Woman on Fire (32 page)

Role-play is such a fun way to play sexually—and it's a way to ensure that sex doesn't become rote. Role-play is a way to not take rejection so personally. Put on a role and it frees you up. Taking on a persona allows you to tap into parts of yourself that you might not have experienced before. You become transformed by an outfit and ready to be bold. I've seen that transformation many times: a person can't tap into something in real time, but when they take on a role, they turn into that person and a whole new side of them comes out. It's why we love Halloween so much and why cross-dressing is the most common Halloween costume. People want a chance to be something or someone different for a few hours.

There are rules of engagement within a role-play. You have parameters for who you need to be or what would be in character. You can do things when in role that would feel more risky as yourself. Some people have special props they use when in role. A particular pair of boots or stilettos. A sex toy. A hat or piece of jewelry they wear. The skirt they only break out for schoolgirl scenes. It's fun to
have the special Pavlovian prop that calls attention to the role you are stepping into, helping you to leave behind the outside world and go into the place of discovery in your playground.

Sex that is based in play does not want a particular outcome; rather, it is important purely for the act itself. You are showing up and allowing yourself to move with erotic energy, to create something, to let go.

Opening up to play allows you to open up to developing skill. If you learn to allow yourself to play and give yourself the freedom to move and open up to imagination, you hone in on what you want to be able to practice so that you can, in turn, learn to do it well. You hit on something really fun and you want to do it again. And again. And again. And soon you get better and better at it. It becomes a skill and a proclivity that sticks.

Sex is one of the greatest playgrounds adults have. If we embrace play, we can embrace playing with new skills and trying on new things. Play is trying something new just because. How could you tap into your playful side and invite new experiences?

I made my students repeat aloud “Sex is a skill” as I would begin the sexuality module in my college courses, their collective voices paired with uncomfortable grins. I am always amazed at how many people do not realize that, yes,
sex requires skills
! Contrary to unfounded popular myth, sex does not come naturally. Nothing does, except maybe involuntary breathing. When we come into this world, we don't know how to do anything—not even eat. We have
breast-feeding consultants to teach us that fundamental skill. Babies need to learn how to take their mothers' breast into their mouths and suckle, and new moms need to learn how to teach them!

When we are infants, we don't know how to drive a car, play Frisbee or soccer, cook a turkey, dress ourselves with style, or use an iPhone, even though Apple insists that it's intuitive. All of these things must be learned. And so must sex. Yet we have all these romantic notions that somehow sex is natural, it “just happens,” and it's perfect with “the one you love,” right?

I teach people the skills of sex and relationships. People love to argue about this. Invariably, someone will say, “Well, sex is instinctual. We are guided by our sexual instincts and we just know what to do.” My bullshit meter spikes. We
have
instincts, yes. Instincts are at work. But sex is not instinctual. Quite the contrary. It is learned—we learn how to do it, what's appropriate, what's expected, what makes it pleasurable, and we act based on messages that are instilled about sex from the time we are born.

This is why most people's first sexual experience is typically not a super-positive one. It tends to be fumbly, awkward, and rarely involves mutual orgasm. Imagine if you had never played soccer but you knew a little bit about it, yet you'd never really seen anyone play. When you “came of age” you were thrown out onto a soccer field with a ball and some other players and told to play! What do you imagine would happen? You might know to kick the ball when it comes to you. You'd probably get bonked in the head a time or two and be confused about which way to run. You wouldn't know how to interact with the other players. You'd have no rules of engagement. At best, you'd make it out with all your bones intact, but you sure wouldn't play a great game of soccer. You might have fun, but you'd most definitely have a lot of anxiety about not knowing the game you were playing.

That's how sex goes for people when they've got no training, education, or knowledge about what they are doing. This is how many
people experience their first sexual experience. They have no clue what to do. They have some feelings inside they are working with. We do feel desires, attraction, and instincts about what we want. We know if something feels good or doesn't feel good. But we don't necessarily know how to explain what we want, make something better, or extend an orgasm. We don't know how to have safe sex or much about our options for sex. We might know very little about how the other person feels. We set out in the dark on a sexual expedition without a map.

Why is it that we leave people to figure out on their own one of the most important, sacred parts of their life? We have so many questions about sexuality and typically have no idea where to get them answered. And if we did, we would have to know how to ask. And most people never learn that either. What a mess!

We have a powerful cultural myth that in sex we should just know what to do. That if we love a person, the sexual part will just fall into place. How many virgin brides approach their wedding night with terror because they have no idea what to expect or what they will be required to do? So many cultures do not even support virgin brides and grooms-to-be to discuss consummation prior. A little pre-negotiation would go a long way for a playful wedding night.

Most of us experience awkward, unsexy, muffed early forays into sexual pleasuring with a partner. I certainly did. In a culture like ours, where we place so little emphasis on teaching sex education, we are all left to fumble about and try to figure it out on our own. Sometimes we have a happy accident and learn something new, and pleasures, even orgasms, happen. Cheers for happy accidents! That is play at work. But by and large, if we don't take some time to learn and perfect the skills of sex and relationships, the quality of our sexual lives will reflect that lack of emphasis.

My first significant boyfriend taught me so much about how to love, how to be in relationship. He was an extraordinary teacher, and I was blessed to learn from such a loving, present sexual partner
when I was still in high school. I clearly remember my long, painstaking path to learning to orgasm. He did his very best, he brought enthusiasm and A+ willingness to try. But I had to learn my own body and what I liked and be able to convey it to him. Women's bodies can be complicated. There is a lot to learn—for yourself and your lovers. You can't expect someone else to just know what to do. It's not instinctual, it's not obvious, and they are not mind readers. I think most guys who care about their female partners care about their pleasure and want to do their best but often don't know where to begin. You've got to develop your own skills—not just the
Cosmo
kind: “How to give a great blow job” or “How to blow his mind in bed” . . . I'm talking the skills of your own body's pleasure. How to get yourself off like a rock star. Then you can begin to teach your lovers and improve your experience of sex exponentially.

What does it take to be good at something? Practice, of course! All skills require practice to become good at them, and sex is no different. So since most of us had no sex education or limited education that focused mainly on prevention of unwanted consequences, we have to roll up our adult sleeves and do the work to learn the language of erotic pleasure. When you take time to develop your sexual skills—everything from sexual techniques, breathing and breathwork, anatomy, sexual functioning, communication, how to create deeper intimacy and relationships, develop awareness of desires, or how to be playful—you reap the rewards of a more satisfying sexual life, bigger orgasms, and deeper sexual connection and intimacy. What sexually active person wouldn't want that?

I remember the lover I had a long-distance relationship with who taught me how to talk dirty. I got master's-level practice in our five- and six-hour marathon phone calls long before Skype existed.
Then I got into kink, and there was an endless collection of skills to learn that could make my kinky desires possible. I continue to learn new things all the time. I'm not even close to complete. I learn them by playing with them, seeing what is fun, and then continuing to explore the things that light me up, the places I want to keep visiting.

Imagine if we grew up going to school and each day as we went to language, math, and science classes, we also went to life skills class, where we learned real skills and information that would help us to have meaningful intimate relationships, take care of our health and body, make conscious, healthy decisions, and live fulfilling sexual lives. Imagine! How different our lives would be.

Sadly, our culture does not treat our sexual life as something worthy of learning and teaching about. We are still stuck in so many taboos about sex that we will let our children watch people be violently murdered yet we will cover their eyes when the sex scene comes on. This is ludicrous given the importance of our relationships, our experience of our bodies, and our pursuit of pleasure. That pursuit is so essential that the founders of the United States put it into the first drafts of our Constitution. So it's up to each individual to develop sexual and relationship skills that will assist us to live the life we want to live. Yet most people
never
do.

The vast majority of adults will never take a sexuality class, read a meaningful sexuality book, or work with a sex coach or therapist. Just the fact that you are reading this book puts you way ahead of most people.

Sam is a professor in her forties who identifies as queer and is into BDSM play. She started attending classes I taught in New York City, and for four years in a row she came to my annual “Manifesting
the Sexual Life You Want New Year's Ritual.” I distinctly remember the year she had began her “Prioritize Sex and Play Project” and I asked the group a series of questions to assess where they were. One question was whether they currently had as much sex as they wanted in their life. Sam was the only person who stood for that one, with cheers and awe from others in the room full of people. She had taken an intentional approach to creating more play and sexy fun in her life when she realized she'd gotten into a relationship where she was unhappy sexually and had lost her own sexual drive and energy. She took matters into her hands and started to do something about it. Each year at the ritual, we got an update about how it was going. Here is how she approached it:

I had always thought of myself as a very sexual person, as a sex-positive person, as sexually adventurous. Yet my life did not reflect that. It started to bug me because it messed with my identity, with my sense of myself. In hindsight I do think it was in part the
play
that I missed. As I reflected on my life I decided that the reason I did not feel sexual was because my life was not sexy! So I decided I needed to start putting myself in sex-positive and BDSM or ‘play' environments. I started announcing to close friends and random people at parties that I had embarked on a “prioritize sex and play project.”

Sam involved her partner, who was trans* and identified as queer.

First off, let me say that I told my partner about the project from the outset and asked for his support. One of the things that made him fall in love with me was my sexual adventurousness and openness and the way I brought that to our relationship, so I think he knew that me not even feeling sexual was indeed something worthy of addressing. Few people who know this part of me currently would believe that I ever had a period of not feeling sexual—it wasn't just
that I wasn't acting on my sexual feelings, I just really felt nothing in this area, barely even masturbated.

I wanted spaces to explore and play with people. I started to pursue opportunities that presented themselves. Going to workshops allowed me to see kinky folks I hadn't seen in years and meet new people. I remembered how much it energizes me to be the one spurring on provocative conversations. Well, something began to shift during the Prioritize Sex and Play Project! One, I signed myself up to top a friend of a friend. We negotiated over steamy e-mails for probably close to a month and then somehow I agreed to have our first date at one of the largest women's play parties our city had seen in a while. Really? Wow. Yes.

Really, that night I was topping myself! What if I wasn't using the cane correctly? What if it wasn't hot? What if I couldn't read my bottom? Somehow I went for it—and really I thought I was going to
die
and made my friend attending the party swear upside down and sideways not to watch. I survived. I jerked off thinking about it afterward, and then I kept sending steamy e-mails and signing myself up for another date of topping and another, and another, and at some point I just hit my
groove
. It was definitely faking it till you make it. In the beginning it was a little like taking vitamins. I just trusted it would be good for me some way. And it was interesting. And fun. And sometimes when I'd check later I'd discovered that my cunt was
soaking
wet.

Seven years later, and let me tell you I have been having the time of my life sexually! Wow. Today I just feel so
alive
in this area. I have sexual connections of various sorts, and this is a thriving part of my life. It feeds my work and everything else I do. For years I sat frozen in the face of desperately wanting the group play I saw at parties and even at the prospect of having threesomes like those I had organized several times in college. After literally wanting my whole life (it seemed) to be a part of an actual orgy or those group gang-up and spank someone scenes I had witnessed, I finally got to
be a part of some group fun! One of the things that emerged is that now I am solidly a switch. In my late twenties' exploration I was decidedly a bottom. And I have wholeheartedly embraced my sexual-initiator and -instigator side. I have become very comfortable with initiating and with topping as well.