Anatomy Lessons

I recently talked to a 50-year-old woman who told me she didn’t even know what a clitoris was until she was 30 years old.  As you can guess, she also didn’t orgasm up to that point, either.  I asked her if the reason she finally had an orgasm was because her next husband knew about female anatomy.  She said, no, it was an accident.  We weren’t able to get into how she learned about the clitoris, or how her current husband learned about it.

I was appalled.  How can a woman not know about her clitoris?  Well, let’s see.  Her mother didn’t tell her, it’s very likely her mother didn’t even know, herself.  She apparently didn’t discuss such things with her girlfriends, either.  She never read a Penthouse Forum or a steamy, graphically termed novel.     She didn’t read a book like “The Joy of Sex”.   She probably didn’t even read, “Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume, which was scandalous for mentioning  female masturbation.  Gasp!!!  And she certainly didn’t discover it by accident through self exploration, the way I’m pretty sure many women do.

Then my bestie, Ms. Canon, who has commented here a total of one, yep, ONE time ;), reminded me that I was the one who told HER what a clitoris was.  We were about 15, I think.  There’s a story to that, an inside joke that wouldn’t be funny in the slightest to anyone but us.  When she reminded me of it we laughed and laughed!  And, yep, I did have to explain to her what a clitoris was.  Even back then my favorite subject was sex!   She is very thankful to me for that, uh-huh!

My daughter told me that the clitoris was discussed in her health class, too.  It certainly wasn’t when I was in school.  That part of the female anatomy might as well have not existed, at all!  Why not?  Because it has no other function that pleasure and orgasm?  Scandalous!!!  That a woman might know how to get an orgasm, and what part of her body is required, was as taboo as anything else. “You’ll find out when you’re married” obviously is not a good way of dealing with it!

How did I know my anatomy, you ask?  Well, in all honesty, I cannot remember how I learned about the clitoris.   I do remember how I learned about the rest of the female anatomy, though.  Very simple.  I read and studied the little diagram on the instruction paper in my mom’s tampon box.  Yep.  I used to look at it all the time.

I got to thinking, does my daughter know about her anatomy?  I can’t remember telling her about it.  So one day in the car I asked her, do you know what your clitoris is?  Yes, Mom, you told me that already–awkward!!!  She says to me.  hee hee!  I love embarrassing her.   Well, you need to know these things, honey.  I tell her.  No I don’t, Mom, I’m only 13!!!

Well, she does need to know these things.  All men and women need to know these things.  Let’s make sure our kids know about their bodies and the bodies of the opposite sex.  Hiding it, being ashamed and embarrassed, hoping they’ll figure it out, those things just don’t cut it as lots of men and women have learned the hard way.

Sex Toys

Conan and I had been married for a few years but didn’t have any children together yet (so I imagine I was between 21 and 23 or so) when we decided to take a trip up to Vancouver, BC for the weekend.  It was a lot of fun!  One of the most memorable moments up there was when we were sightseeing and decided to go into a specialty shop and look around.  And by specialty shop I mean SEX TOY Shop!  This was my first look at anything like that.  (I’d heard of vibrators, dildos and such before, but never seen any.  This was back in ancient times, remember, and there was no internet.)  I was soooo embarrassed!  Plus I was young enough to be a bit giggly and juvenile about it, ha ha!  Even so, I was fascinated with everything I saw there.  The two things that were burned into my brain were a dildo that was as big as my forearm and had a suction cup on the bottom of it so you could stick it on whatever surface and use it hands free!  And a swing with a dildo ON it!   W.O.W.  My eyes about popped out of my head everywhere I looked.

I have had lots of fun and laughs over the years talking about that hands free dildo with my BFFs, but never thought I’d actually ever get any kind of sex toy.  (I never have tried that hands free one, I’ll just tell you that right now!)

I did eventually get a sex toy.  I got a  hard plastic, turbo-shaped, purple vibrator.  It was interesting and fun solely because it was such a novel experience.  We tried it a number of ways but it didn’t really do a whole lot for me.  First of all, it was cold, and second of all the vibrations were pretty weak, in my opinion.  Later, we decided to try a different kind.  We got one that is like a Rabbit.  I don’t know if it is an actual Rabbit, I can’t remember that far back,  but it is shaped like a real penis, and it is made of squishy plastic instead of hard plastic.   It is also purple.  (Conan’s favorite color is purple.  Because of the U of WA Huskies!) Anyway, it has those little bunny ears that are supposed to rest on the clitoris and vibrate while you penetrate with the penis.  Once again, I didn’t like it.  It was cold, too.  And whatever nasty plastic they used to make the thing smelled horrible!  I just went and got it out of my drawer.  It still smells horrible.  And the little bunny ears worked about as well as me leaning up against the washing machine during the spin cycle, ha ha!  Meaning not at all.  Still, we tried it out several times.  We tried both of them together.  We got good and creative.   But they just didn’t do much for me.  I know other women love their Rabbits, but they just don’t work for my body.  Why do I even still have those things, you ask?  I really don’t know.  They just sit in the drawer year after year, hahaha!

Fast forward a few years, (I really have no idea how many) and I discovered the bullet vibe.   Conan and I talked about it and decided to go get one.  We got in the car with our new purchase and Conan practically begged me to use it right there.  I did.  He still remembers the street we were on.  Ummm, I kind of don’t, I was busy.  😉   Now, up until this point I was a one and done girl.   I was always soooo jealous of my BFFs, because THEY could have multiples without even batting an eye.  But no matter what we had done thus far, one was it for me.  But this night, with my new little bullet vibe, I had five, count them, five Os IN A ROW.  I fell in love with that little bullet.  It was my new best friend.   We wore the thing out and had to go get a new one.  We actually wore a couple of them out.

I’m so thankful for bullet vibrators because they taught me that I could be multi-orgasmic.  (I am happy to say that, now, if I was only having five or less I would be highly disappointed.)     It’s still amazing to me that one day I can only have one and the next day I can have several!

But something strange happened.  We got so that Conan could give me lots of Os with no need for the bullet vibe, and then the bullet stopped working for me.  I haven’t been able to figure that one out.  It would just buzz away, feeling pleasant, but not producing the same results.  Since we had just about worn it out anyway, I just threw it away and never replaced it.  I certainly didn’t NEED it anymore!

So now it’s been seven or eight years since I got my first bullet.  And last year I decided to try a new sex toy.  I didn’t do my research very well, but what I wanted was something that I could use hands free (No, NOT the one with the suction cup on the bottom!) during intercourse.  I sooo want to orgasm DURING intercourse.  So we purchased this:

It’s a bullet vibe that you strap onto yourself.  The theory is lots of great stimulation without having to think about it or hold onto it.  Once again, while the buzzing sensations are nice, it did NOT do the trick.  And can I just say I felt like a complete moron trying to get it strapped on, and once it was on I felt I looked ridiculous.  Anyway, sad to say, this didn’t work, either.  I even popped the bullet out of it’s little butterfly and tried to use it that way once, but it was a no go.  😦

A few months ago I learned about something called a Hitachi Magic Wand.  Hmmmmm.  I was intrigued.  I really liked what I saw.  I asked Conan if I could get one.  He laughed a bit at me but gave the okay.   It arrived not long before our romantic weekend in early November.

We took it with us.  This Hitachi is no joke.  The handle is about a foot long, so even though it’s not hands free it’s very easy to use.  The vibrating part is about the size of a tennis ball, which makes it simple to apply to the right spots.  It is not battery operated, it PLUGS IN.  It has two speeds.  The low speed will make you see fireworks and the high speed will drain the power grid and trip your breaker.  You will forget your own name.  How could I not have heard of this baby before???  It gets RESULTS.

I tried it through my jeans and within 60 seconds it blew me away.  Used against bare skin I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  Conan commented later that he thinks I woke up everyone within a 10 yard radius. *blush*

I could not keep this to myself and so I told my BFFs all about my new toy.

That’s my experience with sex toys.   I still prefer Conan to any toy, but I’m super glad for those toys, just the same, and am looking forward to wearing out a few magic wands!

Tips:  I have recently heard about glass toys.  You can heat them up in warm water before you use them so they won’t be COLD!  Yay!  That’s going to be my next purchase when I get around to getting another toy.

Shop Erotic is a tasteful online shop and you can find just about anything your little heart desires there.  From lube and vibrators to whips, blindfolds and restraints.  Hmmmm.

Simply Sweet Marriage  is a good online store by LDS people and is a very nice site where you can get lots of good stuff.

Oral Sex for Me, Part III

I’ve been scared of oral sex.  Specifically, of having oral sex performed on me.  Even though I used to ONLY orgasm through oral sex, it would take quite awhile for me to achieve orgasm, and I didn’t like it (go figure).  Not just that it took too long, but I was self-conscious about it.  I had a negative opinion of my body, especially my vulva.  I thought there was no possible way giving cunnilingus could be enjoyable, and was something for a man to tolerate, at best.  Conan and I stopped doing that years ago, since we were able to bring me to orgasm so much more effectively and pleasurably through manual stimulation.

A couple years ago I stumbled across a website called The Marriage Bed.  There’s a great forum there, and I found it very interesting to read about what other people were saying/doing.  I was pretty amazed by all the men who waxed poetic about giving their wives oral sex.  How much they love their wife’s vulva and everything about it, the sight, scent, feel, taste, everything.  They especially like giving their wives pleasure in that way.  I started thinking about it.  I started feeling like I might be missing out on something great!  I began to examine my emotions and mental attitude towards it.  I took a good look at myself with a different mindset and decided that I was beautiful there, just like everywhere else.  Then I decided that I wanted it.

After talking about it (and blogging about it!) Conan told me he was going to do it!  He called me up one day and told me exactly what he was going to do to me that night.  YIKES!  As I said in Part  II of this trilogy, I was very, very nervous!    Well, that night it didn’t happen.  Too much pressure to perform on both our parts, I believe, and things felt stilted and contrived.  But just knowing that he was going to do it was a good thing.

So one night, after a short while, with no prompting or blogging (ha ha!) from me, Conan just slid down and began.  It felt as natural as breathing.   I was completely comfortable and confident in myself and in him.   It was lovely.  We both went into it with no intention of me having an orgasm, as my lovely reader, CM, advised.  Well, within a matter of minutes, I was responding and orgasming.  (I hope that is not too much detail!)   And after Conan finished with oral, I continued to respond to other things and had even more orgasms.

A little later, I wanted to analyse it and dissect it.  That drives Conan NUTS!  But he relented and answered my questions and talked about it.  He liked the lack of hair there.  I had no taste.  He liked that I wasn’t all self-conscious and freaked out.  His jaw got tired, ha ha!!  I liked a few things he did that I did NOT like years ago.  In fact, I liked them A LOT.  We were both very surprised at the speed and intensity with which I responded.   I guess it’s true that our biggest sex organ is our brain.  It sure seems like it in this situation!

Conan likes to say that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Well, I don’t feel like adding cunnilingus to our sex life is fixing what isn’t broken, it’s adding to a wonderful thing!

So now, I said to Conan, I want to do 69.  But you don’t like that, Conan answered.  We both laughed!

Oral Sex for Me, Part II

Conan called me from work to tell me one thing.  In his usual blunt and to the point fashion, he said, “Honey, I just called to tell you that tonight I’m  going to !

In other words, he’s going to do what I have requested.  So now I’m nervous!!  Have I built something up in my mind that can’t be lived up to?  What if I freeze up and can’t orgasm at all?  What if he forgot how to do it and is no good at it?  Will he keep trying until we get it right?  Maybe I should buy him the book “She Comes First”, first.  Maybe I should tell him to just forget it.

Good grief, why does this have to be so complicated?  We’ve been married for almost 24 years, for goodness sake!  Haven’t we shared everything?  Haven’t we seen everything?  Yes and yes.  Why have I built this up in my mind to be this complicated thing?  It’s not like this isn’t happening somewhere to someone at any given moment!

Giving a guy oral sex is a piece of cake.  There’s not much to it, really, since his parts are pretty simple.   And beyond that, I KNOW he likes it.  I know I like it.  I’m pretty darn good at it if I do say so myself.   The other night Conan grabbed my hair and pushed me firmly down because he knew what he wanted and he was going to get it.  I have ZERO problem with that.  I like it when he does that!  So why can’t I do the same?  Because being the receiver instead of the giver is harder than it sounds.  It makes me feel vulnerable.  It makes me feel self-conscious and exposed.  I don’t like to feel any of those things.

I think I need to GET OVER IT!  Take a chill pill and calm down.

I don’t mean to sit here and over-analyze this, but this is one more way to remove invisible barriers from between us.  To increase trust and closeness.  To show and feel love for EVERY PART  of each other.

I guess I’m telling you all this to say that even though I feel like Conan and I have a wonderful marriage and sex life there are areas in our life together where we are still growing.  Where I am still growing.  We don’t have it all together.  But we are working at that.  We’ll get there someday.  It’s a good thing we’ve had years together and by the Grace of God we’ll have many more years to get it together.  And tonight will be a good place to start.

Oral Sex for Me

Just a little caution with this post.  I may be more explicit than some are comfortable with.

Black Iris, Georgia O'Keeffe

I have one thing to say before I start into the subject of my post.  And that is about “The Letter” from 1982.   If you don’t know what this “letter” is, don’t worry about it.  Forget it.  I have been a member of  the church my entire life, and never heard about this letter until just a few short months ago.  I can find no reference to it AT ALL on lds.org.   I got my temple recommend almost six years ago now, and nothing at all was mentioned in my temple prep classes about it, and nothing was mentioned in my temple recommend interview about it.  If this was church policy, people would be hearing  about it.  If it was a sin that could keep you from the temple, people would be hearing about it.  What about all the new converts since this letter?  All of them are happily going about their lives, quite a few probably having great oral sex, with no idea that some of the older members of the church are convinced that it’s a sin.   The church stays out of our bedrooms.  The marriage bed is undefiled (see Hebrews 13:4).  That’s all I have to say about it.   On to the post!

As you may know, Conan was not my first.  But even though I have a slightly checkered past, my experience with oral sex could just as easily be with one partner.  Anyway, my first boyfriend performed oral sex on me, and that turned out to be the only way I could orgasm.   Here’s the rub, I didn’t like it.  I was extremely self conscious of my look and scent.

I thought my vulva looked ugly.   Now, I’d seen some porn and all I knew was that my vulva didn’t look like the vulvas on those women.  So I didn’t like mine.  Well, here’s something no one ever told me.  Those women have every little hair waxed off from front to back, sometimes with the exception of a small strip in the front called a “landing strip”.    And the hairs that don’t come off with the wax get plucked out by hand by someone VERY  up close and personal.    That may be common knowledge in 2011, but back in 1984, before the internet, how would a sheltered girl from a small town know such a thing?   I certainly didn’t.

Well, anyway, if I ever did orgasm, it was through oral sex, so I put up with it.  The ends justify the means, that sort of thing!

My next boyfriend, The Boyfriend, did not want to do oral sex on me.  It was definitely all about him.  See my “Gasp, Swallowing” post.  Anyway, in one of his more “giving” moments, he decided he was going to bring me to orgasm manually.  It didn’t happen.  But the fact that he didn’t want to do oral sex on me just reinforced my negative opinion and attitude about it.

Hello, Conan the Barbarian!  Conan at least willingly did what I needed to be satisfied, but I think I projected some of my negativity onto him.  I thought he didn’t like it.  I think I may have conditioned Conan to not like it, and I reinforced my own conditioning that it wasn’t a good thing.  He used to comment about lingering scents in his mustache (in a good way, by the way).  I told him how gross  I thought that was.   I think I may have talked him into feeling like it wasn’t very good.   Conan being Conan, he kept working at pleasing me in other ways until he had mastered the art of manual stimulation and then we completely stopped doing oral sex for me, because I was just so much more comfortable with manual stimulation and it was so much easier for me to orgasm.

This may be far out of some people’s comfort zones, but one of the things we really enjoy doing is switching back and forth from intercourse to my giving Conan oral sex and back again.  I got the idea to do this when I saw how much Conan liked it when I would suck his fingers after he touched me.  If he liked that so much, how much more would he like oral after intercourse?  Answer:  A lot.  When I started doing that, of course I was going to experience my own taste and scent.  I discovered that it is not bad, not gross, not disgusting.    I would say it’s actually very nice.

Then I found an interesting forum on the internet, TheMarriageBed.com, and some of the threads wax poetic about oral sex for her.  Women love it.  Men love it.  To hear them talk about it, you’d think it was the best thing in the world!  Okay, so now I want to experience this “best thing in the world” for myself.   Trouble is, I can’t quite bring myself to actually do it.  I still cringe at the thought that maybe Conan won’t enjoy it.  I think if my mental attitude is not right, then even if it feels good I’m not going to like it.

(I even bought a waxing kit and am ready to rip all the hair out of my vulva to make it more appealing.  Except that I’m just a little chicken.  Waxing the bikini line and shaving some bits  is one thing, waxing those bits is quite another.  YIKES!)

I’ve talked to Conan a bit about this.  He thinks I just need to not worry about what other people are doing, that what we are doing works for us.   He thinks I obsess over things and have spent too much time on TheMarriageBed.com. ( He just may be right about that, by the way.  I”m like a dog with a bone.)   I say, well, what if it’s good now?  What if I like it now?  He does say it’s not his favorite thing, but he’d be more than willing if he thought that I liked it as much as manual stimulation.  Well, I just want to try it again!  We’ve been married a long time, lots of our likes and dislikes have changed, more than just sexually, and I’m thinking this just might be one of those things.   Maybe.  I just cannot get over the mental block that Conan doesn’t like it and won’t like it and then it’s ruined for me.   Then I get all self-conscious just THINKING about it and that’s an orgasm shut-down if there ever was one.  I keep telling myself, tonight I’m going to ask for it.  Tonight comes and goes and I don’t ask.  I get as nervous as if I’m about to sing a solo in church, ha ha!  HOWEVER, I do sing solos in church, and I sound quite lovely, if I do say so myself.  If I can do that, surely I can ask my husband to give me oral sex, to experiment, to keep at it until I’m comfortable with it.  And then maybe it can be a part of what we do sometimes.  I want to make our already wonderful sex life even better.  I want to experience all there is to experience with Conan.   I just have to ask.

That was going to be the end of my post, but here’s something I just discovered, this minute, about myself!   “LIGHT BULB MOMENT!”  I don’t want to ask.  I want Conan to just do it.   With enthusiasm.  Not taking no for an answer.  Hey, I sound exactly like the guys who wish their wives would give them oral sex once in awhile without being asked!   Wow, am I gaining some empathy here!

My advice to myself is:  I’m just going to have to relax and ask.  Relax, Zookie, and ASK!  I’m pretty sure that eventually I won’t have to ask any more.    ‘Cause Conan is just that awesome.

That Elusive Female Orgasm

Several years ago a friend of mine told me that there were two types of female orgasms, internal and external.  In other words, clitoral and vaginal or G-spot orgasms.  I flat out did not believe her.  Orgasms come from clitoral stimulation and that is that, I thought.    Well, I rationalized, maybe these women just don’t even KNOW what an orgasm really is.   Maybe they just think they are having one?  After awhile, I started thinking, well, maybe they’re right and I’m the one missing out!  I’m not having this kind of orgasm.   Am I defective because I can’t orgasm through penetration?  Why is it so easy in bodice ripper novels for the woman to climax?  The man just enters her, spends just the right amount of time doing just the right thing, and KAPOW!  Climax!  But that’s fiction, right?  Penthouse Forum for women.  We all know those Penthouse stories are made up, and so are the sex scenes in the bodice ripper novels, right?  But wait, maybe not!   Is there something wrong with me?  Or something wrong with my husband? Why would I hear about women orgasming from penile penetration alone, with no clitoral stimulation, if it didn’t happen?   WHAT’S THE DEAL, HERE???

Then I found some statistics that made me feel better.  Only about 30% of women can reach climax through penile penetration.  Whew!  I’m not broken!  But then I found a site that refuted that statistic, saying it was false and we women just had to LEARN how to have these types of orgasms, and that we all could if we really wanted to.  Here we go again.  I already had to LEARN how to have a clitoral orgasm for crack’s sake, and now I have to learn how to have a vaginal orgasm.

Some time later Conan found the G-spot.   I said, wow, Conan, where did you learn THAT?!?  He got a Men’s Health article in his e-mail about finding the G-spot.  What a nice e-mail!   The  G-spot is a good spot!  Yay, yay, hip hip hooray for Men’s Health.    I’m loving this new thing.  And hey, maybe I’ll get to have that kind of O now!  But guess what?  It did NOT happen.  Don’t get me wrong, the spot is great.  This new thing in our bedroom is never going off the table, so to speak.  But I am not O-ing from it.  AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!

Well, aren’t there supposed to be positions that are more conducive to a female orgasm?  Oh, yeah, the recommended position that is supposed to be a surefire winner for a woman to orgasm during intercourse is woman on top.  Mmmm-hmmmm,  woman on top is a great position!  Very, very nice.  But no orgasm.  Nope, not even a little bit.

Conan the Barbarian gets irritated with me when I start talking about this woman or that woman having an orgasm during intercourse.  He says, why can’t you just be happy with the kazillion orgasms you get from manual stimulation, huh?  Why not?  Well, I am quite happy with them, thank you very much, Conan!!!  They are great!  Mindblowing!  Full body ecstasy!  And they keep happening in waves and waves of deliciousness.  (I should stop now, I know, I can get carried away.)    So why can’t I just be happy with them and move on?  Huh?  Why?

Well, I’ll tell you.  I just can’t stand the thought of something good out there on the sex menu that I’m not getting to try.  It’s like (here we go with food analogies) seeing the chocolate caramel fudge  torte with whipped cream on the menu, hearing everyone rave about how good it is, but not getting to EAT IT!!  Not fair, I cry!  I want what she’s having, okay?  Don’t say, you can have lemon and white chocolate mousse with strawberries  now go be happy about it.  Yes, I love that!  But I already HAVE that!  Okay, well, maybe I have the chocolate caramel fudge torte with whipped cream and she has the lemon and white chocolate mousse with strawberries.  In either case, I. Want. What. She’s. Having.  End of story.

Achieving Orgasm, Man vs Woman

Have you noticed the huge difference in the achieving of a woman’s orgasm as compared to a man’s?   It’s perfectly natural for a man to quickly come to orgasm.  No effort involved at all.   And it just happens.  He doesn’t have to learn how to do it or get to know his body so he knows what he likes.  A man has to train himself to hold off, hold back, keep going, and delay gratification.    I’m also thinking that an occasional quickie for a man must be such a relief!  No holding back, no “thinking baseball” no making sure he lasts long enough.

For a woman it is just about polar opposite.  It’s perfectly natural for a woman to take 15, 20, 30 minutes to get there.  A woman might have to learn how to do it.   A woman may have to concentrate, focus, work for it,  and strive to get gratification.     Once upon a time I used to have to work so hard and wait so long for that elusive O that I sometimes thought it just wasn’t worth it!     I’m wondering why it takes so long for women?  In a perfect world should it work like it does in the bodice ripper novels, both man and woman simultaneously orgasming at the end?

It’s so simple for a man to achieve orgasm.  While it is no longer difficult for me to orgasm, it certainly isn’t like a man.  I sometimes wish it was.   Why isn’t it?

No answers yet, just questions.