 |
|
|
|
|
Summer Sex |
||||
The average length of an erect penis is 5 to 7 inches.
|
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
|
|
|
Illustration:Ben Killen Rosenberg |
|
|
ThaT PorNo booK i'M noT wRitiNg A few months back, my younger son poked his head into my office and casually asked what I was working on. In the same way I'd grab for a towel if someone had interrupted me in the shower, I quickly darkened my computer screen. My desire for privacy only piqued his curiosity. "Come on," he said, "you've been down here with the door closed for weeks. What's the big secret?" The truth was, I'd been collaborating with a Eugene sex therapist on an in-depth study of women's sexual fantasies. As a writer, I was enjoying the challenge of tackling a book. As a woman in my 40s, I was finding it enlightening to talk frankly with other women about their most erotic thoughts. But as a mother, I had no clue how to explain this subject to my teen-aged sons. What kid wants to find out that his mom packs him a lunch, gives him a ride to school, then high tails it home to analyze women's sexual secrets? We weren't just talking about the mechanics of sex here, but that murky, mysterious realm of desire. To answer him honestly, I'd have to get past how people have sex and move on to why. It seemed like an enormous leap. So I lied. Instead of giving him the straight answers he wanted, I spoke in vague, safe generalities. I told him I was "exploring the erotic imagination." But there's no bluffing a teen-ager. While I sputtered and stammered for the right words, he grinned broadly and said, "You mean, you're writing pornography?" I shouldn't have been surprised to hear him conclude that a book about women and sex would have to be trashy. The only women he's heard talking about fantasies are the scantily clad ones who whisper on late-night television commercials for phone sex. They tend to have names like Ginger, wear feather boas or French maid costumes, and look nothing like middle-aged me. I tried to tell him that those sexual stereotypes have almost nothing to do with women's real desires and everything to do with making a buck. Pornography is about selling a product, and it sticks to a limited, fairly predictable script of what sex can be. A phone-sex operator interviewed for the book, for instance, said she can usually tell within the first minute of a conversation which porn formula will take a male caller to climax. But fantasy is free and offers us unlimited possibilities to define pleasure on our own terms. One woman we interviewed said her fantasies are more complicated than "suck-suck-suck, lick-lick-lick, pump-pump-pump." Another described her favorite sexual fantasy (a mélange of chocolate, high-heeled shoes, slow dancing and saxophone solos) as "a beautiful cloth made up of all the threads of my life." That's pretty different from Debbie Does Dallas. Just when I thought we were making some headway in our unusual mother-son conversation, the doorbell rang. "Come on in," my son told the kid slouching in the doorway in baggy pants and baseball cap, "and listen to my mom tell about the porno book she's not writing." Over the following weeks, as friends, other family members and eventually the media caught wind of our fantasy research, I found myself having reruns of this conversation. Plenty of adults, it seems, morph right back into adolescence when the subject turns to women, sex and fantasy. During a theater intermission, I spotted an old friend waiting for me in the lobby. She wasn't smiling. In fact, she looked worried. As I got closer, she pulled me aside and said, "I've been meaning to call you. Is it true?" When I drew a blank, she went on: "You know, the porno book?" This sounded familiar. I assured my friend that just because I was writing about women's sexual thoughts, it didn't mean I was having a midlife crisis, leaving my husband or running off to join an X-rated circus. When she still looked a little worried about me, I told her how much I was learning by hearing about the fantasy lives of ordinary, garden-variety women--women who drive car pools; juggle commitments to jobs, families and gym workouts; and still have the energy to think in some mighty original ways about sex. Although our interview pool included a few women who work in the sex industry, we were just as eager to find out how life experiences have shaped the sexual fantasies of women who have survived breast cancer, outlived their spouses, struggled with their weight or recovered from sexual abuse. "Oh, I get it," my friend said. "A thoughtful book about women and sex. How unusual." She sounded reassured to learn that her fellow PTA mom wasn't a pornographer after all. But when I saw her in the health club parking lot a couple weeks later, she couldn't resist calling out, "Hey, how's that porno book coming along?" A few weeks later, I was attending a wedding reception with my mother. We shared a dinner table with three other women we had just met. The conversation was cordial but a little stiff until one of the women asked me about my work. My mother, a widow in her 60s, perked up and said, "Tell them about your porno book!" While the gasps subsided, I gave my little speech about how sexual fantasy, although often quite explicit, is much more complex and personal than pornography. The women I'd just met scooted their chairs closer and started firing off questions. While the bride and groom waltzed and cut their cake, our table had the most delicious conversation about the many ways sexual fantasies can soothe, amuse, entertain and arouse us. Now that our book's been published, I've gotten more accustomed to working on the edge of respectability. It turns out to be an interesting place, where we get to talk about the subjects normally omitted from polite conversation. And at home, I've gone back to leaving my office door open. My kids might as well find out the facts of life from me: We all think about sex, in fascinating ways, throughout life. Sexual fantasies don't make us perverts or pornographers. They make us more interesting people. In the Garden of Desire: The Intimate World of Women's Sexual Fantasies, by Wendy Maltz and Suzie Boss, was published by Broadway Books in May. |
||||||