By Jamie
There’s a place I like to visit from time to time. I don’t own property there, but the people and terrain have become familiar. Call it a favorite vacation spot.
It took a while for this place to grow on me. I can remember an early lover, after that a girlfriend, asking me to take them there. But I didn’t know the way. Maybe the fact that I lacked a map made them feel we were incompatible. I didn’t know enough back then to even wonder.
The aptly named Internet site kink.com made me aware of this place and handed me the beginnings of a map. In 2005, the magazine Wired published a story featuring fuckingmachines.com, a site under the kink.com umbrella that depicted women reaching “authentic orgasms” with the aid of motorized dildos. Now, this was not the first time such an idea had stirred me. I own a copy of Robert Anton Wilson’s Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, which includes a chapter called “First Mammal-Robot Dyad.” (It starts on page 164 of the 1988 reprint, if you’re keeping score at home.) I was blown away that someone out there, almost certainly a Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy fan, had applied resources and focus to bring this whimsical, far-fetched fantasy to life. Like many, I was captivated by the sight of women getting real with their sexual pleasure, without the stale choreography that comes with a male partner in the frame, without tissue-thin plotlines, without the awkward or clumsy or sometimes offensive scenes that come with porn territory. Just a woman (often holding the controller) enjoying multiple orgasms at a speed and intensity far beyond the capabilities of a human partner. My doorway to the fetish world opened here, and I stepped timidly over the threshold.
At that time kink.com hosted a handful of sites featuring different flavors of fetish sex. (Currently the category count on the revamped site is up to 36.) Exploring further, I found myself drawn to scenes of bondage and power play. I also liked the fact that even the short promo clips included conversation with the featured performer before and after her experience to document that she had chosen to be there and was happy with the outcome. (As an aside, it seems to me this should be standard for all self-respecting adult filmmakers.)
Slowly, I got my head around the idea that I could push my personal envelope. I could be a doer, not merely a voyeur. My then-partner and I began to play with our video camera (as a CCTV rather than a recording device), watching ourselves on screen, an exercise that was both supremely narcissistic and humorously humbling. We visited Forbidden Fruit, an excellent local sex shop, and added some leather-and-steel restraints to the bedside drawer. The hardware store provided rings and rope; the pet store provided adjustable leashes. We groped our way blindly into this world, following our imaginations and revisiting our more pleasurable discoveries. The map began to take shape.
My abiding interest led to more research. Shared curiosity created new intimacies, deeper friendships. I learned the rudiments, for example the acronym “BDSM” — which cleverly includes bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism — rather than the outdated and less-descriptive “S and M.” I learned my tastes, recognizing quickly that in these forays I was a top (to borrow a term from the LBGTQ world) and a dom; I had little interest in being done to or having my agency removed. But I am also an introvert, never the loudest or most aggressive person in the room. Negotiating a path between these poles proved to be a challenge.
Exploring the landscape
So here is where the landscape became familiar. I was an individual highly motivated by sex who found myself intrigued by certain aspects of kink. I was (and am) also somewhat introverted and not always sure how to inhabit my natural role. Add to this the fact that even before discovering fuckingmachines.com, I knew that the female orgasm was, for me, the most interesting thing about sex.
You read that right. As I see it, a satisfied female partner quivering in ecstasy atop the tangled sheets is the ultimate goal. It thrills me to see my partner orgasm frequently in a variety of ways. It pains me when that doesn’t happen. It’s just how I am wired, and it has shaped my appetites. The male orgasm is pretty linear, more or less, that long slow rise at the beginning of the roller coaster followed by the plunge. The female orgasm, in contrast, is all the twists and turns along the way, inventing an entire roller coaster as it goes. I prefer moving my long slow rise to the very end of the ride, and delaying it as long as possible. To accomplish this, I put the pleasure of my partners before my own, and to do that well I had to learn to listen. I listened to the words of my partners, and I listened to what their bodies told me whether they knew it or not.
By kneeling reverently at the altar of female pleasure, and dedicating a portion of my life to its study, I became a sort of priest. Even before my interest in kink, before I had the words to describe the landscape, I knew this drive. Some of my earliest and fondest memories include bringing a partner some new or fresh or surprising form of pleasure. My very first (equally intense) lover, a jaded pro, a silver-haired beauty on the far side of menopause, a seasoned libertine with a convoluted path to oral ecstasy – there is no better gift than to hear some version of the words, “Oh wow, I didn’t expect that to happen.” Likewise, the memories I carry of partners with whom I couldn’t connect – when, for whatever unidentified reason, we couldn’t both enjoy orgasm as we had hoped – are the saddest and most haunting. I feel as if I have betrayed some higher ideal. But the memories are mostly positive.
Defining the landscape
As I continued to explore the frontiers of female orgasm while sidling my way into kink, I found that combining these two interests gave me a sexual presence and power greater than the sum of its parts. Rather than parrot the physically aggressive, verbally demeaning stereotypes too often found in porn, with which I have never been completely comfortable, I felt happier working out from what I already knew. I was a cheerleader, a facilitator, a coach, and I would continue to be so. This seems obvious when spelled out. I didn’t need to become somebody new; I needed to become more fully me. Playing with the dynamics of power doesn’t change a thing.
And now we come to the central truth about power. Those who rule do so with the consent of the ruled. The meek truly do inherit this piece of earth. I cannot order a lover to strip and lie across my lap to have her ass beaten pink unless she has given me that permission. I cannot tie a lover to my dining table or my bed, or suspend her spread-eagled against the door, or dress her in homemade rope, unless she agrees to do so. Permission doesn’t have to be a dreary bureaucratic process, but it does need to happen. This is far more than a #metoo safety precaution; it’s a type of foreplay. Giving away control over one’s sexual destiny is a powerful aphrodisiac, equally powerful to receiving that gift. That lover who has given me permission to render her helpless and will accept whatever I do to her, she is most beautiful person in the universe. I take her pleasure extremely seriously. I want to give her so many orgasms of such intensity that she seems to levitate off the bed. I want her to think she has reached her limit and then roar past it. I want her to think “oh no,” and then, “oh yes.” I want her to be the happiest person in the universe after her restraints are loosened and we are both gasping for breath atop the tangled sheets.
Owning my turf
One of the great things about this moment, and one of the primary reasons for this blog, is that Sophie and I seem to have found each other at the right time. We are both veteran sexual libertines. Our BDSM tastes are well aligned. My commitment to female orgasm has created for her a vast new frontier, to her happy surprise, and her comfort with the full spectrum of pleasure means any fleeting time-of-life male issues are barely a blip on our radar, to my mild relief. As she recently wrote, our bodies like each other. And we have room for each other within our bigger lives. We were ready for each other to come along.
All the same, Sophie has been slightly frustrated with me lately. She is hungry for more of the overt power dynamic. She has been dropping hints, and I’ve been making her wait. Granted, our relatively vanilla sessions have been stratospherically successful. We’ve added a twist or two to our shared experience. Neither of us has any complaints. But she’s ready for more toys and roles.
Technically she isn’t supposed to ask for it. That goes with the roles, after all. But it is my role to meet her needs. Lately we’ve both been busy in other parts of our life, and the timing just hasn’t worked, and really she’s just letting me know she still wants me. Maintaining that couple connection, important in every flavor. Still, I have felt a bit lazy.
So the other night I gave her a taste. I lubed up the butt plug and slid it into her gently yet insistently while also fucking her from behind. For all her blanket-consent bravado, it is sometimes quite easy to take her by surprise. Her trepidation is so satisfying. Eventually I decided to address that part of her hesitation that started to seem real. I brought my mouth close to her ear, and I said, “You’re doing great. I am really proud of you.” It was like turning on a switch. She moaned, “that’s so hot,” and started bucking into me with abandon until we both came like volcanos. Two entire sexual histories, mine and hers – our experiences, our tastes, our habits, our fantasies – culminating in one supremely powerful shared experience. Just like last time, and next time.
We will have lots of time together this weekend. She will read this before then and finally know what’s been on my mind. She will be ready for more, and so will I, as we climb the ever-fresh upward spiral of our explorations. Stay tuned.
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