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IDEAL_SEX

I knew a woman a few years ago who I thought
fairly sexually experienced, and yet who
still believed in simultaneous orgasms.  For
those of you who missed this one, people used
to think that the ideal sexual experience
involved both partners reaching orgasm at the
same time.  A lot of people felt anxious and      
worried when they didn't have them, which is	  
to say they felt anxious and worried all of	  For instance, there's   
the time (except when someone faked it).          a line in Kerouac's     
                                                  _The Subterraneans_:    
                                                  "I think we're getting  
                                                  closer together."       
                        

The current ideal is more like "Taking Turns"
(or "Ladies First"?), and it's probably a lot
healthier (it isn't tough to do, provided
you're not fanatic about fucking being the
centerpiece of making love), but I think it
still has it's problems.  For instance, try
convincing a woman that she shouldn't be
insulted because you haven't had an orgasm,
and that you really don't care about it.

And I guess there was
the idea of multiple
orgasms, but it didn't
last very long.  I
don't know of any
women interested in
having them, or
willing to give them.
Maybe it was never	        
much more than a	   	
fantasy, a paper tiger	   	((Turns out I was wrong about
set up to be attacked	          this: I've since met one.))
in magazine articles.	   				     
                                                             

There's the more traditional
sex-is-evil ideas, but I
don't know enough history to
sort out whether or not
anyone really believed in 
"No Orgasms" as an ideal.

Back in the mid-seventies, I remember
hearing Margot Adler read "The Asexual
Manifesto" over the air on WBAI
("Listener Sponsored Radio in New
York.").  The general idea had to do
with the liberation of people who are
into solo sex.  This, to my knowledge
is not an idea that has ever caught
on, despite more recent appearences,
such as in a poster I've seen which
was prematurely withdrawn from an
academic confrence.  (Trivia for
psychologists: Margot is Adler's
grand-daughter).

There's a recent short story by Bruce
Sterling called "The Beautiful and the
Sublime" which is about a future with
technology advanced enough that no one
cares much about technology or science 
anymore.  People have become something
like 19th century aesthethes, who sit
around debating things like the
precise distinction between the
"beautiful" and the "sublime".
Anyway, their sexual ideal seems to be
to get close to the edge of orgasm and
stay there for as long as possible
without crossing over.

And I guess I want to propose another one,
which I might call "Assisted Masturbation",
because I'm too stupid to think of a more
elegant name.  This is something like a
compromise between the Asexual Manifesto
and Taking Turns.  The point being that
most people really do know what they like
best (or more accurately, they've trained
themselves to like what they've trained
themselves to do through years of living in
a really tight feedback loop).  Anyway, I
think that one of the most intense,
simplest things you can do with another
person is simply to help them masturbate.
(I don't mean "mutual masturbation", by the
way.  I mean something like working on a
woman's breasts while she uses her hands on
herself.)

It's always seemed like a shame to me that
most women won't masturbate in front of you
until fairly late in a relationship.  It's
really the easiest way to find out what
they like...

Anyway, so how do you define "successful" sex?

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