Not long after that first relationship broke up, I went through what would be the first of many periods of promiscuity. I had sex with a series of women and men. I knew I wasn’t gay, but I wasn’t inflexibly straight either; though I could only experience romantic feelings for women, I was turned on by both sexes. Count me in the camp of those who believe that sexual fluidity isn’t just for women; authentic male bisexuality is far from a myth. But my own bisexuality seemed to mirror the “Mr. Blake problem”—though I was physically drawn to both sexes, I found women more sexually alluring. Whether that was because I wasn’t really bi or because I bought into what I’d been taught about the comparative undesirability of the male body, I wasn’t sure.
I established a pattern in high school that would stay with me for years. While the women I had sex with were always within a year or two of my own age, almost all the men I slept with were a decade or two my senior. With women, I was usually the pursuer; with men, I was the pursued. And while I often liked the actual sex with women better, I loved the way my male lovers made me feel wanted.
I grew up on the Monterey Peninsula in the 1980s, home to the now-shuttered Fort Ord and a number of other military installations. Most of the guys I slept with when I was in high school were soldiers or sailors or airmen. One Friday night, a few weeks before my 18th birthday, an older man picked me up on a street corner. I think his name was James; he was a master sergeant. He was certainly one of the oldest guys I ever fucked during my teens, perhaps in his mid-forties.
James was huge—everywhere. When he took off his clothes in the dimly lit Fremont Boulevard motel room, I was turned on and terrified at the same time, and by the same thing. I looked at his cock and his muscles and his tattoos and thought to myself, He could rape me if he wanted. He could kill me with his bare hands. And then he started to take off my clothes, and my fear evaporated.
This giant of a man whispered sweet, sexy words as he pulled off my shirt, shoes, and jeans. I’d never been undressed by a lover before; I stood submissive, passive, open-mouthed. I shifted my weight to help him slide off my clothes, but made no other move. I listened.
I’d been a clumsy, awkward kid. I’d struggled with a bad case of acne early in my teens. I was just coming out of a chubby stage. And on top of that, I still had damn Mr. Blake’s words in my head. Who wants to see a naked man, anyway?
James wanted. James wanted to see me, to touch me, to kiss every inch of me. And as he made his way down my body, he praised everything his hands and lips touched. The master sergeant had quite a tongue on him, and he used it effectively.
Standing there under the heat of his gaze and his touch, I felt a rush of elation and relief so great it made me cry. The sex I had with him was based less on my own desire than on my own colossal gratitude for how he had made me feel with his words and his gaze. As we lay on the motel bed, this man ran his fingers across every inch of my body, murmuring flattery of a kind I had never heard from a woman’s lips. As I lay beneath him on that lumpy motel mattress, the dim light of the TV flickering in the corner, he said the words I can still hear nearly 30 years on:
You’re so hot you make me want to come.
I remember the next sound: my own gasp, my own lust and pain and gratitude mixing together. How different his words were from my ex-girlfriend’s gentle reassurance: “Hugo, you make me feel so good.” While she had praised my technique, James praised my body’s desirability. And I realized how much I craved exactly that kind of affirmation. James didn’t just give me that validation for one night. He changed how I saw my own skin and my own maleness.
I don’t want to suggest that straight women don’t lust, and that only gay or bi men are vocal about their strong sexual craving for male bodies. As I got older, I met women who were more confident about expressing desire, and discovered that it wasn’t only gay or bi men who craved the male body. And I came to see that our cultural myths about desire hurt everyone. We shame women for wanting, and we shame men for wanting to be wanted. We still have too many Mr. Blakes out there, giving that same destructive message that no one wants (or should want) the dirty, disgusting male body. (See the recent discussion on a professional photographers’ website about the unattractiveness of naked men viewed “from the front.”1)
Acknowledging Men’s Longing to Be Admired
Though our culture often also teaches women that their bodies are dirty (particularly because of menstruation), we make it clear that men “naturally” crave and desire them. Teaching women that their bodies have great power over men creates a huge problem for women. By putting the focus on managing male desire, women are taught to ignore or suppress their own desires. That’s a loss for women, and it’s a loss for men.
Before I started doing men’s work two decades ago, I wondered if my longing to be wanted was perhaps unique to me. I quickly found out otherwise, as I heard this topic come up again and again, often charged with great pain. So many straight men have no experience of sensing a gaze of outright longing. Even many men who are wise in the world and in relationships, who know that their wives or girlfriends love them, do not know what it is to be admired for their bodies and their looks. They may know what it is to be relied upon, they may know what it is to bring another to ecstasy with their touch, but they don’t know what it is to be found not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but worthy of longing. And they want to know.
The hurt and rage that men feel as a result of having no sense of their own attractiveness has very real and destructive consequences. While both men and women often struggle to trust a partner’s affirmation of their desirability, men are more likely to externalize that struggle as anger at women. Men’s belief that “women only pretend to want sex” is at the root of a lot of male rage, a rage that wives and girlfriends and lovers are forced to deal with all too often.
This isn’t women’s problem to solve; it’s not as if it’s women’s job to start stroking yet another aspect of the male ego. The answer lies in creating a new vocabulary for desire, empowering women as well as men to gaze, expanding our own sense of what is good and beautiful, aesthetically and erotically pleasing. That’s hard stuff, but it’s worth the effort. I have known what it is to believe myself repulsive, and also what it is to hear that I am not only wanted but desirable—for how I appear as well as how I act. That was precious indeed, and far too few men have known it.
Endnotes
1 http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/general-chit-chat/144038-why-do-nude-photos-men-bother-me.html
Grief, Resilience, and My 66th Birthday Gift
Joan Price
During my extreme grief after Robert died, I cried all day. “I cried” is such an understatement: I wailed, I screamed, I keened. I exploded in great, ripping waves of crying that felt like I was vomiting tears uncontrollably from my gut. I understood the term “a broken heart”—it felt like my heart was literally breaking, sawed to pieces by a huge, merciless, serrated knife while an elephant kicked me in the chest.
What does this have to do with sex? Nothing—and everything. For the first months, I didn’t have sex at all, not even with myself. Grief buried my sex drive, except that in my memory, I made love with Robert all day long, celebrating our erotic highs, his beautiful dancer’s body, his touches, his howls of pleasure—and my own.
Robert and I met in the line dance class I teach. I was 57 and he was celebrating his 64th birthday on the evening he wandered in, looking for a new place to dance, and altered my life. I was fired by lust immediately, especially after he started to dance, his gracefulness and mobile hips revealing a lifetime of dance training.
I couldn’t take my eyes off this sexy, white-haired man with ocean-blue eyes and a “touch this, please” tuft of curly white chest hair peeking from the V of his shirt. I imagined holding him, unbuttoning his shirt, nuzzling that chest hair.
Nine months later (“I don’t get into sex casually,” he had told me), I got to do just that. I nuzzled his chest hair,
his head hair, his belly hair, his pubic hair. Even now, three years after his death, I can feel the soft, springy texture in my memory, as vivid as the last time I touched him.
Our lust and our profound love thrilled us. We scheduled whole afternoon sex dates, reveling in the power of our aging bodies and minds to rise to exhilarating heights. It was the best sex of our lives.
Was it the same as 20-year-old sex? Not even close—we weren’t driven by the biological urge to reproduce, but by the drive to bond and touch and share pleasure. And our bodies didn’t go into ready mode right away. In fact, my arousal time was so long that at first I was embarrassed. Silly me, I even apologized to Robert for the amount of stimulation I needed.
“I don’t care if it takes three weeks,” he told me, “as long as I can get up sometimes to change positions and get something to eat.” His humor, creativity, and enjoyment of his own physicality—combined with our deep love—made our sex soar and roar.
We loved. I wrote a book about senior sex, Robert painted beautiful art, we moved in together, we married.
Robert died of cancer exactly seven years after our first kiss.
“Can you see yourself dating again, getting in a relationship again, having sex again?” my friends asked me as I mourned Robert. Even curious readers of my sex and aging book and blog would ask me this.
At first, I said no. I had found and lost my great love—no one could follow that. My sex life with Robert, the love of my life, had been so dynamic, so passionate, so thrilling that his loss felt like the end to everything. Yes, I was still interested in sex, but more as a writer and sex educator than in my personal life.
Then, amazingly, about six months into my grieving, I started to feel stirrings. I found myself feeling turned on by men who radiated that enticing combination of sexuality and gentleness. I didn’t act on those feelings, but I admit I was surprised and happy that I was feeling them. I didn’t feel the need to satisfy the urge—it was enough to marvel at still being able to feel it. We human beings are amazingly resilient.
I remember having a dream at that time that I was responding sexually to a fully dressed, sexy man who was pressing his aroused self against me. I awoke, excited and filled with wonder. “I’m still alive!” I said aloud.
A year and a half after Robert’s death, I prepared to face my 66th birthday alone. I longed for a man’s touch, but still hadn’t felt comfortable enough—or attracted enough—to welcome another man into my body. I wanted to be aroused and I wanted to orgasm from a man’s touch—but (was this selfish?) I wanted the pleasure without giving back just yet. There were men in my life who offered their services, but it didn’t seem fair to take and not give, and a real relationship was too complicated. I feared I would dissolve into tears if I made love with a new man.
I wondered, though, could I hire this pleasure? Men bought “happy endings” easily—could I?
I started looking on the Internet. Most ads and websites were sleazy and scary enough to make me run for cover. Then someone I trusted recommended Sunyata:
Our Sacred Session may involve sensual, intimate touch—unconditionally loving your body with sacred, sensual, and erotic touch that catalyses holistic energetic shifts and nurtures your soul to vibrant life. This touch may stimulate you and result in a climax of pleasure—however, the goal of orgasm is not the focus of the Sacred Session.
I read Sunyata’s website over and over, pausing over these words. Then I wrote this email to a man I had never met:Sunyata, I lost my beloved husband to cancer. I have been celibate for a year and a half (exactly, as of today), despite being a writer about sexuality. Although my toys enable me to keep my sexuality strong, I have been longing to be the recipient of a respectful, gentle, erotic massage with no body parts off limits. Your Erotic Enrichment, as described on your website, seems to fit what I am seeking.
He emailed back, then we had a phone conversation. We made an appointment for my 66th birthday.
Me? Hire someone I’ve never met to give me an “erotic massage,” with every intention that it will lead to orgasm? Yes. I did it, I loved it, and it still brings a smile to my face and a tingle to my nether parts remembering it. (Now I’m really shocking my family.)
Brave? Maybe. Typical of me? Absolutely not—I had never done anything like this before. Foolhardy? It didn’t seem so. He was recommended by someone I knew, and his website and client references seemed professional and impressive. Sure, a bad guy could construct an appealing website and concoct convincing testimonials, but would a bad guy go to the trouble of claiming to be a Certified Tantric Healer, Reiki Master, and Universal Life Church Minister? Would a bad guy even know what these terms meant?
Face it—it’s a fantasy of ours: a pair of skilled hands focused on giving erotic pleasure, no reciprocation expected (or allowed), nonsleazy, all pleasure, orgasms included. No, no, I wasn’t buying sex, Sunyata assured me. I wasn’t buying any outcome. I was simply hiring his services. And if I happened to get carried away experiencing his services—these are my words, not his—every response would be accepted and celebrated.
I still missed Robert like crazy. I had been with Robert exclusively for our seven years together, and his face, hands, and body were the images that stirred my fantasy life when I aroused myself. I pictured Robert as he was through all but the last months of our relationship, vital and strong: a dancer’s body, an artist’s hands, a lover’s smile. I imagined that he was the one touching me when I touched myself. I heard his murmurs of love. I saw his body responding to my touch. I felt his kiss.
And now I wondered: If another man were to touch me intimately, would I even be able to respond?
Sunyata seemed a safe way to find out. I would pay his fee, lie on his massage table, and receive his full attention for two hours.
Sunyata started our session with a discussion, seated on a couch in the massage room, both of us fully clothed. (He would remain so; I would not.) He asked me about what brought me there, and listened compassionately to my story. He explained the basic premise of the massage, which was a way to move Tantric energy (I think—I admit I was too nervous to retain what he was saying). He explained that he was offering his service to honor me, and it would not be reciprocal.
“The session’s intent is to provide service in one direction—to you, my guest,” he explained. ”You are welcome to touch me in nonerogenous areas of my body for connection and emotional support, but not to engage with my eros or my genitals. My sexual desire or need for gratification does not enter the space of our sacred session.”
In other words, I was to get naked, climb on the table, relax, and receive.
But would my sexual desire and need for gratification “enter the space?” I couldn’t ask directly, because I knew we were hovering on the edge of what was legal. I concentrated on listening between the lines.
“I focus on being present with your desire and what wants to release or be revealed,” he continued. That answered my question.
It started out as a traditional massage, relaxing and unhurried. Traditional except that he didn’t skip my breasts as nonsexual massage practitioners do. I felt my nipples harden to his touch. I arched my back in response to his gliding hands—strong, sure, gentle.
Would Robert approve of what I was doing? I couldn’t help flashing on this, which put me on the verge of tears. No, he wouldn’t approve or understand. But Robert would never touch me again, and I had to find my own way to reclaim the sensual and sexual life within me. I pulled my awareness back to the present, the gentle touch of this stranger offering pleasure, as much pleasure as I wanted. And I wanted it.
As Sunyata continued massaging me for a very long time (an hour, maybe?—time stopped), my whole body and brain began to quiver in anticipation. I felt my body rise and fall with his touch, his rhythm in sync with mine. I kept my eyes closed, focusing on the sensation.
I parted my thighs, and I could feel my own heat drawing his hands closer to my pleasure center. Finally, his h
and cupped my vulva and waited. I rocked into his hand, my clitoris on fire. His hand moved expertly, slowly, gently, waiting for my response with each movement.
“May I touch your yoni? ” he asked quietly. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. Fingers entered me, slick with massage oil. He massaged me slowly and gently, inside and out, as if his hands had known me forever. He and I were the ocean—timeless, our rhythm primordial and certain.
I gave myself up to Sunyata’s expert hands, and the ocean soared and roared in crashing waves of pleasure. Wild sensations, the culmination of a year and a half of grief and longing. I laughed. I cried. I laughed again.
His massage turned quiet again, relaxing me after my wild ride. As he stroked me, my arousal started to rise again. Though in “normal” life, one orgasm is absolutely fulfilling and plenty for me, his hands responded to my surge and—more quickly this time—the waves crashed again.
“You must love your job,” I mumbled to Sunyata as I quieted finally.
“I love my job,” he said. I pictured him smiling but I didn’t manage to open my eyes to find out.
My birthday erotic massage from a gentle stranger changed something in me. It showed me that I was still a responsive, fully sexual woman, getting ready to emerge from the cocoon of mourning into reexperiencing life. I realized that one big reason I ended up on Sunyata’s massage table was so that I could get ready to reenter the world.
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