Slutever Read online

  Eventually, after three months of dry-humping and so much making out that I had a perma-rash on my chin, little by little we began to “fool around.” And those first sexual interactions both enlightened and confused the fuck out of my teenage mind. Because of the ability of Sam’s body, we couldn’t have sex in a lot of the “normal” positions. Me on top was cool, but at this stage penetrative sex wasn’t even remotely on the menu. At the beginning, it usually went down like this: We’d get into bed, I’d strip naked, and then he would just sort of inspect my body while jerking off, still wearing most of his clothes, usually to the soundtrack of Arcade Fire. At first it was more innocent, like he’d give me a gentle massage, lightly touching the outside (only the outside!) of my body, and then we’d both masturbate. Then it slowly evolved into a doctor-patient role play where he’d literally give me an exam, checking me for cancer and crabs and spending an unprofessional amount of time just staring blankly at my vagina (to be fair, it was the first one he’d ever seen not on a porn star, but to this day I’ve never had someone do such a thorough inspection, medical or not). Eventually the exam began including him sticking his fingers inside me. I think it was somewhere around month four that I was finally given permission to take off his pants.

  While all of this was going on, I was constantly analyzing these experiences with my roommate, a red-haired girl with more than one Bob Marley poster in her bedroom. “Are we having sex? Have Sam and I had sex?!” I’d ask her, panicked. It’s funny: Before then, there were multiple times when I had fucked a guy in a car for like forty seconds while completely wasted, I could barely feel anything (let alone come), there was no emotional connection, I could only half remember what had happened afterward, and yet there was zero question in my mind about whether we’d had sex. Hello, his dick was inside me, obviously we’d had sex! But with Sam, I was having some of the most intensely romantic, physically pleasurable sexual experiences of my life, we were falling in love, we would both come, and afterward I’d panic and say things like, “My freak virgin boyfriend won’t have sex with me—I hate my life.” I was more than a little misguided.

  As time went by, we did begin to have penetrative sex. But by then we were so close, and so in tune with each other’s body, that the “fucking” didn’t change our sex life very dramatically. It didn’t feel like: Okay, now we’re actually having sex, but before we weren’t. And even postdick, the fact that we couldn’t do all the “standard” positions kept us creative. There was a lot of mouth work happening, and a lot of sticking weird stuff that we found lying around the house into my pussy (a flashlight, a teacup, whatever). And sure, he might not have been bending me over tables to pound me, but I didn’t mind, because while being table-railed is admittedly cinematic, it can be unnecessarily cruel to your cervix. And we got to do some other, equally cinematic things. Like the time when Sam spent three weeks in the hospital after an operation, and I would sneak into his room after visiting hours to resurrect our medical role play in an actual hospital bed. The faint smell of death added a weird vibe, but I accepted it as part of the authentic experience. I still credit those early, pervy medical exams for why even now, to this day, I often type “gynecologist” into the PornHub search bar. (But please don’t repeat that.)

  Fucking Outside the Lines

  Sam and I broke up when I was twenty-three. The sanitized version of the story is that we grew apart. The resentful version is that I grew into a sex blogger, and he was vaguely repulsed by that. (Oh, and I was also a bitchy unemployed unshowered ketamine addict, which might have factored into it.) But the relationship had piqued my interest in sex and disability—specifically, how disability can change the way a person has sex, or even the way they define sex. I wanted to learn more about it, and to hear people’s stories. And so I did what any good investigative slut blogging autodidact would do: I spent all day on pervy sex forums, begging strangers to tell me their secrets.

  One of my favorite interviews I did during that time was with a twenty-five-year-old girl from New Jersey named Sarah, who I met on a forum for people who are into spanking. Sarah suffered from a rare form of dwarfism, was quadriplegic, and lived permanently on a ventilator. Because of her condition, for most of her life she’d had minimal contact with the outside world. However, in her late teens she discovered Second Life—you know, that early-2000s virtual world that’s basically like the actual world, except you’re allowed to fly and be a prostitute—after which she gave up “real life” almost completely. In SL Sarah had a successful career as a model, she was into kink and BDSM, and when I met her she was actively looking for a man to spend the rest of her life with. Through SL, she had created an existence for herself that did not rely on the capabilities of her body.

  In the nonvirtual world, Sarah needed assistance with everything. She had enough movement in one hand to use a mouse, so she could utilize the internet by herself, but everything else required help, and because of that she’d accepted that having in-person sex with someone wasn’t for her. But that didn’t stop her from being a virtual ho. Through slutting around on SL, she’d worked out that she was sexually submissive, and described her taste as “sensual BDSM”—like, she enjoyed being tied up, but only if the guy was romantic about it. Once, she told me about losing her virginity, and how intensely emotional it had been for her. Hearing her describe the experience felt like hearing anyone describe what it’s like to have sex for the first time. We actually ended up commiserating about how losing your virginity can be an anticlimax: I was complaining that the first guy I fucked only lasted fifteen seconds, and she was complaining that her guy used “poseballs” when he fucked her. Poseballs are a way of expressing yourself and touching on SL, but they’re the way to touch someone that involves the least amount of effort. So her dude was basically the avatar equivalent of the guy who doesn’t go down on you.

  Clearly, before talking to Sarah, I would not have considered two avatars repeatedly crashing into each other a genuine sexual experience. But then I started to think: Why, though? If virtual fucking is the way that Sarah’s body is capable of having and enjoying sex, then that’s sex for her. If, as a society, we have been able to detach sex from its biblical purpose of procreation to redefine it as an activity between people that’s done for sexual pleasure, then why does someone need to stick a dick into a vagina for “sex” to be sex?

  Another one of my favorite interviews was with a woman named Pink, a then forty-two-year-old nanny from Seattle. Her boyfriend, Patrick, was a quadriplegic government employee. He didn’t have feeling below his nipples and couldn’t get an erection, but that didn’t stop him from actualizing his inner sadist. Patrick had taken on Pink as his sex slave, and ordered her to abide by his house rules whenever they were together. Primarily, she had to be naked at all times, and was paid by him for her sexual services in jelly beans, and was only allowed ten jelly beans a day. Patrick had full range of motion in his arms, but both hands were stuck in fists. Whenever Pink deserved to be punished, Patrick would command her to slot a bamboo cane into his fist, which he could then swing in order to beat her. When Pink was well behaved, Patrick would allow her to put his fingers inside her while she masturbated—something she described as “heavenly.” Together, they had conceived of an array of handy DIY contraptions, for instance, a machine that allowed for him to push a button that would trigger a paddle to hit her in the boob. Like all great partnerships, master-slave relationships rely on teamwork.

  And then there was the blond bombshell Canadian sex worker I met last year, Bip. At the time, she worked for an organization called Sensual Solutions, which pairs sex workers with clients with physical impairments. One of her clients didn’t have feeling below the waist, but through erotic coaching, together they were able to remap the erotic zones on his body so that he was literally able to achieve orgasm through her touching his earlobe. At first I assumed she was lying—like “I’m so good, I can make a man come through his ears” vibes—until I discovered that it
’s actually not that uncommon for a person with a spinal cord injury who’s lost the ability to feel sensations in the genitals to develop new erogenous zones above the level of injury. I guess it’s true what they say about orgasms being mostly mental.

  Hearing all these stories made me realize how uncreative and lazy most of us can be when it comes to sex, unless we’re literally forced to find new ways of being intimate with someone. Despite the endless ways that one person can make another feel good, so often we stick to the most basic solutions. It took a lot of hindsight for me to realize how special and significant those early sexual experiences with Sam were, and how oblivious I was for not considering them significant enough to be defined as sex.

  The problem with our cultural definition of sex (essentially: dick in vagina) is that it delegitimizes the sexual experiences of people who can’t have or aren’t interested in having sex that way. That includes disabled people, most of the LGBTQ community, and, like, those people in Japan who get off on putting eels in women’s vaginas or whatever. The traditional definition of sex also conflates being a man with having a penis and being a woman with having a vagina, but hello, it’s 2018—we are now casually enlightened enough to know that not all women have vaginas. Basically, the way we think of sex is extremely dick-centric. And not only does dick define sex, dick also defines women. Women are consistently divided into two groups, virgins and nonvirgins, and the difference between those groups is a dick. Literally and figuratively.

  Fuck Penetration

  In his book Sex Outside the Lines (2015), sex therapist Dr. Chris Donaghue writes, “The concept of sex as penetration, with genitals as the tools, has vandalized the sexuality of all individuals…. We determine which body parts are sexual by social definition and socialization, and we prioritize specific procreative-based anatomy as sexual parts while illegitimizing the rest of the body. When pleasure, and not procreation, is the main goal of sex, the genitals are irrelevant, as erections and vaginal penetration are not required.” Essentially, expanding our idea of sex would make it a lot less norm-y, and a lot more pleasurable, especially for women.

  I probably sound like I’m super antidick right now, but I promise I’m not. Look, I like being fucked as much as the next guy. But there’s a time and a place for everything. And in my opinion, penetration is a grossly overused resource.

  So often, in straight sex, we stick to the most conventional itinerary: First some kissing, then groping and hand stuff, then the girl gives a BJ, maybe the guy gives some head, which all leads up to the main event—being pounded until the dick is satisfied. How boring. This might shock you, but you don’t have to stick your dick in to have a good time. Penetration isn’t necessary, and it’s not always interesting. It’s time to (literally) think outside the box.

  We’re so penetration obsessed that, in some people’s minds, if you hook up with someone outside of your relationship, and do everything except stick your dick in, then it wasn’t really cheating. Right. I was personally on the (non)receiving end of this theory back during my sugar baby epoch. One of my pretend boyfriends was a tall, tweedy Columbia professor in his midforties who was married with three kids. When he joined SeekingArrangement, he told himself that as long as he never stuck it in anyone, everything else was kosher. I told him that while I was happy to be an auxiliary to his self-manipulation, there was no way in hell that his wife would ever buy that as a valid excuse. He half agreed with me, but said he still needed to keep this rule for himself, otherwise his guilt would cock-block his fun, so to speak. (Again, I can’t help but think of Joan Didion’s famous adage: We tell ourselves stories in order to live.)

  Of course, the idea that removing penetration somehow eliminates a level of closeness is totally insane. Conversely, it made my sexual interactions with the Professor arguably more intimate, because we ended up doing a lot more kissing and massage and tongue stuff, and a whole host of other playful, nonpounding activities. A lot more “foreplay,” as it’s often called. However, even the word “foreplay”—“fore” meaning “at the front of”—suggests that all nonpenetrative acts are just the appetizers, whereas penetration is the goal of sex. But maybe if we started to think of all intimate acts as equal, then we could actually slow down and enjoy the entire process more. When we focus solely on penetration, we forget about the pleasure of simply rubbing against someone.

  And not fucking really heightens the sexual tension. In the heat of the moment, the Professor would always almost fuck me, but then would have a moral panic freak-out and jump out of the bed—repeat to infinity. And eventually this became really frustrating for me, too. Usually during sex I wish guys would get more into foreplay, but when someone takes dick off the table, it’s suddenly a hot commodity. Bizarrely, one of the hottest things about penetration is when you want it but can’t have it. Basically, the moment when a woman is dying to be fucked is rare and precious—guys shouldn’t be desperate, but they should be on call.

  My new theory is that penetration should never be the beginning of sex, and we shouldn’t automatically assume that it’s the end of sex, either. Like, it’s okay to fuck, then pull out for a while and go back to kissing or hand stuff or water sports or whatever you’re into, and then come back to fucking again later on. Sticking to an itinerary is not sexy. But there are certain times when penetration is simply a NO. For instance, in the morning when I’m half-asleep and vaguely hungover and my mouth tastes like death, and the guy in my bed is trying to shove his penis into my desert vagina. It’s like, “Bro, if you literally can’t get it in, there’s a reason—that’s my pussy telling you to get the fuck away from me.”

  I actually wish more guys would get into pegging, because I think if men knew more about what it was like to get fucked, they would be better at fucking. The person doing the penetrating is the one in control, which means they have to be more aware of the other person—to observe their physical cues and gauge if they’re feeling pleasure or if they’re bored or suicidal. If you’ve never been fucked, you just can’t be an expert in this department.

  At this point it’s no secret that most women can’t orgasm from penetration alone. In fact, only 25 percent of women are consistently orgasmic during vaginal intercourse. In other words, dicks are not the magical orgasm wands their owners make them out to be. But still, in the years that I was with my girlfriend, it felt like literally once a week someone would ask me: “But don’t you miss dick?” As if the penis is the holy grail of pleasure. As if dicks are the only dick-shaped things on earth. But as anyone who’s ever thought about anything knows, hands and a mouth and toys can do everything that a dick can do—and far more. While the increasing cultural conversation around female pleasure has genuinely helped this issue—for instance, I’m pretty sure that most guys now realize that a woman can’t come solely from deep-throating (even if she’s having fun)—statistically, women who sleep with women still report having far more frequent orgasms during sex than women who sleep with men. Now, armed with my post-lesbian hindsight, I was a psycho for complaining about having a boyfriend who wasn’t that interested in sticking it in.

  Is it even possible for lesbians to have sex, technically?

  While lesbian sex might be an aphrodisiac for the male boner, it’s also kryptonite for the male ego. This is why, when you’re a woman dating another woman, you often have to put up with drunk guys asking you: “But wait, how do lesbians even have sex, anyway?” They’re usually half-joking, half-serious. When I was with my girlfriend, I became so used to this question that I developed a stock response: “Oh, ya know, it’s just like in lesbian porn,” I’d say. “We sixty-nine wearing stilettos on the kitchen floor, and then after about five minutes our landlord comes in and fucks both of us.”

  Of course, this goes back to the “How do you define ‘sex’ as opposed to ‘other stuff’ when there’s no dick involved?” question. In high school, I heard a variety of questionable answers to this conundrum: oral sex; fingering; some skater kid once to
ld me, “It’s not sex until you’re knuckles deep,” which in my teenage mind somehow seemed logical. To be fair, similar conversations arose about straight sex. Does anal sex count as sex? (Some Christians seem to think not.) If you give someone a blow job, have you had sex with them? The lines have long been blurry.

  I have to admit, when I first started batting for team lez, I didn’t really know the answer to this question, either. At the beginning of the relationship with my girlfriend, I was constantly worried that I was going to make some unknown lesbian faux pas, or that I was going to fuck “too straight” or something. I remember anxiously wondering: Wait, is scissoring actually a thing, or just an ancient lesbian myth, passed down from porn generation to porn generation? (Turns out, even lesbians don’t know the answer to that question—I’ve asked almost all of them.)

  Being with Alice made me feel like I was learning to have sex all over again (again). First of all, I learned that you cannot fake orgasms with girls. I swear, women have a sixth sense for telling when other women are faking it, even from like fifty feet away. With a dude, you can literally just be boiling pasta and then randomly say, “I’m coming,” and he’ll sincerely believe you. But with Alice, I could give an Oscar-winning performance and she would just laugh in my face. It’s not like I was in the habit of faking it, but it’s always comforting to know that you can fake it if you need to—like how you can cry yourself out of a speeding ticket, or blow-job yourself out of literally anything. Knowing I have it in my back pocket somehow enables me to relax during sex. But when you know you’re going to be accountable for every fucking orgasm, you have to actually relax, which is clearly a recipe for anxiety.

  But that was just a tiny part of the learning process. I also learned that when you’re sleeping with someone who’s genderqueer, there’s sometimes literal body politics. When we started dating, Alice told me that she saw herself as falling somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum—while she didn’t identify as trans, or as a man, she didn’t fully identify as a woman, either. And because of that, she said, she didn’t really “relate to having a vagina.” She didn’t hate it, but she just saw herself as someone who had more of a metaphorical dick than a literal pussy, ya know? And because of that, she didn’t like being penetrated. For the most part, she didn’t even really like being touched down there. It was an iron-curtain situation.