The Guide to Getting It On (6 page)

To prevent hickey mortification, point to the area between your legs and tell your lover to suck there. Unless your name is Sookie.

How to Hide a Hickey

Hickeys go through stages, so you will need to change your cover-up makeup as the hickey goes from three-alarm to one-alarm.

• If the hickey is blue-black-purple, use a yellow-based concealer. If it’s reddish, try a green concealer.
  
• If the hickey is greenish-yellow, use a pink-based concealer. Be sure to blend out the edges.
  
• If your hickey is blue-black-purple at the epicenter and reddish around the perimeter, dab on yellow in the center and green over the reddish part.
  

After the concealer is on, dab on your normal foundation. Do not rub. Then use your normal powder. If not being found out is of the utmost importance, try a translucent powder on top of the whole mess to help set it.

If you don’t have green, use an oil-based concealer that is lighter than your natural skin color. That’s because the hickey color will cause the lighter concealer to look darker. But focus the lighter concealer only on the hickey area and not on the skin beyond it. Otherwise, the unbruised skin around the hickey perimeter will look like a big smudge, and everyone will know.

The Real Estate between Your Ears & Knees

This Guide places way too much emphasis on the standard blue chip kissing zones—lips, nipples, and genitals. Lovers who enjoy each other will often go from head to toe, discovering and rediscovering where a partner likes to be kissed. Here are a few areas to consider:

• Skin Folds:
  The places on the body where the skin folds or creases tend to be very sensitive and love to be kissed. These include the backs of knees, the fronts of elbows, the nape of the neck, under breasts, on eyelids, armpits, crotches, between fingers and toes, and behind ears.
  
• Lower Back & Buns:
  The lower back and rear end can be exquisite places to kiss and kiss again.
  
• Bellies & Navels:
  Think of the navel as a little vulva rather than a collecting point for lint. Some people love to have their navels licked and caressed. Others become seriously annoyed.
  
• Long Licks:
  Don’t hesitate to get your tongue really wet and take a long lick up your partner’s body, from hip to armpit or tailbone to neck (known as “Australian” in some circles.)
  
• Human Serving Tray:
  Fruits, dessert foods, and certain liquors can be served on various parts of the body with pleasing results.
  
• Love Bites:
  Teeth on skin can feel really nice or really ugly. Lube your lover’s skin with oil or saliva so your teeth glide along the surface. Then raise your lips up and run your teeth back and forth. You might try a little biting action on large muscle groups such as the shoulders or buns. Be sure to get lots of feedback from the bitee and try not to violate your local cannibalism statutes.
  

Eskimo Pies & Eskimo Kisses: Kissing in Other Cultures

You may have heard that Eskimos don’t kiss like we do. Instead of kissing on the lips they allegedly rub noses. What’s closer to the truth is that Eskimos put their noses in close proximity to inhale the breath of a loved one. Perhaps they do this to keep their lips from freezing together.

Eskimos find that inhaling the breath of a lover is erotic; those of us from more temperate climates prefer exchanging wads of saliva. People raised in different cultures may define what’s sexy in different ways.

Kissing on the Edge of Town

In nearly every community where people have lips, there are places where the locals go to make out.

In the town where your author grew up, there were two favorite places where people went to kiss and grope—well, three if you counted the local drive-in, but that was more like an extra bedroom. One of those places was at the river, which was in the mountains east of town. Another was in the orange groves.

Perhaps there were places where you grew up that lovers went to for making out. Maybe there still is one where you and your sweetheart go.

Passion Pits & the Phone Booth—Symbols of the Past

Not long ago, there were more than 4,000 drive-in theaters or
passion pits
in America where younger couples kissed, groped, and petted themselves into a frenzy. While the population is nearly double today what it was then, there are now fewer than 500 drive-in theaters in America.

If the loss of the drive-in has led to less making out, it wouldn’t hurt to have a “Drive-In Night” in your living room where all you do is grope and make out in front of a big-screen TV. Don’t forget the condoms and popcorn.

CHAPTER

4

Getting Naked

I
n human relationships, there are different kinds of nakedness. Sometimes, we just get physically naked. Other times when we take our clothes off, we get emotionally naked. Whatever your situation or inclination, this chapter suggests a kind of nakedness that has emotional as well as physical grit. It also talks about different ways of getting naked, and the things we cover ourselves with that can be as enticing as wearing nothing at all.

Getting Naked — An Overview

For some people, getting naked in front of a lover is as easy and natural as drinking a glass of water. Some even send naked pictures of themselves with their phones. For others, getting naked can cause distress or embarrassment, with some people even engineering situations where they can get it on without taking their clothes off in front of a partner. Perhaps this gives you an idea of how powerful getting naked can be, and how vulnerable we can feel about our bodies.

As a culture, we are so uptight about nakedness that we don’t have street-corner fountains with fat marble cherubs peeing into large pools of water or public paintings of naked Botticelli babes. A bare crotch on network television is about as common as a snowstorm in Siam. Even the suggestion of body parts beneath a person’s blue jeans on the public airwaves can result in a massive fine from the FCC. No wonder why a free-for-all of nakedness has evolved over the Internet.

Don’t Sell Near-Nakedness Short

We now have a two-tiered approach to nudity: pornographic nakedness online and near-naked images in mainstream media that drip with prurient fury—Victoria’s Secret, Dolce and Gabanna, A&F...

Many of us are almost more aroused by near-naked images than by actual nakedness. Perhaps that’s because near-nakedness allows more space for our fantasies to imagine what’s under the skimpy thongs, bikinis, and whatever else is used to cover prime breast and genital real estate. With the suggestion of impending nakedness, the illustrations in this chapter may have more intrigue than if the couples in them were buck naked.

The Naked-Nipple Rule

In North America, we believe that a woman isn’t really naked unless her nipples are showing. In Europe, they still don’t understand what the big fuss over naked breasts is all about.

On mainstream television, we have the naked-nipple rule. Show a naked nipple on network television, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines will soon follow. We also have the naked-nipple rule on most beaches in North America. Hopefully, you will feel free to violate the naked-nipple rule at home as often as you please.

Getting Naked — Hidden Possibilities

If you and your sweetheart are in the process of becoming more physical, you might consider some of the hidden possibilities that getting naked has to offer. A lot of honesty and trust can be generated when you are naked together, something that rarely develops if the sole purpose of taking your clothes off is to have intercourse. It’s how you can learn to relate physically with more than just your crotches. It’s how a guy can learn to have his penis resting on a woman’s soft, warm skin without feeling like he has to perform with it, and how her vulva and breasts can be pushing against him while she dozes off.

Naked Logistics

If it feels like your relationship is ready, you might consider planning a time and place where the two of you can work on getting naked. Some couples enjoy undressing each other, while others make a game out of taking their clothes off, from playing strip poker to lighthearted wrestling. There are occasions where one partner blindfolds the other before undressing him or her.

Getting naked happens naturally if you shower together or go skinny-dipping. Sometimes it happens when you are hot-tubbing, and some couples enjoy undressing each other while dancing. If you try this, be sure to have birth control handy in case you suddenly find yourselves doing the polka.

Occasionally, people find it helpful to tell each other some of the things that they do and don’t like about their bodies. For the first six editions of
The Guide
, women would mostly worry about their butts being too big or their breasts being too small or mismatched. But with the seventh edition, some women are also worried about their labia not being porn perfect. Some guys worry they aren’t hung well enough, or they might be hung too well, or that their penis might bend the wrong way when it gets hard. Just getting your fears out in the open will usually help you feel more comfortable.

For couples who are particularly self-conscious, writer Jay Wiseman suggests getting naked in total darkness. Each partner then takes a turn examining the body of the other with a small flashlight—one of those little penlight things that excites just enough photons to light up an area the size of your thumbnail. This can be a fun game that taps into your fantasies and helps decrease the anxiety of being seen naked all at once. Another way for the shy to share their nakedness is by getting a fun top or T-shirt to wear with nothing on underneath. Or maybe you’d like to try a pair of silk boxers.