Action: A Book About Sex (15 page)

If you have to turn down the first place a person proposes that you two get risqué, that should wave an entire nation’s supply of red flags at you. If you want to continue—maybe your companion is dense? It happens—tell them why you need to go somewhere you feel more comfortable and gauge their reaction: “[X PLACE] is too out of the way/dark/set apart from other spots for me. I’d rather do [X AMAZING-SOUNDING THING] someplace I know is okay.”

If they say, “Of course—where do you want to go?” and honor your request without complaint… well, stay vigilant anyway. But I’d be a lot less worried than if the person protested, told you you were being uptight or to, like, “have some fun” or “just go with it” (ONLY DIRTBAGS STRING THOSE WORDS TOGETHER IN THAT ORDER WHILE PROPOSING SEX), or refused to go elsewhere. In those cases, I’d be out.

Should your intended safe spot be where you live: Exercise serious judgment about whom you bring home—this person now knows where to find you again. Are you okay with that? I usually am, but if I have some inkling that I shouldn’t be, I wait until I can dispel it to invite a person over.

If you
welcome
a new acquaintance to pay a call, do all you can to make that person feel safe. For all they know, your closet is stuffed not with the overflow from your long-suffering hamper, but with your secret scalpel collection, organized in fastidious
order from sharpest to “still terrifyingly sharp.” Keep the lights on unless they ask that you turn them off, and don’t close the door to your room without first locking down the absolute certainty that they’re ready to take part in some private goings-on with you. And PUT AWAY YOUR MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS if you do for some reason have them, you fascinating lunatic.

If you’re the visitor, follow my sister Laura’s lead: Make sure you let a friend in on your whereabouts, including the address, if you don’t know this dreamboat very well. Should something feel funny upon your arrival, text your friend that you’re leaving by X time, then let them know when you make a break for it.

Home security isn’t the last of your concerns—sexual violence can and does happen everywhere. Your gut will tell you if something seems untoward, and I try not to get too plastered to properly hear mine if I’m looking to get down. I never get together with a stranger when I’m too wasted to function otherwise, no exceptions—and anyone who would sleep with you when you’re visibly
throwed
is probably not looking out for your best interests. If you’re on the town with a friend, make them aware of this rule in case you can’t be, via some encounter that goes something like, “YES OF COURSE I’D LIKE ANOTHER LONG ISLAND ICED TEA, FRANK. OH, SORRY—IT’S PETER, RIGHT, RIGHT.” (I have been quoted thusly once or twice in the past, as I am nothing if not an excellent conversationalist in every moment.) When you try to abscond home with Frankenpeter or whomever you’re into, your partner in crime will be there to remind you of the figurative KEEP OUT sign over your door instead.

WITHIN BOUNDS

Even when I haven’t had a hunch that someone means me ill, I am my own warden when it comes to preventing people from unintentionally causing me discomfort—and I try to take care of the people I’m having sex with, too. You might not know what someone’s
history of abuse or trauma might be. It’s imperative that you ask your partner, out loud, if some new act you’re introducing into your physical hangout is okay with them. I don’t expect people to do this for quotidian-seeming above-the-waist touching ALL THE TIME, but, I think the more you ask, the better. It doesn’t have to slacken the fervidity of what’s going down!

It’s impossible to guess what a person might feel skittish about. Something you think is not only totally on the level, but also distinguishes you as an elevated prime sex master, could be fraught with the BAD kind of nostalgia for your partner.

You know how tons of people love it when someone plants one on their neck? When someone tries to kiss me there, it’s possible that I’ll recoil into brain-shivers and moribund thoughts because of some violence that was done to me there in the past. I have to be conscious of that and let the person literally necking with me know about it beforehand. Sound like a bummer? A worse one: NOT doing so, and having the person think that I am an oversensitive freakbag with a dented-up past as I squish myself away from them and into the wall.

For a while, I tried fibbing about why I wore an invisible caution-tape necklace. But when I told someone I was ticklish, I ran the risk of their testing that theory (in the cases they were monsters). Just imagine how well that went down!
Directness is best.
If I think someone is about to go for the throat, I steer them away and say, “Hey, everything you’re doing feels amazing, but I just don’t like being touched there. Try here instead,” and traffic-control their hands or mouth to other vicinities. See how that keeps the pace of the hookup while ALSO making sure I’m not having a meltdown? Pretty sick, right?

When I’m asking others, I take a similar tack: “Would you like it if I did [X THING]?” I say this under my breath, with my eyes evenly connected to the other person’s. Doesn’t that seem like foreplay more than it does a reminder that many of us have had to endure condemnable bodily disrespect that scarred us forever??? Having tested this formulation many times over, I can tell you that it does.

Credit: Annie Mok

Credit: Annie Mok

On that “consent isn’t sexy” tip: If you believe that’s true, YA ACTUALLY DEAD WRONG. I so admire—and am turned on by—people who make a sturdy effort to make sure all’s clear between us. It floods me with trust and warmth, which I usually like to express by tenderly mauling my partner however they like that best. When a person I like halts me at any point, even when it seems rubber-stamp-notarized that we’re heading somewhere specific, and asks, “Is it okay if I [insert here]?” I am then positive that they are a good fuck. This is also true of when they let me in on what’s not okay for them. If a person knows and cares enough about how to be good to their partners, it’s all but guaranteed that equal devotion to making you feel A+ will be present in their efforts.

I make sure to sensually interrogate all my partners about what’s permissible and what isn’t, because I think many people don’t feel comfortable bringing up their pasts on their own. If where and how people can touch you have their borders, you should let someone know what they are before they test them. If you two are close enough to fuck, you’re close enough to tell each other how to do it, like how I offer up that my neck is a NO TRESPASSING area. It’s unwise to expect everyone you sleep with to abide by your sexual bylaws if they don’t know what those are—and you’ll both end up feeling weird and low when the encounter doesn’t work out as you’d hoped. People, whether they’re aware of trauma or not, will still be receptive to wanting to make you feel good about what’s happening. For most of the boning populace, knowing where to touch someone is a common part of getting down.

Hearing different people’s versions of this leaves me more cognizant of future bedmates’ feelings, which is very
party
for all involved. The mimesis of respect, as it spreads, helps us all improve collectively as serial, rampant pervs and devoted couples and clandestine oral-in-the-closet-after-work friends and those of us in good one-night standing until we all end up finding ourselves in a sexual golden age of consent. A girl can dream, right?

In the Act

Now that you are set up in terms of how and where to find a hot person and squire them to the nearest available love shack with both your health and inner ethical compass in tow, let’s try not to blush over the specifics of
how
to establish yourself as a world-class fuck. While each sexual act, as discretely performed by each person, will not look or sound the same even as executed by the same partner later on, there’s one absolute, all-enveloping way for all of us to rule at sex:
Never assume when you can ask instead.

Following this protocol gives you the intelligence you need to find out what your partner likes most (and basically guarantees
consensual seduction
, to coin a phrase that I would rather abstain for the rest of my life than use aloud). Let’s say someone neuron-splicingly enticing is going down on you. (Hello? It’s impolite to leave someone hanging when they’re trying to give you daps—hell yeah get it get it.) As this is happening, they look up at you, and ask, “Do you like it like that?” as if there were a mote of a chance you could refocus your eyes right now. But… you also like another kind of head gesture at which you think they’d excel. When you tell them, they’re eager to prove you right.

Who knew this kind of orgasm was possible?!,
she exclaimed over a hypothetical that doesn’t have to stay one. Oh—normal normalsons who converse maturely and autonomously, instead of dunces operating under the self-congratulatory, self-concerned mindset that they are TOTALLY SLAMMIN’ ROCK ’N’
ROLL SEX-HEROES WHO KNOW PRECISELY HOW TO
WORK THAT BOD
, aka those people who are usually excessively terrible in bed. Everyone’s got their own specifications on what constitutes a rock ’n’ roll sex-hero. (Mine is Debbie Harry of Blondie.)

It is stupidly easy to be the kind of person who
is
, or is in the process of becoming over time, a formidable lay. All you have to do is utter some close approximations of the question “Do you like it?” and sometimes add the word “how” in front of it. You can
very steamily interrogate
them beforehand and kill two birds with one bone: Sexual tension is my favorite way to get high (besides a couple of other ones). I recommend the entrance interview below for this, and because it helps you work toward the real-world application of its answers. It sets the precedent that they’ll do the same for you, too. How does the adage go? Right: Lead by (devastatingly erotic) example.

If someone’s response to “How do you like to be touched?” is the sincere, yet kinda-irksomely opaque classic that goes, “Whatever you do feels good,” or if they’re not down with announcing what they like out loud (and that’s keen, too!), here are some devastatingly erotic examples of how to give the performance of a lifetime until you’ve supplied your own understanding of what that means for you two.