Read My Secret Garden (Women Sexual Fantasies) Online
Authors: Nancy Friday
And then, on top of everything, the other people begin calling to us, I can even hear Phil’s voice calling to me to come in to dinner. I don’t know what would be worse at this point…if they were to find us or if he were to stop before I’d finished. For an instant I hang there in space, totally dependent on this unknown man; I couldn’t move if Phil were to walk straight toward me, which he is just about to do. But then, thank goodness, everything happens at once: Just as Phil is about to be close enough to see the expression on my face, the entire garden party, all the other people, turn as a body to follow our hostess in to dinner, and at that moment, this man’s bubbles turn into the most incredible jet, ejaculation, and I climax. I suppose I almost drown the poor man. [Interview]
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ROOM NUMBER TWO:
THE AUDIENCE
We spend most of our fucking lives trying to be alone, trying to improve the privacy of our fucking with sound-proofed bedroom walls, No-Lite window blinds, and locked doors. We race miles with our lovers to "get away from everyone," and if sexual desire overcomes us at a crowded party or in a restaurant, the first impulse is to get out of there and be alone before Act One.
That is reality, and with no moral judgment intended, it’s probably just as well.
But fantasy goes in the opposite direction: more often than not there are other people present. I’m not talking about orgy fantasies. They exist too, but often the other people in fantasies don’t join in, in fact their presence isn’t meant to imply even the possibility of an orgy. A fantasizer will indeed go out of her way to point out that the other people aren’t really watching her and what she’s doing with the six baldheaded waiters. The audience is simply there. Doing what? Perhaps lending their tacit approval simply by their presence. ("It’s okay to fuck.") Or by adding a touch of suspense with the implication that at any minute they
could
turn, and see what’s going on: "My God, look at that, Harry and Isobel are having it off and her husband’s in the next room!" (Alternatively, the point of the audience’s surprise could be that Harry and Isobel are not in the accepted missionary position, or that they have a second man or a dog in the act, whatever it is that makes the scene particularly exciting to the fantasizer, and so particularly "loaded" when discovered by the audience.) The
possibility
of being seen, watched, discovered, can be more exciting than the actual presence of an audience.
Anyone who has ever fucked in the warm sunlight of a (seemingly) secluded beach, or within earshot but out of sight of 108
others, must admit the added excitement which the imminence of an audience brings to an already fine fuck…or she’s a liar.
But not all fantasy audiences are passive bystanders, inoperative in the fantasy story line. Some creative women give their fantasy audiences the active, participating role of a real audience they have them applaud, Oh! and Ah!, and she, lucky lady, becomes not only the Sarah Bernhardt of Fucking, but also the Fellini of Fantasy, controlling both her own performance and that of the audience, her critics, pacing the one against the other so that her fantasy audience reinforces her fantasy performance, which in turn heightens the ebb and flow of her very real fucking.
Complicated? Read Caroline’s fantasy below, keeping in mind the newspaper reports of what happened to some of the members of the cast of
Oh, Calcutta!:
they became so dependent on the excitement the audience brought to their performance in the theater, they were unable to perform sexually without an audience back home.
Caroline
I met Caroline, a young actress, in London through, mutual friends at a party. Right off, she seemed to me to lack that narcissistic self-involvement that I had always thought of as the curse and/or blessing necessary to achieve theatrical prominence.
Therefore, I was not surprised that I had never heard her name, although she said she was currently playing in a hit in the West End.
Mostly we talked about Italy, and she told me briefly about the village where she and a lover had spent six months "trying out the idea of being married." They had decided against it. She was enthusiastic to hear about my years in Rome, and my own ideas on marriage.
A few nights later, I saw Caroline’s name on a theater poster on Shaftesbury Avenue, and on impulse bought seats for that 109
night. Her role required her to spend the entire evening onstage almost totally nude, and the first curtain fell on a protracted, tumultuous scene in which she was required to have (just barely simulated?) sexual intercourse on stage, front and center. The audience loved it, and her. It made me curious about a girl who was so reticent to speak about herself privately, but was so uninhibited otherwise as to be able to perform this role on stage.
We went backstage afterward, and a group of us went on to dinner, during which the subject of this book came up. She told me she would like to contribute. Hers wasn’t a typical fantasy, she said, but I might find it interesting.
Ever since I had to do this love scene in the play you saw – it’s been running now for six months – I’ve needed to feel that the same audience is there when I’m making love at home or anywhere else offstage. I suppose having to be, or at least to appear to be, so excited on the stage every night in front of so many people has really affected me. At first I tried to tell myself that it was just another role…you have to act so many emotions in the theater, and there’s all that "Method" business of feeling yourself into the part …. But as I said, in the beginning I tried to keep a little "distance" between the personal
me
, and me, the actress, making love in front of all those people.
But I couldn’t. As I got more and more used to the role, more comfortable in it, I found that instead of dreading the moment when I had to begin, I was looking forward to it. My nipples would become tight and erect. It was a surprisingly seductive feeling, one I enjoyed. I began wearing tighter and tighter blouses, filmier ones, more see-through, so that the audience could see my excitement, could see the excitement I felt right down – or up – to my nipples. I needed the audience’s excitement for my own…a form of complicity was set up between them and me, a sexual conspiracy which heightened my ability, or rather, desire to play the part.
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The silence, the tension in the theater during the scene communicates itself through the house – from me to them, from them to me – and at the end of the night’s performance, when they clap and call me back for curtain call after curtain call, I feel it’s not only the actress they’re applauding, but me, Caroline, the woman, too. Acting often tends to split you off from yourself, and you don’t know who you are. But in this role, the audience’s applause – their approval – somehow reunites the actress in me with the private self in me. Now when I make love privately, I sometimes think, Oh, what’s the use… it’s all so dull and unstimulating. And there’s this feeling of anxiety. It’s as if I’m not sure I’m doing it well, you see, no matter what the man says.
Before this play, I didn’t need fantasies. Or that’s what I would have told you six months ago. I realize now that somewhere in the back of my mind I’d always had someone watching while I made love: me. This split between the me who is in the act, actually making love, and the me who is watching, this split is healed by the audience taking over the role of watcher and applauding me for my efforts. I can’t tell you the feeling of satisfaction it gives me.
I remember the first time we did the love scene before an audience. The rehearsals had naturally been private, and I had been able to be professionally cool and clinical about it. But on opening night I was very nervous and apprehensive, I imagine because I was afraid that they would think I was not very good, or wouldn’t give me their approval by becoming excited themselves…that they would just think the scene odd, and me very strange for being in it. But when they applauded …
Now I need an audience; without it, there’s just no excitement.
So even if I’m with the man I’m in love with, somehow in my mind I twist his face around so that it’s the face of the actor I’m in the play with. The funny thing is, I don’t even
like
the actor.
Maybe that makes it even more exciting for me, I don’t know. I haven’t really figured this out. But I think it’s because behind 111
him, behind his back is the audience, and they’re applauding him for making love to me and applauding me for responding to him in such a loving way. And as my own excitement mounts and mounts, the applause gets louder arid loud
er…[Taped
interview]
Elspeth
As I am sure most women do, I have had the usual exhibition-type fantasies. I especially enjoy the thought of being watched by someone who is not aware that I know he is watching me. Or I imagine that I am making love to someone, perhaps a close friend of the family, and my husband comes in and watches us, as prearranged between my husband and myself without the knowledge of the other man. It would be equally intriguing to walk in and catch my husband with another woman, also by prearrangement. I don’t think about this with my husband; I only think about it for excitement. [Letter]
Mary Jo
In the first sexual fantasy that I can remember, I thought of myself undressing while a boy I liked watched me. That became one of my most common fantasies when I was a teen-age girl.
[Letter]
Melanie
I am twenty-five years old and have been happily married for four years. My earliest memories of sexual sensation go back to when I was about three years old. I remember after my parents put me to bed that I would take my clothes off. I enjoyed being nude. Then I would put them back on. That is all I can remember; the exciting feelings of my own nude body.
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My fantasies during masturbation are generally of my old boy friends. I never had intercourse with any of them, but when I masturbate I wonder what it would be like. Often, during the fantasy, my husband watches. He doesn’t do anything, he simply is there.
My fantasies during sex with my husband are quite different.
Mostly my thoughts are on what we are doing, although sometimes mentally I take it out of the bedroom and imagine we are on a quiet beach, quite nude, or lying in an open field with green grass all around us. I often think of us skinny dipping on a lonely beach. The idea of nudity, of the two of us being nude outdoors, excites me.
I have no desire to tell my husband of my fantasies, of the excitement it would give me for the two of us to be nude outside the privacy of our bedroom. I think speaking them out loud would definitely lessen their effectiveness. [Letter]
Celeste
Celeste is a pretty, very bright-faced, red-cheeked blonde in her early thirties. She had been a legal secretary when she met Charlie, and had liked the work, but gave it up without a qualm when Charlie asked her to when they got married. They’ve been married twelve years. Today they live in a comfortable suburban home and have two children. Celeste works for the League of Women Voters and is an officer in the local PTA.
She describes their sex life as "very satisfactory."
We still enjoy making love at unusual times, like when we’re already late for a party, or an impromptu session on the living room rug, the kitchen table, etc …. time we can steal while the kids are away at a Boy Scout meeting or football game. I’d say we have sex most nights of the week, even when Charlie’s so tired he just comes and falls asleep while he’s still on top and inside me.
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But something different happened the other evening when Charlie got home early and we thought we could steal some time before the kids got back. Suddenly we were interrupted – we were in the living room – by the unexpected arrival of our next-door neighbor. I just had time to pull my skirt down before Charlie let him in. He only stayed five or ten minutes, but all the time he was here, I knew something was up. I couldn’t help noticing the way this guy kept fidgeting…and then I noticed this big bulge in the front of his trousers while he was talking to me.
It was only after he’d left that I realized that in my haste I’d forgot to put my tights back on; all during our talk, my short skirt had ridden up, leaving me totally exposed to the man. For a few minutes I was mortified, absolutely embarrassed. Then the shock wore off and I was left with this odd feeling of excitement, which is still with me when I think about it, although I consider our neighbor about as exciting as a graham cracker.
I could hardly wait for us to get to bed that night. It was one of the most exciting sessions that I’d ever had. But I couldn’t sleep, I really couldn’t, until I’d told Charlie what had got me so aroused. I expected it would make him angry, just as I thought it would make me angry, too. But the idea that another man had been’ staring at the quim he had just enjoyed excited Charlie so much, he put out his cigarette and got on top of me again. He didn’t wait the usual time it takes him on those nights we do it more than once. He wasn’t in me more than a few seconds before he came again, almost like an explosion. It’s as though this idea has given our sex lives a whole new dimension. Now when we’re in bed together it’s almost become a necessity for us.
Instead of Charlie whispering things into my ear (that really didn’t excite him, they were more or less routine words to him, but he knew they excited me), I tell him of imaginary experiences. For instance, that I’m on one of those stirrup tables that gynecologists have, where they spread your legs and look deep into you. But the table is in the middle of the ring, in 114
Madison Square Garden, and it’s mounted on a revolving platform. Thousands of men have paid fifty or a hundred dollars each for tickets, and the ushers are selling binoculars so they can get a better view. I tell Charlie that the table is slowly turning around and around, with the bright lights illuminating me, and the men in the seats all around begin pushing forward, jumping out of their seats, the whole giant mob wild with excitement to see, thousands and thousands of men in a circle all around me, all wild with excitement to see me better, to fuck me, to get deep inside those wet, red lips they can see so plainly.