief. It’s as though he has helped me become a citizen of the sexual world, and it’s a wonderful place to be.
Will sex with my husband ever trump or even match the magical lovemaking I’ve been enjoying with train-station man? Probably not. But is it better than it’s been in a long time? Absolutely. I feel freer to talk dirty, to guide his hands, to show off my body instead of hiding it under the covers. My newfound confidence has rekindled his desire too, adding more fuel to the sexual fire. Better still, we’re doing crossword puzzles again. We’re eating dinner together and actually talking—the very things that tamed the sex fiend in me in the first place. Just yesterday he downloaded two CDs’ worth of my favorite songs and presented them to me as a gift. We’re getting back to being involved in each other’s lives in that simple, loving way. And that’s a huge dividend from an illicit affair with a gray-haired stranger I met at the train station.
Is Cybersex Cheating?
Violet Blue
“Hey. Baby. I know you like to have some fun.You. Know. Where to find me,” burbles Kari, the Virtual Girlfriend in a halting, female Stephen Hawking voice through my G4’s speakers. But while Kari might be the most advanced commercially available artificial intelligence pleasure model online, if I walked in on a boyfriend having an 8-bit roll in the hay with her, I’d be fighting the urge to laugh, not the urge to throw dishes. Cybersex, it seems, might just be in the eye of the beholder.
Right now there are more ways to have cybersex than ever thought possible, and it’s making modern couples reconfigure their relationships’ Terms of Service. Cybersex makes it easy to cheat; you don’t have to meet anyone, so the risk factor is low on all fronts—except maybe emotionally. Cybersex is also a more creative form of masturbation, so in many ways it’s not too terribly different than enjoying porn or fantasy. But that cybersex often involves another human gives it a twist; walking in on a boyfriend with an actual human female on the other side of the screen, having a hot and heavy text or cam session—I don’t need to consult our ToS to know that wouldn’t feel good, at all.
But if it’s really just masturbation, then is cybersex “real” sex? Dr. Keely Kolmes, PsyD, a San Francisco psychotherapist for individuals and couples, tells me, “I would say that whether or not it is ‘real’ sex depends upon how the interaction is experienced by the participants. It may even feel ‘real’ for one person in the encounter, and not for the other person with whom they are having cybersex. On the other hand, you may have two people having cybersex where neither of them considers it ‘real,’ despite arousal, a feeling of intimacy, and even mutual orgasm—and yet their real-life partners may beg to differ.” Kolmes adds, “But it’s fascinating that two people can be having an experience and one person may compartmentalize it in a way that feels ‘not real,’ while the other person is feeling much more integrated about it.”
Best Sex Writing 2009 Page 5
