You make me feel like a natural woman

My mistress touches me, strongly and sensitively, knowing how and when, feeling around and tickling me sensitively, inviting me to explode.
I’ve never been touched like this before. I’ve never felt so many orgasms from the creative and experienced fingers, fiddling away at my fanny, fondling me to distraction.
My mistress does the most amazing things to me, enabling me to feel more liberated and more sexually alive than I have ever felt.
My mistress really is my ‘man’.

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Oh, baby, what you've done to me
You make me feel so good inside
And I just want to be close to you
You make me feel so alive
Cause you make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like
A natural woman
http://www.lyrics007.com/Aretha%20Franklin%20Lyrics/You%20Make%20Me%20Feel%20(Like%20A%20Natural%20Woman)%20Lyrics.html
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What is a natural woman?
Well, according to my friend Aretha, it has something to do with the effect that another human being has on her, which is fine but I would hope she had some inner strength and understanding about being a natural woman from within her own being as well as the effects of others.

She talks of having “piece of mind”, that prior to feeling like a natural woman her “soul was in the lost and found”, that she used to feel “uninspired….. when I knew I had to face another day”.
This resonates with me.

Of course, Aretha Franklin is probably not singing entirely about feeling a ‘sexually’ natural woman but I like to think that there is an element of this within her writing. And there is part of me that feels somewhat abusive in taking her lyrics and giving them a slight Zenpuss twist but I hope that she wouldn’t mind me using her song in this way, for it is for the good of womankind, I hope.

Feeling like a natural woman is an incredibly important thing. Feeling that what happens to your mind, your body and your soul in day to day living should feel natural if you are at one with yourself. Feeling that you are appreciated for being a woman is another very natural thing that I hope all women could explore and appreciate for themselves as well as having this confirmed for them by a loved one or even a friend.

I like being a woman. I like the parts of me that make me a woman, not just the physical attributes either. But I also like feeling like a sexy woman, and I like to think that this too is very natural; it is as it should be. Feeling like a “natural woman” has to be about feeling sexy doesn’t it?
Even if it is not explicit in the song, I am assuming that one of the joys that Aretha is singing about is that her lover makes her feel this way. When she is with her lover, she feels natural, she feels as a woman should feel. She feels like a natural woman.
(Just as an aside, I love the emphasis on the word “Woman” at the end of the chorus – so forceful and determined, so pleased that she is the WO-man who is feeling so natural).

I suppose one of the purposes of writing these blogs is to enable women to feel natural about their sexuality, which is partly why this song sprung to mind on my drive home from work today.
I want women to feel natural about every aspect of their sexuality which means dispelling some of the myths that surround female orgasms and ejaculations. It is also about ensuring that women feel good about the way that they dress and what feels natural for them. In some cases it is about making sure that women feel that it is natural to be creative and innovative and that using their imagination to explore themselves and their world is also natural.

Today, of course, I want to concentrate on the natural aspects of female sexuality.
I’ve already covered many aspects of these, ranging from masturbation to gushing cums, of bisexuality to loving thrusting cocks but for now I want to concentrate on the ‘naturalness’ of it all.

When I talk about masturbation, if I talk about masturbation with friends or colleagues, then I feel slightly unnatural. Obviously, I would not launch into a confession about my own masturbation practices, desires and needs with anyone, and certainly as far as colleagues are concerned, I would take the personal out of it and discuss masturbation as a generic issue.
I am perfectly comfortable when talking about this subject so the unnatural state does not come from within, but I often get the impression that others find it unnatural. Others consider that even talking about it is a little unnatural.
But why should this be the case? How are we going to make it a natural subject if we do not talk about it? How are we going to ensure that women feel natural about their own masturbation if it is constantly ignored?
Talking about your sexuality and normalising this perfectly normal function in life is an absolute must for all those who consider sexual enlightenment as a way forward in life.

Feeling natural about your physical state is another important thing for women.
It has been said on more than one occasion that what women feel about their own bodies is quite different to what others might feel about a woman’s body.
There have been all sorts of experiments done to ascertain what the average man sees as a ‘standard’ size and what women see. Very sadly, the image of a woman that men find attractive is a size or two bigger than one that a woman would choose. Women choose the size 10 model, men look longingly at the size 14.
Okay, that is a slight generalisation, and I would hope that when it came to relationships that people would actually consider the person before the label on their jeans but the point is that it is quite common for women to have an opinion on size, and that opinion is that they see attractiveness in a smaller form than men.
Maybe it is possible that men see the naturalness of a woman’s curvaceous body more readily than we women do.
Some would argue that men are probably less discerning but I do not think that is the case.

“She's a perfect 10, but she wears a 12
Baby keep a little 2 for me
She could be sweet 16, bustin' out at the seams
It's still love in the first degree

'Cause we love our love,
in different sizes
I love her body, especially the lies
Time takes it's toll, but not on the eyes
Promise me this, take me tonight”

This “Beautiful South” song goes on from the woman’s point of view.
“If he's XXL well what the hell
Every penny don't fit the slot”

It’s probably about time that women realise that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Why is it that most women do not even have a glancing worry about the size of their men yet are fixated with their own state of being? Women still love their men irrespective of their size and it is exactly the same for men. They may prefer a little less weight. They may actually prefer more but essentially, it isn’t the main contributory factor to the initial or the maintained attraction.

Sticking to the subject in hand, being natural means being content with what you are. That does not mean the same as being complacent and if you want to or ought to do something about your body for health or aesthetic reasons then that is what you should do. However, this is quite different from trying to achieve something that is not your natural being.

But Aretha mentioned “you”. “You make me feel like a natural woman”.

And the “you” is important.

I, like the many women described above, am not content with my body. I don’t want to be a stick insect. I don’t want to be obese. I want to retain my decent sized boobs and I want to be voluptuous. And I will, eventually, manage to tone it all up so that I can look something like the way I feel I should.
However, my particular “you”, whilst encouraging me to do something about my body for ME, still makes me feel like a “natural woman” whatever I physically look like.
He celebrates my curves. He relishes in the abundance that I have in certain areas of my body. He devours my legs and smoothes his hands up and down, acknowledging their fullness and their feel.
He makes me feel like a natural woman, and that is before I have even got to the important parts of my body that are so natural and so significant to both of us. When we get to my pussy, he certainly makes me feel like a natural woman.

At this point, I need to mention female ejaculation once more.
Is it natural?
Does ejaculating in the middle of an amazing orgasm make me feel natural? You bet it does!

As I am on the theme of songs, I will quote a few little lines from some terrible songs that spring to mind.
“It started with a kiss”. Yes, a kiss is all that it took.
A friend of mine was explaining to me some time ago that another mutual friend had this lover.
This friend had stated that her lover was amazing and that he only had to kiss her in a certain way to bring on a huge, pounding orgasm. My friend was somewhat sceptical about this. It had never happened to her, or so she thought.
I had to tackle her on this one because when I kissed the “you” mentioned before for the first time, I distinctly remember that it would only take the slightest of touches after this inaugural kiss to have me screaming “orgasm alert” in an instant.
With a beautiful kiss and a mind wholly set on the togetherness of that intimacy, then I for one would certainly describe the experience as orgasmic.

I asked my friend once more. Had she not felt an urgent need to pee when she kissed someone that she felt a huge passion for? She agreed that she had.

It’s not pee!

That feeling that wells up inside when the mind and the body are working simultaneously is real.
It is natural. Has no-one ever considered how bizarre it would be for a kiss to make you feel the need to urinate? Yet, we assume that it is a need to pee because that it feels a little like it.
However, if you look at it more objectively, it is totally different. Yes, there is a welling up and a pressure of fluids in the nether regions, but I for one, don’t have a sudden hardening of my clitoris every time I go and take a leak.
The build-up of fluids that resembles the feeling of a need to pee is not a build up of urine but a build up of ejaculatory fluids that are desperate to come out, and there are too many women out there who do not recognise it as such.

IF you are ever in that situation again, take this kiss, take the build up of fluids and then rush to the loo as soon as possible. Then take a look at the basin. I bet the “urine” is light and clear and you are still left with a tingling desire and possibly a feeling that you still need to pee because despite releasing the fluids, the insides of your pussy are still engorged and alive. You are having an ejaculatory orgasm, albeit in a slightly controlled and less natural state. It is NOT pee.

Time for another song!
“First I was afraid. I was petrified”
Okay, the rest of the song doesn’t fit in with the theme but this phrase has a purpose here.

I’d had orgasms before but they weren’t exactly gushing ones. They were intense. They mainly happened after a finger fuck. They often happened after a partner had spunked inside me; something that I still find unbelievably arousing but in essence they weren’t very moist.
My orgasms had always been about a stimulation of the clit and a growing consciousness of a swelling inside that had nowhere to go other than fill my body with a glorious climax.
I admit that most of the very best orgasms were still self-inflicted rather than supported by a friendly finger or cock.
So when I was finger fucked for the first time by “you”, I was afraid and I was petrified for I had no idea that my body was capable of emitting a little dribble of excitement. Yet, even then, when it happened for the first time, I was convinced that I hadn’t pissed myself. I knew and felt the difference. I knew that I had been fingered to orgasm and that the climax was so intense, I had cum avec ejaculation.

Time passed by and I continued to have these arousing and immature little splashes.
It felt natural yet I wasn’t quite sure. I wasn’t sure whether this was something that was special to me or that it usually happened with women.
Subconsciously, I think I held back a little. I tried to put a stop on the amount of juices that were coming out of me.

And so it went on.
I continued to cum with the ejaculation and I got accustomed to the spillage.

Only it changed.
The more intimate and closer I became to my lover, the more juices seemed to spill out of me.
At first it was a trickle. Then it got to a cascade. Then we bought towels because it seemed that this was going to happen every time I opened my legs.
Once the towels were bought and spread conveniently on bed or floor, it was as though it was an open invitation to release more.
And I did.
At first, I soaked one towel laid beneath me. Then we had to double them up. Then we had to ensure that there was always more than one towel there because I realised that one cum was not enough for me. Then my cascades began to be projectile, soaking not only my lover’s balls but spraying all over his chest if he was sitting in front of me.

Recently, we watched a video of two women having a competition to see how far their cum could travel. Pretty impressive too! It travelled some distance and I suppose the competitive element in me felt as thought there was a challenge on.
But it wasn’t really a challenge at all and this wasn’t the reason that I came so copiously after watching the video.

He made and makes me feel like a natural woman. The inhibitions are going. I feel liberated by the fact that I really can just release whatever needs releasing, even if, in some instances, the orgasm and the ejaculation is mixed with the odd measure of urine.
It is natural. I am a natural woman.

The other day, I had already soaked the obligatory three towels. I was probably incapable of another gush and yet, I felt that familiar feeling in my cunt. I was lying there in need of another ejaculation. I turned to my lover who was already there before me. With a sixth sense, he often knows when I am ready to cum before me. When his dick is inside me, I know he feels a rising orgasm before it has taken place and his acknowledgement of the impending glory brings it on even faster.
At this time, I knew another release was imminent and I kicked the duvet away just in time to project a huge wash of watery goodness out of my body. The duvet caught too much of it, but had it not been there, I am sure I may have reached the window sill, such was the force that this ejaculation had.
And it was all perfectly natural.

“You make me feel like a natural woman”.
You enable me to be a natural woman and enabling me in this way makes me desperate to enable other women to feel natural about this totally natural state of being.

There is nothing more natural than a female ejaculation. Yes, it can be messy. Yes, it can need a bit of mopping up but it is a glorious wonderment for both parties involved.
I still marvel at how my lover’s cock rises in an instance at watching me ejaculate. It is like a natural order of things; the cycle of sex keeps on going. I cum, he gets erect and so we start all over again.
How natural and brilliant is that!

Of course, being a natural woman is far more complex than the ability to relax and ejaculate but there is nothing unnatural about this part of my sexuality or other women’s, and that is why I wanted to reiterate this today.

Being natural, being comfortable with your physical being, enabling your mind, your spirit, your body to work in harmony – releasing all sorts. That is natural.
Naturists – natural – it all fits together.

What greater gift can you actually give to another human being as well as yourself than to feel alive? I would argue now against the bible quote "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
You don’t need to die to give life to another.
Giving life, not giving up life is part of being a natural woman, or man, for that matter.
The greatest love, the most natural way to be is to make another person feel alive and I guess that is partly what Aretha Franklin was singing about.
“You make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like a natural woman”.

Anonymous blogging

So Belle de Jour has finally come out.
She revealed herself to one of her greatest critics, Times writer India Knight in an interview with the paper that was published this week.

Here is what she stated on her blog.
“Belle and the person who wrote her had been apart too long. I had to bring them back together.

So a perfect storm of feelings and circumstances drew me out of hiding. And do you know what? It feels so much better on this side. Not to have to tell lies, hide things from the people I care about. To be able to defend what my experience of sex work is like to all the sceptics and doubters.

Anonymity had a purpose then – it will always have a reason to exist, for writers whose work is too damaging or too controversial to put their names on. But for me, it became important to acknowledge that aspect of my life and my personality to the world at large.

I am a woman. I lived in London. I was a call girl.

The people, the places, the actions and feelings are as true now as they were then, and I stand behind every word with pride. Thank you for reading and following my adventures.

Love, Belle”

Apparently, India Knight had written a damning piece on her “Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl” book, claiming that Bella was a man. Heaven forbid!
This journalist, together with other writers and bloggers had thought that her style of writing was, wait for it, too “good” to be a woman. It’s like jumping a few centuries and going back to George Eliot.
“Good” isn’t really the correct word. What the collective group of conspirators were suggesting was that no woman worth her salt would ever admit that there was an enjoyable side to her work as a prostitute. It would only take the nerve of a man to suggest such a thing and by doing so legitimise, albeit not by law, this most ancient of professions.

According to Clive James on his Radio Four “Points of View” programme on Friday night, there were hoards of people determined to out Belle. Some even suggested that she was a famous writer such as Martin Amis. Other people went to such lengths as to trawl through regular bloggers to try and match the style of writing, once more convincing themselves that this woman was no woman but some perverted bloke doing his bit for male sexuality by ‘pretending’ that women enjoyed sex.

I do not know enough of Belle de Jour’s work to make a useful, literary comment. I have looked at mere snippets of her blog and have dipped into her book. Maybe after my comments on writing about female sexuality, which by a quirk of synchronicity was written on the day that Belle dropped her anonymity, I should read more of her writing.
Yet, Belle does not take away from the point that I was trying to make regarding the normalisation of female sexuality.

Just as I do not want the world to think that sex is all about the gratuitous dirtiness as described in Charlotte Roche’s “Wetlands”, neither do I want the world to think that the only way a girl can truly be sexually liberated and fulfilled is to become a prostitute, even a safe and comfortable courtesan who earns £300 an hour and is managed by an agent.

What I think women want is a writer who is a normal human being with a healthy interest in sex, who understands what it is like to not have an adventurous and fully functioning libido and who has seen the light as far as the potential to enjoy her sexuality.
Well, I would say that wouldn’t I, but as I said in my previous blog, I am not professing to be the housewives answer to sexual liberation. I just think it would be really good to have a real person write about real or certainly imaginable situations that are not so fantastical that they defy belief or are not so obvious as to be linked to the sex or pornography industry.

My purpose for writing is not to titillate though I sincerely hope the reader is occasionally turned on by my imaginations or reminiscing (who knows which is the truth). My purpose for writing is to explain that real women with real lives can actually have real desire and real need for sex and that real desire and need for sex is perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable and perfectly life-giving.
My purpose for writing is to show women that there are a multitude of sexual experiences that we could be having if only we were free to express our sexuality without the implication of it all being a bit tawdry. My purpose in writing is to acknowledge that I am not alone in feeling sexy and that together we must blast this myth that sexual excitement is a domain of men and apparently well-paid call girls.

Sex is normal. Sex is exciting. Sex is actually the peak of existence, and ten years ago, I would have laughed at that and suggested that fifteen minutes consuming a bar of chocolate was far more preferable. Nowadays, I do think about sex quite frequently and I am almost, I said, almost proud of the fact. Right now, it is approaching Sunday evening and I haven’t had sex for a few days, not even a wank. I would really love to be having a damn good finger fuck at the moment. I would really love to have some time to sneak away and play with my sex toys. I would really like to talk sexy talk to my lover. I want sex. This is my normality.

So, it’s time to move on. It really is time to think about talking more naturally about sex and trying to encourage women to explore and celebrate their sexuality.
Belle de Jour or should I now say Dr. Brooke Magnanti together with the likes of Abby Lee/Zoe Margolis, author of “The Girl with the One Track Mind” have done huge amounts for women in accepting the fact that there is nothing abnormal in women enjoying sex.
Abby Lee is particularly interesting for me because she reports real experiences. She is not a hooker. She is not a nymphomaniac. She is not a flighty twenty something who goes out in search for a lay each night. She just likes sex.

Ms. Lee is a woman who started to write about her sexual encounters in her mid thirties. She has certainly helped me to relax into an orgasm with my dildo. She has also excited me with her writing about having a finger fuck in the middle of a busy London street, oblivious to the people walking by because she is so caught up in the moment of the sexual delights. She isn’t writing to shock. She is writing to celebrate the joy of being a woman.
What I am not sure that she does is fully explore the holistic nature of sex. She concentrates on the earthy, the raw but not coarse aspects of sexuality. I am still looking for a writer who truly shows the all-embracing nature of female sexuality – where there is acknowledgement of the mind, body and soul working in glorious synchronicity to ensure that sexual experiences are the most pleasurable, the most cerebral, the most emotional, the most divine experiences one could have in life. I’m not sure that it is even possible to explain this fully, but I will continue to try.

And I will read more of “The Girl with the One Track Mind” and will enjoy explaining to the readers, with reference points, precisely what this reading does for the lubrication levels of my pussy.

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This blog is about writing once more and is also about a dose of reality.
I know that the menopause is hardly the sexiest subject to write about but this is the reality of being a woman in her forties and therefore it is an important aspect that will have to be spoken of in the coming years.

It is time to make a confession. It is something that I am not entirely proud of but I have my reasons for it.
I am having a ‘coming out’ moment in celebration of Belle’s week, only mine is the exact opposite.
I am a liar. I am the classic case of “do as I say, not do as I do”.

The other day, I was out with some friends and we were sharing the usual conversations of friends catching up. How were the children? What are they all doing now? Is your health and wellbeing all positive? How are your hormones?

A friend of mine who is a stunningly beautiful woman with a great body and wonderfully quiet and contained aura, mentioned that she thought that she was starting the menopause.
Over the years, I have known this woman in a variety of capacities; as colleague, as friend, as co-worker, as employee, as parent/carer etc. We have always got on really well but I am not sure that our conversations have ever included anything to do with sex.

My friend went on to explain that she was having night sweats quite frequently. Furthermore, she was not sleeping very well – a sure sign of the menopause, according to her. She was very tearful far more frequently and felt that she had lost a sense of direction. Her periods were sporadic and she hadn’t had one for several months, even though her mood swings still seemed to be on a monthly cycle.
This all sounded incredibly familiar to me. Like me, she had put the lack of sleep down to other factors such as work stress and snoring but had read up on the subject and the nature of the sleep disturbance seemed to suggest that it could be attributed to “The Change”.

She then went on to say that the worst thing about this menopause malarkey was the decrease in her libido. She said that she had totally gone off sex and was completely disinterested in anything sexual at all. Prior to this, she said that her sex life had been fairly fulfilled and regular.

During this conversation, I had been in utter agreement with her and was nodding away in sisterly affirmation.
Then, all of a sudden, I was placed in that horrible situation whereby there was only one thing to do.
To lie.

Despite my protestations of the need to spread the word about female sexuality and heightened libidos, I sat there and allowed my mouth to reiterate that this lack of desire was exactly the same for me. Not only was I having night sweats and disturbed nights and no periods, but I too had no libido. It has sailed out of the window with the onset of these changes to my physical being and I too no longer wanted sex, to which another friend commented that, for me, this wasn’t very much difference to my thirties.
Once more, I nodded in agreement. I was not in possession of a great urge to be sexual.

As I said, I have my reasons. These people know me. They have known me for years and some of them have known about my lack of sex drive for a long time.
To suddenly admit to these friends, in my current circumstances with all that they know about in relation to this, would be a very stupid thing to do.
However, to ensure that I got the message across in some way, I did try and explain that I thought that I was unusual and I had heard it be said on more than one occasion that a woman in her forties was in fact at the height of her sexuality. Luckily for me, my gorgeous friend confirmed that for her, this was the case. When she was forty, she was at her sexual best, which was why this sudden lack of libido seemed so horrendous.

As she is nearer to approaching fifty than I am, I am hoping that this next stage of the change is not too near for the fear of losing my libido after relatively recently re-finding it, is an almost unbearable horror. I really do not know how I would cope with the loss this time around.

This is difficult.
In any circumstance, I want to express the need for women to ‘come out’ about being sexual beings, and yet, it isn’t always that easy. I was confronted with a situation where I wanted to say something entirely different to what I did, but even though my musings here on this blog are small scale, even though the alleged tales that I tell may or may not be part of my experience, even though I want people to be open and honest, sometimes you just have to accept the fact that anonymity is the right course of action.
In time, things will change.

In time, I would love to share my thoughts about gushing pussies and multiple orgasms. I would love to explain the pleasure that I get from reading and receiving sexual messages. I would love to divulge the news that I love nothing more than the overwhelming delight in feeling so sexy that I can physically feel the insides of my cunt responding to the mere imaginings of glorious sex.
I would love to tell them that three hours of sex is perfectly normal for me and that I can cum within minutes of being aroused. I want to explain that I seem to have a new sexual experience at every turn and sex seems to be getting better and better despite the fact that I feel as though it couldn’t be more brilliant.
I would love to have told them that whilst I was thoroughly enjoying their company, my sexual mind was a million miles away, reminiscing once more, reminding myself of another day spent being gloriously horny with my gloriously sexy man, who has awakened me not only to sexual experiences beyond my imagination but has enabled me to consider the essential need to enlighten the world about the life of a sexually fulfilled forty something.
I let myself and him down in being dishonest about my libido but I find other avenues to share my thoughts with phrases such as “I have read…..” or “A friend told me…..” or “In my past…..”.

All of this makes you wonder. To people who I don’t know, I am more than happy to divulge this information. People who I meet in real life can get a taste of my sexual mission as I encourage them too think about their sexuality and their response to female sexuality as long as they know nothing about my own personal life.
It makes you wonder whether there are more people like me who, for their own reasons, pretend to be less sexually enlightened or indeed sexually needy than they actually are. In which case, then maybe my mission is not as impossible as once thought.
But this still does not explain why on anonymous surveys, there is still the notion that most women do not orgasm regularly and that a much smaller minority have frequent wet and gushing ejaculations.
Mmmm, I think there is still much work to be done.

Sometimes, as Belle has suggested, anonymity gets in the way. It is an obstruction to the vital point of life in understanding and acknowledging important aspects of sexuality.
But everyone has their reasons for doing things in certain ways. In order to continue with my own journey, I need the time and space to have a little secrecy in life. I am far being ashamed of my sexuality but I guess I would just like the space to come to terms with it for myself before I divulge it to others. And I still have far more to learn and hopefully more to experience.

Literary Review of Sex

I don’t profess to be a good writer. I am not writing to be brilliant or proficient in any way. I am writing because I enjoy it.
Writing relaxes me. It is one of the ways that I meditate, allowing my mind to wander off in a multitude of directions. I am sure that this is quite evident in my style.
They are my wanderings, my musings and consequently, for the reader, may not be as cohesive as they could be. But then they are probably not supposed to be.
For that really is one of the points of meditation – clearing your mind and just seeing where your thoughts end up.

Sometimes my writing is post-meditation, when I have considered a subject for some time and the writing is the plenary – the gathering of thoughts together so that I have them written down for posterity. Sometimes it is good to review my writing, not because the writing itself is particularly inspiring but because it reminds me of where my heart and soul was either immediately before or during the writing.

I do like writing about sex. I like considering the significance of being a sexual person. I like to explore the myths and untruths, particularly around female sexuality and I do feel incredibly passionate about the need to liberate women from the restraints that certain parts of society have placed on them to hide or suppress their instinctual sexual thoughts and actions.
Hot women are still considered slightly lewd in some places!

I also like writing sexual fantasies. Some of the stories that I have written on here may have been inspired by a totally non-sexual situation that I have embellished into a saucy or steamy situation, partly to prove that there is a sexual world out there if only we allowed ourselves to see it, if only others enabled us to be sexual without feeling as though we are morally corrupt.
Yes, morality and sexuality are not mutually exclusive but perhaps that is for another blog.
Come to think of it, morality and sexuality are good partners if you are thinking of yourself, others and the coming together of body, mind and soul.
Yes, definitely another blog!

Anyway, my purpose for writing today is about writing.
I am still very concerned about the lack of decent, erotic writing.

I have recently read, or should I say, half read “Wetlands” by Charlotte Roche.
Since writing about it previously, I still have not finished the book, mainly because of a certain amount of inertia. I haven’t actually found a reason to complete it because I get the theme. I got it in Chapter One and it has continued throughout the book.
To some extent, it is a very refreshing read. The woman writes coarsely, which in the first few pages of the book is, as I said, quite refreshing. She leaves no stone unturned. She shies away from no subject and explicitly explains the smell, sloppiness and simplification of the sexual act of penetration – be it anal, oral or vaginal. She writes enthusiastically about masturbation, and not just simple finger fucks or the occasional use of a sex toy. She writes about stuffing every day objects inside her and also writes about filling herself with objects that most would consider quite offensive to consider placing inside one’s fanny.

And so it continues throughout the book. She has written to shock. Yet at the same time, she has written to say that there really shouldn’t be these gross taboos about sex.
I like that purpose. I like the idea that she is trying, in her own slightly coarse way, to say that it is okay to write about these things. It is okay to think these things.
My problem with this writing is that it perpetuates the notion that sex is a little bit dirty, and although I understand her point, I’d really like to see something produced that is less gratuitous.
Sex can be gloriously sloppy and delightfully dirty when you want it to be but it does not have to be portrayed as entirely so.

I am sure there are decent books out there, just as there are decent films that can give the reader or viewer a little bit of intelligent sex, i.e. it can be a huge turn on and incredibly explicit yet still maintain a sense of dignity because sex does not have to be disingenuous or crude. Good, honest, adorable sex, even if it is recreational, can still be dignified and beautiful and certainly worth writing about.

I think one of the problems about sexual writing is that the authors tend to concentrate too much on the thrill factor. I would suggest that some exceptionally good writers, when trying to write about sex, are suddenly consumed by the hope to arouse rather than really feeling it, really getting into the depths of what sex does for your mind and your body.
I am not sure that I am explaining this very well but it is though their main purpose is to get a quick response rather than thinking about the characters, the setting, the story, the sex.
What often emerges from this is that the writing becomes stilted and false. It sounds contrived and although big words and eloquent language may be used, it doesn’t flow. It is almost as though you can feel the embarrassment of the writer, which once more does nothing to eradicate the hang-ups that people have about sex; quite the contrary.
Sometimes, writers write these prosaic paragraphs, interspersed with ‘naughty’ words such as “fuck” and “cock”, hoping that the use of the expletives set against their usual creative styles will in itself create the desired shock factor. Instead, it just appears a little lazy – throw a “fuck” in and people will instantly want to reach out for themselves or their partner. It is all a little too clichéd.

I’m not suggesting that I can do any better. I am possibly guilty of exactly the same crime in my own writing, and in actual fact, writing arousing and sexually stimulating writing is a very finely tuned skill.
I am wondering now whether you have to experience decent sex to enable you to write about it.
And now, all of a sudden, I cannot get the thought Edwina Curry and Alan Titchmarch copulating out of my mind!
Can you really imagine the intensity of sex if you have not experienced it? Can you write about the hunger and the passion if you have not been bereft of the sex that you need and desire? Can you feel that all-consuming brilliance in your own writing if you have no physical experience of it? Can this really be portrayed without having done it?
Oh dear, Edwina will not disappear. Help!

I don’t know the answer to this but I suspect that it would take an exceptional mind to be able to write about good, erotic, sensual sex without experience. And of course, having the experience doesn’t automatically make you an exceptionally brilliant writer. That is a learned skill too. Just because you are a fantastic lover with a wealth of glorious sexual experiences does not mean that you can convey that wonderment on paper.

I suppose there is a possibility that it comes down to a simple fact, and I know that there are plenty that would disagree, but here you go.
Maybe there is actually an incredibly small amount of people who
a) have had mind-blowing sex
and
b) have the capacity, the capability and the desire to write about it

The reason that I have started to write about this today is threefold.

Firstly, I am somewhat annoyed with myself for not having the will to complete the book which is still sitting underneath my bed, and I am conscious that I still need to find that book that I cannot put down because it is stimulating me so much I need to read and masturbate simultaneously.
Secondly, I watched a film the other day which portrayed a ménage a trois so subtly and without fuss or titillation. Although, there was part of me that really wanted to see more, I really liked the erotic nature of the single touches and the ever-so-subtle kisses that I watched. It was beautiful. It implied so much and showed so little. It left the viewer full of thoughts of where this could go visually, enabling the imagination to take the erotica to another plane.
Thirdly, there is an article in the Guardian looking at the 2009 Literary Review Bad Sex Award.
And boy, are there some ‘decent’ candidates!

“The fourteenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Awards took place last week. The awards were set up by Auberon Waugh with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels. Previous winners include Tom Wolfe, AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, and Melvyn Bragg.”

Here’s one from one of my favourite men!!
Dave licked between Phyllis's shoulder blades and drove his tongue down her grooved back. She shuddered and, grabbing his thigh, pulled it up and over her own so that he half straddled her. In the confusion of their bodies - his hairy shanks, her sweaty thighs, his bow-taut cock, her engorged basketry of cowl and lip - there was clear intent; so that when he penetrated her, they moved into and out of one another with fluid ease, revving and squealing, before arriving quite suddenly.
Dave and Phyl were having sex in her cottage outside Chipping Ongar.
“Arriving quite suddenly”! – oh please, Mr. Self. Surely you can do better than that!

Here’s an extract from a previous winner.
She's wearing a short, floaty skirt that's more suited to July than February. She leans forward to peck me on the cheek, which feels weird, as she's never kissed me on the cheek before. We'd kissed properly the first time we met. And that was over three years ago.
But the peck on the cheek turns into a quick peck on the lips. She hugs me tight. I can feel her breasts against her chest. I cup my hands round her face and start to kiss her properly, She slides one of her slender legs in between mine. Oh Jack, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation. And then I'm inside her, and everything is pure white as we're lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.
Ian Hollingshead from “Twentysomething”.
Breasts, cups, sliding, crotches, bulges, grunts – not good really.
I may scream (not squeak) in a divine cry of ecstasy when I am having an orgasm, as do others but does anyone really “grunt” themselves to climax?

Here is an extract from this year’s shortlist.
Apparently the story is about the seduction of a lesbian by an aging actor. This particular extract is taken from a scene where the actor and the lesbian pick up a girl for a threesome. It involves a green dildo.
First Pegeen stepped into the contraption, adjusted and secured the leather straps, and affixed the dildo so that it jutted straight out. Then she crouched above Tracy, brushing Tracy's lips and nipples with her mouth and fondling her breasts, and then she slid down a ways and gently penetrated Tracy with the dildo. Pegeen did not have to force her open. She did not have to say a word – he imagined that if either one of them did begin to speak, it would be in a language unrecognizable to him. The green cock plunged in and out of the abundant naked body sprawled beneath it, slow at first, then faster and harder, then harder still, and all of Tracy's curves and hollows moved in unison with it. This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though, in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. She could as well have been a crow or a coyote, while simultaneously Pegeen Mike. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze.
Philip Roth, of all people, from a book called “The Humbling”

I mean, to be perfectly honest, I have seen and read worse but clearly, it would appear that Mr. Roth has probably not participated in lesbian sex changing sex. The thought of the green dildo is pretty revolting, and the idea of “curves and hollows moving in unison” is certainly an interesting one.
I guess what Mr. Roth has seen is a couple of snippets on a porn site that has given him some ideas to play around with.

But I don’t want to criticise really, and I would like to defend these authors whilst simultaneously criticising them, if that is not seen as somewhat bi-polar. For one has to say that at least they are not brushing sexuality under a carpet. At least they are not proverbially pulling a bed sheet over actress’s boobs, as is seen far too frequently in modern day films. They are acknowledging that there is sexuality in our lives and it is about time that we recognise the fact.

Contrived and stilted language will be overcome eventually once the glorious sexual revolution has taken place. To talk and write in such a way will not be accompanied by the cringes of embarrassment as people feel empowered to move away from the cliché to something more subtle, more beautiful and more erotic without the need for the harshness of the unknown.

As I said at the beginning, it is really difficult to write about sex in a way that is arousing and not clichéd. In some ways it is more difficult for the accomplished and renowned author because there is an assumption that they can write about anything and this clearly isn’t the case.
As for me, I will continue to write even if the only person who is aroused by my writing is myself. And hopefully, I may accomplish something that others can enjoy without wondering where the hell this woman’s writing skills disappeared as she desperately tried to describe the indescribable joy of sex.

The Apprentice

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Meditative Masturbation and Sexual People

This is going to have to be a short piece because I have less than an hour to write. It’s been rather difficult over the last couple of weeks to find the time and the space to be able to write, which is somewhat annoying considering how important writing has become in my life.
So without further procrastination, here we go!

1. I have always masturbated. Well, from the age of consent at least. There’s an interesting comment – fancy having an age of consent for masturbation! There’s much debate about the age of consent at the moment. Maybe it shouldn’t be a set chronological age but be set individually against the first time you feel a need to masturbate regularly.

2. I have never considered myself a very sexual person. I went for decades of believing that a life of self-imposed chastity was not a major issue for me. There were so many things that I would rather do than have sex, and so many other ways that I felt I could be fulfilled.

I am genuinely not been flippant in my title. Masturbation is important and sexy people are important. Combine the two and add a dose of thoughtfulness and you begin to see some connections.

Imagine the scene. It’s been a long day. There’s work in the office, there’s family to feed, there’s activities to take people to, there’s shopping to be done, there’s emails to write. The list goes on and is not exhaustive. Many people lead incredibly busy lives where sometimes the most significant things and people get less of a look in than they deserve.
I have been painfully aware for some time of the perils of ignoring significant things and people in my life, and ensuring that I do something about my own balance for my own welfare has, some might say selfishly, taken a greater precedence in recent times.

Back to the scenario!
It is the end of the day and you are more or less exhausted by the mundane tasks that you have had to do. You’re not complaining about them. They are part of life and that is fine, but they have sapped your energy and you are fit for very little other than to fall into bed and into slumber.

And that is precisely what I used to do.
I’d finish my tasks, flop asleep on the settee and then wake myself up to go upstairs and flop into bed. A night of unbroken sleep should then be forthcoming but that was not always the case because I had not had time to unwind properly.
Sex was out of the question because it wasn’t important, and I didn’t feel as though I had enough energy for it even if it was important.

Now life is slightly different.

At the end of the day, this is my preferred style of relaxation when fucking is not possible.
I go to bed and I masturbate.

I lie on my back and gently smooth my hands across my boobs, just feeling their fullness and reminding myself that they are an essential part of my sexuality. I then trace the line from the midpoint of my tits, down my stomach and towards my pubes. I leave my hand there, placing the middle finger on top of my awaiting clitoris. I then rub my clit ever so gently to just prepare it for what is to come. I then work my way down to my labia, opening up and simply feeling the moistness that is there. Sometimes, I may go inside and feel the ripples of inner skin folding around my finger. Sometimes, I take more fingers inside and explore in greater detail the fascinating parts of me that were left for decades, unnoticed and untouched by yours truly.
I then get my vibrator out and start it on its lowest setting, just resting it on my clit.
As I begin to feel that glorious sensation, I start to move it around, pushing it deeper onto my clit and running it down to my labia, sometimes whipping it inside me so that it is smothered in my juices and is tickling my insides.
When I know that I am about to cum, I turn over onto my stomach and ride the vibrator to the wondrously inevitable orgasm, and right at the last minute, I switch the vibrator onto full power and let that climax completely consume me.

At this point, I am utterly relaxed. I am full of the pleasures of being a sexual being. I feel at one with myself and I can then begin to think rationally and calmly about a range of issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I wank because I love the feeling but I also wank because it gets me into a state of serenity whereby I can begin to meditate too.

Whilst I am masturbating, I am obviously thinking as well. One might argue that I am meditating sexually at this point, bringing to mind the very positive aspects of my life; the very things and people that excite me sexually.
Is there such a thing as sexual meditation? Is there such a thing as masturbating meditation? Is this not a conflict of thought as for real meditation, the mind should be totally pure and free of all thought at the initial stages?
I suppose that largely depends upon your interpretation of meditation but for me, I think there is such a thing.
The power of meditation is to free your mind and allow your thoughts to drift into the places that they want to go, and sometimes, your thoughts may want to go in a sexual direction, and I think that is both fine and perfectly natural.

Anyway, I masturbate and then I turn over, close my eyes and free myself of all thought, enabling my mind to take whatever direction it chooses. I am then in a meditative state, induced by the pleasure of orgasm, and I think myself to sleep.
Is there a better way to end the day apart from penetrative sex that I would argue has the same potential to be a pre-meditative activity?
Whatever, it works for me, and even though I may be disturbed in the night with unwanted sounds and scenes, I do think that this meditative process enables me to be calmer and cope with the stresses of day-to-day existence.

Getting to point number two, I think one could argue that whilst I have not considered myself to be a sexual person in the past, I am pretty confident, based on what I have written about my daily meditation process (amongst other things) that I am sexual being now.
And I really like being sexual, even though it is immensely frustrating at times when I cannot express it in the way I would most wish to.

There was an article in the paper on the weekend when a celebrity was asked whether sex was important to them. This is a regular feature of the Sunday magazine in question, and I always like to see whether I can predict what the person might say from the information that I have from their public persona. On most occasions, I get it right. On many occasions the so-called celebrity flippantly refuses to divulge this information (how very British). Sometimes, you get a character who admits that sex is a vital part of their lives, but not as often as you would think.
And sometimes you get someone who is brutally honest about their lack of interest in sex.
This was the case this weekend. The character, who I admit that I believed, would be an earthy sex-driven person, stated that he found the whole thing rather messy, cumbersome and that he would rather be eating egg on toast – or words to that effect.

I am proud to say that my first thought on reading this was shock. How could anyone prefer anything to sex? My second thought was pity. My third thought was – I know!
I know people who do take this stance that sex is not that vital. I know because I was one of those people. What this man said completely resonated with the woman I was a decade ago. What this man said completely resonates with other people that I know – where sex is simply not important.

I wonder if asexual people such as these have other commonalities, including an inability to relax properly?
Pause for thought.

So, in conclusion to this short piece of writing, I think I would like to introduce to the uninitiated the idea of meditative masturbation.
It has such positive effects on mind, body and soul and it is a very clear sign that you are a sexual being.

In all the time that I thought I was not sexual, I still had fairly regular wanks, admittedly not as frequently as now. Maybe the issue for these people is trying to understand what sexuality is. I may have been quite happy to go through life without penetrative sex, but I still had the masturbation, and without realising it, this was keeping me going. This was my sexuality.
Now I am happy to say that I use this time extremely positively and thoughtfully to de-stress, to think, to revel in the delights of fantasy and sexual memory and I am sure this enables me more readily for the mundane yet essential parts of my day.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….
PS. A footnote that contradicts all of the above

Yesterday, on the radio I heard a conversation whereby I learned the sorry story of David Hockney painting an intriguing picture called “Doll Boy”.

He had painted this picture as a tribute to…….. get this……… Cliff Richard! OMG!
He had a crush on Cliff Richard and was so moved to paint a picture.

Now that is not really worth meditating about and if the reader was aroused by any of my previous writing, they sure as hell might have dropped their erection by now!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

SO to finish on a more positive note, I am going to go and shower now and I am probably going to run that showerhead all over my fanny so that I can start my day as sexually effective as I finished the day last night.
And I will think about finger fucks, and juicy cocks and spraying cum and screaming orgasms and…………

Worked?

Jealousy and women's response to it and their sexuality

Sometimes, when I sit down at my computer to write, I am completely stymied by the enormity and complexity of the subject. Today, I fear is going to be one of those days, so this piece of writing will either be a completed blog or more likely notes for a subsequent piece of writing that is more structured and thought-out.
Though I don’t really do that!
When I write, it tends to flow directly from fingers to screen and in some ways that rawness is quite befitting for the content matter within these blogs.

Jealousy and envy are different, I think. It is interesting that when looking up the differences, some commentators distinguish between the two by saying that the former is an ‘emotion’ whereas the latter is a ‘feeling’, that the former is entirely negative whereas the latter could be used to positive effect.
For example, one can be envious of another person having sex with someone else without necessarily wanting to have sex with that person whereas if you are jealous about the sexual encounter involved, then you are upset and hurt by this and wish to be involved sexually with one or other of people involved.
Does this make sense? I am not sure.

My lover said to me the other day that it seemed strange for someone to be jealous of something that they already have. How could I, for example, be jealous of him having sex with another woman if I was getting the very best sex with him? And he is absolutely right. There is no need for me to be jealous about him having sex with another woman when I am perfectly satisfied with the sexual relationship that we have. Furthermore, one of the aspects that I find most attractive in him is his sexuality. As I have said before, to deny that would be to negate its power, and if his sexuality that I adore manifests itself in fucking other people, then that is as it should be.

It only really becomes a problem when you add other things into the mixture. The sense of belonging and ownership creates an intense jealousy and it is this that people really have to overcome if they are perfectly honest about it.
But it is a big thing to overcome when one has been conditioned by society, by family, by their own thoughts on relationships over decades and decades, and it is something that I would like to return to later.

So, do I feel envy at the thought of him shagging other women? Or is it the dreaded green-eyed monster?
If I am honest, it is probably both and it is probably neither.
Shades of light and dark can fluctuate through the mind on a daily or hourly basis. The darkness can subsume for a minute and in the next, the more rational, lighter thought emerges from the depths of despondency.
I embrace these fluctuations but they are sometimes hard to live with. They are certainly hard to rationalise and even harder to explain in the spoken or written form because you can end up sounding like some sort of schizophrenic.

As far as relationships and sex go, nothing is straight forward. It should be. It should be as simple as anything. People should be free to enjoy sexuality and sexual experiences as much as enjoying a good meal. It really should be that natural. If you want sex with someone who is not your ‘designated’ partner, then that should be fine. It shouldn’t take away from that relationship.
But I still sometimes angst about going to another restaurant in case the people at my favourite one discover my infidelity! How ironic is that from a woman who basically has no qualms about having an extra-marital relationship? Not so simple, eh?

So, should I worry about who my lover is having sex with? Absolutely not!
Do I worry about who my lover is having sex with? Absolutely sometimes, even though in my rational moments, I can logically determine that this is not a problem in the slightest, and furthermore, I get really turned on by the thought of him fucking other people, especially if I can be included in the proceedings.

Is there anything that I should be jealous about? Definitely not! I have the most fabulous sex, the very best that one could imagine. If he is getting or is likely to get mind-blowing sex from another then I should be delighted he has the opportunity to enjoy his sexuality to this extent, and why should I be bothered by this if he’s getting equally as good sex with me?
Is there anything that I should be envious of? Not really. Envy doesn’t really come into it but it happens anyway. I am envious of time that he can spend with others when I am not able to do so but I wouldn’t want him not to spend time with others, and it is the same with sex. I might be envious that he is fucking another person but that would not detract from me wanting him to do it regardless.

So returning to his theory that I should not be jealous of other people because I am getting the very best of his sexuality, then that is absolutely the case. And of course, I am exceptionally lucky that there is enough trust in this relationship to be honest about what is happening with other people.
But should I be jealous of him sleeping with another person; saying goodnight to them and waking up in the morning with arms wrapped around one another? Obviously, the correct answer is no. Just because we cannot do this as often as we would like, then it does not take away from our intimacy, yet it is the one thing that pushes my jealously deep into the darkest points because it is something that I an unable to have, and yet I want so much.
I am hanging out for some justification on this regarding his theory of jealousy. I do not have this therefore I am entitled to feel a little jealous (or should that be envy for I would not want him to miss out on this experience with others either?) but in reality, I have no entitlement at all, and it is my problem and my management of this destructive emotion that I need to contend with.

And why am I talking about my lover? Don’t I have a husband?
How would I feel about him having an affair? How would I feel about him sleeping with another woman? How would I feel about him loving another woman in the same way that I love another man?

The answer to this appears to be that I really would be pleased for him that he had found someone who could excite and energise him, amuse and admire him.
Is this borne out of indifference or a sense of relieved self-justification? I honestly don’t know.
Yes, I would have no right whatsoever to feel any jealousy because I have chosen to do the same.
But would I feel jealous regardless? I have to say, at the moment, I really do not think I would.
But then that is how Catherine Millet, author of “The Sexual Life of Catherine M” and “Jealousy: The Other Life of Catherine M” thought she would react.
But she didn’t.

And I cannot fathom her reaction. I cannot understand how she felt so jealous of her partner’s infidelity when she was doing the same thing. I do not really understand why she was so enraged with jealousy that she was pushed to self-harm. She knew her husband loved her. There was a sense of intimacy and their sex life was excellent, from what I can gather.
And yet, isn’t she describing some of the battles of emotion that I have explained regarding my lover?

There is no rationality to it and Catherine herself said that she only came out of this gross depressive behaviour when she realised that she was deliberately maintaining her jealousy “to derive pleasure from the pain”. She goes on to say “Once you become conscious of the mechanisms, they cease to exert such a hold”.
I am not sure how to respond to this other than it is essential to explore one’s behaviour in regard to negative emotions. It is important to rationalise and consider what is happening with jealousy in order to manage it and confront it and eradicate it. As to subconsciously getting pleasure from the pain of such an emotion, well, I cannot understand that at all. For me, jealousy is nothing but destructive, and when it overwhelms me for a second, a minute or even longer I find it completely abhorrent and an enormous sense of self-loathing overwhelms me.

But I can understand her jealousy to an extent because I do feel it sometimes, as I said, at the moment, more with my lover than my husband. And I know that this is not rational.
I have sex with two people. I make that choice. I should totally accept and understand that my lover should do the same. He knows that my having sex with my husband takes nothing away from our sexual relationship. I should do the same.

Choice is partly the issue, and I think this is probably at the stem of some of my jealousy.
I don’t feel as though I have choice. If I did have choice, then I think things may be different. I may choose to have sex with other people as well as my lover, just as he has that choice now. I may also choose not to, and he too has that choice, which I honestly wouldn’t want him to take – not on my account anyway.
Maybe what I am jealous of is not the fact that he has sex with other people but the fact that he can choose to have sex with other people; a choice that I do not feel is there for me.
This is really, really complicated but maybe what I am jealous of, in the moments when I am jealous which really and truly is not a constant, has more to do with the equity of choice than the fucking.
Or maybe it is simple unadulterated jealousy, where I want to be the best, the most important, the significant one.
It’s a bit pathetic really.

But this doesn’t really explain Catherine Millet’s response. She was jealous of her husband having sex with other women. She was jealous of him doing the things that they might do, despite the fact that she had her special times with him. According to my lover’s theory, there was no reason why she should have been jealous, and yet she was. She is. I can be.

Maybe she comes to the conclusion in her book that jealousy is not something that can be rationalised. It is an irrational response and therefore attempts to justify cannot happen because in essence, no jealousy is justified.
Yet it still exists.

I am envious of people who have no jealousy. There – if ever there was a distinction between those two words this is it. I am not jealous of the unjealous, I am envious of them. I want what they have because for me, it is an extremely important part of self-actualisation and maintaining balance and fortitude in life.

I think for me, one of the important things about Catherine Millet’s book is not that she offers a solution to her situation but that she acknowledged the irrationality of her emotions and that she explained how she was feeling. A conclusive response to her jealousy really would be a best seller. Her ability to deal with her jealousy is incomprehensible to me, but then I haven’t read the book. My way of eradicating jealousy might be completely different to hers but what I do admire is her ability to stand up and be honest that it exists.

Those who do not ever suffer from jealousy are rare creatures to be applauded. They are extremely fortunate and it is almost impossible for them to empathise with those of us who suffer considerably or occasionally from this affliction.
Jealousy is very real and should not be dismissed as an irrelevance. Working at understanding it, living with it, eradicating it is a vital importance to me, and I am sure others.
Listening to those who do not suffer from this is a good starting point. Reading how others have had to contend with it, in such irrational ways, is comforting.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The articles on Catherine Millet gave rise to other thoughts whilst I was reading and writing.
In this next section, I have taken some extracts from the pieces in the newspaper and would like to write a short offering on each.


1. “Sexual mores have evolved recently, nevertheless some sexual practices are only tolerated if they are kept hidden. During publication, people came to me wishing to describe their own experiences, which had been secret. Now they feel they can talk about them without being ashamed. I look forward to a democratisation of sexuality where anyone can reveal their true nature without suffering socially.”

These are Catherine M’s words. It needs people like Catherine Millet in this world. We need people in this country to say the same thing. We need people like Pete Ayrton; founder of Serpent’s Tail publishing to be brave (what a stupid word re sexuality) enough to print books such as “The Sexual Life of Catherine M” but we are a long way off.
Isn’t is sad that it takes a book launch to enable people to be honest about their sexuality? How many people, like me, live with this secret as though it is a dark and deceitful one rather than a part of life that is an integral part of my being?
In hope, I want to be able to shout from the mountain tops that I enjoy sex, that I have a lover, that I cannot think of anything sexually that I would not be prepared to do with him, that the sex is something that makes me feel more in tune with myself than anything else in my world, that I care for someone else and that is perfectly normal and understandable, that I am a sexual woman, not a nymphomaniac. In reality, I cannot do this because the people in my life could not cope with such indiscretions. It goes totally against the conformity of family and social life and thus it has to be smothered as though it was a disgrace. It is not a disgrace. It is so far from disgraceful as to be the polar opposite.

If I ever get to the stage of having my book written and launched, I hope that I will be in a position to be honest, and not having to hide behind a pseudonym. But I doubt that will be the case.

2. "You're trying to get me to say he's my grand amour," she scolds. "Well, I did meet the man of my life. I may not have been swept off my feet when I met Jacques, but I did have the impression that . . ." She pauses. "That this was my place." It's only a passing moment of weakness, though, and she collects herself. "The point is," she insists, "that even having a relationship like that doesn't stop you having others. Even from loving others." Indeed.

Again, Catherine speaks.
The important phrase for me in all of this is “That this was my place”.
Returning to belonging and returning to the jealousy thing, isn’t this the crux of the matter?
She felt that this place with her husband was where she belonged. This is quite, quite different from ownership. She felt that this was her place. It did not mean that she wanted exclusivity, or at least that was not the way she was behaving. Yet, possibly she did intertwine ownership with belonging when in many ways they are as different as jealousy and envy.

For me, I do feel as though I ‘belong’ in a relationship with my lover but that does not mean that I want to own or possess him. It feels right, that is all, and going back to the previous point, something that feels right should not have to be hidden and seen as some sort of disgraceful behaviour.
And I have always believed that you can love two people simultaneously.
As far as Catherine Millet is concerned, she readily accepts that the majority of her sexual experiences had nothing whatsoever to do with love, and maybe it was this that concerned her more than the sexual infidelity when it came to her husband. Although she rationally recognised that you can love two people simultaneously, she felt threatened by the prospect of being demoted!

So if you can have two loves, can you also have two places? Or do the ‘loves’ and the ‘places’ naturally have some sort of pecking order? I do not know or even want to answer that self-imposed question for it brings up all sorts of dark thoughts that I do not want to consider, but it really ought to be asked.


3. "I had no need," she has written, "to go and build love stories out of sexual relationships." And: "I had love at home. I sought only pleasure outside."

She says that she didn’t need to find love elsewhere for she had that at home but did she find it anyway? Did she really only seek pleasure outside or was there the room, as she has outlined in the previous quote, for duplicitous love?
As I said, I thought you could love two people simultaneously, but maybe the love for one is slightly different to the love for another. Who knows?

It is interesting to me that there has to be some sort of explanation and justification for her action. If she wasn’t looking for love, then she must have another reason for playing away – i.e. pleasure.
For me, it was never like that. I sought nothing. I gained a very great deal and maybe it was more wonderful because there was never an expectation of anything. At the time, I didn’t feel as though there was something huge missing from my life. On reflection, there was but I could have lived gloriously unknowledgeable to this and been perfectly content.

4. “I continue to believe that love and sexual desire are feelings you can experience divergently, and that you can be attracted to and love many people at the same time. Of course, there are relationships that are more important, deeper, than others. But there are an infinity of ways in which a person can experience love. We're fighting against the heritage of romanticism, mon ami. I hate giving advice, but we need to rid ourselves of the notion of l'amour unique. It's not like that in real life. Romantic love affairs generally end in tears, you know."

Catherine Millet seems to be a person who has her head screwed on which is all the more reason for being personally delighted that she is challenged by jealousy!
I think the ‘romance’ that she is describing here is what some would call “being in love” – a rather dangerous state of mind. But there is a huge difference between having a special person and falling in love. And I have to disagree with the “L’amour unique” if I have interpreted the translation properly. A unique love does not mean possessiveness. A unique love does not mean that it is the only unique love that you might experience, however contradictory that may sound. A unique love is not a romanticised and abstract view that is far removed from reality.
I truly believe that sometimes you can have a “l’amour unique” but this doesn’t equate to exclusivity. The two things do not go hand in hand. Does this sound like a contradiction? Possibly, but if you truly embrace people’s sexuality then you can have both a l’amour unique that has sexual excitement and experience with other people whilst you do the same.

5. The essentially promiscuous nature of the female species has been reflected in recent research into semen conducted by the English scientists R Robin Baker and Mark A Bellis, who wondered why a human penis must ejaculate 350m sperm when a man has no (conscious) desire to fertilise 350m women. The theory of sperm competition says that sperm must be prepared to do battle with the sperm of another man inside a woman because of the possibility that she has 'double mated'. Evolution seems to tell a truth denied by civilisation.

And here is my final offering on the extract front.

This woman, for me, embraces all the contradictions and the joys of being sexual and being a woman. It is not just society that inflicts the destructive emotions of jealousy on us. There is a distinct possibility that there is something quite instinctual about this, though I am positive others would disagree.

Reading about the fact that there are very sexual women out there who like nothing more than penetrative sex is a beautiful and wonderful liberation.
I love sex. I love being fucked to climax again and again. I adore having fingers explore my fanny, reaching into places that even the most delightful of cocks cannot reach. I adore being worked up to such an extent that I am simply unable to do anything other than jet my spunk out in a cascade of enormous proportions.
Nothing, nothing does for me more than feeling a cock deeply embedded in my cunt, working its way around and finding more space inside me as I expand at the elation of having him there.
To know that other women have the same thoughts on sex, even if they choose to be stimulated in different ways, i.e. through recreational sex, is extremely exciting.

I fluctuate. Sometimes, when I am watching porn, I really wish I was involved and that I could participate in these orgasmic inducing experiences. Other times, I worry that I am one of those people who really only gets off on sex with feelings for the person that I am fucking, but I know that I love sex enough to understand that I could just fuck for the sake of enjoying a fuck. It would just be very different from the sex I have now. Acknowledging the difference is quite important to me.
The important thing is that once more, we should be recognising and stating quite confidently that sexual excitement is not the domain of men. Women like to fuck. Some women like to fuck a lot. Some women like to fuck a lot of men. Some women like to fuck men and women.
Women like fucking.

If the likes of Catherine M and Zenpuss do nothing else than make the world realise that sexual enlightenment and enjoyment is available to women of all ages, then they have served their purpose. Sex doesn’t have to be dirty or gratuitous. It can be but it doesn’t have to be.
Sex can be within loving relationships or it can be just recreationally brilliant. Sex can be done alone, with a partner, with a stranger. Sex is fucking good!

With regard to this particular quote though, once more there is significant scientific explanations as to whether monogamy is indeed the ‘natural’ way or not. I’ve heard of this before. I have read about it, i.e. that the woman’s body is so spectacular that it can actually differentiate between different types of sperm, and like the survival of the fittest, chooses to retain the sperm from the man who is most likely to impregnate her in a way that is compatible to her particular eggs.

For me, it is quite indicative that our species were probably not made to be monogamous. If we have this incredible function in our bodies to choose between sperm, then surely we should be experiencing a range of sperm, coming from a range and variety of cocks in our lives?

But once more, life is not so simple. For the human mind comes into play.
There is the instinct of fucking, for sure but there is the spirituality of intimacy that also occurs. There is a passion and a desire for a person as well as the passion and desire for sex, and this is before you take the societal expectations of monogamy as well.

Did our forefathers, or rather foremothers, fight tooth and nail to retain the man who had the stronger and most compatible sperm for a lifetime? I don’t know. Certainly something happened in society to promote monogamy and I am sure this is related to child-rearing and ease of this. It is almost as though it was the lazy thing to do to evolve in this way rather than the intelligent.

Maybe, they still fucked around but still had a “L’amour unique”?
Who knows?

The point is that it seems that having a “L’amour unique” for a lifetime is somewhat contradictory to how our bodies originally evolved.
Again, of course, I could just be returning to self-justification.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

Apologies, dear readers, for I seem to have droned on for over four thousand words and I am still not sure that I have produced anything that is either readable or conclusive.
Furthermore, I fear I have once more been too honest, if there is such a thing.

It’s good to have an opportunity to think about these issues. It is wonderful to know that there are people who are prepared to air the views that women’s sexuality is as vibrant and real as male counterparts. It is scary and stimulating to consider one’s own interpretation of jealousy and envy, and it is always wonderful to think about sex.