My Secret Garden (Women Sexual Fantasies) (27 page)

201

Theresa

Although photos of male homosexuals always excited me, the thought of lesbianism did not, and was indeed repulsive to me.

However, lately I have watched myself do a complete turnabout after reading some of the recent permissive literature. I was and probably still am very naive. I had never condemned homosexuality; I simply never concerned myself with it. Then an attraction to another woman developed this year. We have so far only talked, but I feel more will come of it. My husband is a very forceful and brutal man. I find her gentleness refreshing and feel as if my relationship with her would be very satisfying. So now she is in my fantasies. Just the thought of touching or holding her excites me. No lovemaking, just closeness and gentleness.

I must have been a strange child, because the first time I remember being aroused was when reading a marriage manual just before being married at eighteen. I married the only man I had ever dated. I have come to believe that I must be dull. It is my husband, not me, who thinks up different things to vary our sex life. Often he likes to talk dirty to me. I rather like this and wouldn’t really mind being treated like a whore…an expensive one. But he enjoys brutality almost to the point of rape. I hate rough treatment. I like to be oh, so gentle, and won by kindness and consideration. Although he is rough, he is very controlled, and I often think how much I’d like to tease him to the point where he’d blow his cool and just do what he really wanted, instead of all the deliberate rough stuff. He is a very hard person to bring to climax.

I used to think I was strange, unlike other women. Now I am beginning to believe I’m not as bad as I thought all these years.

[Letter]

202

Tania

I am curious to know if I have any latent homosexual tendencies; perhaps I’m just bisexual.

Most often, during sex, my thoughts drift to other women. I either imagine myself being made love to by a woman, or watching my mate made love to by another woman, or a combination of the two. He and I have discussed this and he confesses that this is often the case with him too. He encourages my fantasies by acting out his own. He very often talks to me as though he were raping me, which encourages another type of fantasy within me. I begin to fantasize that I’m tied, helpless, and at the mercy of this very aggressive man. As a result of this I begin to imagine that a woman enters the scene, dismisses my mate, and begins to make love to me in an equally aggressive manner, but with a special gentleness.

The first fantasy I can remember was about a group of people (four or six) in a large bed, all naked and caressing one another. I was never able to develop it much beyond this, but being quite young at the time it didn’t seem necessary. The mere idea was quite stimulating. [Letter]

Michelle

I have been married five years, and until now have never discussed my sexual. fantasies with anyone.

I don’t think of someone other than the man I am with during sex unless he is performing inadequately, at which times I think of someone who
does
perform adequately. This invariably gives me enough pleasure to achieve orgasm. I think fantasies are very useful for this specific reason. Every time we have sex, it can’t be perfect; the other person (and oneself) is not always in top form.

The most frequent idea that pops up in my fantasies is "being on exhibition." My fantasies vary a great deal, but this idea is 203

usually present. People watching, not necessarily saying anything or doing anything, but just watching… that really turns me on.

What is interesting is that although I’ve never had any desire for another woman, or even looked at another woman "that way"

in reality, I do often have lesbian fantasies when with a man. I don’t know where this idea comes from. In my fantasies, these women and I never actually touch, no bodily contact, I simply think about them, other women, usually naked, usually large-breasted. What they seem to be doing is trying to seduce me by their erotic movements. I allow myself to get excited just watching them, but then when I have built to a pitch and have my real orgasm, the women simply smile, pleased for me, and disappear. Maybe some day I will join them in sex within my fantasy, but I don’t think that is what they are building toward. I would never tell a man about these lesbian fantasies because I don’t think a man would understand. [Letter]

Sandra

Often when my husband and I are making love, I think of another man (or two) and sometimes, not often, of a woman. The man I usually think of was my dentist (I say was because he moved to another state). I never had sex with him, but I would have liked to. To me, he resembles my husband. He is soft spoken, but not one to be bossed by a woman (which I like a man to be: A Man). In my fantasies we have sex in every imaginable position within reason. We even masturbate each other. However, most of the time I think of my husband during sex; he is my ideal sexual partner. He even smells sexy.

When I fantasize about the other men I find attractive, toward the point of climax, I settle on one man (or woman). So you see, I have lesbian fantasies. Usually I think of a woman who is physically similar to a. man, meaning that she is heavily built but still feminine, tender, loving (motherly sometimes), 204

compassionate. Very often she is in military uniform. She isn’t beautiful, just attractive. She is assertive but open-minded, fun to be with, likes music, sports, clothes, and animals. She is well off but not rich, thrifty but not miserly. We usually masturbate, kiss (on the mouth), sleep in each other’s arms (she holds me mostly).

I feel secure with her. We suck each other’s breasts (me hers mostly). Sometimes she and I go 69. My husband knows I have lesbian tendencies and that I could possibly be ambisexual.

However, I don’t go out of my way to find a lesbian or female bed partner.

I don’t know what it’s an indication of, but I love to think about my husband and another man having sex with me.

Although my husband doesn’t encourage my fantasies, he doesn’t discourage them either. When I ask him if watching another man fuck me would excite him, he says probably. He knows I would like him to be with me if I am fucked by another man. We both like to watch our own fucking. Another idea that turns me on is that of watching two homosexuals making love; also, I wish women got a chance to watch some of the blue films men see.

Please excuse my sloppy writing; I am usually neat, but I wanted to put this down quickly so that I wouldn’t change anything. [Letter]

Patty

I have just read your advertisement and feel compelled to help you in your research. I will attempt to write as honestly as I can.

I am twenty-nine years old, have been married for eleven years to a merchant seaman, and have two children. My husband is at sea for almost six months of every year, and during one of his trips about three years ago I was introduced to lesbianism by two young girls. My first experience with these girls was so completely satisfying and wonderfully exciting that I now relive 205

the scene almost every time I make love with my husband when he is at home.

The scene I picture is as follows: My husband is at sea and the children are at my mother’s for the weekend, because I am having a night out with the girls at the office to celebrate one of the girls’ coming wedding. I have invited two of the girls to spend the night at my place, as they live in the next town and they would have had to leave the party early to make the last train home. We arrive at my place, late and tired after the party. I flop down on the chair and say that I wish that I had a maid who would undress me and get me ready for bed. The girls say they will be my maids and proceed to undress me. When they take off my bra and panties they are obviously very excited by what they see, and both say they have never seen breasts as large and beautiful as mine before. They ask if they could touch them. I say they may do anything they want with them, and soon my nipples become very large and firm with their caresses. Then they take a breast each and kiss and suck my large but very sensitive nipples, and at the same time they begin to caress my tummy and thighs, and soon I am squirming all over the chair. When I start moving they release my breasts, and one of the girls sits on the arm of the chair and starts to kiss me very tenderly and lovingly and then more demandingly. Soon our tongues are deep into each other’s mouths. While this is going on, the other girl is kneeling on the carpet between my legs caressing my thighs and tummy until I am about frantic with desire. I am moving all over the place trying to direct her fingers into my vagina, but she ignores my attempts. Suddenly I almost go crazy when I feel her head go between my legs and her tongue enter my vagina. I have an orgasm almost immediately, and nearly scream the house down in the process. While I am regaining my breath, the girls strip off and make love on the carpet while I watch. We then have a shower together and all three go to bed and make love all night.

[Letter]

206

ROOM NUMBER SIXTEEN:

PROSTITUTION, OR, "SADIE

THOMPSON, DOESN’T LIVE HERE

ANYMORE."

This room is empty.

When I began collecting fantasies for this book, and would talk about it to psychologists, writers, and other people who I thought had some information about the subject, they’d often smile with amusement, and tell me that of course one of women’s most popular fantasies was that of being a prostitute. And from everything I’ve read and heard, I thought this was so myself. (For instance, who hasn’t heard that old tag line again and again, that at every costume party, half the women come dressed as call girls?)

But in the hundreds of fantasies I’ve collected, there is not one prostitution fantasy gone into at length; the subject is only mentioned fleetingly, glanced over
en passant,
by people hurrying to the Anonymity, Humiliation, or Masochism Rooms.

This grand old theme, so beloved of Victorian women, is apparently dead. And if I’m right, and Sadie Thompson is indeed finished, it is ironically our permissive age that killed her; contrary to what her mother said, the old girl died from
lack
of shame.

In explaining what I mean, let’s consider the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt concerns something about which you feel badly whether anyone knows it or not, and guilty love is still a very big fantasy of our time. It is an internalized judgment.

But shame concerns something other people may or may not 207

approve of; you yourself may feel neutral about it, or even like it; the
shame
only comes in when some outside observer catches you doing it. The woman who cheats at solitaire, for instance, will blithely go along taking cards out of turn – until someone catches her doing it, when she’ll grow irritable and testy.

Shame therefore enters when your personal code of morals or behavior is felt by you to be at variance with what is generally accepted and you feel at least a hypocritical need to pretend to go along with the majority rules. Therefore, we can see that the reason our mothers delighted so much in prostitution fantasies was their feeling that The Girls were beyond shame; they gave the fantasizer a kind of nothing-to-lose, gutter freedom. But today, why bother to be hypocritical? From every corner we are told there’s nothing in sex to be ashamed about.

Goodbye, Sadie. We’ll keep a candle in the window of your room in case the wheel of repression takes another turn, and backlash brings you back.

208

"WHERE DID A NICE GIRL

LIKE YOU GET AN IDEA

LIKE THAT?"

CHILDHOOD

People invariably ask me whether a woman’s sexual fantasies reflect her background. Doesn’t her education or economic class determine the nature of her fantasy? Haven’t I found that my material just naturally varied and fell into these categories?

By the way the question was asked – especially during my researches in England – the "Yes" answer was always implied: a woman’s background will out.

But my answer is "No." Wealthy women don’t necessarily fantasize about masked dukes, any more than the uneducated wife of a miner fantasizes in rough four-letter words. Nor is the reverse true. It is meaningless to discuss the class or background of the real woman behind the fantasy, except to deny that it is the primary influence on what or how she is thinking. You can never predict what is going to turn anyone on.

If you were to shuffle all the written replies to letters and advertisements requesting contributions that I’ve placed in various publications in the United States and England, plus all the interviews I’ve conducted in person in the same countries, it would be impossible to match the lady to the fantasy…except perhaps by nationality.

209

So no, Mrs. Jones, don’t expect that by ""birth," or by virtue of her happy marriage to Jack Princeton, that your Abigail would be found in the relatively acceptable Earth Mother Room. With all her Foxcroft training, she is just as likely to be rolling in the mud with an Airedale, along with all the other fantasizers of sexual humiliation. She will merely talk about it more grammatically.

I suppose the language and imagery of sexual fantasy is shocking, and perhaps it has put some readers off when they first read this book. But once it is agreed that the subject is worth serious discussion, no other course is open. To try to convey the emotion, meaning, and experience of sexual fantasy through euphemism would be like giving a thirsty man a piece of paper with the word "water" written on it. It’s either the real thing, or nothing.

I’ve had a few moments of revelation myself. I haven’t gone passively and unruffled through all this material, sympathetic to fantasy as I am. I used to open my fantasy mail – the replies to letters and advertisements – in the morning, and more than one gulp of coffee went down the wrong way. Wow! Not so much at the language, or the situations…although they’re potent stuff for nine A.M. But it was the amount of imaginative detail that amazed me, the intuitive understanding that to prettify fantasy is to take the life out of it, and above all the evocative creativity in the fantasies of women whose lives, as described in their letters, were otherwise as routine and predictable as sending the kids off to school in the morning.