by Wendy Jones
I am very blessed, considering my experiences and preferences, to have found somebody who doesn’t have a sex drive, who doesn’t want to force it on me. Well, I think he does have a sex drive. I have a private masturbation relationship with myself, and he seems to as well. We’re cuddly, we’re tactile, we love each other, but we don’t have sex, we don’t share a bed. He’s very pragmatic, he always says to me, ‘Take it a day at a time. There’s no reason to look at what we’ve got today and think, this isn’t good enough.’ And I’m very grateful to have the relationship I’ve got. It’s very serene, we enjoy each other’s company and we’re both spiritual people, we pray and meditate together, we talk about things, we laugh a lot, we really laugh like crazy people sometimes. He has a way of making me laugh: no one’s really ever tickled me like that. It’s not a problem for me, not unless I make it one. I could make it a problem because I want to be socially acceptable.
When I’ve had sex I’ve not felt any pleasure. None whatsoever. It’s very, very painful. So I shut. I clam up. Penetration is painful. But also orgasm. When I orgasm I get cramps like period cramps that stay with me and this has been investigated at length by medical types and I’ve been told I’ve got a clean bill of health. I’ve never been penetrated and had an orgasm at the same time so I don’t know what it feels like to orgasm with something meeting the waves of contractions. My orgasm’s never met resistance, which I imagine must be quite pleasurable.
When I masturbate I have many, many orgasms. Loads! It’s known to have gone on for hours. Maybe, in an average session, six or eight orgasms. The first orgasm is the best, then they taper off – they might just be mini ones at the end but by then I’m past the point of it being pleasurable. I equate masturbation with my eating disorders. It’s not fun to eat until you’re sick, but I did that. It feels good at the first mouthful and I think, ‘Oh, this feels nice,’ and the second sensation feels good, then I tip over to the point where I’ve had too much and I’m chasing that pleasure into the chasm. It’s not satisfying. But if I stop after the first orgasm I’m unsatisfied. It’s physically empty but also emotionally and spiritually empty. I masturbate until I’m absolutely spent and I always end up crying myself to sleep. It’s not a release: it’s a tragedy. Masturbation feels unfulfilling and pointless because it’s so empty. It physically hurts and that’s when the cramps start and then I have to curl up. I don’t think of physical pain as being separate from emotional and spiritual pain, I tend to feel everything emotionally.
Because I’ve never enjoyed sex I don’t think I’m trying to recapture something. It’s a fire that’s not been kindled yet. I don’t particularly want to kindle it. I could function perfectly well for the rest of my life without exploring sex. I’m thirty-three and intellectually I want to enjoy sex and be sexual but I don’t feel it in any deeper sense. I have an incredibly passionate, loving life, I’m somebody who goes out and I give a lot of love and get a lot of love. I feel so validated by the love that I receive that I don’t feel less for not being a particularly sexual person.
I wouldn’t share my fantasies. Even though I don’t think they’re the worst things in the world I still feel shame about them. Perhaps I’ve got the personality of a Victorian lady. I feel like I’m from another era and don’t belong in this world. Sometimes I feel like a child at a very busy junction thinking, ‘Gosh, this world is so crazy, it’s so mad,’ so that I feel like I belong to another time and place. I find the realities of life all very yucky so I tend to prefer to be in a light space of love and peace. Yet I know I’m not fulfilled spiritually if I’m avoidant of my human side. I know that. We’re spiritual beings having human experiences, but I don’t want to go and live in a cave in the Himalayas and meditate and achieve enlightenment. I want to fully inhabit my body and to be at one with the experience of being human. My journey is about learning to be me – who I actually am, in this body, in this life. To fully experience the body I have. To find a way of being comfortable with my sexuality, which is dormant or yet to be awakened, I suppose.
It’s been a revelation thinking about this. I hear talk – I’ve heard rumours – that sex can be incredibly spiritual. I’ve heard that people merge at the point of orgasm, that there’s a sense of being lost in that, completely abandoned, complete surrender. If I experienced that once in my life then I would be sexually satisfied.’
18
Guide leader
Hilary, 68, Sheffield
‘I have a six-foot-three handsome Yorkshire man; you know what I mean?’
‘I bloom where I’m planted! I’m still in the Girl Guide movement – well, I was a Brownie! I loved being in the Brownies. I passed all the badges, got the wings and flew to the Girl Guides. Years later, I was home in Sheffield and they said, ‘Oh, Hilary, would you help with the Girl Guides?’ and I said, ‘Well …’ And they said, ‘It’s only two hours a week.’ I did go and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it ever since and I’ve done thirty years. Absolutely fabulous.
I was the youngest of eleven children. Happy family. My father’s family came from Dublin during the potato famine to work in the factories. My mother was born in 1899. My mum was wonderful. I went to an old-fashioned, all-girls’ convent school with the nuns teaching us. I was at the Immaculate Conception School – the name itself! Every excuse in the world, isn’t it? I’m a Christian. I questioned it, but I believe. My faith has affected my sexuality. Oh, absolutely! Guilt, guilt, guilt. Catholics generally have this guilt thing. I mean, oh, for goodness sake, we didn’t talk about sex at all growing up. I never heard the word sex mentioned at home. My mother had eleven children and I used to think, ‘When did I ever see you in bed?’ I never saw her in bed, not until she was ill because she was always up before everyone and she would never go to bed until everyone was home. I was born in the bed in the bedroom. I was born four pound with the yellow jaundice and they didn’t think I was going to live, but I was very tenacious and I wouldn’t die! I bloom where I’m planted. I said, ‘I bet you really didn’t want me, because with ten children you wouldn’t have wanted eleven.’ Forty-six when she had me. She said, ‘Every baby comes for a reason,’ and my reason was because – it was a long time afterwards – I was the one that looked after her. Amazing, eh?
I met my husband. He is Catholic now, although he wasn’t Catholic when we met. I didn’t go to pubs but this friend said, ‘Oh God, come on, Hilary, let’s go to the pubs,’ so we went to this pub and there was this group on and it was really nice, and my husband was there. We actually saw each other over a crowded room, I looked and he looked and our eyes met, and we just knew there was something. And that was it. Amazing! I was twenty-one when I got married. When we were married, you didn’t have sex before you were married, supposedly. You didn’t – except that you get very near to it! You just try it to see if it can work, and then you know if it can work on a sexual level. But officially, no. But you have to make sure, to try. It was when the pill had just come out so I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll go on the pill’ just before, just before, only just before, we got married. I didn’t really have sex all the time before I was married, other than to try it!
I went on the pill and it was good really. After a while, I got a conscience about the pill and I decided I wouldn’t go on it. But then it was this horrible trauma because we went to the rhythm method where you can only have sex on a certain day and I’d think, ‘Oh, my temperature!’ I had a thermometer stuck up my bum. Then the nurse said, ‘Try it under your arm.’ But under your arm isn’t as accurate as … you know. I had that thermometer everywhere! A different one in my mouth! Then I’d have to record my temperature every day on this chart to see if it was going up or down and then, ‘Ah! Today’s the day, we can have sex today!’ And I’d say to Geoffrey, ‘This is the day!’ He’d be all of a dither. And so this was the day. Oh, but it was wearing. I was that bothered about this flipping temperature thing – this was to avoid having children, which is probably against all our principles anyway! Then we got rea
lly quite fed up with that. And we thought we’d go for a baby.
We had a protected environment when we were being brought up. My husband is proper Yorkshire and he has a dry sense of humour. You see, he’s quite a wit and he’d have a laugh. I’d be out with Geoffrey and there would be all these jokes that I wouldn’t understand and Geoffrey would say, ‘I’ll tell you when we’re in bed tonight. Just laugh.’ I’ve only seen one DVD that was raunchy, which somebody gave me! I was in my late forties. And it was quite funny; it was ‘Eeh!’ I don’t like things like that really. No, I’m more of a sweetie. Sex education was just ourselves learning and developing ourselves. We think maybe we should have got books and read about different things but we didn’t. There are things I would do, oral and all the rest of it. Yes. So we’ve played around but haven’t done anything planned, or said, ‘Let’s look at this book and do it this way.’ But maybe we should. Maybe that’s our fiftieth anniversary treat. Once we were out in the country, because we’re walkers. We lay on the grass and when it happens, it’s magical, isn’t it? I don’t think sex as a routine is a brilliant thing. It should be something you feel and you want and you are. For me, that kind of love is tenderness and nice. It’s erotic at times as well. Makes me feel good. It’s sensual and all those things that give us elation and that’s really, really good.
Recently my husband has had cancer and we’ve just had word that it looks clear, although it’s not totally finished with. It has affected him; he hasn’t been able to enjoy the physical … to rise to the occasion! But as you get older and more understanding you get a deeper love as well. You go up and down through things, don’t you? And I’ve thought, ‘I’m this that and the other and you’re not,’ and then I realise, ‘Well, no, I’m not really, and you are.’ Then all of a sudden it’s like the first meeting and I really want to be with him and I thought, ‘Gosh! This is turning a whole circle. Definitely. The love. It’s as if I’ve come back to the beginning. He wants to be with me, yes, yes,’ and I think, ‘Yes.’ It’s almost as if it’s new. He’s seventy-five and he’s missing me as he would at the very beginning. The love has deepened, if you can imagine it. Somehow he’s got more beautiful; the marriage has got more beautiful. Can you believe it? You can’t really imagine it because I thought the young bits and the new bits are the most beautiful, but now it’s a deeper love and trust. It can happen, that, you know.
We’ve been married since 1967. And we always celebrate wedding anniversaries. Would you believe, for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary the Girl Guides brought the Guide tent and we pretended it was a marquee. We put it up in the garden and my friends decorated it pink. And we had a roasting pig and caterers, and we all got dressed up in black tie and it was a fabulous party. Then for our fortieth wedding anniversary we said, ‘Shall we go on a cruise?’ But we thought everybody can enjoy a party so we had a party in the village hall and everybody was imagining we were going to have this roasting pig. So we thought we’d better get one, so we did. It was once in a lifetime. I got this ruby dress – fabulous dress – and it was all sequins and fitted but it was stunning. And we said to everybody to come in the colour ruby. And it was wonderful. Super. Super-duper. It was really a super do.
I definitely still have a libido and I always have, it’s only that my husband has a bit less now, because he’s been so poorly. Sometimes I miss sex. Oh yes. I actually, in some situations, believe in – well, I wouldn’t call it prostitution. If a marriage doesn’t have sex and one person wants sex why is it wrong for them to go somewhere else? But not have a relationship. I mean, you wouldn’t think I’d think it and I probably shouldn’t as a Catholic, but it’s serving their need, isn’t it? I was thinking of it, but I can’t fancy anybody. I couldn’t just go and have sex with a dirty old man. I’d have to have a really nice-looking escort! My husband wouldn’t like it. But then again, I’ve never asked him! He’d just be very embarrassed and hurt because he couldn’t do it. I don’t have my own private fantasies. Well, sometimes I think, oh, I could really fancy somebody – my husband – touching my body and I’m turned on and my libido’s working. But I don’t wish I could hang on a tree and be doing whatever. Maybe I’m not touching the right buttons on myself.
It doesn’t bother me that I’ve never slept with anyone else. I don’t think of it in that way. I never particularly fancied anyone else. But then again I have a six-foot-three, handsome Yorkshire man; you know what I mean? He’s rugged and he’s very straightforward – what you see is what you get. Well, somebody else might say he was ugly, but he’s generally pleasing to people. Other people could be attracted to him. Now I’m much more aware. Now I don’t put myself or Geoffrey into a position where it could lead to something with someone else. Because there’s some wicked women out there, especially schoolteachers.
Now that I’ve retired from my career in NatWest bank, I also support a national charity against child exploitation. I’ve recently been made an ambassador for the charity and went to the United Nations with them. One, I raise awareness. Two, I raise money by having a ladies’ lunch. At the last count, they had thirty-something exploited children in Sheffield, from age eleven to twenty. The exploited children are very lonely people and they want to be loved. And these men who groom them can identify them. Why the pimps are doing it is a difficult one. The paedophiles, without a doubt, have an addiction to sex and they can’t help themselves: they see it and want it and have to have it. Others are definitely money-making. You can make a fortune. It’s a different trade and industry – anything for money. Would you sell your child? No. But someone else might.
The girls are like sex machines. Words couldn’t express what I see. I feel compassion for them and I can’t help but support the children, even if it’s to sew toilet bags. When I go to the supermarket I Buy One Get One Free and I put the free one in the toilet bag. I put in a toothbrush, soap, facecloth; things like that. One day a week the charity opens their centre and exploited children can drop in off the street. The charity lets them have a hot meal and a shower and gives them one of these new toilet bags, and the toilet bags work superbly well, because nobody wants to use somebody else’s soap after them, and the girls can take them away as well. Every little helps.
I’ve been thinking about my friends’ daughters and I thought, what do I call them: loose women? I think women are too promiscuous now. Sometimes people too readily have sex, like going to the toilet. Some people give up too soon, and think, ‘Well, I’m not standing this any more; I’m leaving, because of der, der, der.’ I can leave and I could have and I don’t, probably because I’m Catholic. When I visited my Auntie Phoebe in the retirement home, I said to her something negative about my husband and she looked at me – she was ninety-four – and she said, ‘So-and-so, her husband was at the council meetings and here, there and everywhere and she just had to put up with it. Hilary, can’t you just put up with it?’ And I thought, of course I could just put up with it and get on. But then it comes back again. You get over it. And I mean, who’s perfect? And to be perfect all the time, you’d be pretty boring, wouldn’t you? And we’ve stood the test of time.
And sex is for a long-term relationship, for its development, for the blossoming, blooming, flowering, coming to the fore. That is what I feel sex is for. Well, it is a sacrament; it’s the sacrament of sex, really, isn’t it? Marriage is a sacrament when you are having sex. In the Catholic faith they say marriage is for the procreation of children. It isn’t, surely, because I wouldn’t be married because I haven’t got children – which can you believe after that thermometer! Just can’t understand, can you? But anyway, there you are. We’re parents to hundreds of others. My husband was a deputy head of a comprehensive school and someone said to my husband, ‘Have you any kids?’ and he said, ‘I’ve got none of my own but I’ve got every bugger else’s!’
Organisms – oh yeah! That’s the culmination of everything. Yeah, it is. I do think that. Yes, I do have organisms; I mean orgasms. Perhaps I’m very fortunat
e: in an unplanned and unknown way I’ve experienced so much of my body, and our bodies, which has developed into experiencing all these lovely things. There’s the tenderness and the excitement and the organisms and then we maybe want to do it again. I’ve been very fortunate. All I say is bloom where you stand, be as good as you can wherever you are, in whatever moment. And then you can look back later and you don’t realise how fortunate you’ve been and what you’ve done. You’ve got to be the best you can whenever you can in that moment.’
19
Beauty contestant
Ariel, 35, Reading
‘Why shouldn’t fat women have as much sex as everybody else?’
‘I’ve entered a beauty competition – it’s for plus-size women. The finals are in two weeks in Birmingham. For the swimwear round, I’ve covered a bra and knickers in bright green Lycra and sparkly purple netting to make a Little Mermaid outfit. Rather than just turning up in a swimsuit, I thought I’d turn up with my hair Ariel-fied and Ariel outfit on. It’s because of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, and because my hair is red. I’m going to get a bubble gun and use it when I get to the end of the runway. God knows how I’m going to do it. I’m not embarrassed, but I’m not a flaunty, get-it-all-out kind: I feel self-conscious in a bikini. I think most women do.