by Wendy Jones
There’s a thing called sex magic. I’ve been in a ritual in England where a marquee full of people were all crescendoing in a very long ritual to orgasm at the same time, including men, although the men did not necessarily ejaculate. It was sixty people orgasming at once to create what they wanted. It wasn’t like we were all trying to get the same thing. We told a partner what our intention was and we checked a year later, and mine did happen! Yeah. Mine was about the relationships I wanted, and it came into being. I don’t know if it’s magic because we ‘make’ things happen too the rest of the year. Since learning about sex magic, when I masturbate, I’m careful what I think about when this powerful energy is passing through me; if I think something negative, the way I’m thinking potentially locks into my cellular system and I might be creating that. Sexuality is our intimate, creative energy because that’s how we make babies. You don’t have to make a baby with it – you can make anything with it! Of course, the scientists are all going, ‘Shut up, May,’ and the scientist in me goes, ‘Shut up.’ Sex magic is the idea that you or a whole group of people can create something positive together through sex while in orgasm. It might be a sense of happiness and joy and love, or peace in the world.
In polyamorous communities you could very easily have an experience and be totally put off for life because there’s some guy and he owns five women. I struggled with that. Then there are polyamorous communities where drugs and alcohol are fine and it’s more about hedonism, whereas I’m not interested in unconscious sex at all. It doesn’t do anything for me if I don’t feel the connection and I don’t see something in his eyes. I’m really into being present. When I was twenty-two I stopped taking drugs, smoking and drinking, not as some weird puritanical thing. It was about being conscious and honest with myself, and being authentic in the world.
Background: Catholic, Scottish father, English mother. Victorian. But a strange mix because my parents have good jobs in medicine. The body in our household was a medical body so it was weirdly acceptable. That did – thankfully – counter all the shame in terms of Catholicism, of ‘Keep your legs together.’ Without it ever being explicitly written anywhere in the Catholic Church I heard the message loud and clear – and I know my sisters did too – girls don’t masturbate. It’s bad and it’s wrong. It deeply influenced my early years, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t do it. Catholicism covertly teaches stuff to women, like the body is intrinsically sinful. I absolutely believe the opposite, that the body is a wonderful, potentially spiritual vessel of unity and blood and mess, and all the fleshy things are magnificent and to be revelled in as we would a waterfall, not ‘Ew, periods! Er, facial hair.’ The power of the female is often pushed down, and sex in the Catholic Church is only allowed once you are married and even then it’s not talked about. Sex is certainly not the place of creativity or joining in union.
Also I went to a girls’ school where I didn’t have someone say directly, ‘You’re a slut because you didn’t cross your legs,’ but I got those subtle messages that if you don’t cross your legs you’re a slut. English women have a reputation of being reserved and uptight; actually behind closed doors we’re outrageous. We just close the doors, shut the curtains and keep the blinds down. To be honest, I’m worried about how in the modern culture, sex is being learned from pornography. In a way you almost couldn’t define it as English sexuality, because it’s a global milieu from anywhere.
I’ve never had a great relationship with pornography. That’s all porn is: it’s friction sex. And her being able to orgasm immediately – that doesn’t quite fit with reality. Porn sends me into low self-esteem about my body. As a trained actor, most porn doesn’t work for me because I really appreciate very good acting in films, and good plots! Although I have compassion for the young males who are trying to figure out female biology by watching porn. In comparison to men’s biology, female biology is like ‘Wow!’ Having done stuff around female anatomy I really get how ‘Wow, this is tricky to figure out.’ It’s complex, it’s mysterious, it’s culturally mysterious, and in our culture the woman doesn’t know herself that well. Compassion is really important because everyone’s got their stuff around sex so if you really want to connect with someone, come with compassion, not expectations.
I’m about to go to a community in Greece which explores polyamory and the idea that ownership over another is a kind of violence that creates, on a bigger scale, a lack of peace in the world. Jealousy and believing that you own your partner, especially male to female, even on a subtle level, creates separation. In the past you did legally own your partner, she was your property. That meant horrific things like beating your wife was legal. And that’s violence. And that’s so recent.
I love to be talked to in my ear or even someone breathing in my ear; that absolutely opens me and I get really juicy and turned on. Another woman might like to be entered really quickly. Most women I know need a lot more than just being shoved into. There’s loads of science about this that is thankfully happening. I know this Urban Tantra teacher in New York who is able to bring herself to orgasm just through breathing, no touching of herself at all. A scientist was intrigued by this and put her in a CT scan to see if it was indeed true and not her telling herself it was an orgasm. All the right things were firing up and more.
Honesty is one of the top aphrodisiacs. Yeah! If I’m making love to myself I feel much more comfortable if I’m in my truth: am I tired and trying to help myself go to sleep? Another level of truth might be, ‘In my fantasy I’m trying to engage with being hot and sassy,’ instead of being in the moment and going, ‘Okay, I’m in this room, I’m in a bed and feeling a bit grotty so how about I be with feeling a bit grotty? What would that be like?’ That’s honesty with myself. That feeds into how I am with sex. I can come to my sexual partner with ‘Hi, I’m all ready and preened,’ and that might not be true for the moment. I might feel really animal and non-verbal and that doesn’t match the partner who’s going, ‘Do you mind if you wear some underwear?’ while I’m growling, ‘I don’t even know what underwear is! Because I’m like this ball of sexual something, I’m not even a human being any more.’ At other times I’m very much, ‘I’ve just come home from work and I want to have nine-to-five sex.’ I’m the person that I am in the office.
I remember once I had a lovely time masturbating. I was imagining a swimming pool filled with melted chocolate – because if I’m going to fantasise I’m going to go for it, I’m going to make something that can’t be made in the world. So, a swimming pool full of melted chocolate. There were gorgeous people and then the swimming pool transformed into the sea so it was warm and then it was cool and sparkly. Bubbling warm chocolate, hot. Yeah. All encompassing. Then it was inside me, outside me, I could eat it. Hello! Great. So my fantasy is not a plumber knocked on my door, and oops! some clothes fell off and we had sex. That plot doesn’t work for me. Fantasies can be very much, ‘Try to picture a black man walking down the beach towards me and then he grabs hold of me.’ But rather than picturing a black male, I might feel the sense of strong arms around me; I imagine the feeling of it as opposed to needing to have a face.
My other fantasy is all the lovers I’ve ever had or have, I bring them all together for a wonderful orgy. That’s one of my favourites. If I’ve been lovers with someone essentially they’re my lover forever in my heart and I don’t go, ‘Ergh, you’re now repulsive to me.’ Most of my lovers are still attractive to me. So they’re very welcome in my fantasies. I really like the idea of making love to one lover while another is watching. And the lovers obviously all get along fine. In my mind! Of course, I’m the centre of attention. It’s a very conscious loving orgy. Loads of women, when they talk about fantasies go, ‘My fantasy would be a sailor,’ and I’m like, ‘No, really, what do you actually masturbate over the most?’ and they’re like, ‘Memory sex.’ It’s the remembering of a moment.
I feel pretty relaxed about my sexuality. My body image is quite different; it’s really irritatin
g, it’s so annoying. The one time when a woman doesn’t feel self-conscious about her body is in the midst of an orgasm. She’s not holding onto herself. When I’m in the middle of an orgasm, I’m not going, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ I’m like, ‘Whoo-whoo-hoo!’ and I’m pulling not great faces. I don’t care! I’m in the space of complete oneness and it might be gone within seconds but usually a female orgasm allows itself to be an extended orgasm. An orgasm spreads up around my whole body so my hand is not excluded, or my foot, or my knees so I have a whole-body experience. It lasts hours because I’m still having sensations and I let them come. It’s like the sea; you can’t really say how long the wave lasted. Because it’s all connected. The waves keep coming in. It’s like asking the sea, ‘How big are you?’
I genuinely think there’s sweet delight, sweet innocence, wonderful, fiery, animal delight in sex and sexuality. Even dipping my toe into cold water – I have to say water because that’s my thing – can satisfy me. Nature has such variety – she has such variety – that I’ll never be bored and I can get my needs met really fast because I could go outside now and go, ‘Ah!’ and sit in the sun. Or if it’s raining I can have a different sensation. But you couldn’t say to a lover, ‘Could you blow warm air over my skin for an hour?’ The sun and wind will do that for me. Nature gives us so many things.’
17
Victorian
Victoria, 33, Bristol
‘Maybe in an average session six or eight orgasms’
‘From the age of eleven onwards if I was watching a television programme and the hero was incapacitated – if he was a warrior and he was wounded and needed to be cared for – the vulnerability that I saw in that man was probably my first stirrings of ‘Oh, what’s this?’ and I felt a physical sensation of longing and a sense of wanting to connect with that person. The only way I can find myself feeling sexual is to imagine I am nursing some man who is hurt. I might be fantasising about my partner – I feel embarrassed to say it – and his knee hurts and so he’s lying there in our flat and I’m looking after him. But then the fantasy becomes him breaking his leg or having a stroke and I’m like, ‘No! No! No! Get out of my head! That is not what I want to happen.’ I don’t want someone to suffer so I can have pleasure. Where is the line between that and sadism? I don’t want him to be in pain so I try to, I police my own thoughts. I’m kind of, ‘That’s an acceptable thought, that’s not an acceptable thought,’ so there’s never an abandonment through fantasy.
I remember being drunk and confessing to my brother that this was my fantasy and he said, ‘Well, the men can’t run away.’ I thought, ‘That’s very insightful – the git!’ He cut right to the quick. I need them to need me. I am critical of myself for having this fantasy, yet I can’t be alone – that nursey role is incredibly common in popular culture because I see it everywhere. If I watch a TV drama at some point the hero gets blown up or hurt or has a breakdown and he’s vulnerable and there is always a woman there who is strong for him. So I can’t be alone.
I had an experience when I was very young, my parents left me and my friend with a male babysitter who was only sixteen himself and he took advantage of that situation. He was touching us on the sofa and he was touching himself. It wasn’t like I was systematically sodomised by an uncle. It was quite tame really. I was kind of absent during the experience; I was in my head, I was thinking, ‘He’ll stop in a minute.’ I just lay there with a big resentment at my parents that I couldn’t get hold of them – this was before mobile phones – because they had gone out to have a jolly old night and left me in that situation. It wasn’t that it traumatised me at that time. It wasn’t that it was a sexual thing, but strangely over the years my sexuality was never … The metaphor of a bud that never opened.
For years in therapy I would start by saying, ‘At seven, this thing happened with the babysitter,’ thinking that was the beginning of it, but I don’t know if that’s realistic. I wonder if I picked up on it even younger. My parents were pregnant as young teenagers and the baby was born, lived, then died. They then went out, drank, took drugs and went crazy and didn’t have me until fifteen years later. They painted a picture of being from that liberal sixties generation but actually the messages I got were relentlessly prudish. We never talked about sex. I was always chastised for running around naked as a child, you know – ‘Put some clothes on.’ I really, really don’t want to blame my parents. I think it goes back ancestrally. I do feel influenced by my Catholic heritage and strong Catholic ancestry, which my parents broke from but that sense of guilt and shame doesn’t disappear in one generation.
I was starting to look womanly and get breasts at the age of nine or ten. I went to an all-girls’ private school and there was this very dynamic power crowd, some of them more sexual and ladylike than others. I certainly was not in the pretty crowd. I remember being twelve when the rumours started about ‘Did you know that so-and-so slept with so-and-so and did you know that so-and-so gave so-and-so a blow job?’ Very quickly I formed this idea that everybody was out there doing sexual things and I was left behind. I remember crying and crying and my parents asking me what was wrong and me saying, ‘I haven’t got a boyfriend.’ They must have thought, ‘Gosh, she’s twelve, what’s she up to?’ And so I did get a boyfriend. I went to one of those discos where everyone’s lined up either side and I was matched up with a chubby lad and everyone said how sweet it was that the chubby ones found each other. We were at the exploring stage and we used to go and kiss in the wood and once he and I were in the bathroom and he locked the door and he got his willy out and I started to touch it and do you know, I haven’t really progressed from that point in my life, when I was twelve where my sexuality stopped!
By the time I was eighteen years of age, I was eighteen stone. It was a catch-22: I didn’t want to have sex because I was so overweight but I was so overweight probably because I didn’t want to have sex. It was a protective thing. Because I went to an all-girls’ school I had this idea that boys were different from girls and that we were separate. Then I was faced with going to university. I always thought I was going to be a nun and I was very frightened. On Freshers’ Day I got myself really dolled up and I got myself a taxi into Leeds and I got out of the taxi and this group of lads went, ‘Oi, Vanessa Feltz!’ – Vanessa Feltz is the TV presenter who is very large – and I got back in the taxi and went home again. I felt so vulnerable and so keenly aware of being fat and being a target, and I felt very, very frightened.
I left university at twenty-three and time and time again I attracted weird people. I found myself drunk in alleys after nightclubs, and in strange men’s beds. I lived in France for a year and when I went to scrap my car, this French guy I knew said he would drive me back and he stopped the car, locked the doors and asked for sex. I was always finding myself with creepy men in difficult situations and, as somebody who is very self-aware, I look back and realise I was sending out some strange signals: those men were culpable but there was something about me that was vulnerable, that was needy. The more those things happened the more frightened I got. I ended up in a cold, nothing kind of place.
I haven’t had a lot of sex: I’ve had two boyfriends. The first one was very controlling about when I could see him. I’d go to his house on a Saturday night, we would watch TV and have dinner and then in the morning it would be sex, but I have perfected the blowjob. Through those difficult situations when men were pressurising me to have sex, the only way I could get out of that, I felt, was to offer a really fine blowjob, wait until they fell asleep, and get out! Once you’ve offered a man that, they don’t really want to go through the rigmarole of turning you on and then having sex. Then occasionally we would have sex and it would be very painful, very forced. I remember him saying to the therapist when we did couple therapy, ‘I don’t want to have sex with somebody that I’m hurting. It doesn’t turn me on to hurt her: er, er, no, stop, ouch!’ There was nothing spontaneous, loose or peaceful about the situation at all.
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I am in a relationship now. It doesn’t really work sexually. A couple of weeks after I first met my partner, I went to stay with him at his flat and I seduced him. I made sure I was hair-free and put my fake tan on and I bought condoms and I was all prepared and he was a little bit blindsided by it, but we had sex on his living-room floor. And for the first time in my life somebody actually gave me oral sex. I was spread eagled on the floor. And I was mortified; I was absolutely mortified that he would do that. I was like, ‘Don’t go down there! Oh my God! You’ve no idea what you’re doing. Stop it!’ From that, he did bring me to orgasm and then we started the rigmarole of penetration and I froze up. I said to him, ‘This is so painful. But this is normal – I’m like this all the time.’ He was on top and he said, ‘Do you feel you’re a bit trapped with me being on top?’ and I said, ‘I do a bit,’ and he said, ‘I’ll go on my back and you go on top.’
So I’m sitting on top of him but still gravity doesn’t help. I can be sitting on top of an erect penis and not let go. It was such a ludicrous situation that I made a light-hearted joke about it and he laughed and I started to laugh and the more I laughed the more I slid down and so I was being penetrated. He said to me, ‘You’re not supposed to laugh during sex.’ That made me laugh even more and so we were entwined and he was inside me and we were laughing, and he said, ‘This was obviously what it was meant to be; don’t give yourself a hard time about it.’ So that was the end of it. I wouldn’t say we went on to have sex. I actually really enjoyed giving him a blowjob because he’d earned it! It was such a liberating experience. That was the first time.
Then there have been a couple more times when we’ve had sex and it has always been difficult and always forced and it didn’t flow. And I do think that guys are as sensitive as I am – he’s sensitive, I’m sensitive – and men find it hard and think, ‘You didn’t find me attractive enough.’ The self-worth thing comes in. We had sex again on his birthday, though it wasn’t full penetrative sex; it was oral sex and cuddling. We had a go at penetration. That was in the summer, eight months ago now. I haven’t really slept with my partner since. I still feel hopeful that he and I will go there again, I don’t want it to be a deal-breaker because I don’t want to go into what I haven’t got, when I’ve got someone who’s so lovely and loving. A lot of women would kill to have somebody who loves them and understands them and can hug them and have a soul connection with them: it’s really profound.