FOREWORD (7 page)

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side of the bargain. She has been a “nice girl,” a good wife.

Her husband has welched on the payoff. Ergo, she is angry at sex, too.

Instead, she will work harder at home, give even more hours to charity, amassing points for being a good mother and member of the community. (Society never gave her points for being sexual.) She may not enjoy community work, she may be boiling inside and have migraines – but at least she is doing what she was raised for. Her husband may find his hand a lousy substitute for a woman, but he doesn’t take masturbation as a sign of his failure as a man. He is angry at her, not at sex.

I remember a summer weekend when I was single. I woke in the night to find my lover was not in bed. I heard noises.

When I went into the living room of his summer cottage, I found him lying in the dark, masturbating. I was filled with uncontrollable rage. We’d had sex that night; in fact, our sex life more than anything else held us together.

He tried to placate my anger. Nothing he said could make me feel better. My fury was not only due to him making me feel a failure as a woman, but also because, by stimulating himself, he was making me unnecessary. In those days, the gift of sex was, I thought, my greatest power. I had so little idea of other values in my identity that I saw his masturbation as a total rejection of me.

Women have the notion that any kind of sex is available to any man at almost any time, even if he has to pay for it. This ignores the fact that some people, like Julius (below), are just too shy to approach a woman under any circumstances. He has to make do with masturbation and fantasy. Even highly sexually active men may at times prefer masturbation. For instance, the very notion of walking across a hotel lobby with someone who is not his wife can give a man the shakes. Fears of discovery, shame, guilt (the wife will happen to be in the lobby and spot him), are just too high a price to endure. Fantasy and masturbation are substituted, a safe route to the desired release.

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The thought that sexually happy people, like married couples, don’t
need
masturbation is puritanical. The italicized word gives it away: only teenagers, maladjusted loners, men in jail, etc.,
have to
masturbate; it’s no more fun than taking medicine. The truth is that masturbation is simply a choice, a variation, another form of sex, not a substitute for it.

Even men who have half a dozen women available to them may choose to masturbate. Because I would never dream of masturbating with my summer lover in the next room – who
needed
it? – I took his behavior as a comment on my inadequacy.

Burt (below) says he masturbates in secret from his wife once or twice a week. Even though their sex life is good, “It would upset her if she thought she wasn’t taking care of me completely.” But what if left over in Burt’s imagination was desire for another woman? How could Mrs. Burt take care of that “completely”? Fantasy and masturbation often give our partners something we cannot. To demand that we be all and everything for someone else is inane.

It might be asked, “Is Burt hurting his wife?” No, he is simply doing something for himself. He has been masturbating all his life; of course he feels free to continue to masturbate now, married or not, good sex life or not. He is no more rejecting his wife than if he occasionally went to a movie alone.

In fact, isn’t Burt willing to encourage his wife in the same pleasure? If she won’t masturbate, it is not his fault. His wife resolutely repeats that
he
is all she needs for good sex. She is not interested in fantasy, not interested in masturbation, “only him.” Is this a genuine expression of erotic desire, or another chain of dependency?

Burt is being made to feel he should be grateful, once again, to a woman for all she has done for him. He knows that if his wife found out about his harmless pleasure, she would not be just hurt, but angry. Must not he be angry, too?

Here is the masculine conflict again: He likes the erotic charge he gets from masturbation, but his wife makes him Nancy Friday

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feel guilty about it. In choosing not to masturbate herself, despite all Burt’s urging, Mrs. Burt is exercising her right, of course. But isn’t it self-defeating? She wants to be all the sex her husband needs. She starts out with a no. A story about how two people lose because of one mindless bit of prejudice.

In later chapters we will see that watching a woman masturbate is one of the greatest of all masculine turn-ons. By breaking the rules, the woman has joined the man in expressing unfettered desire. The gap between love and lust has been bridged, the conflict resolved, and only excitement is left.

JULIUS

I was surprised to find out that women have thoughts or fantasies running through their minds, as I do. I thought my fantasies were abnormal, perverted. This made me feel like some kind of monster. I am thirty-four years old, live alone, and never bad sex with a girl, due to twenty-two years of guilt and being ashamed of myself. Whenever I start a relationship with a girl it always ends with us being good friends.

I figured I had no sex appeal and that women could tell, some way, but I don’t know how, of my fantasies. I feel a lot more relieved knowing that some women have just about the same fantasies that I have.

Around the age of twelve I first learned how to masturbate and it was completely by accident. I was taking a bath and for some reason, I guess to wash it, I put my penis under the faucet, letting the warm water splash over it. It started to grow in size as I played with it and all of a sudden I got this great feeling, but had no idea what it was all about. At that age I read comic books a lot, and happened to buy one of a jungle nature, with a Tarzan-type woman as the heroine. Whenever she was captured by the savage natives, they tied her in some way. This gave me a hard-on and I masturbated. I just knew that there had to be something dirty about something that felt Men In Love

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so good, and especially having to imagine or see a woman tied up. No one ever told me about sex, I had to learn about it from bits and pieces, sometimes with the wrong conclusions.

At the age of sixteen or so I thought I had it all figured out.

To make a girl pregnant you fuck her up the ass. I still wonder how I ever believed that! As the years went by I would buy magazines, like the detective ones with women tied up on the covers. The pornography of the day, around 1960, was very mild, but I finally happened on a book with an ad in it for bondage pictures of women to order by mail. Needless to say I ordered some, and have been buying pictures, magazines, and movies of this sort ever since, but always with a deep sense of guilt. During the last four or five years, bondage has finally come out into the open, and the material on it helps me in my fantasies. These fantasies sound pretty wild, but anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m a very gentle person.

Hearing a knock on my door I open it and standing there is a beautiful woman whom I have never seen before. She tells me that she wants me to fuck her, but only if I tie her up. She comes in and we strip one another, both thinking of what is to come and already getting excited. I get some rope nearby and we both go into the bedroom, and she lies down on the bed.

With each fantasy I tie her differently, but she is very willing to be tied up each and every time, cooperating all the way. I am getting a terrific hard-on as I tie her and she is about to have an orgasm. Finally when both of us can stand it no longer, and depending on how I have tied her, I fuck her, getting and giving the best fuck that any man and woman can have. If I have her tied in such a way that I can’t get into her, I use a vibrator or dildo up her cunt and maybe her ass too, to give her an orgasm. I let her have one orgasm after another while I masturbate watching her roped-up body squirm in sexual ecstasy.

Another fantasy along the same lines is wrestling with a woman while both of us are nude, and she overpowers me and ties me up, or I overpower her and tie her up. Then who-Nancy Friday

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ever is in control stimulates then masturbates or fucks the other.

What I have tried to convey in this letter is the deep sense of guilt that one can conjure up in his mind and build out of all proportion as I did.

BURT

My wife has always been less interested in sex than I.

Could be because her parents were so strict with her. So, right from the beginning, we haven’t had sex as often as I’d like to. I have no trouble coming with her – just seeing her nipples jut against her sweater makes me horny.

Sometimes when I wake up with a hard-on and she’s too sleepy to get interested, I use a favorite situation to help me get off.

I’m walking along a sunny beach by myself, wearing a string bikini that hides nothing. The cool air is blowing in from the water but I like it that way. Suddenly I see a beautiful woman lying face down on a towel behind a sand dune, out of the wind. She’s wearing a very brief two-piece suit with practically nothing but a G-string over her ass.

I walk over and talk to her. When she raises herself up, I realize she has unfastened the top of her suit so she can tan evenly, and I can see all of her beautiful breasts. They’re big with rosy-brown tits surrounded by pink dimpled circles. She smiles at me and moves over to let me share her towel.

I straddle her back with my hands cupping her breasts, squeezing and massaging and pinching her nipples until they’re hard and engorged. Of course my cock is bulging against my leg. I slide under her and mouth her tits, licking and nipping at them until she really starts to wiggle. She slips off my briefs.

Then I roll her over and kneel over her ready to do a sixty-nine, but first I guide my long cock gently into her open mouth. It’s really big and pulsing and alive with excitement.

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She licks its throbbing purple end and I’m almost ready to spill my load. But I hold off while I slide my lips down her belly and untie her G-string. I bury my face in her soft curly bush. I can smell her cunt and can hardly wait to get into it, but first I let her take my hard cock in her little hands and pull it deep inside her mouth where she slides it up and down, moving the skin, while her nails rake and squeeze my balls.

I’m nearly crazy by that time, wanting her.

Finally, I get into her cunt and wow! it’s everything I hoped for – all juicy and slippery. I spread her legs as far apart as they’ll go and just look at that beautiful pink pussy before I come down onto it with my mouth. I reach out my tongue to lick around the soft lips and slide it in and out of her private opening. I kiss her little clit and nip at it while she squirms and wiggles her ass around under me. Then I really suck at her and I feel all hell break loose when my load comes off in her mouth and she heaves her ass up off the ground and practically drowns me with her sweet juice.

Finally, after sucking and licking her up, I turn back and cuddle her in my arms and we go to sleep with the sun drying the sweat on our bodies.

Often I don’t get past the part where she starts licking my cock before I come, but I really like to go all the way through. It’s like rockets going off!

My wife and I make it together real good, but she does have some hang-ups about sex. She was reared with the idea she should “save it for your husband.” When I met her, she almost wiped out the first time I stroked her clitoris and she had an orgasm. We gradually worked into a good relationship although she is still unable to masturbate. I masturbate about once or twice a week in the shower – I don’t think she knows it. I think it would upset her if she thought she wasn’t taking care of me completely.

Fantasy always helps me enjoy sex more and to enjoy masturbation. My wife says she doesn’t need fantasy – that I am all she needs for good sex (notice that this still is part of the idea “save it for your husband”). In fact, she hardly Nancy Friday

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glanced at your two books. She actually does use fantasy because after reading a porno book on sex, she will be as hot as hell.

3

Sharing and Living

Out Fantasies

Perhaps the greatest misconception about sexual fantasies is that they are suppressed wishes. This confusion between thought and deed is evident in Leon’s first words (below). He says he fears he might be “perverted” in actuality because he
imagined
having a homosexual experience and sharing his wife with another man. “I think, therefore I am” may have been true fof Descartes; it is not for fantasy.

Out of this confusion is born the urge to share our fantasies with our lovers. “Since this is how I really am, you should know, and I’d feel better if you knew.” The subse-quent step, of course, is to put these “suppressed wishes” into action. After all, once you’ve taken the plunge and shared the fantasy in words, isn’t it cowardly or puritanical not to experience what you “really” always wanted? No.

An intense inner life is a form of power, a way of defining identity, keeping a place where you live. Some fantasies are best kept forever to yourself. Others? Well, presumably you know your lover well; you know how much he/she wants to hear about what goes on in your secret mind. Even more caution should be taken in deciding which fantasies might well be lived out.

First of all, you have to decide why you want to tell your fantasy. It could simply be for a heightened sexual experience. However, the desire often contains the hope of reversing old hurts. The conflict with parents was how to have a sexual life while retaining their love. The solution was to keep the erotic self hidden. In reaction, now we want to say to our mate, “If you love me, you will accept these bizarre erotic ideas of mine, and not get hurt or angry or stop loving me.”

There is a kind of child’s blackmail here. Whether your partner can or cannot accept your fantasies has nothing to do Nancy Friday

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with love. To ask it in the name of love is a throwback to old, infantile desires for symbiosis; the need to feel that mother knows everything you are thinking,
and it is all right.