Fake it till you make it.

A couple of weeks back, as I was looking for what I can only hope was more useful and life changing information (probably not, I have been known to read a 2-page menu if it looks interesting, such is my idleness), I stumbled across this article, When (Not) to Fake an Orgasm.  I had a hallelujah moment, heavens parting, light streaming down...a kindred spirit has been found.  This woman is the agony aunt I wish I had growing up, I would be much saner if I’d spent my youth reading clear thinking like hers, instead of the ’Mills & Boon’ type bullshit that passed for sex-ed in my day.  I like a woman who has no time for fluff, is all I’m saying, because fluff is what got us believing that an orgasm is an easy thing to have.  It’s not.  You don’t believe me, do you?  The men reading this are leaning back, grinning cockily, hands on dicks, thinking, ’What idiot can’t come? Must be a chick thing...’  The women, on the other hand, are sitting there thinking, ’Not easy? Lakini...what is this cow smoking today? ’  An orgasm is hard to come by, that's why we feel the need to cheat.  That’s right, I said it, we cheat you, and I shall show you why, once I dispense with formalities.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a post about upward mobility.   Just thought I’d clear that up for anyone who may still be optimistically hoping that this week is going to be the week I become a serious individual.  This is about orgasms, and because there is no way to have a conversation about coming without getting explicit, you may want to consider exiting stage left if you’re feeling a little fragile today, looking for some fluffiness and whatnot.  These words, in all their varied permutations, may be used in this post, occasionally together, such as in this sentence: orgasm, come (not literal), cum, ejaculation, masturbation, wanking, lips, breasts, orbs, nipples, penis, clitoris, vagina, pussy, ass, ass-hole (literal), penetration, sucking, oral, anal, pornography...have I left anything out...ah yes, sex.  Still here?  No?  I lost them at ass-hole, didn’t I?  Don’t worry, odds are we’ll never get there, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to throw it in, not when it was sitting there looking oh so inviting, all puckered up and shit.  Stop cringing, you should have left when you had a chance, my lovely, now you’re on the dark side with the deviants.  Insert my evil laughter here...

To fake or not to fake, that is the question.  I know, not exactly Shakespeare, but in my defence, my English came by ship, and my ship is somewhat bandia.  Have you ever faked an orgasm?  Be honest.  Yes?  How many times?  Only once or twice, you say?  Really?  She chuckles an evil chuckle.  I’ve done it, more than a couple of times, but in my defence, when I started doing it, I didn’t know I was doing it.  Back when I thought I was having intense, mind-blowing, earth-shattering woohoo!’s (I can’t keep typing orgasm, sounds like a bloody dildo manual, no?), turns out back when I thought I was coming, I wasn’t.  I figured it out when I actually had mind-blowing, earth-shattering woohoo!’s, late in my 20’s, which in turn means that everything before had been, well, fake, no?  And that’s not to say I haven’t done it since, I have, needs must and all, but now that I’m older and (marginally) wiser, I’m starting to wonder if I should be bothering with all that faking jive, and why I’d want to in the first place.  Wait, don’t lynch me, there’s some thought behind the thought.

Young and naïve, we used to believe that sex is all about the orgasm. ’You must get off!’ was the one thought running through our minds, because everything we saw and heard seemed to stress that getting ourselves, and possibly others (time and effort allowing), off was the most important aspect of sex.  I can’t recall ever reading, or more importantly watching (I am a firm believer in the power of a good visual, blog notwithstanding), any sexual encounter that did not culminate in instant fireworks.  Back in my late teens, if all the Sidney Sheldon’s I read, steamy Dallas episodes I watched and sappy R&B I listened to were to be believed, all it took was for a man to drool over a woman, undress said woman, insert his penis into her vagina (under a well designed sheet concealing everything, of course) and one minute later, there was great gasping of joy, the end.  Occasionally, if I ventured into the odd Harlequin romance, there would be much staring into eyes, longing kisses, tender stroking of trembling fleshy orbs, grasping of rigid manhoods, thrusting into moistness, and then the great gasping of joy.  See, sex was a very straight line: man + woman + inserted body parts = gasping of joy.   No if, but or maybe. 

Luckily for the boys this wasn’t that big of a deal, because a teenage boy is so randy, he can get his rocks off just by thinking about it, I assume.  Teenage girl?  Not so much.  It’s hard enough wrapping your head around the thought of a foreign object a couple of inches wide, and several inches longer, going up a passage that neither looks nor feels nearly large enough to accommodate it, then we’re expected to enjoy it?  Greatly?  Hmmm...  Trust me when I tell you this, any girl who tells me she enjoys sex at that age (let’s ignore the fact that she probably shouldn’t be having it at that age to begin with) is lying to me, or to herself, or to her mother.  Frankly, in our teens we had no clue what sex was.  Which is why when we went off to college/paid employment/accommodation other than our parents’ houses, we quickly indulged in our favourite pastime, experimenting.  No porn was left unwatched, no orifice unexplored, no appendage unsucked, no location untried.  Only, we still had no clue what sex was all about, the same formula applied: man + woman + inserted body parts = gasping of joy.  Yes, you may have learnt to use your fingers (and other) to get yourself off, but your path to coming with another person was pretty much the same, no?

Until you met that one person who shagged you like a superstar, and your world changed. 

Don’t be shy, we all have that someone in our past who took our sex from 10 minute fumbles to hour long marathons, it’s part of growing up, being exposed to new, umm, things. For some of us, this person came along when we were 21, for the late bloomers, perhaps 31.  No matter though, as long as the person eventually came along, yes?  Yes?  For crying out loud, you idiot, what are you doing sitting here if you’re still having 10 minute fumbles, and only 10 minute fumbles (some smart-ass was about to point out my quickie theories...)?  Get out and find a half decent lover, then come back and tell me all about it (I’m a sucker for a good tale, no?).

Today's soundtrack is the appropriately titled, 'Mindblowin', a funky old jam from my teenage years.  I'd love to tell you something about the song, or the woman who did the song, but I know next to nothing about her.  All I can tell you is that it came out in the 90's, mid I think.  Smooth was one of the first sexy female rappers I saw back in the day, hair done, well, nails did, prancing about in lingerie, in her own video.  Suffice to say she was my role model back then, still is, now that I think about it (if I could rap this well, in clothes that small, I would, oh, how I would, but I digress).  I'd put up the lyrics, but they do nothing to help the song, just listen to it and enjoy, it really is quite brilliant, dodgy language aside.

Now, assuming your fucking marathon, fuckathon is more apt, didn’t only involve tedious thrusting for long stretches of time, I’m guessing you had one or two, or five, orgasms, probably of different intensity.  And thus the thought began to form in your mind, ’Maybe there’s more to this coming business than I thought. Maybe, just maybe, the formula is flawed. I wonder...’  Next thing you know, you’re sitting there googling different types of orgasms and wondering how you never knew this before. This is assuming, of course, that you are mildly curious as to why this one person had you calling out you grandfather’s name, and your previous lover didn’t.  You’re a relatively educated person, knowledgeable in the ways of condoms, experienced in at least 7 of the Kama Sutra positions, but alas, you didn’t know about the eleven different orgasms a woman can have (from what little I’ve read, the number of ranges from two to ten, number eleven is a bonus I suspect).  That’s right, 11 Different Types of Orgasms, from head to toe, quite literally.  Hands up any woman here who has had all eleven?  Nine?  Five?  Fine, three, you must have had at least three of these, no?  Wait, don’t tell me.  If you do, I might have to tell you my number, which in turn means I’ll have to work it out, which in turn means I may have to call several gentlemen I do not wish to call.  Gentlemen, how many of these do you think you’ve given your woman?  If anyone just said eleven, you are a shameless liar and you will burn in hell.  I’m guessing the average is in the region of five, and given that you buggers are delusional it may actually be two.  That’s also the number of types of orgasms men have, two, or four.  Exciting, no?

I must detour slightly, because my reading on the topic of men and their come (the act, separate from cum, the substance resulting from the act), is proving to be most amusing.  On one forum, one lovely gentleman claims that there are four types, common ejaculation + orgasm, multiple ejaculation + orgasm, prostrate ejaculation + orgasm, and dry orgasm. I know, only a man would list things in such an uncreative manner, could this sound any more mechanical?  The Male Multiple Orgasm Forum is for anyone who is genuinely curious, and looking for a manual on how better to come, and from the way these buggers are waxing lyrical (pun intended), I suspect they may be onto something.  I’m hoping one of my lovely deviants is willing to be my lab rat cum ’come researcher’ (that’s a mouthful, no? Wait, that’s even worse...).  Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, The Myth of the Male Orgasm, a bunch of scientists arguing that the male orgasm is a disease.  “It should be noted that Dr. Amelia Leviathan is in close agreement with Dr. Shoot. She too believes that what passes for male orgasm is actually a disease. But contrary to Dr. Shoot, she believes the affliction is actually a form of epilepsy localized in the groin. She feels she proved this in her much publicized recent study of 100 male rats, 50 of whom had epilepsy. The epileptic rats, Dr. Leviathan found, could mate with the female rats, even if the female rats didn’t want to. The nonepileptic rats just sat around exposing themselves.”  Rats exposing themselves?  Exactly how big is a rat’s dick?  Or should I ask, how big were her rats?  Bottom line, men have different orgasms too, or none, depending on which bloody scientist is speaking.  Detour over.

As it turns out, there is a lot more to orgasms than we have been led to believe.  Put differently, that age old formula is not entirely accurate, possibly just plain wrong.  See, there’s two things wrong with this notion.  One, that penetrative sex alone will automatically result in orgasm.  It doesn’t, not for most women.  Two, that orgasm is the end goal for any and all sex had.  It’s not, as many women and (admittedly fewer) men who don’t come during sex, willingly or otherwise, can attest.   Do you think that the sole purpose to your sex is for you both to get off?  Given that there are up to fifteen different ways of coming, combined, you may be right in thinking so, who knows?  I figure, for as long as you’re not hung up on one particular brand of orgasm, say, ejaculation, or U-spot (you must read these links, my friend, otherwise you will remain clueless), then you have lots of room to play around.  Take your time to discover all the different pleasures your body has to offer.  Once we begin to appreciate that there is more satisfaction available to us, from tingling skin through to melting limbs, then we are no longer stuck in the same old ruts we’re used to.  You, my lovely, are a...say it with me...veritable cornucopia of pleasure.  Five minutes or five hours, come or don’t come, it’s all up to you.

Which brings me back to where I began.  To fake or not to fake.

I talked about faking it when I was younger, because I didn’t know what coming was all about.  At the risk of TMI-ing myself (lakini that ship sailed a while back, no? Ah well...), I don’t think I had what these internet experts are calling a g-spot orgasm, or any other of the vaginal orgasms, till well into my 20’s, either that or the ones I had were baby versions.  Despite the limited variety, that was relatively good sex, good enough that I smile when I think back (no one ever smiles at the memory of bad sex, absolutely no one).  When I was moaning and groaning, in what I thought were the throes of passion, I wasn’t deliberately trying to deceive, in my head I was doing what was expected of me.  I moaned just so, because that’s how Sharon Stone moaned for...pretty much every man she made a movie with in the 90’s.  I arched my back, like so, because that’s how the woman in ’Sugar Hill’ arched her back when Wesley sucked on her nipple.  I’m not giving you examples of random scenes from movies just for the hell of it, I’m trying to show you that my sex was learned behaviour, it was practically scripted, and, unfortunately, not by me.  I knew that I was expected to react a certain way to a man’s touch.  I was expected to have sex a certain way.  I was expected to come, on cue, after this and that happened.  Only, I didn’t. I looked like I did, I thought I did, but I didn’t.

Gentlemen, the reason women fake it is because we’re trying to play along.  We know that you expect us to come when you flick our clitorises, fuck our pussies (I really don’t like this word, but ’fuck our vaginas’ sounds wrong, no?), or lick our ass-holes (you didn’t think I could use it, did you? Stop sneering, different strokes...).  You obsess over making sure your woman comes, because someone somewhere told you that’s what you’re expected to do.  Come to think of it, you’re probably reading the same script we are, and acting out your part.  That determination to get her off is the reason she gives in and simulates the great gasping of joy.  She wants to satisfy your demands, she wants you to stop pounding her like a jackhammer so she can roll over and finally get some sleep, she wants you to finish whatever the hell it is you’re doing so she can get back to Alejandro and his lovely behind (on TV, or perhaps in real life?).  We know you get a great deal of satisfaction from our pleasure, too much sometimes, given how you insist on getting it out of us by any means possible.  Problem is, sometimes you just can’t do it for her, because you don’t know how, and the only way she can get you to get her off is by telling you, or showing you, how to get her off, something your ego may not be ready for.  More importantly, it may be something her ego may not be ready for either, because it’s entirely possible that your woman is in need of some education too.  Either way, if she knows she won't get off, and she knows you expect her to get off before you finally get off (her), then she will fake it, till you make it.

Wait, stop frowning, in our defence, men fake it too.  Yes, you do, as many as 25% of you.  Your reasons aren’t too different from ours either; tired, bored, lost interest (in the sex and/or the woman), performance anxiety (can’t keep it up, for whatever reason)... same shit, different bed.  We all fake it to end it, but do we have to?

I’ll be straight with you, I think faking it to put someone out of their, or your, misery is a kindness.  No really, it is.  Some days we’re too tired to keep going for hours on end.  Some days we’re distracted, and despite the good sex being had, our minds are elsewhere.  Some days we have sex to satisfy the other person (not that it’s such a great inconvenience or anything, we still get all warm and flustered, we just don’t need to get off).  It’s sex, it’s complicated and rarely ever as straightforward as they would have us believe.  That said, faking it all the time is just silly, and self-defeating.  Why on earth would you pretend to come, all the time?  Don’t you dare sit there and tell me s/he doesn’t know how to fuck you, you probably don’t know how to fuck you either, you wilfully ignorant bastard.  Folks, that silly formula is the reason why half of us claim to be unsatisfied with our sex lives, and the other half are faking their satisfaction.

Yes, I do know that I’m throwing stones in my glass house.  This post is my own attempt at learning something new, because even in my oh so liberal thinking, I still have some ways to go, and then some.  It wasn’t until I met the man who rewrote that script, almost a decade ago, that I began to have sex that wasn’t ’by the (good girl’s) book’; I was writing my own script, acting it out with a man who wanted, nay, insisted that I direct it myself, choosing what, where and how, a man who had thrown out his own script.  I admit, it could be that I’m a bit slow when it comes to sex, hence my poor track record, or it could be that my vagina was insensitive back in the day and therefore impervious to orgasm, who knows, but I’ve slowly gone from an old movie on a 21”, B&W TV, to a 55”, 3D, HD TV, in glorious technicolor.  Hell, these days it’s fucking IMAX is what it is, relative to back then that is.  Yes, I realise that’s not saying much, I’m sure some of you are already fucking IMAX and her seven sisters.    Point is, if there’s actually any, I finally opened up to the possibility of sex being more than just a quick roll in the hay and a come, and with it came a certain amount of freedom.  I don’t have to fake anything any more, because I’m no longer playing a bloody role. 

In an ideal world, we should never have to fake anything, if you don’t or can’t get off, then it’s all good, because the sex is more than that, right?  Unfortunately, finding someone with whom you can have this level of honesty is rare.  Damn near impossible actually, but I live in hope.