Today I’m participating in my wonderful friend Polly Superstar’s virtual book tour, for her indie, self-published Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary. I asked her for a particularly saucy excerpt, and she delivered! I added some sexy visuals, and we both hope you love it.
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When I started being more honest with my friends about my challenges with my orgasm I realized that many women were having a similar experience as I — far more than I ever expected. I would mention it in passing, and their eyes would light up, reaching toward me in gratitude for my honesty. I chatted in a car on a road trip once and discovered four of the five women experienced a similar disconnect from their orgasm.
This realization stunned me: I was normal.
I came to a simple conclusion: I needed to practice more, watch more, and learn. So I explored this landscape without holding back. I gigglingly assisted people’s intimate interactions with a rubber glove covered in lube. I lay under a couple having sex and watched, close up, the fascinating sight of a cock disappearing into a wet and welcoming pussy.
I explored the absolute delight I find in being the girl in a bi-boy sandwich, cocks straining toward each other with me in the middle (still my favorite configuration). If it wasn’t already absolutely clear, I think sex is awesome, but this frustration and fear of being broken didn’t end suddenly with me being fixed.
I still feel broken sometimes.
One night I had a threesome with two girls. It was different because we had all experienced varying degrees of anorgasmia. Immersed in a sea of softness, all I knew was lips, tongues, fingers, and wetness. My hands reached out to caress breasts and slippery crevices as my lips moved from face to face, with smiles, affection, and tender touches. We explored gently at first, then greedily. Moans and whispers surrounded us in a cocoon of pleasure.
When it’s just girls playing, I don’t have the same concerns as I do when straight men are around. Being with women levels the playing field — nobody’s in it to win it. When there are cocks in the equation the dynamic shifts. Don’t get me wrong — there are plenty of sensitive men who are an exception to this rule. I love men! But so many of them can be needy, wanting desperately to reach their climactic conclusion and leave with bodies and egos satisfied.
As the evening progressed my friends pulled out their strap-ons. One was a perfect replica of male genitalia; the other was a blue, glittery alien cock designed specifically for female pleasure with defined ridges on the sides and a curved end to hit the G-spot. They strapped them into harnesses and pressed them deep into hungry cracks. But it was still different from having an actual cock in the room. These appendages weren’t straining to be pleasured in the warm space between our legs. Orgasm wasn’t an explicit goal, fulfilling an appropriately satisfying ending to their story.
As this story reaches its climax, those same old inadequacies keep coming up. I should give you the money shot. I owe it to you. It’s my failure if I don’t. I should take you to a moment where I am fixed. Where I am healthy. Where I bring down the house with a screaming orgasm and we can all feel better about our interaction. But this isn’t simply about my orgasm. Sure, as I get older and more connected to my body I experience orgasms more easily. I can get off in just a few of minutes if I’ve got my Hitachi Magic Wand. But it’s not about my money shot.
The question that is more important to me is this: why are such a large percentage of women disconnected from their orgasm, and why do they experience such shame about it? Even me — a sex-positive activist with a reassuring sex therapist mother — I still experienced so much shame, it crippled me.
Our culture has taught us that sex is supposed to look a certain way — we watch movies, look at magazines, and read stories, and our sexual expectations become intertwined with these fantasies. When things don’t turn out like the movies, where sweaty but perfect bodies rock to that moment of mutual climax in just a few minutes, we blame ourselves.
What I’ve discovered on my adventure is that my ability to orgasm is vastly broader than I could have imagined. It’s not simply a short moment in time, a single, fleeting instant. These days, after years of exploration, reading lots of books, and even participating in a few hands on workshops, I have learned to tune into the subtle, stepping stone sensations that radiate through me. They are waves of pleasure, which pulse and deepen. It’s like an opening, surrendering to my capacity for pleasure. They aren’t a release — they build, one on the other, until my entire body is flickering with their energy. From this place I have no greedy desire for an “orgasm,” but occasionally those blissful stepping stones take me to a rolling, timeless climax that can keep going and going. I have yet to find an end to it. So my understanding of orgasm has expanded from a very specific moment in time, attached to a sensation of neediness and fear, to an arc of pleasure and surrender with no end.
I know now that there is absolutely no problem with how long it takes me to orgasm — the only problem is how ashamed I’ve been. So no, I didn’t orgasm that night surrounded by the soft limbs of pretty girls, not in the way most people understand the meaning of the word. Instead, I released myself from that rapacious yearning. Our rendezvous on that bed was about exploring sensations, pleasure, and love. We nuzzled and rubbed and licked at each other’s bodies like over-excited puppies. We giggled and moaned, and we loved every second of it. When we got tired we fell asleep in a pile, each one of us satisfied and loved.
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This post is part of the Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary Virtual Book Tour. The comedian Margaret Cho called it “Raw, untamed, emotional beauty–Polly is a true supernova. This memoir is as touching as it is hot, as moving as it is a masterpiece.”
- On Amazon: Polly: Sex Culture Revolutionary
- Join Polly’s mailing list
- Check out Polly’s website
- Follow Polly on Twitter or Facebook
- Click the image below to check out the other exciting stops on the tour
Thanks Violet! Whew, that story was tough to tell. I wonder if any of your female readers identify with my story and what they’ve done to research their orgasm?