How to Be a Person (10 page)

How to Have Sex With a Woman If You’re a Woman

Masturbate. A lot. Try different positions, different toys, different orifices (and beyond). Try for different types of orgasms—don’t just go for a direct hit (unless you only have five minutes in a public bathroom). Indulge yourself; foreplay isn’t just for when other people are around. Play with your fantasies, kinks, and desires. Read up on female sexuality and erotica. Confidence is key when it comes to sex—and the more you try out, the more you will know what works for you, and the less timid you’ll be about your own and other people’s bodies. Plus, that post-orgasm glow looks really good on you.

Communicate. A lot. Everyone’s bodies (and brains) are different, even when you are working with similar parts. Rid yourself of preconceived notions about what ladies do with lady-parts. You don’t have to be romantic and slow. Don’t be afraid to fuck. Ask for and take what you want (remembering to make sure everyone involved is on board, of course). Embrace the fluidity that female sexuality has to offer, and play with all the tools you were given and the ones you’ve bought.

Your hands are your primary tools, so get ready to get arm-deep. Keep your nails trimmed, get latex/latex-free gloves, and lube. With patience and lots of talking, you can look forward to fisting, G-spot orgasms, and ejaculating. Strap-ons can also be powerful and exciting. Psychic dick is an amazing thing to experience—so if you
are game, it’s worth investing in. (Any previously acquired cock-sucking skills can still come in handy when working with silicone.) And don’t neglect your classic oral-sex techniques.

5. HOW TO SLEEP WITH YOUR PROFESSOR

BY PROFESSOR X

E
arly in my teaching career, I found a note slipped under my office door: “You’re the sexiest professor on campus and if you can figure out who I am then you can have me.” The note was more confusing than thrilling, especially since it was from a woman and I’m gay. Actually, I was a little threatened by the note—even as a misidentified object of desire. Universities have gotten more puritan and corporate in the past 20 years, and I had just watched a dean get dragged through the spectacle of publicly defending himself against charges of mishandling sexual harassment complaints. He was finally forced to resign.

I pondered the note for a day before I took it to the chair of the
department. He quickly read it, then with a slow grin reached into a desk drawer and pulled out one of those clunky metal stamping machines that records the date and stamped the note “Received.” He knew I was gay, and his crazy, Kafkaesque gesture was a good joke that made me relax.

Universities have changed a lot, but there are still premodern aspects, like the classroom autonomy professors often enjoy and sometimes abuse. Deans can say what they want and have certain weapons in their arsenal, but a tenured professor usually has a remarkable degree of freedom in the classroom. The best professors care about what they are teaching and do give a damn whether or not students learn. The best teachers have an unschooled and unteachable talent to persuade and lead students toward one truth or another. Teaching is a form of seduction. At the same time, universities and colleges just happen to be hotbeds of sexual exploration and discovery for young men and women recently released from parental supervision. Bedding a professor is high on the student trophy list. Students are young, smooth, lean, and sometimes available—a high temptation for some colleagues. It can get messy.

Crazy rumors circulated for years, with sorority girls claiming to have slept with me or definitively knowing a girl who had. When I started getting unsolicited invitations and anonymous notes from young men, I was less amused. If colleagues heard that I was rumored to be fooling around with a young woman, they wouldn’t take it seriously, but an athletic, handsome, creative, and sexy man—that’s another story. I remember discussing one particularly
persistent brilliant and sexy male student with a doctor friend, who told me that physicians often negotiate a similar blurred zone of attraction, authority, and ethics. He had one simple principle: “Never, never, never sleep with anyone crazier than you.”

The student in question wasn’t clinically crazy, but he was in one of those frenzies that Alcibiades describes in Plato’s
Symposium
. He was brilliant, in love with somebody he thought was smarter than he was, and eager to get into bed with him. He was a little crazed. It would have been easy for me to sleep with him, but probably stupid: He was unpredictable and dramatic. Over the course of a semester, I negotiated my escape from his advances. He finally graduated and moved to Manhattan, where he became a painter and gay activist. (I ran into him one day near the New York Public Library; we had a nice exchange, and he encouraged me to “get back in touch.”)

Students like to flirt with professors, especially during office hours. It’s harmless, insincere, and flattering to those of us who have annual physicals. But when students want attention, I often turn a blind eye. I have a reputation for being a misanthrope when it comes to student social events and sit with a quasi scowl until I excuse myself from the proceedings. I met my last serious challenge at a department dinner for majors, and even though he was interested in me, I was clueless. He signed up for a seminar I was teaching, and other professors who knew that the student was gay asked what I thought of him. They were all pretty convinced he was the smartest student in the department, and he was awkwardly
gay in the most adorable way. I started to warm up, pay attention, and feel some sympathy for him. We began an unspoken ritual where he would show up at my office before class and ask me if I wanted a cup of coffee. We would then walk to the café together, chat about nothing, and then walk to class together. I could tell he was nervous, and I thought that made him even more adorable. We slowly graduated to the occasional lunch, and I thought our conversations were more like mentoring sessions—the sympathetic gay professor coaching the young student in queer matters.

Then one day he sprung it on me: He couldn’t go with me and a group of students on an overnight trip because it would just be too difficult; his interests in me were not just academic. I was impressed with how direct and honest he was, and I told him I understood but that nothing could happen between us, and I wasn’t interested in him anyway because he was too young and I didn’t want to settle down. He took it well, but I sensed it was tough on him. About a month later, he invited me to lunch and asked if I was sure I wasn’t interested in having a relationship. It was painful, and my advice to him at the time was to hang out with more gay people; I told him (thinking back to my own experience in the ’80s) to experiment and shop around, have more experience before he thought about settling into a relationship.

Nice advice, especially for the 1980s, but graduation came, he became legal, and I was surprised, truly, to realize that one needs to be careful about these things.
Love
was happening. It is still happening several years later. There is an age difference, to be
sure, but no power or authority issues. He seduced me, but now we’re partners.

Teachers and students have been falling in love forever. If you’re just looking to bed your professor, you might have a good shot, but remember that it could easily get messy and it might also be terrifying for him—unless you want to ruin his career, you need to take your diploma before you take off your clothes. If you’re a professor, remember how awkward it will feel when you walk across campus and see that guy (now clothed) with his schoolmates, talking and turning their heads to look at you. A student might be easy and tempting, but he could also develop a very painful crush on you, and you need to be responsible for the collateral damage. The bottom line is this: Think, respect each other, don’t use stupid clichéd excuses, and don’t fuck anyone crazier than you. Oh, and if you’re in graduate school, all bets are off.

Professor X is an actual professor
.

6. SAVAGE LOVE, COLLEGE EDITION

A Collection of DAN SAVAGE’s Best Advice About Drunkenly Hitting on Roommates, Having Forced Sex with an Ex in a Parking Lot, the Right Way to Explore Polyamory, the Wrong Way to Deal with Annoying Parents, and More

So I Have This Roommate

A FEW NIGHTS AGO
,
I got drunk and knocked on my roommate’s door and confessed my attraction to him while he was lying in bed in nothing more than his skivvies. And then I asked him if I could sleep in his room because our other roommate—whose bedroom is
directly above mine—was having sex so loudly that I couldn’t sleep. Which was true, but it clearly didn’t make the bed of the roommate I was drunkenly confessing to the appropriate alternative. Not being able to sleep on work nights is sometimes a real problem, but one to be addressed with her, not used as drunken fodder to get into someone else’s bed
.

I feel pathetic and embarrassed for having thrown myself at my roommate and completely freaked out that I got wasted enough to do something I have daydreamed about but wouldn’t do sober. But much more importantly, I think my behavior did not reflect active consent, trashed my roommate’s boundaries, and was generally creepy—all characteristics of sexual assaulters
.

I am biologically female, and if the situation were reversed, I would commit a huge double standard because I would back any woman who did not feel safe continuing to live with a dude who did what I did. I feel like I should be held accountable and move out immediately, though my housemate has told me he doesn’t feel threatened and that I should stay
.

Help. I feel like a total piece of shit for having done this and can’t stop wondering …

Am I A Sexual Predator?

Calm the fuck down—and no more women’s studies classes for you, okay? I think you’ve had quite enough, and I’m cutting you off.

Look, AIASP, you didn’t assault anyone, you’re not a predator, you shouldn’t have to move out. You made a drunken,
ill-advised-in-retrospect pass at a roommate. If that makes someone a “sexual predator,” AIASP then we’d better build walls around our better universities and start calling ’em all penitentiaries.

As for that double standard: In light of your recent experience—you made a drunken pass at someone who wasn’t interested in you—you might want to revisit the assumptions you’ve made about men who make passes, drunken and otherwise, at women who aren’t interested in them. Making a pass is not grounds for eviction or conviction. It’s how a person makes a pass (did you pounce or did you ask?) and how a person reacts if the pass is rebuffed (did you graciously take no for an answer or were you a complete asshole about it?) that matters.

Of course, men’s passes at women—roommates and otherwise—exist in a context of male sexual violence. So it’s understandable that a woman might feel uncomfortable living with a dude who did what you did. But if the dude wasn’t a creep about it and graciously took no for an answer (if the answer was no), perhaps he should be judged as an individual and not as someone who bears responsibility for the collective crimes committed by members of his sex throughout history.

And even if you were an asshole about that no, AIASP, that still wouldn’t make you a sexual predator. You’re only a sexual predator—or guilty of sexual assault—if you refuse to take no for an answer and force yourself on someone. (Or if you go after someone who is incapable of granting consent.) You didn’t force yourself on anyone. All you’re guilty of, AIASP, is asking someone whom you
wanted to fuck if he wanted to fuck you. It’s a legit question, and no one gets fucked without asking it.

And that simple question doesn’t magically become sexual assault or harassment when the answer is no.

I’M HERPES-FREE
,
but I found out today that my roommate has contracted it. He has a sore but won’t see a doctor about it because he says he’s embarrassed. We share the same bathroom, so I knew I would have to be diligent about that. But now I am freaking out: Not long after he shared this information, my 7-month-old puppy runs into his room and proceeds to cover my roommate’s face in kisses. I’ve called the vet and my medical provider, and while they both agree that my pup cannot contract the STD, they cannot rule out the pup passing the infection on to me. Please advise. I would like to know how to best handle this situation
.