When it comes to sex, I've always been an overachiever. From the moment I crossed "lose virginity" off a youthful to-do list like it was taking the SATs, I relished the challenge of being good in bed. In my adventures I've experienced earth-shaking lust and utter abandon. Still, I realize now how often the thrill of sex was tinged with something else -- the triumph of conquest. I read the Kama Sutra and sex books with the steely discipline I applied to yoga class, confident there wasn't a skill I couldn't master with limberness and resolve.
Then I had a baby.
I don't know if it's true what they say about sex during pregnancy being incredibly hot. That's how I remember it, but now that I'm a mother the memory of any kind of uninterrupted, unexhausted encounter seems like the apex of ecstasy. I do know that as my belly expanded my libido went right along with it. When certain moves involving weight on my big, big midsection became logistical absurdities, I cheerfully learned new ones to compensate, flipping onto my sides, enlisting chairs and bedposts for support. My hormones were amped up to previously unimagined heights while my puzzle-solving brain relished every obstacle. It was perfect. In the back of my mind, however, I was worried about what would happen next.
I'd heard stories of couples who'd gone at it like gangbusters until an 8-pound bundle of joy killed their sex lives. I saw once recklessly sultry friends get sensible haircuts and saggy bellies, preoccupying themselves with sippy cups and singalongs. I became determined not to commit the sin of letting myself go. I was screwing like a condemned woman.
So it came to pass that precisely six weeks after pushing a human being out of my body, I lay on my back in the doctor's office awaiting the go-ahead to put something else in it. My middle was a vast expanse of squish. My breasts were tender and aching from the infant who'd clamped herself on me in the delivery room and had barely come up for air since. I was so sleep deprived I'd hallucinated a few times. And below deck? Pure wreckage. I had been torn, and was still bleeding. I had hemorrhoids, the least sexy condition ever invented. Yet I was considered normal for all I'd weathered, and had reached a deadline matter-of-factly referred to in pregnancy guides on the "How soon can I have sex?" page. So it didn't surprise me in the least when the doctor removed the speculum, peeled off the gloves and declared, "You're fine to resume sexual activity."
I took the words not as a suggestion but an imperative. It was what I was supposed to do. My body had been pronounced capable; my psyche didn't even stop to question why it was less enthused. Besides, I figured that after our longest period of marital abstinence, my husband was deserving of -- nay, eager for -- my lustful embraces.
I went home and informed him that as soon as the baby was solidly asleep, we were to commence fornication. He gave me a weary thumbs up. Had I not been too tired myself to pay attention, I might have noticed that his work-all-day, up-half-the-night-with-the-baby schedule hadn't exactly been stoking his fires.
The baby's sleep was still as easily and noisily set off as a car alarm on a Sunday morning. At the first sign of her buzz-saw-like snore, we plopped her drowsing form in the other room, where fitful gurgles told us we'd better try to wrap it up as soon as possible.
We undressed quickly and he fondly touched my breasts, a pair of old friends he hadn't seen in a while. I cringed. His hands felt like sandpaper on my raw skin. It wasn't just that it was painful, though; it was worse than that. After having the baby on them all day, I wanted them all to myself for a while. They'd gone from sex props to utilitarian devices, and the thought of having somebody else needing my tools filled me with dread. I swatted his hands away with a grimace. He looked at me, a mixture of hurt and concern on his face. So much for foreplay.
It didn't get any steamier from there. "How do you want to do this?" he whispered huskily, while I paused to contemplate my options. I climbed aboard, figuring that would afford me the greatest measure of control.
It was agonizing. You'd think that after delivering something the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, a woman would feel like she'd just added a lane or two to her private highway. Instead, I'd lately been looking at my ultra-slim tampons and thinking, Oh God, no, never. My earliest sexual exploits had been awkward and a little uncomfortable, but full of fun and foreplay. This? This felt like the Amityville Horror, my husband in the role of unwelcome interloper and my lower half ominously commanding, Get out!
We didn't last much longer after that. We hadn't even fully gotten to penetration, let alone thrusting, let alone pleasure. After a few uninspired minutes, I defeatedly flopped down beside him.
I had what is tactfully referred to as a performance problem. In a previous life, I might have gamely switched tactics, attempted some partner-pleasuring tricks of an oral or manual variety. Instead, I sulked. My husband didn't push it. You'd be surprised what a few yelps of "Ow. Ow. OWOW NOOOOOO" can do to dampen a man's mood. In retrospect, if he'd still been up for it at that point, I'd have considered the possibility that I had married a sadist.
I lay in bed thinking, I have failed. But the truth was, I hadn't wanted to have sex at all that night. I'd convinced myself that because I allegedly was able to, I automatically ought to, and preferably better than anyone else ever in the history of postpartum sex. It just hadn't worked out that way. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to have sex again. For someone who'd invested a certain amount of her self-worth in the idea she could be a wanton slut bomb at will, this was a terrifying place to be. If I couldn't make it happen tonight, surely I was headed down the road of separate twin beds and Lanz of Austria nightgowns. Maybe my brain was never going to have another horny thought. Maybe my body was never going to admit any more visitors.
Or maybe, I realized, this whole fiasco had been more about my ego than my libido. All those satisfying, playful years spent with a partner I loved hadn't diminished my sexual Type A personality. Instead, I had been plagued by the same doubt that had haunted me when I was a young woman devouring magazine articles on how to have Mindblowing Sex Tonight -- the dark fear of not making the grade. Humbled by my changed body and life, I had to learn something I couldn't find in a manual or a porn movie.
I could grit my teeth and attempt another crack at it, with this lovely man who looked petrified I was going to smack him if he touched me the wrong way, or I could let it go. I could cling to the hope that desire, like a full night's sleep and my curvy old ass, would one day return.
Much later, when I had cultivated candid friendships with fellow breeders, we could swap horror stories with the easy rapport of comrades in arms. "You waited only six weeks? My God, you're brave," I'd hear, from women who'd endured months of colicky babies and blocked milk ducts and episiotomy or cesarean scars before they could even think about intimacy again. Yet all of them, and their partners, had survived. Wounds healed. Kids grew, and sleep returned. And eventually we accepted that if ever there were a reasonable period in life for sex to take a temporary sabbatical, the time right after we've experienced one of its most awe-inspiring, ass-kicking consequences would be it.
My husband and I kept trying. Not every night. Not even all that often at first. When we did climb into bed together, I had to, of necessity, pipe up about what felt good and what didn't. Along the way, I began to notice a shift in my attitude. Never before in my life had sex necessitated such intense contemplation. Never before had I needed to plan for it, psych myself up for it, schedule it into my bedraggled existence. But as the months wore on, never before had I felt more appreciative of the simple act of intimacy, stripped of bells and whistles and fueled by pure longing.
I would no longer have the luxury of making love to prove my prowess. I would no longer have sex because I believed it was what I was supposed to do. I would have sex because I wanted to, because dammit, I believed it would be fun. I would discover all over again for the first time what would work for me and what wouldn't. It's not that things ever quite went back to exactly as they were, but I began to understand that they didn't have to. This new stage would have its rewards too.
I'm still open to possibilities, eager for novel ways to discover bliss. I'm just not such a hardass about it anymore. Six weeks after my second child was born, I was back at the doctor's office, in the same undignified, scooted-down position. "You're ready to resume sexual activity," he pronounced authoratively, as if speaking ex cathedra. I smiled indulgently, thanked him, and immediately resolved to ignore him. Because this time, I was going to be the one to decide when I was ready. And I knew that someday soon, I really would be.
It turns out hookup culture isn't a sign of the coming apocalypse, nor is casual sex emotionally corrupting young adults. (No surprise here.) If there's something the matter with kids these days, don't blame it on sex.
This "no duh" news come by way of a University of Minnesota survey of the sexual habits and psychological well-being (based on "body satisfaction, self-esteem and depressive symptoms") of 1,311 young adults in their late teens and early 20s. Researchers simply found no discernible difference in the mental health of kidults in committed sexual relationships and freewheeling bed-hoppers. The study also noted that cases of depression often exist before adolescents lose their virginity or engage in unsafe sex. Of course, self-reports of anything -- perhaps especially when it comes to sexual history and the nuances of one's emotional health -- is fallible. Also, the study focused on participants' most recent sexual experiences as opposed to conducting an in-depth review of their entire sexual history. So, these findings are best used as a counterweight to the hand-wringing and condemnation provoked by the "hookup generation."
However, the researchers were careful to make note of health risks of another sort: Previous research has found an association between "positive attitudes about casual sex" and "a history of sexual aggression among men and attitudes conducive to intimate partner violence." (Yet another perk to being a gal.) And, of course, there is always the major, undeniable risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Lead researcher Marla E. Eisenberg says the study underscores "the need for [safe sex] messages in sexuality education programs and other interventions with young adults." Maybe that would be a more useful educational message than one about the psychological damage of sleeping around, hmm?
Here at Broadsheet, we love us some earnest, academic talk about the sexual differences between men and women -- but this will not be one of those discussions. Sometimes, a girl needs a break from all the stuffy talk of nature versus nurture, and the satiric sketch "Are Women As Horny As Men?" (via Gizmodo) does just the trick. The skit opens with a man and a woman sitting at a bar debating that very question. Naturally, she argues that women are equal horndogs -- and he thinks she's insane. Then commences a dream sequence in which the world is turned upsidedown and men are sexually objectified by women. Without giving too much away, I can tantalize you with the fact that there is some beer gut on stripper pole action. As you might have gathered, it is extremely NSFW (or the faint of heart).
"The mythical status of the hymen has caused far too much harm for far too long," begins a press release from RFSU, the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education. Indeed it has. Broadsheet has written before about the Artificial Virginity Hymen -- a kit that helps a woman fake bleeding when she has intercourse -- and hymenoplasty, in which the hymen is sewn up, so that any man still ignorant enough to believe a hymen can only be broken during sex and that a woman will always bleed the first time will be reassured that he is participating in a deflowering. The popularity of virginity faking highlights the devastating consequences of "the mythical status of the hymen," especially among religious fundamentalists. As Tracy Clark-Flory said in the former post, "If a woman in the Middle East fails to bleed on her wedding night, she can face shame, abuse and even death" -- and as Carol Lloyd said in the latter, "lest we get too high on our horse (equestrian sport being another common hymen-ripping recreation) we should invoke our own recent cults of the virgin -- most notably thousands of Christian youth pledging to become 'Reborn Virgins' and then pretending that they never took the oath." The importance of an intact hymen is a cross-cultural crock.
Last spring, RFSU produced an educational booklet aiming to dispel misinformation about virginity, which gave the hymen a new, more precise, Swedish name. According to Åsa Regnér, the organization's secretary general, "many people commented that it was good to finally have a word that accurately described this body part." So when the RFSU folks decided to translate the book into three other languages -- Arabic, Sorani and English -- they also decided to rechristen the hymen in all of them. Says the press release, "Etymologically, the term hymen comes from the Greek word for membrane. In Swedish, the hymen used to be called mödomshinna, which translates literally as 'virginity membrane.' In fact, there is no brittle membrane, but rather multiple folds of mucous membrane. A vaginal corona, in other words."
So that's the new English name for the hymen: "vaginal corona." Hmm. I'll give them points for accuracy, but since the phrase is only slightly catchier than "multiple folds of mucous membrane," I'm not optimistic that it will stick. If we're lucky, though, the other information in the booklet will. Says Regnér, "The myths surrounding the hymen were created to control women's freedom and sexuality. The only way to counteract this is by disseminating knowledge."
On the surface, a lot of things seemed to be going well for Julie Powell in the past few years. Her Salon blog, in which she cooked her way through Julia Child's recipes, turned into a bestselling book, "Julie and Julia." Nora Ephron's film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams as Powell, was released this year to considerable box office success. And, throughout it all, she remained married to Eric, the gentle husband whom she had been together with since her teens.
In "Cleaving," Powell's memoir covering the years following her first book, things get less Nora Ephron, and a little more David Lynch. The book chronicles a rather tumultuous time in Powell's marriage, in which she became an apprentice at an upstate butcher shop, she and her husband had lengthy affairs, and, more shockingly, Powell experimented with sadomasochistic sex. It's hard to imagine Amy Adams' character spreading her legs in the foyer of a stranger who calls her a "pretty little whore" -- but, on Page 110 of "Cleaving," that's precisely where Powell ends up.
The book, however, is just as concerned with Julie's butchering lessons as with her marital misadventures, and spends considerable time explaining, in lyrical detail, how pigs, or cows, and lambs get turned into dinner -- and describing the raucus camaraderie of her adopted butcher shop. Salon spoke with Powell over the phone about her disdain for vegetarians, the BDSM community's bad rap, and why cutting apart animals isn't so different from being tied up.
As you were writing this book, knowing that the Nora Ephron movie was coming, did it influence your choice of subject matter?
Honestly, when I was writing "Cleaving," my policy toward the movie was always very firmly to stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalala" very loudly and pretend it wasn't going to happen because of this terror of jinxing it. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, what would people like to read after seeing a Nora Ephron movie called 'Julie and Julia'?" Of course when the movie came out, once the movie publicist figured out that there was a book out there getting ready to be published, they flipped out a little bit and I'm sure a lot of them wished that "Cleaving" didn't exist, but, oh well!
Having written a small amount about my own personal life, I know that there's a kind of discomfort that comes with writing about your own experiences -- especially when it comes to sex. Why did you decide to go into that territory?
It was a way of reenacting and trying to figure out what [my affair] really meant. Honestly, if you talk to my editor you should see what remains on the cutting-room floor. There were many instances where she was like, "Ehh maybe you needed to write this, but we don't need to put it in the book."
I'm assuming both your husband and "D," the man with whom you had the affair, have read the book.
Eric is an extraordinarily reserved person and we talked for a long time about what was in the book and would he give me the blessing for writing it. I wouldn't have published it if he hadn't. It's difficult for him and I think his reaction to this entire process is that I just need to sort of back off from it a little bit and let the book have its life. He's been extraordinarily great about it, but it's also something that we don't sit around the coffee table talking about in the evening.
I haven't spoken to ["D"] in nearly a year, but when he read the book in order to give the rights, it was all very cordial and he had a few notes of things he wanted to change for reasons of identification, which I was happy to do.
There are a few moments in the book, where you describe some fairly rough sex, both with your lover, "D," and a stranger. Why did you decide to include the rough stuff?
There was actually more on it originally, that we got rid of. I think for me some of the questions that I was asking myself were: Why this guy? Why this kind of sex? Everybody thinks about getting tied up and tickled with a feather every now and then -- but in terms of that real craving, where was that coming from? I think it was really tied to some other kind of deep, really deep psychological issues that I was having at the time and need for this self-punishment.
The anonymous sexual encounter was an important moment for me, because it was me trying to work out in a really, really crazy and self-destructive way who the hell I was. I think that when someone is processing a lot of stuff you make a lot of wrong turns and strange choices that are going to be -- for your average reader of "Julie and Julia" -- a little disconcerting. I discovered something about myself in doing that, and in the horror that I felt afterward, doing something that I felt in the moment was empowering and realizing in the moment of it that it couldn't be more opposite of empowering.
In some ways, it seems to me that butchery and sadomasochistic sex have a similar kind of stigma attached to them.
I think that there is a similar reason for my attraction to both. The BDSM stuff that I was doing, and was really very attracted to, had to do with the taking and the giving up of power and that balance that happens. In these rough sex encounters I was playing the part of the submissive, but I got power out of that because I was making these guys think they were powerful, and that was a sort of power in itself. I think that the butchering has the same kind of uncomfortable dynamic. There are knives; the men are very strong; the meat is dead.
They're both things that many people don't want to think about. They don't want to think about where their meat comes from and how it gets to their plate in the same way that people don't want to think about how much sex is about power and the lack of it. There is all kinds of squeamish stuff that goes on in both of those cases, and I think for me I feel like squeamish is where I live a little bit.
Do you think that the stigma against bondage and discipline [BDSM] is unfair?
I think it's something that people are fascinated and scintillated by and terrified of. If you talk to people in the BDSM community or read their Web sites, it's so nicey-nicey, so indulgingly generous and inclusive and sex-positive, which is why it's hilarious to me that people are so terrified of these folks. People have this image of it being sort of a corrupt, dangerous practice that only complete freaks engage in and you're going to wind up dead on the floor like Diane Keaton in "Mr. Goodbar."
The same thing goes with butchers. Now it's a little different because there's this rock-star butcher thing happening -- but the traditional image of butchering is violent and bloody and destructive, whereas it's actually a really delicate thing. Most of the butchers that I know, once you get about half an inch under the surface, they're these incredible, sweet, gentle men with a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge.
Do you feel like you were breaking gender taboos by becoming a butcher -- and writing so openly about the sex?
Just the idea that a married person taking a lover is something that men have been writing about for a long time, but women normally don't write about those experiences.
Was I wrong to read the book as an indictment of monogamy?
I'm now in a marriage that is much happier than it was, but I am skeptical of the sort of complacency with which traditional marriage is defined. I'd had very childish views of what a marriage is. We'd put ourselves in this box with a bow -- and I realized you can't live like that. Monogamy can work beautifully but it's a constant moving and growing and changing thing. A marriage doesn't get fixed, it moves. I don't know if I'd call it an indictment of marriage, I'd call it an indictment of the assumption that monogamy is the one necessary thing. I had to change how I was married and become a person who can stand on her own two feet. To find out that I could be a singular human being and also be in a marriage was the only reason that our marriage was able to survive.
How would you feel if you became a poster woman for the BDSM community?
I would be amused. When you look at what I write in the book, it's pretty tame. I've long been a supporter of people just being cool with all that stuff. I love the community, and what people are doing -- being very open and supportive. If they want to make me poster girl, I am perfectly fine with that.
In the book you seem to have a considerable amount of contempt for vegetarians. Why is that?
I was raised Texan. We're a liberal family, but there are some things Texans won't give up. I always judged their smugness. I also hated feeding them -- with them coming to my dinner table and going "ewww." Working at the butcher shop allowed me to gain a weighty sense of responsibility about where my food comes from -- so I'm less contemptuous, but I still hate their self-satisfaction. To quote "The Big Lebowski": "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole."
If "Cleaving" becomes a movie, who would you like to see play yourself?
I entertain this perverse fantasy of forcing Amy Adams to play me in every stage of my life at all times. The other person I'd thought of may be a little old: Catherine Keener. I love somebody who can be strong and neurotic at the same time -- or Kate Winslet, or Zooey Deschanel.
I was hoping you'd say something a little more bizarre, like Charlotte Rampling.
OK, let's say Zooey when I'm young, and Charlotte Rampling when I'm older.
Columbia University students of the opposite sex will soon be allowed to share dorm rooms -- or, as the New York Post puts it in a 1950s time-warp of an article, "live in sin ... on their parents' dime." Horrors, kids these days -- et cetera!
As of next fall, the school will institute "gender-neutral" housing on campus for all students except for freshmen. This will mean that students can select roommates regardless of their sex, and hetero couples can shack up together. You know what that means: Sexy time. Of course, only the most naive among us would think that young couples aren't already fooling around -- but cohabitation just makes it that much easier for them to do it. The Post explains: "Sharing a room could put an end to the infamous 'walk of shame' -- the early-morning cross-campus trek back to a separate dorm in the previous night's clothes." Only, the tone of the article makes it sound like the only thing that's disappearing from that scenario is the walking. The shame part? Still there, big time -- at least as far as the Post is concerned.
Thankfully, in a response to the news, the silver-haired sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer commends the change for allowing roommates to forgo the awkward negotiation of privacy with romantic visitors. But then she goes on to caution that "those students who do not have steady partners are going to feel bad." I suppose we should also ban couples from walking around campus holding hands? She doesn't go that far, instead she suggests setting aside "some rooms with locked doors where students can go to have a couple of hours of privacy." You know, like an X-rated update on the concept of "date rooms." It's unclear, though, how exactly this will make jealousy-prone students feel any better about their singlehood.
There is one rather refreshing aspect of this story: The potential benefit for lesbian, gay and bisexual students has raised nary an eyebrow. They soon will have the option to live on campus with a member of the opposite sex, so as to avoid the awkwardness and sexual tension of same-sex cohabitation. There are plenty of cynical ways to interpret that lack of outrage (as well as the decade-dissonant controversy over coed housing) but I'd rather celebrate the fact that queer students at Columbia will soon have the same choice straight students have always had.
Hey there, urban hipster columnists! Stuck for a way to meet your word count today and fresh out of lorem ipsum? Time to trot out the old "sexual taxonomy of women" satire you first took a crack at for your college humor magazine. You can fart it out before your first latte has kicked in, and the thing will pay for itself in outraged comments and blog links. And before you insist it's too dumb/obvious to work, I refer you to Spencer Morgan, whose withering New York Observer takedown of "cheetahs" has been setting forehead veins reflexively a-throbbing this week.
"Rrowl! Beware the Cheetah!" is a piece of such cynical, calculated offensiveness that my initial response was to ignore it entirely. But hey, I'm just a predatory female, and when that rodenty aroma of bad writing hits my nostrils, I can't help myself. In it, Morgan -- who pointedly excuses himself from the pack of prey by mentioning his wife -- alerts us to the growing menace of "the cougar's young niece," a woman who gets men wasted, takes them home, and then doesn't even have the decency to get up and leave. "The cheetah stays the night," he warns. (Yes, it's true, fellas, older Liz Phair-era riot grrls totally have a lock on the fuck and run.)
I'm all for mockery and making light of romantic foibles. But next time it might be helpful to add some wit, because the only insight here is how a story about female insecurity reveals so much about the male variety. Since we're all dumb animals, I'll speak slowly and break down why the story is so lame:
1.) The feline metaphor again? Really? Yet Morgan crams not just cheetahs and "self described cougars" into his story, but pumas and even the hoariest of all beasts, the dreaded saber-tooth. That shit is more played than "I Gotta Feeling." If you're a woman over 35, you've probably already heard it so much that you find yourself copping to it. Yes, I am a big scary animal. Now excuse me, I have to go take a nap in a gazelle carcass.
2.) While I'm loath to argue that a joke wouldn't be funny if the roles were reversed (in a good joke, it's the reversal that makes it work), I'm none too keen on Morgan's fantasy of desperate women sexually preying on drunken men. But good luck wringing comedy out of a city full of lady rapists.
3. The author's clear discomfort with females regardless of what neat species classifications they occupy. He grudgingly affords "Auntie Cougar and Cousin Puma … a certain dignity ... They’re out there shakin’ it up, slaying dudes and taking names." Ummmm, thanks? But as he channels Caitlin Flanagan, he reserves his greatest shudders for poor, lonely, spinster-to-be cheetahs. They're already "past the first flush of youth" and yet still "wanting to date or at least fuck 'above their station.'"
I'm not even sure how this whole aspirational screwing thing works, but gentlemen, you've been warned. The cheetah is out there looking for "potential mates," hoping, as Morgan's cougar pal explains, "her pussy’s still good enough to keep him." Why the insecurity? Because as another of Morgan's charming compatriots explains, "Getting laid is not as easy as it once was.”
4. The story's scolding reminder, via Morgan's cougar friend Angela, that "men like to chase." Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Congratulations, New York Observer, you're a Rules Girl! A woman who does not placidly wait around to be picked off by a wildebeest -- or maybe it's a crocodile -- is so unnatural, so terrifying, she threatens to throw the whole ecosystem into chaos. And who's the only man weak enough to be ensnared by her wiles? "A pussy."
5. Pop rhetorical quiz time! Why is it that gay men can classify themselves as bears and otters and all other manner of creatures and it seems cute and sexy, but female sexual animals are somehow just pathetic?
6. Final question: Is it possible to write about women and their dating habits and not sound like a nosy busybody, clutching at your pearls and fanning your scandalized brow at the garden gate? Answer: No.
Because the funny thing -- funny strange, not funny ha-ha -- in each eager new spin on the women-as-cougars-and-cheetahs-and-pumas-and-kittens-and-ocelots story is the same old criticism of us for our sexual choices and erotic initiative. Whatever species you name it, it's all just catty. Mrrrreeer!
In summation, there are three weeks left in this decade, and then I am personally shutting these BS trend stories down, rejecting all attempts to brand me as any feline predator. You will hence refer to my ilk and me as naked mole rats. We like darkness, multiple sex partners, and starchy food. See you in the tunnel.
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